Iran's Roaring MeToo Movement

Iran's Roaring MeToo Movement

by Yaas Farzanefar

"WHAT IS A SHIRZAN?” my 5-year-old cousin asked me as she heard her mother and I talk about it. Shirzan translates literally to “female lion”, and is used to describe strong, in-control, and unwavering female heroines; any person who speaks against and doesn’t bend down to injustice is a shirzan. She nodded. “Shirzan,” she repeated to herself.

When the #MeToo Movement sent shockwaves around the US and international Twitter in 2017, I watched as stories and experiences of millions of women poured forth on social media — millions of shirzans were speaking their truth. News channels and mass media were covering sexual allegations against prominent Hollywood figures. With every refresh on my Twitter feed, new voices joined the chants of the collective outpour. My eyes, however, were glued elsewhere: Iranian Twitter. The Twitter bird was fluttering with stories, and experiences that had been caged for too long, blazing a path for Iranian voices to fly forward. Could this be the flight they had been waiting for? For Iranians, joining the movement went beyond speaking against sexual harassment, offering empathy, and standing in solidarity for victims. Iranians had to break down the tall brick walls rooted in patriarchal extremist Islamist beliefs and shatter the dark ceilings built with societal norms and taboos around sex and sexuality that contained millions of cries, horror stories, and voices within. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the global #MeToo Movement would empower Iranians to break down barriers and speak out against sexual assault and harassment for the first time. Could this be the moment Iranian women had been waiting for?

Twitter was a breeding ground for empathy and offered its warm fertile welcome to any cry or voice that had been kept silenced for too long.

Iranian Twitter, however, was hesitant to plant the seeds that would grow to dismantle a systematic patriarchal block over the bridge of public discourse around social taboos. There was some minor movement in 2017. Some courageous shirzans including actors and journalists shared personal stories using the hashtag من هم#‏ (man-ham, which translates to me too in Farsi). However, the fire of the Iranian Twitter movement couldn’t spread for long, as it gave its fuel to political protests that were occurring at the time.

The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, responded to the movement months later, referring to sexual harassment as a “Western” problem. His tweet read that “the hijab [has] shut the door on a path that would pull women towards such deviation,” demeaning the women who had come forward with their stories and ultimately implying that Iranian women were immune to such abuse because of the Iranian law that requires compulsory hijab. I shivered when I saw this tweet. When the leader of a country undermines the trauma and hardship of sexual harassment victims, what can that say about the 80 million people living inside the country? How many women and men had been encouraged to keep their stories, experiences, cries, and trauma caged deep inside of them because of such teachings? It reminded me of my own experience in school. We were strictly told to “cover our flares of fire” — the phrase used to refer to our hair— whenever a male teacher would enter our classroom. In another instance, I was condemned by the school principal for looking a male teacher in the eyes when asking him a question. Our gazes, hair cover, discourse, and even our stance closely monitored, we were taught that our behavior, our actions, and our attire could prevent abuse.

We were taught to protect our bodies and to beware the male gaze because a girl’s high school, as they said, was like a “safebox for jewels.” Like diamonds, our bodies were sacred and precious, only to be taken out on special occasions. We were never given a definition for sexual assault or harassment, nor were we taught how to identify it, just how to prevent it. In this manner, Hijab was often used to implicitly place the responsibility to prevent sexual harassment on us, on all women.

Topics around sex, sexuality, and sexual assault are taboo in Iran. Even among the Iranian diaspora, topics regarding sex and sexual education remain veiled in most families. The lack of sexual education in Iranian schools, families, and even in the diaspora has resulted in children not having access to safe resources, perpetuating the continuation of limiting beliefs about sexual topics regarded as taboo. To understand the societal taboos, one has to understand the extremely complex existential and culturally influenced power aberoo holds in the Iranian world. The word aberoo literally translates to the water of the face in Farsi. The pure water facade has to be kept at all times to show a shining face. The internalized notion of aberoo leads to hiding, blaming oneself, fearing others’ judgments, and even enduring pain or abuse because disclosing the truth would open the door to judgment — or the fear of judgment, perhaps. Aberoo perpetuates a misogynistic victim-blaming mindset which prohibits the discourses around sex and sexuality and thus makes speaking out against sexual abuse impossible.

When the #MeToo Movement erupted globally in 2017, Iranian Twitter was hesitant to participate. In 2020, however, three years afterthe #MeToo Movement surged in the US and around the world, the rage and pain of many women struck Iranian Twitter with a bolt of lightning that sparked the rainfall of courage, outcries, and collective voices. Soon after a group of Iranian journalists shared a video on social media of their experiences with sexual harassment in the workplace, many

other women followed with their own stories and experiences either on their own accounts or anonymous users.

Within days, Iranian Twitter was flooded with thousands of stories of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, in the streets, at home, and even in school with the hashtags من هم#‏ (“man ham”- Me Too), آزارجنسى#‏ (“azar-e-jensi”- Sexual harassment), and تجاوز#‏ (“tajaavoz” - Rape) trending.

Honor and aberoo took a back seat as Twitter bore witness to a hashtag storm and, Instagram, other social media, and even news channels for the first time broke the boundaries of socially unacceptable topics and spoke about sexual abuse and harassment. Despite the limiting belief held by some that sexual harassment is a Western struggle because hijab and Islam offer immunity to sexual abuse, Twitter overflowed with the stories of women and men, describing their experiences with sexual harassment at work, at school, in public, and at home.

The movement acted as a wake-up call both for the legal system where rape had not been defined as a standalone offense, and victimization discourses that viewed victims as accomplices. The من هم#‏ movement shed light on the deficiencies of the education system, that is linked to the problematic perspective of victim shaming and the social stigma tied to sexual harassment. Many shared their experiences, many listened, retweeted, and posted messages including, “if I’m following your abuser, DM me and I will unfollow them.” Masoumeh Ebtekar, the vice president for Women and Family Affairs, even praised the millions that were speaking up stating that “there is a lack of access to the right information and correct education and this creates the grounds for sexual violence and abuse.”

Still ongoing, the movement has led to multiple arrests of prominent figures, redefining sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape in the law, as well as initiating public discourse among families, clerics, and even at schools. In January, Iran’s government approved a bill that criminalizes violence and sexual misconduct against women and specifies punishment for perpetrators. Although the bill still falls short of international standards as it does not address child marriage, domestic violence, or marital rape, it is indeed a step forward. Shirzans roared, and for the first time, the world listened.