Female Bodies and Sexuality in Iran and the Search for Defiance

Nafiseh Sharifi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319609768
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book uses storytelling as an analytical tool for following wider social attitude changes towards sex and female sexuality in Iran. Women born in 1950s Iran grew up during the peak of secularization and modernization, whereas those born in the 1980s were raised under the much stricter rules of the Islamic Republic. Using extensive ethnographic research, the author juxtaposes narratives of body and sexuality shared by these different generations of women, showing the intricate ways in which women construct and convey meanings and communicate their emotions about the unspoken aspects of their lives.

© The Author(s) 2018

Nafiseh SharifiFemale Bodies and Sexuality in Iran and the Search for Defiancehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60976-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Nafiseh Sharifi¹

(1)

School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK

End Abstract

Background of the Context: The Two Generations

My mo ther was in her twenties when the Islamic Revolution happened in 1979. She is from an upper middle class, non-religious Tehrani family . My grandfather is a physician and my grandmother has always been proud that she attended high school, as many from her generation did not have this opportunity. With her famil y’s support, my mother attended Sharif University of Technology (at the time, Aryamehr Industrial University), which remains one of the most prestigious universities in Iran.

My mother’s generation, the 1950s, experienced the Shah’s modernisation and gender reforms. In January 1963, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi initiated a national reform called the White Revolution —later dubbed ‘the Revolution of Shah and the People’—to orchestrate the modernisation of Iranian society (Keddie and Richard 2006, p. 145). The reforms consisted of a national literacy army which targeted women, and included women’s suffrage (Afary 2009, p. 203). Iran’s first famil y planning programme started in 1966 as part of this reform. The Shah’s reforms also increased the legal age of marriage to 18 years for women and granted women more rights to divorce . In comparison to previous generations, 1950s women had a higher level of education and presence in the Iranian public sphere. As statistics show, from 1971 to 1978 women’s college enrolment increased to 79 per cent (Shahidian 1991, p. 9; Tohidi 1994, p. 118).

My mother grew up in peak of secularisation and modernisation of Iran under reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, but turned to be a devoted Muslim and supporter of the Islamic Revolution . During the 1960s and 1970s, as part of the modernisation of Iranian society, women were asked to perform according to modern codes of conduct, which were represented in the images of socially active, fashionable, educated and modern women (Moallem 2005; Afary 2009). However, the clash between the highly sexualised representations of modern women in the media and the social norms of femininity and female sexuali ty—based on the notions of female charm and chastity—led to sexual anxiety in the Iranian public sphere (Najmabadi 2005; Moallem 2005).

As a prelude to the Revolution, hejab became the symbol of resistance against the Pahlavi regime. Veil signified the unity between women from different social and economic backgrounds in their protest against the Western hegemony (Afary 2009, p. 270). Like many of her friends, a few months before the Revolution, my mother started wearing hejab and practising Islam. In Chap. 6, I detail the construction of new forms of gender relations during the Revolution, as well as how these changed women political activists’ perceptions of marriage , marital and sexual relations.

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, during the Iran–Iraq war, women of the 1950s generation witnessed the state ’s establishment of new family courts based on shari’a and the solidification of new gender and sexual policies . These policies included: limiting women’s rights in marriage and divorc e and lowering the age of marriage for women (Mir-Hosseini 2000, 2004; Halper 2011); cancellation of the Shah’s family planning programme and encouragement of large famil ies (Paydarfar and Moini 1995; Hoodfar 1996; Hoodfar and Assadpour 2000; Moinifar 2007); and mandating the wearing of hejab in public places¹ (Paidar 1997; Sedghi 2007; Afary 2009). It is important to see how changes before and after the Islamic Revolution affected 1950s women’s experiences of their bodies and sexuali ty, as well as how their experiences influenced the post-revolutionary generation’s perception of female sexuali ty.

Opposed to my mother, I grew up under the Islamic Republic ; I was schooled by the religious education system and learnt the accepted Islamic codes of and regulations for women’s behaviour. In addition, my parents also asked me to act according to their religious value system at home. Throughout the years, I have internalised many religious rules and regulations, and performed according to them, but there are still huge differences between my mother’s and my ideals of modesty and opinions about our bodies.

I belong to the ‘post-revolutionary’ 1980s generation who were educated to perform the state’s gender ed roles in both the public and private spheres. The Islamic Republic ’s policy has aimed to create a ‘socialised, politicised and Islamised’ female citizen, who performs her tradition al familial role as well as participates in ‘the modern demands of the country’ (Mehran 2003, p. 270). However, this policy created a paradoxical position for women: on the one hand, women’s main role is limited to the famil y and private sphere; on the other hand, women are encouraged to participate in the educational, social, cultural and political spheres (ibid., p. 271). The state ’s paradoxical approach has provided women with opportunities for their own advancement (ibid., pp. 285–286). For instance, women have increasingly entered higher education and the job market. By 2007, ‘the majority of college students were women’ (Afary 2009, p. 360). In addition, despite the lowering of the legal age of marriage , statistics show that the average age of marriage for women of the post-revolutionary generations had ‘gone up to 24, while the fertility rate dropped to 2 percent’ (ibid., p. 360). Especially amongst the conservative classes of Iranian society, women’s increased participation has provided ‘the personal and financial autonomy that the liberal Pahlavi regime had failed to offer to them’ (Yaghoobi 2012, p. 72). Consequently, women of the post-revolutionary generations—from different socio-economic and religious backgrounds—have become more involved in various aspects of public life.

During university, I started noticing differences between my mother’s and my generation, especially when attending gatherings with her university friends in Tehran . My mother and her university friends are similar in many ways, even though from different familial and economic backgrounds. Their political views have changed since the Islamic Revolution , as they have become more critical of the state ’s policies. Some of my mother’s friends lost brothers or husbands during the war with Iraq, and some of their son’s and close relatives faced imprisonment after the 2009 presidential election.

Despite all this, my mother and her friends still identify with the Islamic Revolution . Through clothing and behaviour, they try to live a modest, on the verge of anti-luxury lifestyle according to the ‘values of the Revolution’. They still wear loose, modest clothes and no makeup, even in female-only gatherings. Their conversations mostly revolve about politics; even their jokes are politically charged. I have never heard them speak or joke about sex or their sexual relations. At times, they will discuss problems with their children or husbands, but never sexual issues. This is in contrast with my observation of conversations in gatherings of women belonging to my grandmother’s generation, or my own.

This book was born out of my curiosity about whether we, as two generations, have different opinions about our female bodies and sexuali ty. If there are differences or similarities, how are they constructed? Does sex and sexual relation have different meanings in our lives? How have the social and political spheres influenced intergenerational changes in notions of desire, bodily experiences and femininity? What can a comparison of these two generations’ narratives tell us about the wider socio-contextual changes with regard to sex and female sexuality?

This book, however, is not about the differences between mothers and daughters in the same famil y, rather about their generations. It is about analysing how the rules of female sexuali ty are constructed; how, in each time period and generation, the ‘normalised’ and ‘naturalised’ perceptions of female sexuali ty and the body are changed, reproduced, negotiated and challenged. I also look at the role of different discourse s in constructing and constituting women’s bodily experiences. I highlight the underlying discourse s and relations of power that control and discipline women’s bodies and sexuali ty in the Iranian context.

Moreover in contrast to the existing literature on women in Iran, I argue that searching for acts of defiance and categorising women’s behaviour in opposition to the Islamic Republic fails to recognise the existence of multiple and complex relations of power that operate in different social and economic contexts in Iranian society. Particularly, the use of resistance/subordination framework neglects the multiple ways in which women inhabit and negotiate such norms within the discursive boundaries that control and discipline their bodies. I emphasise the necessity of moving beyond the resistance/subordination binary in analysing and understanding women’s decisions in relation to their body and sexuali ty. This argument will be even further explored in the next chapter of this book.

Youth, Sexuality and the Islamic Republic

In post-revo lutionary Iran, de spite the govern ment’s regulations and control, huge shifts have occurred in the public appearance of the young urbanites, especially women. During the time of Khatami ’s presidency (1997–2005), reformists managed to reduce the ‘strictness of the hejab for children and high school students by allowing more colourful uniforms and scarves’ (Afary 2009, p. 329). Although the moral police are still controlling both men’s and women’s public appearances and private lives, younger generations have started to wear colourful clothes and use forbidden forms of modern aesthetics of the feminine body to resist the compulsory rules of modesty.

There is a new body of scholarship on sexuality in Iran that by focusing on youth bodily behaviour, argue that for the post-revolutionary generations fashion became a form of defiance against the Islamic regulations, as young women are in constant struggle with the morality police by wearing makeup, colourful clothes and having sexual relations outside marriage (Adelkhah 2004; Khosravi 2008; Mahdavi 2008; Afary 2009; Honarbin-Holliday 2009; Hélie and Hoodf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Conceptual Framework
• 3. Learning Sexuality
• 4. Narratives of Virginity
• 5. Narratives of Menstruation
• 6. Narratives of Marriage
• 7. Conclusion
• Back Matter