Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Broken Taboos in Post-Election Iran - Middle East Research and Information Project
Broken Taboos in Post-Election Iran - Middle East Research and Information Project
The on-camera martyrdom of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year old philosophy student shot dead during the protests after the fraudulent
presidential election in Iran in June, caught the imagination of the world. But the post-election crackdown has two other victims whose
fates better capture the radical shift in the country’s political culture. One victim was the protester Taraneh Mousavi, detained, reportedly
raped and murdered in prison, and her body burned and discarded. The other is Majid Tavakoli, the student leader arrested on December
8, after a fiery speech denouncing dictatorship during the demonstrations on National Student Day.
Following his arrest, pro-government news agencies claimed Tavakoli had been caught trying to escape dressed as a woman and
published a series of photographs showing him wearing a headscarf and chador -- a common version of the “modest” garb (hejab)
mandated for women by the Islamic Republic. Attempts at flight in such gender-bending disguises are a classic trope in Iranian political
history. The best-known instance was when the first president of the Islamic Republic, Abol-Hasan Bani-Sadr, after his deposition in 1981,
allegedly fled the country in women’s dress -- the Fars News Agency put a photo of him in a scarf next to that of Tavakoli. But in pre-
revolutionary Iran clerics, too, such as Ayatollah Bayat, are said to have evaded the Shah’s authorities by concealing themselves beneath
chadors, which pro-government media outlets now choose to ignore.
To be nabbed in this act is portrayed by the state as doubly shameful -- a prisoner so afraid of punishment that he literally denies his
manhood. In this case, the shame was pictured not only draped over Tavakoli’s head and shoulders but also etched on his face,
unshaven, his eyes downcast. The exposure of Tavakoli’s “cowardice” was intended to humiliate a hero of the student movement, but it
backfired when an Iranian photographer invited men to post pictures of themselves wearing hejab on Facebook. Men responded en
masse, inside and outside Iran, asserting, “We are all Majid.”
There are many ways, indeed, in which the June presidential election, and the Green Movement that emerged in its aftermath, herald the
coming of an egalitarian shift in the politics of gender and sexuality in Iran.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero121709 1/3
10/5/2017 Broken Taboos in Post-Election Iran | Middle East Research and Information Project
Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), because he promised concrete improvements in women’s lives, but the divide lingered nonetheless.
On the eve of the 2005 presidential election, at the end of Khatami’s second term, when secular women’s groups organized a rally in
front of Tehran University to ask for equality, framing their demands in constitutional terms, women from the official reformist parties did
not join them. They did not want to break all ties with the establishment and to be seen as siding with the newly emerging secular
feminists, who for their part were keen to keep their distance from religious reformists.
But in April 2009, 42 women’s groups and 700 individuals, including both secular feminists and religious women from the reformist
parties, came together to form a coalition called the Women’s Convergence. Without supporting any individual candidate, the coalition
posed pointed questions to the field. They raised two specific demands: first, the ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women and second, the revision of Articles 19, 20, 21 and 115 of the Iranian constitution that enshrine gender
discrimination. Using the press and new media, they put the candidates on the spot to respond. [1] (#[1]) Women’s demand for legal
equality became a central issue in the campaign season. Distinguished filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad made a documentary, available
on the Internet, which registers the voices and demands of these women and the replies of the candidates. [2] (#[2]) Ahmadinejad was,
of course, the only candidate not to appear.
The second novelty was the appearance of Zahra Rahnavard at the side of -- and even holding hands with -- her husband, the candidate
Mir Hossein Mousavi. Though many women politicians have served in the Islamic Republic’s legislature, they had been absent from high-
level politics, and the 2009 campaign was the first time that a woman appeared as an equal partner and intellectual match for her man.
Rahnavard, in fact, was the more charismatic and articulate of the couple. Her open support for women’s rights and human rights
changed the tone of the campaign. She was also blunt in many of her remarks, which inspired the youth of the country. For instance, in
Mousavi’s second campaign film, Rahnavard is shown in conversation with the renowned actress, Fatemeh Motamed-Arya. At one point,
she observes, “A woman does not even own her own body: If you go to the hospital for an operation, you need the permission of a man.”
The third novelty, in the election aftermath, is the availability on the Internet of letters to male political prisoners -- key reformist figures
and people active in Mousavi’s campaign -- from their wives. What makes these often very affecting love letters especially significant is
that many of the writers are women from religious backgrounds who now have no qualms about speaking of their physical longing for
their men, and question the very justice of the system that has imprisoned them. They are breaking another taboo, challenging the
confinement of expressions of sexual desire and love to the private sphere. So the policies of the regime have generated a paradox:
Having politicized the sexuality and honor of all Iranian women, previously a private matter for the family and the local community, the
regime now finds its own adherents taking the policies’ spirit to an uncomfortable extreme -- by making the personal political, in true
feminist fashion.
The fourth, and perhaps the most important, novelty is that the regime has been caught breaking its own taboos, with the revelations of
the extensive sexual abuse and rape of detainees of both sexes. Those who are demanding political rights, the government seems to be
saying, have no sexual honor. The fate of Taraneh Mousavi is just one of the more egregious examples. These atrocities and the
allegations of more have horrified the public -- and many leading clerics. The role played by defeated reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi
in the disclosure of these sexual abuses, his support for the victims and the authorities’ refusal to allow proper investigations have added
further to the rumors and led gradually to other victims breaking their silence. One of Karroubi’s witnesses, a male rape victim, refers to
his decision to disclose what happened to him as “committing social suicide,” which speaks to the power of the taboo -- but then, once a
taboo is broken, it loses its power. On December 16, Britain’s Channel 4 TV broadcast an interview with a refugee member of the Basij,
the paramilitary force charged with carrying out the arbitrary detention and abuse of protesters, movingly detailing his horror at what
occurred. “I have lost my world,” he says, choking back tears. “I have lost my religion.” The clip has rapidly spread through Iranian
cyberspace. [3] (#[3])
The political prisoners include a number of women, ranging from Azar Mansouri, deputy head of the reformist Mosharekat Front, to
human rights activists, journalists and students. [4] (#[4]) Some have been released, but none were among the victims of the show trials
held in September, when well-known reformist personalities “confessed” on camera that there could be no cheating in the Islamic
Republic and that the opposition was mistaken and misled. This government strategy had worked well in the 1980s, when “confessions”
and shows of remorse by opposition leaders were regular features. But this time, far from convincing people of the integrity of the
election, the show trials displayed the brutality of a regime prepared to go to any lengths to destroy former revolutionary allies who had
now become reformists and leaders of the Green Movement. And this tactic, too, backfired, as messages of understanding, eulogies to
the pragmatism of the political prisoners and voluntary “confessions” started to appear on the opposition-friendly websites.
Together with the Tavakoli episode, these aspects of the election aftermath have discredited the regime’s “culture of hejab” and shaken
the very foundation of the government’s Social Morality Plan.
Endnotes
[1] See Nayereh Tohidi, “Women and the Presidential Election: Iran’s New Political Culture,” Informed Comment, September 3, 2009,
available at http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/tohidi-women-and-presidential-elections.... (http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/tohidi-women-and-
presidential-elections.html) .
[2] The film, “We are Half of Iran’s Population,” is accessible online at http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/bani-etemad120609.html
(http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/bani-etemad120609.html) .
[3] The interview with “Sayyed,” the refugee Basij man, is available at
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/middle_east/iran+basij+membe...
(http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/middle_east/iran+basij+member+describes+election+abuse/3466142) .
[4] The known women political prisoners are listed at http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article3828˜
(http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article3828˜) . [Persian]
[5] See for instance: the writings of Fatemeh Sadeghi (http://www.alborznet.ir/Fa/ViewDetail.aspx?T=2&ID=259
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero121709 2/3
10/5/2017 Broken Taboos in Post-Election Iran | Middle East Research and Information Project
(http://www.alborznet.ir/Fa/ViewDetail.aspx?T=2&ID=259) ); Nasrin Afzali (http://jensemokhalef.blogspot.com/2009/12/blog-post_15.html
(http://jensemokhalef.blogspot.com/2009/12/blog-post_15.html)); Sarah Laqaie (http://www.meydaan.info/Showarticle.aspx?arid=934
(http://www.meydaan.info/Showarticle.aspx?arid=934) ); and Masih Alinejad (http://chrr.us/spip.php?article7307 (http://chrr.us/spip.php?article7307) ).
[Persian]
[6] Ebadi’s commentary is posted at http://www.iranfemschool.com/spip.php?article3916 (http://www.iranfemschool.com/spip.php?article3916) .
[Persian]
Filed under:
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero121709 3/3