Robin Wright from New Yorker argues that the anti-regime protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini is the first time in history that women have been both the spark and engine for an attempted counter-revolution.
The girls and women of Iran are just bitchin’ brave, flipping the bird at its Supreme Leader in a challenge to one of the most significant revolutions in modern history. Day after dangerous day, on open streets and in gated schools, in a flood of tweets and brazen videos, they have ridiculed a theocracy that deems itself the government of God. The average age of the protesters who have been arrested is just fifteen, the Revolutionary Guard’s deputy commander claimed last week. In the process, they have captured the world’s imagination; sympathy rallies have been held from London to Los Angeles, Sydney to Seoul, and Tokyo to Tunis.
Iran’s protests may well be the first time in history that women have been both the spark and engine for an attempted counter-revolution. “The role played by Iranian women right now seems very unprecedented,” Daniel Edelstein, a political scientist at Stanford and an expert on revolutions, told me. One of the few possible parallels was the role of Parisian female poissonières, or market workers, who stormed Versailles to prevent the king from turning against the National Assembly and crushing the nascent French Revolution, he said. In that case, however, “the women were seeking to prevent counter-revolution, not contributing to it.” During the Russian Revolution, bread riots led by women in Petrograd played a pivotal role in the tsarist empire’s collapse, Anne O’Donnell, a Russia historian at New York University, told me. But Iran’s protests have been unique because, she said, “this is not just an upheaval involving women, it is an upheaval about women and women’s freedom, and that makes it very special.”
Despite the dangers of arrest and death, Iranian women of disparate ethnicities have united in imaginative ways. The spark was the abrupt death of Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two-year-old Kurd, after she was sent to a reëducation center for “inappropriate attire”—too much hair protruding from a head scarf—in Tehran. She ended up in a coma on a ventilator and died three days later, on September 16th. Protest chants about her death quickly evolved into calls to oust the regime: “Death to the Dictator,” and “Our disgrace is our incompetent leader,” and “We don’t want the Islamic Republic.” The slogan—and hashtag—of the protests became #WomanLifeFreedom.
On Wednesday, a video widely shared on social media captured schoolgirls in Tehran giggling at their audacity as they stomped on a framed photo of the two Supreme Leaders—Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—who have ruled since the 1979 Revolution against the Shah. They ripped up the photo and threw pieces joyously into the air. With their backs to the camera, the girls formed a line and pulled off their head scarves. “Don’t let fear in, we stand united,” they shouted. In multiple tweets, other girls were photographed—from the back to hide their identities—raising their middle fingers at pictures of the two Supreme Leaders. In a video last week from Karaj, schoolgirls gathered in front of a male official, ripped off their hijabs, and shouted, in unison, “Get lost.” They tossed empty water bottles as he fled through the school gates. In historic Isfahan last week, three young women unfurled a blanket-size banner over a highway bridge. It featured a painting of a woman with long black hair; it warned, “One of us will be next.” The girls then whipped off their head scarves and dashed away; the banner remained. In northwestern Sanandaj and southern Shiraz, young women have marched down streets—chanting anti-government slogans and removing their head scarves—and called for drivers to join them. Many cars could be heard honking in support.
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