How modern feminism abandoned Iranian women (II)

Despite all the constant displays of perseverance by Iranian feminists in the face of the Tehran regime and the reach of the movement, there is hardly any news about it in the West. No television channel mentions the arrests of activists opposed to wearing the veil, the physical punishments and torture in prisons and the daily difficulties of living in a system that considers you inferior from birth. On March 8, in the West, there is no mention of women trapped in purely patriarchal societies. Some actions of first world feminist organizations tend to be strongly criticized and accused of making these women invisible.

The most commented case in recent years is the controversy Women's March on Washington in 2017. Originally planned on Facebook by Teresa Shook in response to Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US elections, the march quickly gained popularity online and activists Tamika Mallory, Carmen Pérez, Vanessa Wruble and Linda Sarsour took it upon themselves to create an entire campaign around him. The march was held on January 21, and was criticized from the first moment. One of the main symbols created to represent the feminists of the march is a woman with hijab, and attendees were encouraged to wear a hijab as a “symbol of female empowerment,” ignoring the connotations of sexualization and objectification of women.

Some participants wore the uniform of the maids from the popular television series The Handmaid's Tale, completely ignoring that said uniform is based on the chador and the imposition of the hijab on Iranian women after the Islamic Revolution. During the march, another group of protesters popularized the well-known pussyhat, a pink wool cap that represents female genitalia. Many feminists criticized both and accused organizers of promoting sexualization “on both ends of the political spectrum.” One of the speakers invited to make a speech at the march, Donna Hylton, she was received as an activist. At no point was any mention made that Hylton had spent 27 years in prison for torturing and murdering a 62-year-old man for being homosexual. Through the event's Twitter account, the participating activists also They wished terrorist Assata Shakur a happy birthday, calling her “a symbol of resistance.”

The organizers were not exempt from controversy. Teresa Shook he ignored the march in 2019, after constant criticism since 2017 of the management, which he described as “anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT.” Mallory, Perez and Sarsour have been accused of show support to black supremacist leader Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, which promotes racism and anti-Semitism. One of the original organizers, Vanessa Wruble, left the organization after being a victim of bullying by her classmates for being Jewish. Tamika Mallory and Carmen Pérez supported, in different meetings, Farrakhan's position that Jews “had a special collective responsibility as exploiters of blacks and browns.” Other extremist positions related to the Nation of Islam maintain that Jews caused 11/XNUMX, the Holocaust, and the transatlantic slave trade, that they are the main promoters of homosexuality and are closer to Satan than to Yahweh, and that white people They were created as a race of demons by a black scientist named Yakub (who could be identified as the biblical Jacob) on the Greek island of Patmos through a eugenics project.

The organizer who has generated the most controversy is the Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour. Sarsour is known for her activity on social networks in favor of different feminist movements. However, her actions and statements in favor of oppressive systems of women have made many question her real objective in organizing the march. Sarsour has stated en multiple occasions support for the law Sharia, used in Iran and Saudi Arabia, among other States. As mentioned above, the Sharia It establishes the inferior position of women compared to men and denies them all kinds of fundamental rights. Despite this, and the obvious conflict with feminist values, Sarsour has defended the existence of Islamic courts based on Sharia, and has insisted which is a good way to live because “there is no interest on loans”, ignoring the oppression of women, physical torture, capital punishment for innocent people and the violence of this system. 

According to the activist, “the law Sharia It's reasonable and when you read the details it makes a lot of sense. People only know the basics.” He has never mentioned what he means by 'the basics' of the law Sharia, yes to stoning or the indiscriminate killing of homosexuals. Sarsour has also indicated support for Saudi Arabia, which uses the Sharia, since “they have 10 weeks of paid maternity leave. Yes, paid. And you worry about women being able to drive.” The former Consul General of Israel in New York, Dani Dayan, he answered: “in Israel, women have 14 weeks of paid maternity leave and can drive.” Sarsour had previously expressed numerous criticisms against Israel and the Jews, declaring that the persecution of the Jews “is not systematic.” Of all the Women's March organizers, Sarsour and Mallory are the closest to Louis Farrakhan. Sarsour has also publicly defended the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization in a tweet, typing “The Muslim Brotherhood sure knows how to have fun! So these are the radical Islamists taking control! “They are the coolest.”

Some Zionist organizations have expressed concern about Sarsour's activism due to your support to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, associated with Hamas. In a tweet, Sarsour wrote: “Saudi Arabia beheads more people than ISIS #fact.” On several occasions, the feminist activist has referred to be against President-elect Donald Trump as “a form of jihad.” In 2017, Sarsour he said feeling “honored and privileged” after participating in a conference with the terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who murdered two Israeli students in 1969. Despite the obvious discrepancies that all these events represent with respect to Sarsour's feminist activism, her most infamous statement and cruel should have been enough to distance her from any kind of acceptance among the Western feminist movement.

After receiving criticism from Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali for supporting the Sharia, Sarsour published on her Twitter account: “Brigitte Gabriel=Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is asking to be spanked. “She wishes she could take her vaginas away from her, they don’t deserve to be women.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a survivor of childhood female genital mutilation. Gabriel, a security expert, has assured that Sarsour is not interested in feminism and that through the women's march and various organizations “she manipulates the ignorant to advance her cause. […] She wants the law Sharia be the law of the United States, as he has tweeted so many times, talking about how wonderful the Sharia and the luck that the women of Saudi Arabia have.”

Feminist activists are not the only ones who display this kind of hypocrisy. In a great moment of empowerment and courage, Sweden's self-described “first feminist government” a photograph was taken mocking American President Donald Trump, showing the group, composed exclusively of women, affirming their commitment to feminism and ecology in a serious and forceful way. ten days later, all of them covered themselves with the hijab and dark coats during a visit to the Iranian regime. Trade Minister Ann Linde decided to wear a black robe similar to a chador. Linde is one of those responsible for the "feminist foreign policy» whose main objective is “to promote a gender equality perspective, in which equality between men and women is a fundamental objective.”

Masih Alinejad harshly criticized this double standard in the European Parliament. “European policies are hypocritical. They support French Muslim women and condemn the ban on burkinis, because they believe that compulsion is a bad thing. But when it comes to Iran, they only care about money. […] They go to my country, and ignore the millions of women who send me their photos and put themselves in danger to be heard. And [the politicians] keep smiling, and putting on the hijab, and saying “this is a cultural problem,” which is false.”

Despite everything, many European policies have continued to obey the sexist demands of theocracy. On the same day that Shaparak Shajarizadeh was arrested for protesting against the imposition of the hijab, three Dutch politicians took cover against the regime. Several European parties and politicians who claim to defend feminism and equality have collaborated with the Tehran government in exchange for power and influence. On several occasions, the morality police have used these visits by European leaders to harass Iranian women against the veil. Curiously, the only ones who have publicly defended Iranian women and challenged the imposition of the hijab have been the players of the 2017 Women's World Chess Championship, who They organized a controversial boycott by refusing to wear the hijab after it was announced that the competition would be held in Tehran.

The motion #metoo He has also been accused of creating more hypocrisy and centering the conversation about women's rights around Westerners. He hashtag #mosquemetoo, which was intended to highlight the sexual abuse suffered by women in the Muslim world, could hardly be promoted due to the controversies surrounding the original American movement. Created by Hollywood actresses to denounce abuses in the industry, the #metoo It was used to accuse thousands of people on social networks without any evidence, like a real witch hunt. Several of the actresses who promoted the hashtag were accused of physical and sexual abuse by third parties, such as Amber Heard (who admitted having physically abused Johnny Depp, who he blamed her having burned him in the face with cigarettes and cutting his finger with a glass bottle) and Asia Argento (who had sexual relations with Jimmy Bennet when he was 17 years old, and paid him $380.000 for his silence, which he tried to hide during her allegations against Harvey Weinstein).

Numerous celebrities from Hollywood have defended for years to director Roman Polanski, exiled in France to avoid being arrested for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Several days after sexual assault accusations against Joe Biden came to light, Lisa Bloom, famous harassment and abuse lawyer, manifested On her Twitter account: “I believe you, Tara Reade. You have people who remember you telling them this decades ago. We know he’s a “sucker.” You’re not asking for money. We know you’ve had to fight hard for this. I still have to fight Trump, so I’ll continue to support Joe. But I believe you. And I’m sorry.” In the following messages, she reiterated the need to support Biden for his political beliefs, while attacking Fox News for paying attention to Tara Reade’s case and not the one she represented at the time.

Alyssa Milano herself, who catapulted the original movement, defended Biden after write “You can't pretend to be the party of Americans and then not support a woman who presents her story of #metoo"And"I don `t believe that a man's misogyny should take precedence over a survivor's humanity," both regarding the sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and “zero tolerance. If we don't hold everyone accountable for horrible behavior, nothing changes. “I’m sorry, [Al Franken], you shouldn’t be in a position to represent women constituents in your state” in reference to the same accusations against Democratic Senator Al Franken.

Such actions in the name of feminism, which are totally contrary to women's rights, have caused many feminist activists to distance themselves from the current wave. While decisions are made that supposedly show the true relevance of women in society, such as the use of inclusive language, many call them paternalistic and insist that, instead of promoting the role of women as equals to men, they only infantilize the female sex. Feminist thinkers accuse the defenders of the current wave of seeing the world through "gender lenses," such that they will always be the victims of an oppressive system and will not be responsible for their own failures.

One of the main people accused of this victimhood is the American politician Hillary Clinton, who has reiterated that misogyny is what caused him to lose the presidential election in 2016, but that has attacked to several women for not supporting her, such as Melania Trump or the Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard, whom she has accused of being a Russian agent. Gabbard called Clinton “the queen of warmongers, the embodiment of corruption and the personification of the rot that has plagued the Democratic Party” for her support of American involvement in foreign conflicts and her activities in the Clinton Foundation. Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Clinton for her “dissenting comments” regarding sexual abuse: “she should start denouncing her husband.”

US Vice President Kamala Harris has also come under fire for similar statements, in which she admitted to believing sexual harassment allegations against her boss, Joe Biden. The founder of the feminist school of thought known as “Amazon feminism,” Camille Paglia, has called the contemporary feminist movement “bourgeois feminism” that “is institutionalizing neurosis. […] It seeks to have the state protect [feminists] in a paternalistic way […] It is about weakening women, not strengthening them.” Paglia has criticized the current movement as sexist for portraying the male sex as oppressors of women.

All these conflicts, coupled with heated debates that clash with contemporary intersectional feminist ideology (whether JK Rowling deserves to be “cancelled” for defending the word for “person who menstruates” is “woman”, if masculinity is intrinsically toxic, whether women's bathrooms should be eliminated in favor of gender neutral bathrooms, if it must eliminate use of the word 'mother' for not being inclusive enough, or if skyscrapers are too phallic) have caused feminists from countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia to feel forgotten and abandoned.

Prominent activist Yasmine Mohammed has been mocked of the Western feminist movement, but also Has expressed frustration y resentment, accusing feminists of using women from patriarchal countries when it is convenient for them. Mohammed celebrates #nohijabday y #freefromhijab (started together with the Muslim activist Asra Nomani) on their social networks, fighting against “a tool that promotes female subjugation” and “rape culture”, but which many Western feminists they welcome as “a garment of female empowerment”, to which Mohammed flame “traitors of feminism.” She has been especially hard on Miley Cyrus, which celebrated the launch of a new Barbie wearing a hijab: “[uses] her power and influence to support her own freedom and the freedom of other women in the West, and [uses] that same power and influence to support misogyny and the subjugation of other women. “It is a distressing hypocrisy.” 

In a podcast hosted by Sam Harris, Mohammed spoke of a “two-tier system, of all the girls who matter and the girls who don't matter” and thanked the academic for his support of women in Middle Eastern countries: “ “It was the first time I had seen someone in the West […] speaking for us as if we were human beings, like any other girl in the world.” She referred to a controversial magazine cover that called for 'celebrating' the hijab as a symbol of freedom: “Would you celebrate Mormon underwear on the cover of Sports Illustrated? No, you wouldn't, you would automatically see it as ridiculous, for many different reasons. But, have a burkinis on the cover of Sports IllustratedIs it something to celebrate? I want you to think about it for 4 more seconds, and think why we celebrate this, but not this? Mohammed, who spent her entire childhood in an abusive family after a Canadian court ruled that her mistreatment was simply due to “cultural differences,” broke down in tears recalling Harris' famous TED talk in 2010: “It was the first time that, in some media, I heard someone worry about those girls the same way you would worry about any other girl. The reasoning you were doing in that TED talk… these girls from Afghanistan, how are they different from girls in a Mormon sect?”

The activist emphasized her beliefs in freedom of dress, but also criticism, especially of defenders of the veil who have never been forced to wear it: “I am very sorry that they consider Muslim women to be of some other species, who are completely different from them. […] When it comes to these women from the outside, then it's empowering? Would it be empowering for you if you were told that you had to wear these clothes to protect yourself from men who could rape you? Or, do you have to wear these clothes in order to be good, and pure, and go to Heaven, because if you don't wear them you are a dirty whore? No woman wants to hear that, no 7-year-old girl wants to be told “you have to wear this to go to school, your brother doesn't, he can wear whatever he wants, but you have to wear it, or you won't get an education. It's an atrocity, it's something that should bother each and every human being, and the fact that they think it's okay for those humans over there, but not for us, is what truly hurts me. […] Why don't the women of these countries deserve, no #freethenippleBut #freetheface? Why don't they deserve freedom? How are they a different type of human being than you?”

Mohammed commented on several cases in which this kind of oppression has been experienced in Western countries, pointing out, in particular, the murder of Aqsa Parvez, strangled to death by her father and brother wearing the same hijab that she refused to wear. . Parvez lived in Mississauga, Canada. For this reason, she was especially harsh on women who ignore the symbolic relevance of the hijab: “when the prime minister of New Zealand, or Meghan Markle, wears a hijab, it is not benign support for a benign cultural practice. It is not just a symbol, but a tool of oppression. […] There is a fight against the hijab right now. Women in Sudan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, are burning their hijabs in the street, they are fighting against this... and to see free Western women, free Western women and leaders, taking this thing that they are fighting against, and putting it on voluntarily [... ] are supporting the oppressors these women are fighting against.”

Despite all their attempts, Iranian feminists, and those in the rest of the world outside the sphere of the West, continue to receive no attention from large feminist groups. The women's rights activist and founder of Faithless Hijabi, Zara Kay, was stopped on December 28 in Tanzania (she had traveled to visit her family) and accused of blasphemy by the government, which she had criticized for its management of COVID-19. Her Australian passport was confiscated and, through brief statements, has admitted who is not receiving support from the consulate. Fellow activists in contact with Kay, including Yasmine Mohammed herself (with whom she collaborated in Youtube to explain the origins of the hijab), have started the global movement #justiceforcerakay. However, it is barely receiving any media attention.

One of the women detained in Iran for refusing to wear the hijab in public, Monireh Arabshahi, he asked in a viral video: “If they stop us, will you be our voice?” In a world where social media can help elevate even the smallest concern, what's stopping it?

NOTE: Due to the length of the article, it has been impossible to include the stories of all the women who have been imprisoned or executed due to their advocacy or defiance of the regime. Among those not previously mentioned are Elham Barmaki, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Aras Amiri, Masoumeh Ataei, Soheila Jorkesh, Masoumeh Jalilpour, Fatemeh Borhi, Rayhaneh Ameri, Fatemeh Barihi, Samaneh Norouz Moradi, Fariba Adelkhah, Fariba Kamalabadi, Mahvash Shahriari Sabet , Negin Tadrisi, Farah Hesami, Azita Rafizadeh, Nasim Bagheri, Elham Hosseinabadi Farahani, Negin Ghodamian, Forough Taghipour, Nasim Jabbari, Maryam Banou Nassiri, Nejat Anvar Hamidi, Zahra Safaei, Parastoo Mo'ini, Maryam Akbari Monfared, Sedigheh Moradi, Fatemeh Mossana, Behnaz Zakeri Ansari, Rayhaneh Haj Ebrahim Dabbagh, Zahra Zehtabchi, Zahra Akbari-Nejad, Nahid Fat'halian, Marzieh Farsi, Somayeh Bidi, Elham Ahmadi, Maryam Naghash, Ziba Pourhabib, Fatimeh A'rafi, Leila Jafari, Sima Entesari, Zahra Mohammadi, Daiman Fat'hi, Somayyeh Roozbeh, Mojdeh Mardouki, Shima Babaei, Marzieh Vafamehr, Bahareh Hedayat, Giti Pourfazel, Nahid Shaqaqi, Akram Nasirian, Zahra Kazemi, Reyhaneh Tabatabaei, Afarin Chitsaz, Noushin Jafari, Shahrzad Jafari, Raheleh Ahmadi, Marzieh Rasouli, Parastoo Dokouhaki, Sepideh Gholian, Mourdia Amiri, Atena Farghadani, Tahereh Jafari, Roya Saberinejad Nobakht, Sara Sheriatmadari, Niloufar Motiei, Foruzan Abdi, Mabubeh Parcham Kashari, Shahla Shahdoust, Monireh Rajavi, Nasibeh Shamsaei, Farrakhroo Parsa, Mona Mahmudniz had, Atefeh Sahaaleh, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, Parvin Ardalan, Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Shadi Sadr, Mahnaz Afkhami, Roya Toloui, Shiva Nazar Ahari, Mansoureh Behkish, Maryam Shafipour, Shohreh Bayat, Shahla Jahanbin, Shahla Entefari, Zahra Jamali, Samira Jamali, Marzieh Amiri, Neda Naji, Atefeh Rangriz, Parvin Mohammadi, Narges Mansouri, Haleh Safarzadeh, Ronak Safarzadeh, Hanna Abdi, Fatemeh Goftaria, Rayhaaneh Jabbari, Farangis Mazloumi, Sahra Afsharian, Mehrangiz Kar and Homa Darabi. These are all publicly known cases. This list does not include the more than 400 women killed during protests against the Iranian regime in November 2019.