October 2, 2022

"We tell each other on the scene where and when we would gather next time. But mostly you know where people would gather..."

"... and you do not need to arrange anything.... We will continue until they kill every single one of us.... They fired teargas directly at us the other night, my eyes were burning, I could not sleep all night, but still I went out the next night, with my tears and pain in my eyes." 

Said one woman named Nasheen, quoted in "'Women are in charge. They are leading': Iran protests continue despite crackdowns/People, determined to defy violence by security forces and online blackout, are resorting to old-fashioned methods to organise unrest" (The Guardian).

Also, from a woman named Negar: "Much of the time the men are just watching. Women organise and do everything. It’s completely different from previous times. Women are in charge. They are leading."

ADDED: Those 2 quotes seem to present a paradox — leaderless leading. Here's something in The New Yorker, "How Iran’s Hijab Protest Movement Became So Powerful," quoting the Iranian scholar Fatemeh Shams: 

Today’s revolution is completely leaderless in the sense that none of the previous figures... are being called upon. People in the streets are not waiting for anyone to come and take the lead. They are the leaders of the revolution....

It has made it very difficult for the security forces and for the government to actually suppress this movement.... [T]hey can’t really go after a particular figure. They tried. They had mass arrests in the past few days of journalists, and of people who they thought could potentially be leaders. They did that, but the protests haven’t been shut down. They couldn’t shut it down. In fact, it has become more widespread. 

Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human-rights lawyer who has represented many of these women who, over the past ten years, have been sentenced to jail or summoned to court on the basis of not observing the compulsory hijab. She recently said this movement is leaderless and is only led by those women who are doing this one revolutionary act. And that revolutionary act is not carrying a weapon. They’re not armed. This is completely peaceful. 

And the only thing that they’re doing is they’re harmlessly taking something off of their head and they’re walking in the streets of Iran. The figure of this revolution is the body of these women, these unveiled women who are walking in the streets without harming anyone. Without even chanting “death to the dictator” or saying anything harmful against anyone. Their bodies have become the revolutionary figure of this movement....

29 comments:

Dave Begley said...

Tyranny can only last so long. Liberty is the natural human state.

Has our alleged President said anything in support of the people of Iran? Does he even know this is happening? Or have the mullahs paid off the Big Guy via Hunter?

How valuable would a Second Amendment be in Iran now?

If the people are successful, I hope they adopt our constitution verbatim and add the ERA. The sainted RBG thought there were better constitutions around the world, but she was wrong.

Howard said...

Olive toned split-tail lives matter.

Heartless Aztec said...

Civil disobedience with attitude.

Temujin said...

I can see how it is that women are leading this uprising. They have borne more denial as humans. Men can still 'have it all' under the Mullahs, as long as they grow long beards and kowtow to whatever the Mullas claim is the word of the Prophet. Maybe not have it all, but they can live a life, albeit a fundamentalist one. Women have few rights as individual humans and as such, have farther to come to gain their actual freedom, more to risk, a harder road to take. Their bravery needs to be shown, respected, and supported- not only by us, but by the men living there.

Rusty said...

Don't piss off the grandmas. Once you've piss off the grandmas you're in a world of hurt. They've been around for a long time. They have methods.

hombre said...

No pink pussy hats here. These are real feminists and they will be murdered without a comment from kindly ol' QuidProJoe, enabler of Ayatollahs.

Heartless Aztec said...

@Rusty - If momma's not happy, ain't nobody happy. If grandma's not happy...RUN!

Drago said...

Howard arrives with crude "jokes" in support of his islamic supremacist allies.

"Unexpectedly".

Lyle Smith said...

Sounds like they are going to lose. The billions we send to Iran goes straight to the Mullahs.

hawkeyedjb said...

Joe will solve this by shipping a few $billion to the mullahs. "Here, take a break from building The Bomb and buy some bullets to take care of the uppities."

Tina Trent said...

Iranian women are the oppressed, and Iranian men can do as they want. A few generation of this created pussified bullies out of male children and tough fighters out of female ones.

The difference between their culture and our culture should demonstrate that we have a different reality on the ground here.

If you want to help these women, the Dr. Homa Darabi Foundation has been fighting this fight for decades. They're a bit hard to find.

They have to be.

gilbar said...

so, how long? Before Biden sends American Troops? To support the Iranian Government?

Larry J said...

Also, from a woman named Negar: "Much of the time the men are just watching. Women organise and do everything. It’s completely different from previous times. Women are in charge. They are leading."

Most husbands learn fairly quickly that it isn't a good idea to make plans without consulting their wives first. This evolves into women making the plans and telling the men when and where to be.

Ampersand said...

Courage is a virtue. Not all virtuous behavior works out well. I worry about these women.

Aggie said...

Brave and stalwart, and I have to say, as usual the men are drones. Unless they're jihadis, arab/persian men are not known for their faith in causes. They're known for being meek until they're able to dominate, which turns them into abusing tyrants.

I admire the ladies, but the religious heads that hold the power are old men and not amenable to shakeups in the order of things. Thousands of years of iron religious rules are asserting their draconian supremacy. I wish the protesters luck.

ccscientist said...

The regime is quite capable of killing thousands. I hope not.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Millions of words for Ukraine and billions of dollars poured into Zelensky’s corrupt hands and not a word on Iran out of Brandon’s admin except to insist we keep pursuing a nuke deal with them that does the opposite of Joe’s stated goal. Yeah. Those ladies are on their own for a while longer.

Sebastian said...

The question, as always, is when the hard men with the guns will lose their nerve and stop shooting. The shah's men lost theirs, if they ever had it. Khomeini et al. have been tougher. Any tyranny can be cracked, but the cost varies.

Michael K said...

Those ladies are on their own for a while longer.

Yeah. Obama and his puppet are all in with the mullahs for reasons that no one but a Democrat can understand.

Lance said...

"Tyranny can only last so long. Liberty is the natural human state."

Ahistorical nonsense, proven by centuries of subservience throughout Asia, Africa and most of Europe. Even in the US, at least half the voters want more government telling them what to do. No, liberty is not a natural human state.

Mr Wibble said...

Tyranny can only last so long. Liberty is the natural human state.


No, it isn't. The natural human state is small tribal hierarchies, and constant, low-level violence.

holdfast said...

One advantage that the women here may have is that the regime probably doesn’t take them very seriously. That actually affords them a bit of space and even a measure of protection.

n.n said...

Persia Spring 2.0? This time, the women and girls.

n.n said...

Tyranny can only last so long. Liberty is the natural human state.

Anarchy is the natural human state. Authoritarianism its progress. Without a suitable moderator (e.g. religion: morality in a universal frame, ethics its relativistic sibling, law their politically consensual cousin; lust and abortion to take a knee, beg), the left-right nexus is leftist.

Scott said...

I did a Ctrl+F for "tribal" and didn't see anything until Mr Wibble's comment. "Leaderless leading" is exactly what tribalism is.

JK Brown said...

Is it just me or is this another government in fear of falling because of what people were on their head. In the US, it was a couple guys in funny hats. In Iran, it is women refusing to follow fundamentalist oppressive rules to cover their hair.

In Iran they are truly fighting the patriarchy, the theocratic state but all the little college-credential white girls in America are remaining silent.

Tina Trent said...

Homa Darabi was a wealthy Iranian Sixties campus radical who realized her radicalism was being duped by the Mullahs to dispose of the relatively moderate Shah and impose an Islamic slave state. She was well-off enough to immigrate and become a pediatric gynecologist and obstetrician in the States. She was humble and moral enough to recognize her youthful radical errors. She was courageous enough to risk death to correct them. She was brave enough to go back fully aware of the consequences to her to treat women and girls sexually brutalized by the Islamic dictatorship. She immoliated herself before the Mullahs' palace to show the world what was being done to women, boys, and girls.

When her sister tried to ban Iran from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics for human rights abuses, not one politician (Andrew Young was on the Islamist payroll), not one feminist organization would help her. I begged them all. They didn't want to insult brown men. I called the black civil rights groups. Ditto. Gays, ditto. Fucking hypocrites. I stood with her, alone but for one decent pal I roped in. The Iranian Secret Service parked outside my house repeatedly. We mocked them, mooned them, threw bottles at their limos. The cops I knew thought we were funny and did nothing to stop us. What wasn't funny was their efforts to get me in the car the first time they showed up.

Screw the feminists. The same game is being played out here: international leftists and international radicals duping the Democrats and all their identity parasites. It will will not end well, nor as that hag Margaret Atwood imagines it.

Joe Smith said...

Hijabs in Iran are an insult to women.

Here, they're an insult to me.

Muslim women in the U.S. should have some self respect and burn the things.

I see them all the time in Costco, covered head-to-toe while their sons wear board shorts and AC/DC T-shirts, and their fat husbands waddle along in flip-flops, golf shorts, and Hawaiian shirts.

You've come a long way baby...

Michael K said...

Ahistorical nonsense, proven by centuries of subservience throughout Asia, Africa and most of Europe. Even in the US, at least half the voters want more government telling them what to do. No, liberty is not a natural human state.

Yes. Look at Afghanistan after we left. Ditto for Iraq. Hong Kong was a glorious dream for the residents. Now, we have to face the Democrat Party authoritarians. Chicago is an example of Democrat anarchy.