Women

Generation V

In my late 30s I feel very old or old-fashioned at best. I remember my mom’s words when I was a teenager and she was giving me grown-up advice. Once she asked me if I knew why crows lived 300 years? I replied with a half-open mouth and popped-up eyes, “they live 300 years?” She said, “yes, and it’s because no-one has ever seen them mating in public." My mom’s mystical approach to sexuality not only stayed with me but it evolved as I did>>>

Women's story

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This is for You

To mark international women's day I decided I should write about three Iranian women whom I came to know well when living in Iran just before Ahmadinejad's first term. The three of them worked for me as housekeepers/babysitters and my knowledge of their lives is limited to our employer/employee relationship and class differences. But we spent a lot of time together and often our talks and interactions were more intimate than those I had with women I knew socially. For whatever it is worth I thought that I should expose the lives of three very ordinary Iranian women from different backgrounds and different sensibilities. This is for them>>>

Hayedeh

A year after the overthrow of the Shah, the Islamic Revolutionary Court issued a subpoena with a list of singers and actors who were ordered to surrender to Evin authorities. Second on the list was Massoumeh Dadeh-Baalaa, known to the music world as Hayedeh. The ominous document, scribbled in course handwriting, can be seen in Pejman Akbarzadeh’s encyclopedic video biography of the legendary Iranian diva. Akbarzadeh chronicles Hayedeh’s life with such detail and insight that by the sad end we realize the storyteller has covered territory beyond the life of one artist; he has shed light on the world of the Iranian exile>>>

هشتم مارس زير نورافکن

زنان ما اکنون بايد از مفهوم کلاسيک روز جهانی زن دور شده و به مفهوم مدرن آن، که در پی تصويب اعلاميه حقوق بشر شکل گرفته، برسند. يعنی در روز جهانی زن، پيش و بيش از هر شعاری خواستار اجرای مفاد اعلاميه ای شوند که جهانيان، و از جمله کشور خودشان، پای آن امضاء گذاشته و آن را به رسميت شناخته اند. آنها بايد بجای طرح خواست های «اختصاصی» که ثابت شده اين حکومت برآورد کننده ی آنها نيست، خواستار اجرای مفاد اعلاميه ی حقوق بشر، بدون هيچ حذف و شرط و چون و چرايي، هم در مورد خودشان و هم در مورد کل مردم سرزمين شان باشند>>>

Women in Prison

In the process of finding a new transitional global identity, Iran state authorities have steadily continued in the use of legislative delays, reversal of legal means and arrests of dissidents, activists and journalists. Younger, as well as older, women human rights defenders, are now finding themselves victim to increasing intelligence policies of non-disclosure, intimidation and repression. The Islamic Republic of Iran's state detention policies act as only a surrogate solution to many of the social problems now growing inside the country>>>

حجاب سوزان؟

چندان شگفت انگیز نخواهد بو د اگرامسال در هشتم ِ مارس و یا در شبِ چهارشنبه سوری، زنان ِ دلیرمان تصمیم بگیرند که اگر چه بصورت سمبولیک ( با آوردن یک روسری ِ یدکی) در یکزمان ِمشخص روسریها و چادرهایشان را به آتش بکشند. این اقدام قطعا با حساسیت ِ رژیم، حرکتی آنی وموقتی خواهد بود اماچه در سطح ِ ایران و چه در سطح جهان نتایج ِ بی نظیری را در بر خواهد داشت. بدون ِ شک با اینعمل دیگر رژیم نمی تواند آنان را با اتهاماتی نظیر ِ "محاربه با خدا" به صلابه بکشد وقطعا این عمل خطرناکتر از آنچه تاکنون بانجام رساند ه اند، نخواهد بود>>>

از زن ستیزی تا تبعیض ستیزی

سی سال حاکمیت و تبلیغات تمامیت خواهانه‌ی یک نظام ایدئولوژیک بی‌شک تاثیرات مخربی در شکل‌گیری تفکر و بر رفتار مردم داشته است. اما ضد ارزش شدن ارزش‌ها معمولن یکی از مهم‌ترین دست آوردهای تجربه‌ی تلخ نظام های ایدئولوژیک است. یکی از ارزش‌های حیاتی حکومت اسلامی بنیادگرایانه که ریشه در سنت‌های پدرسالارانه و حرم‌سرایی ایران سلطنتی هم دارد، تفکیک جایگاه شهروندان بر اساس جنسیت‌شان است. تعبیه‌ی جایگاه فرودست برای زنان، نشانه‌دار کردن آنها به واسطه‌ی حجاب و تقسیم عرصه‌های حضور اجتماعی زنان به مجاز و غیرمجاز، از ارکان اصلی و بازتولیدگر ساختار نظام جمهوری اسلامی است>>>

Shir Zanan

Nestled deep in the snowcapped Alburz Mountains of Northern Iran, amongst a heavily forested region, the Council of Shir Zanan met under the cover of a pitch black, moonless night. Seven women were seated around an altar, facing each other and holding the eternal fire of Ahura Mazda in the palms of their hands. The sacred fire illuminated their faces and drew eerie shadows on the wall. Their murmur could be heard in the silence of the frosty night as they chanted under their breath: “Fear not our wrath; Fear not our revenge; Fear only our reverence.” >>>

S&M Iranian Style - Finale

As we followed Manijeh joon up the stairs, I could see she was not wearing underwear and if she was it must have been the transparent kind: a newly arrived model from Victoria’s Secret, her favorite place. Just the thought of her kos-excited outfit (or lack of it) scares me. I just find the whole thing frightening in a weird way. It’s like being in a war zone. At any moment something is going to go wrong. It made me feel edgy and tense and defensive>>>

S & M Iranian style

Nazy joon is 40-years old going on 13 and often says she’s in her early 30s. She considers herself a virgin [I mean virgin-like] after 5 years of marriage to a man in his early 60s who brought her to LA from Iran. After arriving in LA, she told her newly wed husband that she's a virgin and so afraid of having sex that he has to wait til she’s comfortable. So he said fine and he waited and waited till she disappointedly gave up (after 2 weeks) her virginity that had won a bid of 1349-gold-coins worth>>>

Veil as Mandated

It seems some Muslims in the U.S. have only two things to worry about, Halal meat and veiling (hijab). While Halal meat can be found only in the freezer of ethnic food stores, the veil is visible everywhere, even around public swimming pools. It is considered the most distinctive, controversial, and often resisted sign of Islamic identity especially in Western countries. In some Middle Eastern countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia where hijab is mandatory, the so-called Islamic dress codes are stringently enforced by police. Occasionally, we see a video clip on YouTube of a screaming young lady resisting arrest or begging for mercy while she is being dragged by the so-called Iranian morality-enforcer police toward a waiting police car>>>