Dissent

[End Page 82]

In March 1979, urban Iranian women and girls and their male supporters took part in a week of demonstrations in Tehran, beginning on International Women's Day, to protest the new Islamist regime's edict compelling women to wear hijabs. The demonstrators expressed a deep sense of betrayal at the direction being taken by the Iranian Revolution, then just weeks old. "In the dawn of freedom, we have no freedom," they chanted. Their ranks grew by the day, eventually reaching at least 50,000. The movement attracted international solidarity, including from Kate Millet, who famously traveled to join them, and Simone de Beauvoir. At home, Iranian feminists gained support from the People's Fedayeen, a Marxist-Leninist group that had engaged in armed resistance against the American-backed monarchy before it was overthrown by the revolution. For a few days, the Fedayeen formed a protective cordon, separating the protesters from crowds of Islamists who were trying to physically attack them. But in time, influenced by a visiting Yasser Arafat and others, the Fedayeen withdrew its support for fear of weakening the revolution at a time when, it was widely believed, the U.S. government was ready to pounce and restore the shah. Over the next few years, the Iranian feminist movement seemed to die, or at least go underground.

More than forty years later, Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman, arrived in Tehran with her family on vacation. Soon after, on September 13, 2022, agents of the country's infamous morality police arrested her on charges of wearing her hijab improperly. Despite her vigorous protestations, they took her into custody, whereupon, according to eyewitnesses, she was severely beaten. Three days later, she died from brain injuries. Amini's death struck a nerve throughout the nation. The state's refusal to look into the causes of her death, or to offer an apology, further fanned the anger of protesters. Demonstrators soon began to chant, "Don't be scared, don't be scared, we are all together."

Demonstrations have taken place in more than eighty cities and towns throughout the entire country. As the protests have spread, young [End Page 83] women, even high school and middle school students, have ripped off their headscarves and cried, "Death to the dictator!" The uprising is rooted in red-hot anger against gender apartheid, and not only among women. As the renowned actress Golshifteh Farahani told Le Monde, what has made these protests historically novel is that "men are willing to die for women's freedom."

Demographically, Iran, with a population of 85 million, is a very different country than it was in 1979. Fully 75 percent of the country is urbanized, literacy stands at almost 100 percent among people under twenty-five, and there are 4 million university students, the majority of whom are women. Meanwhile, the fertility rate has fallen to 2.1 births per woman, from 6.5 in 1979.

Many issues besides women's rights are bound up in the protests: authoritarianism, economic stagnation and severe unemployment, climate disaster, and various religious-fundamentalist impositions. The current uprising also represents the public's response to the regime's colossal cronyism and corruption, and to its confrontational foreign policy and regional expansionism, which have isolated Iran and contributed to extremely high inflation in the country. These grievances have fueled other protests over the past few years, but the 2022 uprising is also distinguished by an ethnic dimension: Mahsa Amini was from Iranian Kurdistan, an impoverished, marginalized area with a long history of revolutionary resistance. When she was born, her family had wanted to give her a Kurdish name, Jina, but the policies of the Islamic Republic restricted their choices to Persian and Arabic names. In Kurdistan, the 2022 uprising has taken over whole towns—and the regime has not hesitated to use live...