What Iranian Women Actually Said
Part 02 of The Descent of Feminism
Part one of this two-part commentary, The Descent of Feminism, explored how calls for women’s rights have been folded into the language of Western military power. In part two, Heather Brunskell-Evans shifts the lens to the people too often treated as symbols rather than citizens. Iranian women, whose lives have been shaped by both internal repression and foreign interference, respond to the narrative that war can be waged on their behalf. Their message is pointed: they are not asking for bombs, or saviours, or moral posturing. They are asking to be heard.
Many gender-critical feminists rally to support Trump’s and Netanyahu’s machismo. “Get Iran while it is weak,” Baroness Clare Fox, founder and director of the think tank the Institute of Ideas, urged on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions. JK Rowling, the children’s author, describes John (aka India) Willoughby, a “trans woman” who positions himself as “#team Iran,” as a predictable “fan of a woman-hating, gay-hating, authoritarian regime.”
The feminist journalist Julie Bindel, writing an article for the Sun, reduces morality to a simple, childlike binary: “To support #TeamIran is to support anti-Semitism.” She resurrects the rape atrocity propaganda to which she and some other gender-critical feminists have been wedded since 7 October by claiming that those opposing Israel’s attack on Iran are condoning, even celebrating, “gang rapes by terrorists.”
Deploying the same simplistic fairy tale that pits good versus pure evil that she despises when transactivists do it, characterising her as evil personified, she argues that Israel is at the receiving end of “stupid, ignorant lefties” who are forming “a grotesque unholy alliance between Western far-left and Islamic far-right.” Rowling argues, “If you prioritise an ideology over giving clear and accurate information, you aren’t journalists, you’re propagandists.” Yet, Rowling retweeted Bindel’s article, uncritically wedded to Zionist propaganda, approvingly.
Bindel claims that she is left “wondering just what kind of a world #TeamIran supporters wish to live in.” Please allow me to elucidate.
Iranians desire a world where reckless, illegal, and unprovoked bombing of a sovereign nation—especially its civilian nuclear facilities—is condemned and opposed. They imagine a world free from global lawlessness, as seen in Gaza and the recent strikes on Iran. Similarly, Israel’s attacks on Gaza, driven by propaganda, have caused the deaths of over 57,800 of which the majority are innocent women and children. This in addition to the 40,000 people still missing and believed to be buried beneath the rubble of their homes. Since Israel has banned Western journalists, medics are left to provide factual information—rather than myths—about the inhumane atrocities carried out by “the most moral army in the world.” The attack on Iran has now killed over 900 people and wounded more than three thousand, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA), a US-based organisation.
Critics of Israel want to live in a world where, in Fazi’s terms, might does not make right—“a free-for-all where nothing is off limits: not the mass slaughter of civilians, not the bombing of nuclear sites, not even the complete sidelining of international institutions.” They desire a world that is not dystopian, where foreign men do not kill women to spare them from having to wear the hijab. Lastly, regarding women’s rights, they want feminists to critique phallic power, represented by narcissistic, emotionally charged Strong Men like Netanyahu and Trump, as dangerous and harmful to women and children.
An Iranian woman, Atieh Bakhtiar, responds to Rowling’s tweet that standing with Iran in this context is to endorse a woman-hating, gay-hating, authoritarian regime. Bakhtiar expresses great disappointment that Rowling thinks so little of Iranian women that she reduces them to victims of a regime, while mocking the entire nation from a position of “smug superiority.” It makes Rowling part of the same arrogance that “Iranian women have been fighting all along.” Bakhtiar continues:
Iranian women are fighting for freedom and democracy, not to trade one oppressive regime for a foreign flag and lose independence. We don’t want bombs, invasions, or fake saviours. We want our voices to be heard, not hijacked by people who think liberation comes from the sky with a foreign logo and an oil contract.
While Rowling says she’s criticising the regime and not the people, “the tone, timing, and language lump all of us, Iranians, women, activists into the same basket.” It’s the kind of rhetoric, Bakhtiar argues, “that manufactures consent for bombing my country.” When your people are under threat and lives are at stake, this isn’t just a casual comment. It sows doubt, making outsiders feel the destruction of Iran is justified. Talk about the regime all you want, she insists, but when you speak about Iran “as if it’s nothing more than its worst rulers, you erase those of us fighting for change. And let’s be clear: bombs don’t have filters. They won’t spare the women she once claimed to stand with.”
With considerable arrogance, Netanyahu has just declared victory in the 12-day Israel-Iran war. Professor Mearsheimer argues that, contrary to his claims, Israel has failed to achieve its two main objectives. In fact, the bombing has made it less likely to accomplish either. First, even with US support, Israel did not dismantle Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, and attacking Iran increases the likelihood that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, not reduce it. Second, Israel did not succeed in forcing regime change, and if anything, the regime now maintains greater control than before. Additionally, Iranian missiles and drones caused significant damage to Israel, which was running low on air defence missiles and lacked the resolve for a war of attrition—something the Iranians possessed.
The world still holds its breath, fearing it will be pulled into World War 3. But even without escalating to a global conflict, as Dave Smith argued against Konstantin Kisin, every US attempt at regime change in the Middle East, under the supposed goal of liberating the people, has failed miserably. For example, in Afghanistan, the cruel oppression of women and girls has worsened due to the failed regime change and the Taliban’s triumphant return to power.
An obvious consequence for Iran after the recent attack is that people, who are not united in their views, will now come together in social solidarity against “the enemy.” Iranian women are highly educated and hold authority in the workplace. Nonetheless, the hijab remains mandatory, especially in rural areas, and punishment for not wearing it can be up to 15 years in prison. Still, women move and live without strict enforcement in urban areas like Tehran, where they are on the streets bareheaded. The enforcement of the death penalty for male homosexuality varies, and public executions for this are less common now, but the law still stands, and cases are reported sporadically. The attempt at regime change may end up tightening the oppression of women and denying their bodily autonomy and sexuality, but, as with Afghanistan, Trump and Netanyahu probably don’t care. Despite the naive, touching feminist faith in these men’s intentions, freeing Iranians from sexual oppression was never their real goal for regime change in the first place.
