For the “Iran, a reflection” Series
Iranian women participated massively in the 2009 election campaign and in its subsequent popular uprising. While it is absurd to call a movement that is neither a revolution nor contingent on twitter ‘a twitter revolution’, widely accessible images spoke louder than volumes of words to discredit the caricatured face of women living in the post-Revolutionary Iran.
But to avoid replacing one caricature for another, it is now time to correct some of the misperceptions that hovered over the commentaries decoding the fast journalism on women’s participation. This has some serious implications for understanding the green movement and its potential future.
Iranian women’s political sophistication and extensive engagement both in the campaign and in subsequent protests, quite unassumingly, defined feminism (small f) and testified to the growth of gender consciousness. But to say that this was all a Feminist (capital F) rage would not only ignore the complexity of Iranian Feminism but also miss the historically significant and larger political sensibility of the Iranian women involved.
For starters, many self-avowed Feminists inside and outside boycotted the election altogether. Secular Feminists didn’t see much to gain from reforming the system from within an Islamic system. The campaign promises of the reformist candidates, Mousavi and Karoubi, were too religious-laden to be trusted. In spite of their initial boycott, some nevertheless did join the ensuing protests
This suggests that the startling number of women taking to the streets –whether or not they had partaken in the campaign and election– to protest the mockery of an election were demanding more than mere women’s rights. The attractive display of fashion and the determination of female protesters is not just a nose-thumb to the arbitrary dress code or, under a more sympathetic analysis, attesting to women’s anger at men’s passive silence against gender discriminatory laws and practices. Behind the easy-to-consume glare of those perfectly polished nails, the hands showing the V-sign belong to the great-granddaughters of women supporting the Tobacco Revolt of the late nineteenth century, the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, and the establishment of the first Iranian National Bank to resist against the stranglehold of British influence. They follow in their mother’s footsteps who stood for the 1953 Oil Nationalization and the 1979 Revolution in search of independence and freedom not just for women but for all citizens alike.
The history of Iranian women’s political engagement suggests two points: first, women’s demands are merely part of a broader political consciousness that has historically been translated into resistance against both internal tyrants and external intervention. From Neda Agha-Soltan –the iconic image of the 2009 post-election movement, to women’s craftsmanship projects to support the soldiers of the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, to their demonstrations and threats to employ all the means at their disposal if parliamentarians surrendered to the Russian ultimatum of 1911, women have actively stood against their incompetent and illegitimate statesmen and foreign meddling.
Second, despite all ebbs and flows of women’s rights in the past century, gender consciousness has been incessantly on the rise. Rather than an overnight uproar against the confinement chains of Hijab or household, the recent massive presence of women proves the role of long-term progressive, grassroots movements to educate women as equal, politically-informed citizens. If the government is afraid of Iranian women, as suggested by Western media, it is not afraid of enraged emotions over dress code. It instead fears the unity of minds and hearts who are well capable of showing mercy on their enemies when they save a militiaman with a motorcycle set on fire or one Basiji who has fallen into people’s hands. It is such a unity of political positions that defies any gender (or class, religion, age, ethnicity, and political orientation) divide in pursuit of the most basic demands of a decent life for every Iranian citizen.
This is the message of the green resistance movement, unanticipated by Mousavi or any other reformist. It is the message of Neda, as it is of Ashkan Sohrabi’s –the 18 year-old male victim who was shot three times in the chest, of Kaveh’s –the 19 year-old male whose low-income father was asked to pay more than he could afford as bullet fee to collect his body, but of many more whose fate didn’t make it to the cameras. This is a message that pushes identity politics and all other perennial ideological differences back to dusty bookshelves.
