Woman, Life, Freedom: All In On Iran — Sexual Politics in Iran with Janet Afary

[00:00:00] Nahid Siamdoust: In the name of the God of Rainbows, welcome to Woman Life Freedom, all in on Iran, a podcast series in which we’ll go deep in conversations with experts on various aspects of the revolutionary uprising that began in Iran in September when 22 year old Mahsa Jina Amini was killed in morality, police detention. In each episode, we’ll unpack an important aspect of the unfolding of this historic moment in Iran.

[00:00:44] Nahid Siamdoust: I’m your host, Nahid Siamdoust, an assistant professor of Media and Middle East Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Our intention is to quote unquote, archive the important insights of our experts here and now, both in their capacity as [00:01:00] professional observers, as well as humans living through these momentous times.

[00:01:04] Nahid Siamdoust: Stay tuned

[00:01:11] Nahid Siamdoust: the, this week we’ll be speaking with Janet Afary. Dr. Afary is Mecham professor of Global religion at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She has published widely on various aspects of modern Iran, often with a focus on gender. She really is an expert in this field with her award-winning book, sexual Politics in Modern Iran, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, which was the winner of the British Society for Middle East Studies Annual.

[00:01:41] Nahid Siamdoust: Book prize. She also has written wildly on Iran’s constitutional revolution on Fuko and the Iranian Revolution, gender and the Seductions of Islamism. And her newest book is about white marriages in contemporary Iran. But first, a quick [00:02:00] recap of the most important events leading up to this week’s episode.

[00:02:13] Nahid Siamdoust: Today is February 20th, and,~ um,~ the most important event that’s happened leading up to the today’s,~ um,~ interview is the issuing of a charter of minimum demands. ~Um, ~this has been issued by 20 independent,~ uh,~ organizations, Iranian trade unions, feminist groups and student organizations,~ um,~ in which they list their minimum demands.

[00:02:34] Nahid Siamdoust: And this has been an important charter that has been shared widely on social media and discussed, and,~ um,~ many people are pointing to it as a most progressive charter that could really illuminate the path forward for the kind of Iran that,~ um,~ many of these rights organizations. In the country have been calling for.

[00:02:55] Nahid Siamdoust: So I think what I’ll do is really just read the demands, the, these minimum [00:03:00] demands that have been posted,~ um,~ in this charter by these 20 independent organizations. It starts with, and I won’t read the preamble, but it addresses the Noble and Free People of Iran on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of the 1979 revolution.

[00:03:16] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Um, ~these are the demands that they are,~ um,~ articulating one immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, prohibition of criminalizing political union and civil activities and public trials for those responsible for suppressing popular protests. Two, unconditional freedom of opinion expression, thought political parties, local and national trade unions, popular organizations gathering strikes, marches, social networks, and the media.

[00:03:47] Nahid Siamdoust: Three. Immediate cancellation of the issuance and execution of any type of death penalty, and retribution and prohibition of any type of mental and physical torture. Four.

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[00:03:59] Nahid Siamdoust: [00:04:00] Immediate and full equality of rights between women. And men in all political, economic, social, cultural, and family spheres.

[00:04:07] Nahid Siamdoust: Unconditional abolition of discriminatory laws against sexual and gender relations and tendencies. Recognition of the rainbow society, l g Bt Q i a plus decriminalization of all gender relations and tendencies, unconditional adherence to all women’s rights over their bodies and destiny, and preventing patriarchal.

[00:04:30] Nahid Siamdoust: Five. Religion is a private matter of the individuals and should not interfere in the political, economic, social, and cultural destiny and laws of the country. Six. Ensure work safety, job security, and an immediate increase in the salaries of workers, teachers, and employees, whether they are all still active or retired with the involvement and agreement of elected union representatives, seven abolish laws and any behavior based on ethnic or religious [00:05:00] discrimination and oppression.

[00:05:01] Nahid Siamdoust: Establish appropriate supporting infrastructures as well as the fair and equal distribution of government resources for the growth of culture and art in all regions of the country, and provide the necessary and equal facilities for the learning and teaching of all languages used in society. Eight, limit the influence of the government and grant people the right to interfere in local and national Councils directly and permanently.

[00:05:28] Nahid Siamdoust: Dismissing any government or non-government official by voters at any time should be among the voters. Fundamental rights. Nine. Confiscate the properties of the individuals and governmental semi-government and private institutions that have taken the property and social wealth of the Iranian people hostage through direct looting or government rent.

[00:05:49] Nahid Siamdoust: The wealth obtained from these confiscations should be immediately used to modernize and reconstruct education, pension funds, the environment and the needs of the [00:06:00] regions and Iranians who have been deprived and had fewer facilities under the regimes of the Islamic Republic and the mon. 10 and environmental destruction.

[00:06:11] Nahid Siamdoust: Implement policies to survive the environmental infrastructure that has been destroyed over the past 100 years, and publicized the natural areas that have been privatized, such as pastures, beaches, force, and foothills. Depriving the people’s rights on them. 11. Prohibit children’s work and provide their education regardless of their family’s economic and social status.

[00:06:35] Nahid Siamdoust: Establish public welfare through unemployment, insurance, and strong social security systems for all the people who are of legal age to work or unable to work. Additionally, provide free education and healthcare for all the people of Iran. 12. Normalized foreign relations at the highest levels with all the countries in the world based on fair relations and mutual [00:07:00] respect.

[00:07:00] Nahid Siamdoust: Ban the acquisition of nuclear weapons and strive for world peace. and then the signatories, right? In our opinion, the above minimum demands can be achieved immediately given the country’s potential and actual underground wealth. The presence of informed and capable people, and a generation of young people who are motivated to enjoy a happy, free and prosperous life.

[00:07:28] Nahid Siamdoust: I,~ uh,~ read the translation of this charter, which is published on Iran Wire,~ um,~ the online zine. ~Um, ~I’m sure there are competing translations, but the essence is of course the same. Moving on to our interview.

[00:07:54] Nahid Siamdoust: Well, hello, our guest today is Professor Janet Ari. ~Um, ~it is such a pleasure to [00:08:00] have you today, professor Ari.

[00:08:03] Janet: Thank you very much, Dr. Siam Dus. It’s a pleasure to be here with your podcast.

[00:08:07] Nahid Siamdoust: Professor Afai holds the MEChA chair in Global Religion and modernity at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she’s a professor of religious studies.

[00:08:16] Nahid Siamdoust: She’s a historian of modern Iran and ~uh, um, ~and has a PhD in history and near East Studies from the University of Michigan. ~Um, ~she has so many wonderful publications,~ um,~ and it’s really just such an honor. To have her on this program to speak on this particular topic at the intersection of gender history and politics.

[00:08:35] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Um, Um, ~her award-winning books include Sexual Politics in Modern Iran, published by Cambridge University Press. ~Uh, ~in 2009. ~Um, ~the I Iranian Constitutional Revolution, grassroots Democracy showed Social Democracy and the origins of feminism,~ um,~ from Columbia University Press. And these discussions about the Constitutional Revolution have of course, become so resonant today with the Woman Life Freedom Movement,~ um,~ and Fuko and the Iranian Revolution Gender, and the [00:09:00] Seductions of Islamism.

[00:09:02] Nahid Siamdoust: Published in 2000. Five and more recently, Iranian enrollments in the digital age, from arranged marriage to white marriage, sex, family, and culture in the Middle East, published in 2021 and ~uh, ~recently translated into Persian. ~Um, ~Dr. Afai publishes frequently in both academic journals and also more mainstream publications.

[00:09:25] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Um, ~again, wonderful to have you here. There is just so much to discuss with you and. . Just hope that I can do some of your work justice,~ um,~ in this interview.

[00:09:34] Janet: Thank you very much. Wonderful.

[00:09:36] Nahid Siamdoust: I mean, you have such a breadth, so , it’s, ~you know, ~quite difficult to figure out actually where to start and,~ um, ~what to draw on.

[00:09:43] Nahid Siamdoust: So what I think what I’m going to do today, if it’s okay with you,~ um,~ given you a recent piece in,~ uh,~ magazine that you published in December,~ um,~ woman Life Freedom, the origins of the Uprising in Iran. You give this sweeping history of,~ um,~ the intersection of gender and politics [00:10:00] in, ~you know, ~sort of ranging more than a hundred years.

[00:10:02] Nahid Siamdoust: And it’s both a great historical analysis, but also political analysis and. , I’m going to be drawing on your historical knowledge equally, and I hope that ~I can, ~I can sort of, ~you know, ~start,~ um,~ start there a little more than a century or so ago. And just to ask you, , when you look at the woman life freedom movement,~ uh,~ and I know you mentioned this a little bit also in, in the piece you recently published in Dissent Magazine.

[00:10:26] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Um, ~where do you see some of these, role models? ~The, ~the movement in Iran didn’t come out of nowhere. We’ve had great,~ uh,~ precedence of revolutionary figures and icons. ~Um, ,~ who held the torch long ago. Who sort of comes to your mind when you think about,~ um,~ some of these,~ uh, you know, ~champions of women’s rights?

[00:10:43] Nahid Siamdoust: Well,

[00:10:44] Janet: the persecutions of the Islamic Republic have produced almost an amnesia about the history of women’s rights in Iran. The reality is that women have been extremely active in the last century, more than a century. ~Um, ~just going back to just the beginning,~ uh,~ end of 19th [00:11:00] century, BI comes to mind. Who marked the intellectuals over time for their misogyny and hypocrisy?

[00:11:08] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, twenties and thirties. Lato, who was an activist, pioneer educator. ~Mm-hmm. ~ and,~ um,~ pioneered the unveiling movement in the forties,~ uh,~ Iranian. women feminists were quite active in the Iranian Communist Party, the two day party. ~Mm-hmm. . Um, ~the one that comes to mind is,~ uh,~ Dr. Forte Saia, the professor, but also a strong advocate of women’s suffrage.

[00:11:31] Janet: And then the sixties and seventies. We have a whole generation of women,~ um,~ who are campaigning for women’s rights. ~Um, ~of course they’re hampered by the fact that,~ uh,~ they have to do it within the limits of the biv monarchy. ~Mm-hmm. ~, the authoritarian, biv monarchy. But nevertheless, they’re quite remarkable.

[00:11:48] Janet: In a mi manu Cherry member of Parliament who campaigns for women’s rights and reforming religious ~uh, ~laws and marriage laws, minister of [00:12:00] education, . ~Mm-hmm. ~. And she was also my former school principal who started the Ngo O movement in Iran. ~Hmm. Uh, ~among minorities, even Shama, who had one foot in the women’s organization of Iran and reformed inheritance rights for Iranian women.

[00:12:16] Janet: Mano , who was of course Minister of Women’s Affairs. And on let me surrender with that because,~ uh,~ as a poet, filmmaker,~ uh,~ and somebody who really ~broke, ~broke so many taboos. And today, of course,~ um,~ we’re in an age when. I don’t know how many people in America and Europe know this, but the leadership of so much of the protest movement in Iran is in the hands of women.

[00:12:43] Janet: Women have been, and not just like yesterday. ~Mm-hmm. ~ for the last decade at least. Various campaigns for ending execution of prisoners, of rights, of political prisoners or ~mm-hmm. ~ ecology movements, as well as feminist movements, as well as [00:13:00] movements of,~ um,~ various ethnic nationalities,~ uh,~ of Iran. ~Mm-hmm. , uh, ~all of these have had really strong.

[00:13:07] Janet: Female presence. And let me just say here that we, this is really the strength of this recent movement that it really is building on this long century, if you will, of women’s activism. ~Mm-hmm. ~,

[00:13:21] Nahid Siamdoust: I mean, this is really astounding because, ~know, ~you’ve just named so many very powerful leaders,~ um, uh, you know, ~championing women’s rights.

[00:13:28] Nahid Siamdoust: And it’s almost like, ~you know, ~it’s parallel when we look at this. Avalanche of, ~you know, ~decades of women really trying to fight and push and claim more rights. It’s kind of parallel to really Iranian nation at large trying to achieve,~ uh, you know, ~freedom and democracy and justice. ~Uh, ~and yet not really,~ um,~ so far having achieved it.

[00:13:49] Nahid Siamdoust: And I wonder, ~you know, ~what do you, both ~as a, ~as a professional who’s observing,~ um,~ and has been studying these matters for decades, but also as ~you know, ~an Iranian woman, why do you think we’re [00:14:00] still here given, ~you know, ~these champion women who, ~you know, ~you’ve mentioned going back,~ uh,~ over a century, why are we still in this, not still, but why have we actually almost, not almost, but actually gone back, right, in terms of rights and freedom?

[00:14:12] Nahid Siamdoust: ~I, ~I

[00:14:12] Janet: actually don’t say that We haven’t achieved very much. I would say that we’ve actually achieved an enormous amount, but that the stakes have been extremely high and the barriers have been so unbelievable. I mean, when you think of the beginning of the 20th century, for example, let me just compare Iranian women not to,~ um,~ for example, European and American women, but let’s compare them to women in Turkey or women in south caucuses.

[00:14:39] Janet: So in Turkey for example, you had schools for mid midwifery, you have women’s publications,~ um, you know, ~for their own time considered feminists in terms of groundbreaking issues they discussed. And in south caucuses were also shared Iran, she culture. ~Mm-hmm. ~. You had,~ uh,~ Pioneering men who actually were [00:15:00] opening private schools for women, and you had women philanthropists and we had young women heads of numbers, NGOs, ~mm-hmm.~

[00:15:08] Janet: And in that very same period in Iran,~ uh,~ the clerks were absolutely 100% adamantly opposed to girls’ education. I mean, they were opposed to all kinds of secular education, but particularly girls’ education. There were no girls educa girls school other than what some,~ um, uh, ~missionaries, for example, Presbyterian missionaries had created.

[00:15:29] Janet: Or for example, Alliance Israeli,~ uh,~ had created primarily for the Jewish community. They were. , ~you know, ~and so this is the barrier, this is the barrier that you run in women face, even in the region, bystanders of the region. So we’ve come a long way, ~you know, ~actually ~mm-hmm. ~ from those days and have achieved an enormous amount.

[00:15:50] Janet: And of course, when you break so many barriers, they’re bound to be backlashes. ~Mm-hmm. ~. And we’ve gone through, ~you know, ~two steps forward and one step backward, [00:16:00] and sometimes three steps forward and two steps backwards, , ~mm-hmm. . Uh, ~but we have nevertheless made an enormous, I mean, looking back, I at it, for example, from the REO shop period, I would say.

[00:16:10] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. , ~

[00:16:10] Nahid Siamdoust: ~I, ~I, I was just about to ask you about the resource shop period ~you know, his, ~his,~ uh,~ reign is commonly sort of credited with having. ~Um, ~really modernized Iran also in the gender sphere. And I wonder whether you think, and of course, his very controversial ban on veils,~ um,~ is still widely discussed today,~ uh,~ in the context of having, in some ways almost caused the imposition ~of the, ~of the veil again with the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

[00:16:35] Nahid Siamdoust: And I wonder how you view ~the, ~the reign of,~ um,~ Zel pa, the first,~ uh,~ pathla monarch,~ um,~ who crowned himself in

[00:16:43] Janet: 1920. . Right. So, ~um, ~when Reza Shaw became Shaw, I mean, he was brought to,~ with,~ with British support to power ~mm-hmm. ~, and he became Shaw because the clerics didn’t wanna see another Kamala Turk in Iran.

[00:16:55] Janet: So although he was perfectly happy to be president, they insisted that he should [00:17:00] become king. ~Uh, ~but when he came to power, he actually recruited,~ um,~ to his cabinets in various positions, a generation of Constitutionalists people who had fought two decades earlier for greater democratization and modernization in Iran.

[00:17:14] Janet: And the Constitutionalists made a decision that. ~You know, ~they couldn’t achieve democracy on their rek, although they very much wanted to, but that it could at least,~ uh, uh, ~attain some of the reforms that they had wished to do. And I will put these reforms in four categories that they very short period they achieved.

[00:17:33] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~Mm-hmm. . . So one was the reforms in health and hygiene, ~you know, ~stopping spread of venereal diseases and public bathhouses. And what that did is that greater awareness of science, for example, vaccination and the fact that alcohol was actually something good because it was used in vaccination, undermined the authority of the Sheik CLEs and many other sayings, for example, ~you know, ~alcohol is a taboo.

[00:17:58] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. , uh, ~and in many other [00:18:00] areas. So the whole authority of the clerical establi. Almost broke apart in this period as a result of these health reforms. The second were educational legal reforms. So, ~you know, ~suddenly you have tens of thousands of girls going to school and then going to the university and then joining various government organizations that we’re propagating literacy and legal reforms and, you know,~ you know, mm-hmm.~

[00:18:25] Janet: ~.~ Age marriage goes up for girls to 15, for boys to 18. But these reforms are also desegregating Iran. They’re mitigating,~ um,~ dramatically social hierarchies, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~. So the dress reforms of the re, which is a third one that I was gonna talk about, the dress code. Actually, those two things. One or goal of it is to.

[00:18:46] Janet: Present the more modern image of Iran to the western world, because of course, the colonial powers had always used the question of gender, going back to, ~you know, ~the British and Egypt, for example, the French Algeria. But the same [00:19:00] thing in Iran saying that they were on the civilizing, modernizing,~ uh,~ bent.

[00:19:05] Janet: And of course what they gave as an example was the status of women. ~Mm-hmm. ~ women are very backwards ~and, ~and what they used as measure of backwardness was the way women dressed and men dressed. And so with in one stroke, Rezak and his people basically, I should say, decided to just take this away from the western world.

[00:19:22] Janet: ~You know, ~you say we’re backwards because ~of the, ~of the hijab or the dress, or the veil or the turbine. Well, we’re gonna just dress like you. And that was an enormously important thing in breaking, essentially,~ uh,~ silencing, if you will. In some ways the Western colonial. discourse, ~um mm-hmm. ~um mm-hmm. , of , course it had, when you mention.

[00:19:42] Janet: ramifications inside Iran,~ uh,~ which I’ll talk about in a second. ~Mm-hmm. . Uh, ~but it also did something else because these dress code, the way your turbine was, the way your belt was that actually said what social class you were from and what religion you were from. And when that was [00:20:00] taken away, when people started wearing uniform clothing, essentially you could no longer say who was a Bahai, who was a Tian, who was a sun.

[00:20:09] Janet: Everybody looked the same. ~Um, ~because Iranians are, can’t really be distinguished based on the color of their skin. Or even most of the time based on their dialect, if they’re speaking Persian. And so that was another thing that really reduced social hierarchies in the REO shop period. And then finally, I would say there were reforms that contributed to normative heterosexuality.

[00:20:30] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, by that I mean centering,~ um,~ the constitutionalists ~ ~were very bent on arguing that the proper relationship is that between a man and a woman, and that there should be companionship between a husband and wife. They were against polygamy. ~Um, ~so a lot of these reforms were aimed at creating a more, a monogamous marriage, if you will, in Iran, although they didn’t abolish polygamy, but they made it.

[00:20:57] Janet: culturally unacceptable. And the second thing [00:21:00] was that Iran still had a tradition of men maintaining boy concubines. ~Um, ~ if you’ve mm-hmm.~ mm-hmm. ~ seen videos about Afghanistan today. Even that’s, that tradition has stayed in Afghanistan, but in Iran. , he was, I wouldn’t say eradicated, but fundamentally undermined in the thirties.

[00:21:19] Janet: ~Um, you know, ~it was a tradition for men. ~Um, ~not they’re wealthy, but also like a shopkeeper, for example, or,~ uh,~ an officer. They all had like boy servants who basically were their boy concubines. And so a lot of laws are passed in the thirties that make it simply unacceptable

[00:21:36] Janet: so I, I’m not saying that it disappears, cuz I’ve found later on in research examples of it in the fifties of sixties also, 1950 sixties. But I would say that it becomes far less acceptable culturally. Right,

[00:21:50] Janet: Thing that I wanted come back to is that,~ um,~ she is a, what we call, uh,~ uh, um, ~ religion based on purity laws.

[00:21:58] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~Mm-hmm. . . And it’s not the only [00:22:00] religion, ~you know, ~so, ~uh, ~Islam in general is bechis far more, but so is Orthodox Judaism, so is Tism. So is mm-hmm. ,~ mm-hmm. ~, for example, Hinduism. And in these religions, the way you perform your religious obligations is by maintaining certain rules and,~ uh,~ rights a about segregation. So these are highly hierarchical societies in which gender segregation is a pivotal aspect of your religious observance.

[00:22:29] Janet: So lack of contact between men and women, for example. Or very detailed rituals of,~ uh,~ cleansing called evolution after sexual conduct. All of these create an enormous amount of anxiety in these societies about the mingling of sexes. And so what happens in the thirties as these reforms are carried out, I Iranian in society becomes, Less segregated.

[00:22:54] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, there’s more interaction between men. Women actually basically come to the public sphere. You [00:23:00] start to have an enormous anxiety on the part of the more observant sectors of society about how they could still be. ~You know, ~good cheese when every day their encounters with the world is breaking these social taboos.

[00:23:15] Janet: ~Mm. ~

[00:23:15] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Mm-hmm. . ~Thank you so much for that very clear explanation as to why sort of gender is mixing,~ um, you know, ~created such deep anxieties about countering the kind of religious purity that was the norm

[00:23:25] Janet: ~that’s, ~that’s why,~ uh,~ gender reform in Iran particularly,~ um,~ has to go,~ has,~ has had to go hand in hand with religious reform because it’s not sufficient to just introduce laws,~ um,~ in the, ~you know, ~for example, as the pese did to try to reform.

[00:23:41] Janet: You actually have to do something very fundamental with religious perceptions of people. . ~Mm-hmm. ~ This work has also been done. ~Mm-hmm. ~ started with the constitutional revolution, actually have to book on that about ~mm-hmm. Uh, ~Dedos, for example, contribution to that.

[00:23:55] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. , um, ~I don’t know how much ~your, ~, our listeners are familiar with Iranian history, but mm-hmm. ,~ mm-hmm. ~, a great deal of [00:24:00] work was done by Amma cast, for example, in the thirties. ~Um, ~and then,~ um,~ , a kind of reform took place,~ uh,~ in the sixties and seventies. It was very problematic, but it, its aim was the reformism that I’m referring to, for example, Ali Shariati.

[00:24:14] Janet: . But it ended up politicizing Islam as it tried to move it away from these rituals. ~Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ~. And then I would say the generation of reformers,~ um,~ starting in the 1990s,~ um,~ they started also moving away from a textual,~ uh,~ fact, ~you know, ~Jewish prudence based kind of reading ~of, ~of a, of she, ~um mm-hmm.~

[00:24:30] Janet: And that’s been also very important. But of course the biggest problem, as in that area has been every time they encounter gender and sex, sexuality, they have trouble. Most of them have trouble, ~you know, ~with, we try to break that barrier to

[00:24:44] Nahid Siamdoust: Interesting. Even though what you’re saying is that, ~you know, ~on the religious front, this kind of modernization and reforms has also taken place, but perhaps.

[00:24:52] Nahid Siamdoust: The anxieties around sex and gender are so deeply

[00:24:56] Janet: rooted that they are so deeply rooted. But we do have people [00:25:00] who are doing it, for example,~ um,~ A terrible example these days, of course, was ab ~mm-hmm. ~, you’ve probably heard the story about how it was attacking with

[00:25:12] Janet: ~you know, ~so ~how, ~how dare ~uh, uh, ~an actress,~ um,~ who’s appeared in. , ~you know, ~nere, semi-nude images. ~Mm-hmm. ~ come and talk about Iranian reform. You, so you have that ~mm-hmm. ~, but actually his son is a very good example, you know? Mm-hmm.~ you know? Mm-hmm. ~ So he’s far more open. He’s still a reformist, but he’s far more open. He talks about, ~you know, ~the need for people to accept and recognize, for example,~ uh,~ cohabitation, ~you know, ~white marriages and living together basically as a legitimate form of existence and ~far, ~far more open on questions.

[00:25:42] Janet: So, ~you know, ~there’s some work also being done by the newest generation,~ um,~ in that regard. But the, in a way, to me, the two have to go hand in hand, ~you know, ~cuz, cuz the roots of these issues are so much within, as you just mentioned,~ uh,~ religious,~ uh,~ religious, think.

[00:25:58] Nahid Siamdoust: Yeah, so this is ongoing [00:26:00] work, uh, ~you know, ~more than a century, I suppose.

[00:26:01] Nahid Siamdoust: It’s ongoing work and still highly sort of contested and problematic and yeah, I thought it was interesting. It was a few days ago, I guess, that, the,~ uh, uh,~ initially a very much part of the Islamic Revolution and its cultural revolution, but then dissident ab. ~Um, ~said something like,~ um, you know, ~how dare are somebody like, uh,~ uh,~ the actress who had to strip down from head to toe in order to be accepted in Western society, pretend that she’s the, she’s one of the leaders of the opposition.

[00:26:29] Nahid Siamdoust: And,~ um,~ I would love to talk to you actually about the Opposition Coalition,~ um,~ once we get to it. ~Um, ~but I’m, I think we’re benefiting so much from your historical insights here that, if you don’t mind,~ um, let’s, ~let’s continue on this front. So then, of course, Reza Pany associates himself too much with the central powers, or isn’t relenting enough to the Allied forces during the Second World War.

[00:26:49] Nahid Siamdoust: And he is,~ um,~ forcibly Deron by the Allies and his son Mohamed is put in his place. And I wonder. ~You know, ~how ~did, did, ~[00:27:00] did Albe basically continue his father’s work? Is that, or did he sort of accelerate

[00:27:04] Janet: it? ~Uh, ~so just before talking about him, the forties was actually a period of opening up in Iran because the young Shaw was very weak.

[00:27:12] Janet: His father was gone. ~Mm-hmm. ~. And although Iran was occupied, By the Allies, it meant that Iranians came in daily contact with Western culture. With Western mos, through publications, through film, especially through,~ um, you know, ~these propaganda films that the allies were creating. ~Um mm-hmm. ~ as well as the Germans of course.

[00:27:31] Janet: I mean, there’s also a very big German influence in Iran. ~Mm-hmm. , um, ~in first the social Democrats, ~you know, ~Weimar Republic, and then it’s the Nazi period, but I’m not gonna segue to that. So, but the,~ uh, the, ~the,~ uh,~ the biggest,~ um,~ of course important board, most important reform is the formation of the Iran and to the party Communist Party, which has recruits, women, has a lot of women members.

[00:27:53] Janet: And that breaks down also Iran’s social hierarchies, cuz you have Sunnis and Muslims and Bahais, ~you know, ~sitting together [00:28:00] in a room talking about women’s rights. ~Mm-hmm. ~ and they become champions of women’s suffrage. . ~Mm-hmm. ~. And the question of women’s suffrage becomes, again, very important when Moba becomes Iran’s Prime minister, he’s very lenient.

[00:28:13] Janet: It’s, I mean, progressive on this issue. He would like to give women the right to vote, but then this again becomes a huge controversy. He’s trying to keep a coalition. ~Mm-hmm. ~ as he’s trying to nationalize Iran’s oil. He is trying to find British colonialism. ~Uh, ~of course the Americans are playing both sides here.

[00:28:30] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~. And ~he, ~he, at a certain point, he realizes he kind of has to let go of this women’s issue because ~he, ~he will lose any, at any rate, he does lose the coalition because of his more progressive issues on gender and on,~ uh,~ questions of religion. ~Uh, ~but this becomes, again, important. Now when we move to the Mohamed.

[00:28:48] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, it’s really the sixties. And it’s,~ uh,~ in a way directed to, related to Iran because the Kennedy administration comes to power and they suggest now that, ~you know, ~everything in America is seen from [00:29:00] the prism of worldview of communism versus, ~you know, ~capitalism and ~mm-hmm. , um, ~it’s this bipolar world basically.

[00:29:07] Janet: You’re either with the communist regime or you are the western capitalist regimes. Right, right. And so ~he, ~he and his administration suggests a sort of a,~ uh,~ some degree of,~ uh,~ liberalization, particularly gender realization as a way of forestalling the growth of communism in Iran. So, ~you know, ~you know, military build up,~ they,~ they sell a lot of arms to the Shaw and they try to fortify the military, but at the same time, they push him towards greater reform because they understand the young people are attracted by changes that they saw.

[00:29:42] Janet: happening in the Soviet Union. ~Mm-hmm. ~ and particularly reforms with regard to women’s rights that had happened there. ~Uh, ~and so they said, well, let’s do this under the ds, under the monarchy. So the show introduces something called the White Revolution. party says you wanted a revolution. I’ll [00:30:00] give you one except it’s going to be a bloodless one.

[00:30:03] Janet: And that’s why he calls it the white revolution. It’s, ~you know, ~it’s not red revolution. And he puts in a lot of things that since the constitutional revolution and then the treated party had been demands of the Iranian left. So nationalization of forest, redistribution of government, land sale of government, land, profit sharing for workers,~ um,~ and literacy core.

[00:30:25] Janet: And the literacy core gradually involves also women who are~ mm-hmm. , um, You know, ~they go and become teachers in villages around the country. ~Uh, ~but women then start pushing for women to suffrage. They say, ~you know, ~if you bring women, if you give them the right to vote, when you wanna have a referendum on these issues, then you’re gonna have so many women also come and vote.

[00:30:44] Janet: And it’s on that grounds that he basically says, okay, I’m going to agree to women’s suffrage. ~Um, ~because ~the, the women, ~the women that I mentioned to you earlier, the generation of the sixties and seventies mm-hmm. ,~ mm-hmm. ~, push him into. And so that’s how women end up getting suffrage, the right to [00:31:00] vote in Iraq.

[00:31:00] Janet: Right. So

[00:31:01] Nahid Siamdoust: the White Revolution is launched,~ uh,~ he launches it in 1963, and there were active interest groups, women’s groups who pushed him towards suffrage for women to finally get the vote so that they can aid him in carrying out these sweeping reforms. in Iran. ~And, ~and

[00:31:17] Janet: maybe I should say a little bit also about ~mm-hmm.~

[00:31:19] Janet: the other reforms of this period. So there’s the Women’s Organization of Iran, which has four, 400 branches, 70,000 members, and it starts with literacy, moves to vocational trading, healthcare, legal counseling,~ um,~ and then advice for marriage in divorce, inheritance issues, childcare, and even fighting. ~Um, ~sexism and portrayal of women in books and publications, for example.

[00:31:48] Janet: Oh,~ uh,~ and ~uh, you know, they, they~ they were actually,~ uh,~ I think they got a bad rap afterwards, but ~they, ~they were rather,~ uh,~ careful at the time. For example, they would have theaters in the more secular parts of city. They would have,[00:32:00] ~you know, ~Rosa Honey for the religious parts. They would be unveiled women in one chapter.

[00:32:05] Janet: There’ll be veil women in another chapter. ~Hmm. ~Even the clerics,~ um,~ supported the sha Mad, mad for example, was by John. He sent his daughters to the organization. Mm-hmm. .~ Mm-hmm. ~. But what happened, and,~ um,~ this is ~a, ~a really nice interview with Mannus , who was head of the organization at the time. ~Mm-hmm. ~Mm-hmm. . . She says that we realized that there were lots and lots of cultural barriers.

[00:32:28] Janet: ~you know, ~the, basically the organization is an example of state feminism. ~You know, ~they’re operating within ~a, ~a dictatorship, but they have certain leeways, ~you know, ~in terms of pushing things, right? ~Mm-hmm. . Um, ~and so she says, ~you know, ~well, we realized that people put a lot of barriers, and the clerks put a lot of barriers in our way.

[00:32:45] Janet: But then every time we said, well, his majesty wanted this, ~you know, ~then of course they would not, they would stop saying anything and say, okay, if the Shaw wants it, then you can do it. And she says, after a while we realized that this was a really convenient way. [00:33:00] To push things forward as fast as possible.

[00:33:04] Janet: And she says in retrospect, that was a mistake, right? Because we shouldn’t have done it. We should have actually had,~ and,~ and then,~ but,~ but then I think when she says we should have done it differently, it wasn’t an environment where you could actually have discussions. I mean, if you were going to have, let’s say,~ um, you know, ~a discussion for example of marriage and divorce and inheritance rights would’ve.

[00:33:25] Janet: multiple sessions on tv, in radio and women’s newspapers talking about women’s rights issues. And then of course the clerics would’ve certainly not allowed that to happen, or they would’ve, in some cases they tried to,~ um, you know, uh, ~they tried to steal the agenda, for example. ~Mm-hmm. ~, I remember this major cleric in the seventies who had a series of article in the biggest women’s magazine of the time.

[00:33:49] Janet: Xus. ~Mm-hmm. ~Mm-hmm. try to say that, ~you know, ~true Islam is actually good on all these issues and you don’t really need to have. Any reform of religious ~and, ~and ~you know, ~the women’s magazine published them because what [00:34:00] else are you supposed to do? So you couldn’t really fight back. So these are the constraints of state feminism.

[00:34:06] Janet: ~You know, ~you may have some,~ um,~ very important and very, Good ideas about religious reform, but when you do it under a dictatorship, it becomes a sort of a truncated form that appears, that is

[00:34:18] Nahid Siamdoust: fascinating. It kind of points to, ~you know, ~smis comment that perhaps they shouldn’t have always played. The shock card sort of speaks to the democratic processes and dialogues and debates that would’ve given those requests more.

[00:34:31] Nahid Siamdoust: rather than just being put down as, ~you know, ~top down enforcements by a westernized dictator. ~Um, ~but yet at the same time as you said, ~you know, ~they were in a bit of a bind in which perhaps doing that work wouldn’t actually have,~ um,~ achieved the desired results because of the,

[00:34:45] Janet: ~um, ~ways. And you still have backlashes.

[00:34:47] Janet: I mean, a good example of that is the United States,~ um,~ for example, you know, the right to abortion was gained 50 years ago, and now we have a severe backlash in so many states in the United States,~ um,~ taking away that [00:35:00] right, for example. But at least half of a country is on board because ~of, ~of course, all this educational campaign that has been done.

[00:35:08] Janet: So it doesn’t guarantee. ~Uh, ~not having a backlash, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~, there are people who wanna push back on in the United States today for gay marriage, for example, but ~mm-hmm. ~, there has been enough work done that you would still be able to have a substantial number of the population and you simply didn’t have that opportunity in Iran to be able to have that kind of a dialogue and back and forth, free dialogue and back and forth on the subject because of the close political space or because of our close political space, ~you know?~

[00:35:36] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~Like for example, students were not allowed to form their organization. The government was so worried. ~Mm-hmm. ~You wanted to even copy a page of flyer or something. You had to go all the way to the top of the university to be able to get permission for a flyer, posting a flyer, for example. ~Mm-hmm.~

[00:35:51] Janet: there was extreme,~ uh,~ limits on freedom of expression, freedom of organization, freedom of association, and so forth in Iranian time, freedom of [00:36:00] publication certainly. And so within that constrained, ~you know, ~ta trying to make reform and. Bring about change, but within this ~really, ~really restricted environment, of course.

[00:36:11] Janet: you couldn’t do it really that well. Yeah. ~Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . ~

[00:36:13] Nahid Siamdoust: ~This is really, ~this is really interesting. And ~you know, ~you know, I mean, basically women get some fundamental rights, right? Whether it’s,~ uh,~ voting, the women’s suffrage they have, cus they gain custody rights, divorce,~ uh, you know, ~all kinds of personal,~ uh,~ rights within the, within personal,~ uh,~ legal,~ uh,~ matters.

[00:36:29] Nahid Siamdoust: And they enter the workforce,~ uh,~ more visibly.

[00:36:32] Janet: They larger your numbers. Exactly. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , right? ~right? Mm-hmm. ~. Well, like to give you an example of mm-hmm.~ mm-hmm. ~ where there wasn’t a debate. So for example, the family protection law ~mm-hmm. , ~which was another thing that was created that the Women’s Organization of Iran created,~ uh,~ now gave the right to divorce to women under certain conditions.

[00:36:47] Janet: ~You know, ~if your husband was excessively abusive, for example. And it also gave the right to custody and it took away from men the right to just,~ um,~ it’s called tell the right to just,~ um,~ divorce your wife, ed will. , ~you ~you had to [00:37:00] actually go to court, you had to make a petition. You still could divorce your wife, but you couldn’t just do it some early, you had to actually go to court and go through the legal process, right?

[00:37:08] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, or for example, you couldn’t just take a second wife. ~Um, ~your first wife had arrived to say, I object. And it didn’t mean that you didn’t take a second wife. It meant that she then had a right to divorce with her alimony, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~. So there were these things that were put in place and suddenly you heard everybody complaining about these OP women.

[00:37:27] Janet: And they’re so demanding, and oh my god, divorce rates are catastrophic in Iran. They’ve just gone up off the chart. But the reality is that actually divorce rates have, in other words, it was like 1 65, you know, per a hundred thousand and it came to 81. And so that means that even though a few women were getting divorced and had the right to divorce the law had actually limited the right of a man.

[00:37:52] Janet: to divorce his wife, right? Mm-hmm. . So that’s why the divorce rates had actually plummeted. But if you talk to the ordinary people, they would [00:38:00] all say that, oh my God, a calamity. Everybody, women in drove are divorcing their husbands, and they would point to a few single women, divorced women who were living alone.

[00:38:10] Janet: ~You know, ~because in pre-modern Iranian society, when man divorced his wife, she would be absorbed into the extended. . ~Mm-hmm. ~Mm-hmm. , , she become the second wife of somebody, she become a nanny to her brother’s children. Mm-hmm. But now because you have jobs and women are more educated, they actually go get a job and they may get their own apartment.

[00:38:30] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~ . And this was Scandal as this idea that. , ~you know, ~a woman with li And so, but so what I’m saying is the reality, if you looked at the figures at the time ~mm-hmm. , um, ~it was an entirely different picture. Actually. Divorce rates had gone down dramatically, but everybody thought it was, and you know, you didn’t have a public forum where you could actually have a few sociologists up there who would say, look, this is a reality of what’s going on.

[00:38:53] Janet: Here are the charts, for example, . Right,

[00:38:56] Nahid Siamdoust: right. So it seems like there was a moral panic happening in [00:39:00] society. It was a moral panic. Right, right. Caused by these,~ uh,~ yeah.

[00:39:03] Janet: Sort of. It has been almost a social contract is one of the things I say in my sexual politics book. Mm-hmm. , that Iranian reformers, when they started to introduce these reforms, and I mentioned to you how far behind Iran was compared to even Ottoman Empire.

[00:39:18] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~ that essentially promised men that ~give us, ~give us a right to, for example, educate the women because we need a modern Iran because we need. boys to be educated basically. And for boys to be educated, the mothers have to be educated. ~Mm-hmm. ~. So the rights that were given to women were rights to make them a more better mother, ~you know?~

[00:39:38] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~ people have talked about it ~ um, you know, ~sort of a domestic, if you will, scientific,~ um,~ sort of women’s rights. Yeah. At the service of the nation, at the service of a nation. Better health, better hygiene, things like that. Mm-hmm. taking your kids from vaccination, and they had made a promise that made an implicit promise.

[00:39:55] Janet: And the promise was that we promise you that these women, these things are not [00:40:00] going to interfere with traditional expectations of women, so they’re going to stay beautiful daughters, faithful wives, and self-sacrificing mothers. And that social contract had held. all the way through the beginning of the 1960s, and now it broke apart.

[00:40:16] Janet: Mm-hmm. ~Hmm. ~It broke apart in all these things that we talked to in law, for example, in the consumer industry comes in and in the mind of people, consumer industries,~ uh,~ vulgar display of women’s bodies becomes the same as feminism. ~You know, ~they don’t make a distinction between feminism, which is trying to fight for women’s rights, and of course it’s fighting for women’s sexual rights as well.

[00:40:40] Janet: But feminism in America and Europe was fighting against consumerism, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~ was fighting against Playboys, for example, display of women’s bodies and things like that. They, but the Iranian public, the Egyptian public, they don’t make a distinction between these two. Consumerism becomes the new face of feminism, and as I said, ~you know, ~these op [00:41:00] women, and then you have ~mm-hmm.~

[00:41:01] Janet: at the same time, an Iranian poet for . . ~Mm-hmm. ~, who for the first time in the history of modern, is this your poetry, not just modern poetry. ~Mm-hmm. ~, but Iranian poetry writes about love from the perspective of a woman. Mm-hmm. ,~ Mm-hmm. ~, you have, Iran is a very romantic culture. You know, you have generations going back to the classical poets of 10 to 14th century classical Persian poetry is highly romantic, highly erotic, ~I ~I should say homoerotic.

[00:41:30] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~. And ~you, ~you have a few kind of women, you know, vinta, Sammi starting in the 20th century, writing from a woman’s perspective, but never from a woman’s sexual desire. And this is what does, ~you know, ~in po poems that talks about, ~you know, ~I sin the sin and I enjoyed it passionately, or something like that.

[00:41:48] Janet: She says . ~Hmm. Or~ Or what she writes about, um, you know, she’s in a caged married, she really wants to get a divorce. ~Uh, ~but she has a. Child, just, she had a son for a while. I mean, it’s ~mm-hmm. ~, I don’t wanna make it, you know, [00:42:00] biographical the poetry. ~Mm-hmm. ~, because it’s not always, but,~ uh,~ of course she had also gotten ~a, a~ a divorce and, ~you know, ~she, her husband had custody.

[00:42:06] Janet: And so ~to the, ~to the public it becomes, ~you know, ~the sinful woman who, how dare she, she even talks about sex and sex. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. .~ Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. ~. And so in, in it,~ it,~ it, and so this maybe brings me to sort of some of the reasons for the revolution, because you have this coalition that essentially is formed on the one hand, the clerks who all along oppose these and the more traditional sectors of society, the bazaar merchants.

[00:42:32] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, who still wanna marry their daughter at 15, they don’t want ’em to go to college. ~Um, ~ to be able to get a temporary wife, for example, or,~ um,~ and all those sort of traditions. They certainly don’t like to see women working, ~um mm-hmm. ~ and in high professions. And you have a generation of leftists,~ uh,~ sort of their remnants of a two-day party, but now in different forms who are making, and this is what the Communist Party does everywhere in sort of the third world where they make a big distinction between [00:43:00] the, what they call women’s rights,~ uh,~ w rights of peasants and rights of workers.

[00:43:04] Janet: And these are like, ~you know, ~food and work and hygiene and. Kind of things like education and maybe mm-hmm. , basically the right to work and maybe childcare centers,~ but,~ but they absolutely up whore what they call, ~you know, ~oi women’s rights. And by that they mean,~ uh,~ middle class women who are demanding greater sexual freedom, for example, or the,~ the, the, ~the way, the right to dress the way they wish, for example, or asserting themselves.

[00:43:29] Janet: ~Um, ~and these were considered sort of decadent values,~ uh,~ in moral areas and in an attempt to appeal to the broader sector of society. And this is sort of happening everywhere now. ~Um mm-hmm. ~ and the broader sector of society is very sensitive about these,~ uh, ~ issues that are fundamentally changing the institutional family, right?

[00:43:50] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, they start saying,~ uh,~ well, ~you know, ~we’re against these OI rights. ~Uh, ~we’re against these decadent rights, but we are for the rights of peasants and workers. And that’s how you start to have a [00:44:00] coalition that basically overthrows the regime, have a large enough coalition that includes the traditionalists and the CLEs and significant part of the generation of young people, leftist students,~ um,~ nationalists and leftist students.

[00:44:15] Janet: Remember, this is the first people who going to college, the first generation ~mm-hmm. ~, and the whole Maurice of the University,~ um,~ is drawing to them. ~Um mm-hmm. ~mm-hmm. lava would be, for example, a good example of this. ~You know, ~she was an artist in the seven sixties and seventies, and she goes to Tehran University.

[00:44:33] Janet: She’s gets admitted. to the art school and now of course she’s exposed to, ~you know, ~all the latest ~uh, ~trends, artistic trains. And she’s just completely recoils because to her art is very conventional. Very traditional. ~Mm-hmm. , ~and ~she, ~she just, she ~at, ~at a certain point, she says she’s almost like suicidal because she just can’t reconcile the life that ~she, ~she wants to be, ~you know, uh, ~an educated woman.

[00:44:59] Janet: She wants to be [00:45:00] an artist, she wants to go to university. But then there are these values that she was taught at home. Leftist ideas are ~very, ~very attractive to her. ~You know, ~also, ~mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. ~She . says, ~you know, ~I read everything from Marks, which of course she didn’t, but that’s what she thinks.

[00:45:14] Nahid Siamdoust: zk, of course.

[00:45:15] Nahid Siamdoust: The,~ uh,~ wife of mijo, Jose Muk, the former Prime Minister

[00:45:18] Janet: who still, you know, who’s under prison. ~Uh, ~inha.

[00:45:22] Nahid Siamdoust: The leader of the green movement and the former director of,~ uh,~ Azaro University in Tes. Right, exactly right. Yes. The all women’s very strong university. Precisely.

[00:45:31] Janet: So she starts, this is how she’s in this period, and I can’t find anyone better to really explain the mentality of this generation.

[00:45:41] Janet: So to her, the hijab is comforting, you know? ~Mm-hmm. ~ somebody when Ali TTI comes and says, well, you can be an educated woman and be a professional woman. Um, and, you know, gives example from Madam Currie and things like that, and women who are studying in Cambridge ~and, ~and scholars, but, ~you know, ~don’t buy into the decadence and immorality of the western world.[00:46:00]

[00:46:00] Janet: She totally buys into that and so do as a generation, and I think that becomes a foundation for the revolution. So, ~uh, you know, um, and to, ~and to ~many, ~many people remember the re revolution had its like a million, probably leftists in it. ~Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. ~. So it’s a huge contingent of leftists and nationalists.

[00:46:15] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~. And then they decide on maybe Ito Lomania as a figurehead. ~You know, ~something that will unify the whole country together. ~Mm-hmm. . Um, ~but that’s not what, that’s not what these people want. It’s not like they wanna go back to a religious autocracy ~mm-hmm. , ~uh, but they wanna bring as many people from the run in society into the fold of this moment so that they could get rid of the.

[00:46:36] Janet: Right, and gender becomes a thing, which is gender rights, but not all gender rights. So you know, education and employment and all these things these day. But then anything that has to do with women’s sexuality, that becomes, and so the revolution is essentially carry that by sacrificing. These aspects of women’s rights.

[00:46:59] Nahid Siamdoust: That is so [00:47:00] fascinating. Thank you for that. Very clear sort of, ~you know, ~leading us up to this moment and you know, you pointed out the dangerous sort of conflation,~ um,~ between women’s rights and feminism and sort of this understanding in Iran by, ~you know, ~swaths of the population, that perhaps what feminism went meant was precisely these, ~you know, ~ways of life, the sexual liberties and everything that people just found unacceptable within,~ um,~ within, or many people found unacceptable within Iranian society.

[00:47:27] Nahid Siamdoust: And then, ~you know, ~you know, you’re talking about this top down sort of state feminism that, ~you know, ~gives women. , many rights. And then this bottom up,~ uh, you know, ~women coming and entering the, ~you know, ~educational system and really going through universities and the workforce and all of that and finding this sort of jarring reality between their,~ um, you know, ~their learning from home and what they find, uh,~ uh,~ somebody like Lanard who you mentioned.

[00:47:51] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Um, ~and of course this is at play and I think you explained to us beautifully how you see this sort of boiling over and, ~you know, ~leading to these coalitions that ultimately overthrow [00:48:00] the PA regime. But then you also have, ~you know, ~ this interesting moment, right in,~ um,~ leading up to the revolution in February, 1979.

[00:48:07] Nahid Siamdoust: So in the fall of 1978. and onward,~ uh,~ after the revolution in March, 1979, where foreigners,~ um,~ really become interested in the revolution that’s happening in Iran. And of course, you’ve published a book on,~ uh,~ Michelle Fuko and his writings on the Iranian Revolution, which as you mentioned in your book,~ um,~ a large, ~you know, ~number of his writings except for two or three had actually never been translated into English.

[00:48:30] Nahid Siamdoust: And, ~you know, ~up until the publication of your book in which you’ve trans translated all of his work from,~ um,~ French and,~ uh,~ added it as an appendix to your book. ~Um, ~but I’m curious ~you know, ~you know, since we’re at this moment of revolution, if. ~Um, ~if you would indulge us to just discuss a little bit, the role of these,~ um,~ foreign,~ uh,~ intellectuals and feminists such as Michelle Fuko, and then later on Kate Millett and Simone de Bvo.

[00:48:51] Nahid Siamdoust: Of course, Fuko was interested in the Iranian revolution because he had reached a point where he was interested in a sort of, ~you know, ~spiritual politics and he saw ~a, ~a promise, he thought the Western [00:49:00] philosophy was at an end and, ~you know, ~the Iranian path might, ~you know, ~point the way forward into a new kind of future,~ um,~ that diverged from,~ um,~ Sort of the dead end ~of, ~of Western,~ uh,~ western thinking.

[00:49:11] Nahid Siamdoust: And,~ um, ~I have from the introduction of your book, this passage that is really fascinating and I wonder if I can just read these few sentences and have you lead us into,~ um,~ this interesting foray into the Iranian revolution and Fuco understanding of it and role in it. ~Um, ~you write on a few occasion and ~I, ~I will say again that you co-wrote the book of course, with,~ um,~ Kevin B.

[00:49:32] Nahid Siamdoust: Anderson. ~Um, ~but ~you, ~you both write on a few occasions, Fuco reproduced statements. He had heard from religious figures on gender relations in a possible future Islamic Republic, but he never questioned the separate but equal message of the. Fuco also dismissed feminist, ~ uh,~ premonitions that the revolution was headed in a dangerous direction.

[00:49:50] Nahid Siamdoust: And he seemed to regard such warnings as little more than orientalist attacks on Islam, thereby depriving himself of a more balanced perspective toward the events in Iran. [00:50:00] At a more general level, Fuco remained insensitive toward the diverse ways in which power affected women as against men. He ignored the fact that those most traumatized by the pre-modern disciplinary practices were often women and children who are oppressed in the name of tradition, obligation, or honor.

[00:50:18] Nahid Siamdoust: So we have this highly progressive, intellectual public figure coming to Iran. And,~ um,~ if I understand it correctly, he misreads,~ uh,~ the gender ~uh, you know, ~dynamics of the revolution.

[00:50:31] Janet: Yeah. So before that, of course, Fuko,~ uh,~ even in when he was alive, but certainly afterwards,~ uh,~ has been highly criticized for his,~ um,~ Blindness essentially on feminism.

[00:50:41] Janet: ~You know, ~generation American feminists have philosophers have written on this. And also I would say blindness about colonialism, ~you know, ~because he lived, he was a contemporary of France Fanon. ~Mm-hmm. ~. And, you know, I, for example, SART was writing,~ uh,~ in support of the African revolutions. ~Um, ~and, ~you know, ~certainly all that work by,~ uh,~ Amil cabal and says there, [00:51:00] all this was available to him, but he never, of course, ever talks about colonialism.

[00:51:04] Janet: ~Hmm. ~ the role of imperialism for that matter. So there are these huge blind spots in her work. ~Um, ~he’s,~ um,~ as you said, he sees modernity at a dead end and he hopes that Iran might be a sort of a spirituality that would find a way out. ~Um, ~, of course, he’s extremely uninformed about Iran’s history. He knows none of, like, for example, the stuff we talked about today, but he just, ~you know, gets in, ~gets in the water and,~ um,~ starts issuing these,~ uh,~ writings,~ um,~ for,~ um,~ for the Italian newspaper,~ um,~ that has commissioned him to basically write about some journalistic pieces on the Iranian revolution.

[00:51:39] Janet: And ~ uh,~ it’s essentially, it’s a sort of a reverse Orientalism because he sees women who are fighting now. . Now we come to late 78 and early 79, really realizing that there’s going to be,~ uh,~ a complete backlash with regard to women’s rights. ~You know, uh, ~cuz remember the first thing that Khomeini does when he comes to Iran, the very first thing is to [00:52:00] abolish the family protection law that had given minimal rights to divorce, for example.

[00:52:04] Janet: And then the second thing he does is he says,~ um,~ all these women are nude. Basically he means unveiled and they should be basically worthy hijab to go to work. ~Uh, ~and then he goes and he executes a few,~ uh,~ openly gay men. So those are like the first three things that he does, right? And then he goes after the ethnic minorities in Iran and accuses them of being,~ um,~ separatists, ~you know, ~the Kurds, for example.

[00:52:27] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. . Um, ~so right away,~ very,~ very quickly, he sort of takes off, if you will, These components of the revolution of which Iranian people were themselves, some. Confused about, ~you know, the, the~ degree of women’s rights that women should have, whether these ethnic minorities are now demanding autonomy should actually be given these rights or not.

[00:52:49] Janet: So it comes in this atmosphere and he starts saying, oh my God, this is a new form of spirituality and it’s gonna be completely in a way. And not realizing that [00:53:00] as this theocratic regime that’s, ~you know, ~we’re beginning to see the earlier forms of it, can use the very same techniques of modernity that all these other states have not used.

[00:53:09] Janet: ~You know, um, ~it’s, it the, he for some reason he thought that the theocratic regime will be outside the regime of modernity. . ~Hmm. ~But I mean, using his own insight, this is ~the, ~the really, the big,~ uh,~ perplexing thing about him having talked about modernity as such an all-encompassing thing. How did he think that a new,~ uh, you know, ~clerical regime would operate outside modernity?

[00:53:31] Janet: Wouldn’t it have its own disciplinary system, the mechanisms for control of society? ~Hmm. ~But there were people who did see that,~ uh, you know, ~best example of it, and we talk about him in our book and also bring his writing is Maxon who spent ~mm-hmm. ~ and ard. Those are the two people I really would like to mention.

[00:53:49] Janet: Scholars of the Middle East and Iran who had. Decades, you know, studying and rode son said, ~you know, ~college, almost Islam of fascism. He says, this is fascism. [00:54:00] Coming to Iran beware is ~very, ~very dangerous. And,~ uh,~ so did Richard, ~you know, ~RI also realized what was going on. And then,~ uh,~ Simon ~then, ~then the couple of feminists also saw it because they were of course, very sensitive on women’s issues.

[00:54:13] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~. So I would put Simon Dewar and Kate millet on in the category of women feminists. And by the way, both queer wino today, of course, by their writings and their lifestyle, who really supported the,~ uh, you know, ~Women’s woman that was being crushed completely. And I would take issue with people who think that,~ uh,~ millet’s intervention at the time, or Dewar’s intervention writing in support of Iran, she didn’t come.

[00:54:38] Janet: She just wrote a statement of solidarity should be put in the same category, for example, as Lord Kon or mm-hmm. Kromer, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~ or the,~ uh,~ or the Algerians who use the question of women’s rights as a wedge issue to basically divide ~you know, uh, ~the Algerian people or the Egyptian people.

[00:54:55] Janet: ~Um, ~it’s an entirely different thing, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~ absolutely has [00:55:00] colonialism and imperialism used the question of women’s rights. as a way to establish this domination? Absolutely. No question about that. The history of that is clearly documented, but are there feminists,~ uh,~ individuals who through various historical periods in modern Iran history,~ uh,~ lent their support and they’re not supported by a state and they’re individuals and they’re generally caring as we see today.

[00:55:25] Janet: And I think we need to make that distinction. Otherwise, they’re gonna, we’re gonna , ~you know, ~hit ourselves in a kneecap basically, because we need that support as Iranian women fighting for women’s rights. We need, for example, today all the global support we can get. But of course, we need to make a distinction between, ~you know, ~I don’t know, somebody like Condoleeza Rice, for example.

[00:55:46] Janet: Mm-hmm. , who, ~you know, ~might speak on behalf of Iran Women’s Rights, or George Bush’s wife or somebody like that. ~Mm-hmm. ~ and,~ um,~ you know, a feminist,~ uh,~ who,~ um,~ Generally and deeply cares about women’s rights in Iran. ~Uh, ~members of these smaller organizations or even people [00:56:00] who might today be, have some position, maybe mayor of a city for example, or are well known writer or something, and they generally care about issues of Iran.

[00:56:09] Nahid Siamdoust: ~ ~Yeah. This has been a really sort of, ~um, you know, ~vexing issue. Where with,~ um,~ I think especially sort of as you say, ~you know, ~some,~ um, you know, ~progressive leftists, just being really very cautious about supporting the woman life freedom movement,~ um,~ because of some of these,~ um, , you know, ~misgivings perhaps.

[00:56:24] Nahid Siamdoust: And yet ultimately I have seen people in talks and panels come around to, ~you know, ~saying, well, just because, ~you know, uh, ~you support anti imperialism doesn’t mean you have to then,~ uh, you know, uh, ~against a people’s movement, like the woman life freedom movement,~ uh,~ stand with the oppressive force here rather than the liberatory force.

[00:56:44] Nahid Siamdoust: And I think these are, yeah,

[00:56:46] Janet: ~and, ~and I would say that even the hijab issue has to be contextualized, right? ~Mm-hmm. ~. So for example, . I have students coming from conservative families,~ um,~ coming to the university, sometimes maybe first generation,~ uh,~ from Middle Eastern [00:57:00] backgrounds in the United States, and they were the hijab.

[00:57:03] Janet: And I totally support that and applaud them because this is something they did, either because they were very uncomfortable or their families wanted some assurances that when they come to the university and get an education, they still remain loyal to, ~you know, ~whatever cultural values of that family is.

[00:57:23] Janet: And I think that’s ~a, ~a struggle that this individual woman has to decide for herself. ~You know, ~she wants to wear the hijab. She doesn’t want to wear the hijab. That’s an entirely different question. It’s an entirely different question in Iran where the hijab has become really the emblem of. Reactionary theocratic state forcing and having a whole,~ uh, you know, ~slew of mechanisms, enforcement mechanisms for torturing.

[00:57:47] Janet: And of course in the case of Masa Amini and ~many, ~many other women killing women over this issue. And I think a left should be able to make these distinctions, ~you know, ~between a hijab that’s a cultural [00:58:00] expression of someone, particularly in a diaspora community, ~um mm-hmm. ~, and a way to maybe holding on to some values and as they negotiate, and I’ve seen women wear the hijab.

[00:58:09] Janet: I’ve seen take them, take it off. ~You know, ~they go through these stages in their lives and mm-hmm. a state that is actually forcing and using the hijab as a way of reducing women to second and. Citizens in the country and also taking away so many other human rights from them.

[00:58:27] Nahid Siamdoust: Right? I think these distinctions are sometimes difficult to make from,~ uh, you know, ~the outside, especially with people who have these hesitations about not getting into other people’s business and sort of a orientalist fashion.

[00:58:38] Nahid Siamdoust: But,~ um,~ yes, these are all very important sort of distinctions to keep. And,~ um,~ I wonders since we’ve already sort of moved in this direction, if we can then take it forward and,~ um, you know, ~you write ~in your, ~in your descent piece about the demographics in Iran and how it’s a very different population today,~ uh,~ in trying to come to, ~you know, um, ~to grips with what’s happening, what’s been happening in Iran since September, 2022.

[00:58:59] Nahid Siamdoust: And, and [00:59:00] before that ~for, ~for many years, as you mentioned, very early on in this interview, it has been in fact women who for over a decade,~ um, you know, ~have happened on the front lines of these very visible,~ um, , you know, ~movements ~for, for, ~for rights, not just women’s rights, but all kinds of rights in Iran.

[00:59:13] Nahid Siamdoust: And you write in your piece that, ~you know, ~fully, 75% of the country is urbanized. Literacy stands at almost 100% among people under 25. And their 4 million university students, the majority of whom are women. And the fertility rate meanwhile, has fallen to 2.1 births per woman,~ uh,~ from 6.5 in 1979. ~Um, ~so ~what kind of, ~what kind of Iran are we seeing today?

[00:59:35] Nahid Siamdoust: And,~ uh, you know, ~as you write in your piece, how it’s different from 1979 and how has that contributed to,~ um,~ what you think we’ve been seeing,~ uh,~ not just these past months, but over the last couple

[00:59:44] Janet: of decades. So profoundly it has changed. ~Uh, ~what ha what’s happened is marriage as,~ um,~ Stephanie Kunz likes to say in her,~ uh,~ classic book on marriage.

[00:59:53] Janet: Marriage used to be in pre-modern society, a way to get in-laws. , ~you ~sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. ~Mm-hmm. ~, [01:00:00] and of course procreation. ~Um, ~and that was the same also in Iran. So marriage was something that the extended family arranged. So we’ve moved to a world of companionate marriage. We see that actually happening even in some very conservative communities of Iran where you don’t have, ~you know, ~cousin marriages or for example, are becoming ~very, ~very small.

[01:00:21] Janet: Certainly,~ um,~ even semi arranged marriages,~ uh,~ let alone totally arranged. Marriages are becoming much smaller. And so, . ~Uh, Uh, ~Uh, with that, of course, with the, ~you know, ~as urbanization, industrialization, vaccination, people living longer and until recently, contraceptive technology being widely available in Iran, you have a situation where marriage evolves and changes, and it becomes not an institution just for having babies, but it becomes ~a, a, a, ~a relationship where sex is important.

[01:00:51] Janet: Companionship is ~very, ~very important in it. And then with that comes the understanding. . ~You know, ~sex is not just important in marriage, but it’s also important [01:01:00] outside marriage. ~You know, ~what about people who are not married? Don’t they have a right to sex? And then with that’s what happened ~in the, ~in the Western world, came an understanding that, okay, well what about people who are identifying as gay or lesbian?

[01:01:13] Janet: I mean, sex is important. Well, don’t they have a right also to sex? And so this was a very gradual process that took place in the west, I would say a couple centuries probably. But again, it’s happening very fast in Iran. ~Um, ~and one of the things that happens is that a lot of these taboos about premarital sex or have broken down now, it’s still a very, I’m not saying that it’s completely acceptable because, ~you know, ~girls have, or boys.

[01:01:41] Janet: Sex and they have sex with people of their own social class. I mean, that’s, this is a big difference. ~You ~you don’t have sex with ~mm-hmm. ~ sex worker, but you have somebody who’s actually from your own social class ~mm-hmm. ~. And then maybe it gets into marriage, maybe it doesn’t, lots of times it doesn’t because the boy doesn’t have a job.

[01:01:56] Janet: And so then maybe a tra more traditional suitor shows up and then the [01:02:00] girl goes,~ uh,~ and has a hyman repair operation. So, ~you know, ~it’s happening still in this context in which that she’s having premarital sex, but maybe she’s not telling everybody about it. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . But it’s breaking down these taboos.

[01:02:13] Janet: And, but the breakdown of this taboos has a lot to do with, um, . Oh, and then I, Iranian society has become so much less religious in the way that it used to be, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~ religion based on fact, ~um mm-hmm. ~ broken down. And I think in this way, the reformers did their duty. I mean, they were needed essential in this passage to convince people that you didn’t need the to interpret the text for you.

[01:02:40] Janet: That you personally could have a direct relationship to the text. I mean, that’s really the most important thing they said. Mm-hmm. since sort of a Protestant, if you will, of religion. ~Mm-hmm. ~. And so with that came a breakdown of the way in which, I’m not saying people are less pious. They’re so pious, but their piety isn’t expressed in the [01:03:00] way.

[01:03:00] Janet: that it was expressed before through these religious rituals. ~Mm-hmm. ~. And so that has also been a very important factor. So the combination of these is that a lot of taboos in Iranian society about, ~you know, ~is a girl naji, which is proper ~mm-hmm. ~ really mean, sexually proper. ~Um, ~and ~the, ~the sort of,~ um,~ well, the sort of trauma that a family endured if their daughter was divorced or ~mm-hmm.~

[01:03:23] Janet: maybe if she was known to have a boyfriend. I mean, all these things were hugely big issues that all that has broken down, ~you know? Mm-hmm. ~ broken down, even in the more traditional society. I mean, remember the story a friend told me of a very conservative woman? belonging really to the base of the Islamic Republic, observing the hijab, taking her daughter to some of these parties, ~uh mm-hmm.~

[01:03:46] Janet: while all sorts of things happen, of course. And she would sit in the car and wait for her daughter to go to the party, and then she’d take her back home. And when she say, well, I want my daughter to have some experience before she got married, [01:04:00] I want to be like me. ~You know? Mm-hmm. ~, that’s the extent to which things are changing in Iranian society.

[01:04:05] Janet: And so in this context, women have gained a lot of freedom to actually assert themselves,~ um,~ to become leaders of these organizations. And so I’ll come back to what I started with, which is that many of the,~ um,~ NGOs and various organizations and entities that have been fighting for human rights, for ecology, for women’s rights, prisoners’ rights in Iran are led by women.

[01:04:29] Janet: Right. So men are now used to seeing women in these leadership positions as lawyers, as journalists, as activists,~ um,~ as college professors, for example, as lawyers and so forth. ~Uh, ~and so that has really shifted relations between the sexes in Iranian society. It’s become a society where’s far more accepting of,~ um, uh, you know, um, ~premarital sex.

[01:04:52] Janet: For example, women are living with men in something called white marriage, which is basically,~ um,~ cohabitation without, ~mm-hmm. ~ without getting [01:05:00] into a formal marriage. So all that means that when,~ um,~ I think. To me,~ this,~ this thing that after Ka said was particularly vile. ~Mm-hmm. ~Mm-hmm. , because , he went back to the mindset of the 1970s and try to smear.

[01:05:15] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~. Okay. You don’t like this group of people who’s formed in Georgetown? Go form your own, have another, you know, ~I know, ~I know he’s a Duke or somewhere else,~ uh,~ or Harvard, I don’t know. He has those connections, ~you know, ~organize something you like and then, ~you know, ~particularly attacking, as you said, very well.

[01:05:29] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~. An artist who was forced out of Iran. ~Mm-hmm. ~, and then she came abroad and here by dictates of American consumerism in Hollywood. She sort of, ~and, ~and Europe is the same thing. She sort of, ~you know, ~in order to be accepted, that was the first thing that she had to do. Well, why didn’t, why Didn’ts talk about,~ uh,~ she didn’t know about.

[01:05:46] Janet: ~you know, ~who was on the same panel? ~Mm-hmm. ~, certainly a noble laureate who, so you see he’s really undermining, he’s trying to undermine a movement in which women are playing a very prominent role. And then he gave some suggestions of people inside he run, [01:06:00] and he didn’t name one woman.

[01:06:02] Nahid Siamdoust: Right. Right. And, ~you know, ~I’m not even sure Gold Shift had to strip down to be accepted.

[01:06:06] Nahid Siamdoust: She’s a great actress and,~ uh, you know, ~or actor. And also, ~you know, ~I feel like she was, uh,~ uh, uh,~ ahead a few years given that this movement has been, ~you know, ~rooted in the notion of bodily, ~you know, ~women’s bodily autonomy. Everybody’s bodily autonomy. Right, right.

[01:06:20] Janet: Again, I don’t know what context she did it under, which of course she has every right to do that,~ uh,~ and represents something.

[01:06:25] Janet: But the f to me it’s more interest, ~you know, ~it’s really upsetting that, that would then like, pick this as a way of trying to undermine the Iranian women’s movement. Right, right. And I wanna just maybe end by,~ uh,~ on this note, which is that,~ um, we, ~we should not lose sight of the fact of how crucial, first of all this history has been, how much we have sacrificed to come to this point.

[01:06:48] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, you know, I remember. It was there in the 1979 Revolution. It was a little bit after that. I went to a protest movement. There were a few thousand people I think [01:07:00] there, and by the way, this was happening abroad by then. And I asked to,~ uh,~ speak on behalf of women’s rights and feminism. And,~ um,~ by then I had started translating and publishing about women’s issues and women’s rights.

[01:07:12] Janet: I mean, that’s how I sort of started entering the, these protests. And the first thing they asked me was, well, how many Martys has your movement given,~ uh,~ your organization? Given,~ uh,~ I know that was my right to speak about women’s rights was contingent on how many Martys. , our little feminist group had given to them.

[01:07:30] Janet: And of course we hadn’t given any martyrs, Ines. Sure. Although if I had known it at that time, I would’ve said, we’ve given martyrs for over half, uh, ~one~ one and a half centuries. Right. For the cause of women’s rights and human rights in Iran. ~Uh, ~right. And so we have given that ~if, if, ~if that’s, they’re gonna judge us.

[01:07:45] Janet: But we’ve done that. We’ve paid our dues for the sake of Iranian women’s rights and human rights in Iran, and we certainly have earned ourselves a prominent place at the table. And we shouldn’t lose sight of that and shouldn’t let the movement get [01:08:00] distracted by this and that, which I see happening all the time.

[01:08:04] Janet: ~You know, ~that’s something we need to hold onto.

[01:08:06] Nahid Siamdoust: Wow. Yes. Thank you. I mean, you did mention at the beginning,~ um, you know, ~when I pointed to the, ~you know, ~decades of work and where are we that, ~you know, ~really what we should keep in mind is how much women have achieved. ~Uh, ~rather than looking at it,~ um,~ sort of from the other perspective of why haven’t we achieved more?

[01:08:22] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Um, ~and it is truly astounding. And I’m, I know I’ve already kept you for too long, but if I could just sort of, ~you know, ~bring this around a little bit to the present moment if you have a few more minutes with us. ~Um, you know, ~were you personally,~ um,~ stunned by what happened after the,~ um, you know, ~after the death of Massino Amini in custody and morality, police custody?

[01:08:41] Nahid Siamdoust: Were you stunned with the protests or how did you perceive this happening? ~You know, ~again, both as an intellectual, but also just ~as an, ~as an Iranian woman ~who’s, ~who’s been there to witness the past,~ uh, few~ decades, what was your first reaction? Oh, of

[01:08:53] Janet: course it was absolutely stunning. But then, at the same time, it was almost like [01:09:00] expected because when you look at the history of the moments, particularly in the last decades mm-hmm.

[01:09:05] Janet: ~uh, ~one of the issues that we had was that these, there was, there were ethnic,~ uh,~ I should call it nationality movements, for example, of Iran. The Kurds, for example, or the Bauch consistently fighting for the rights. ~Mm-hmm. ~, there were women’s protests consistently, ~you know, ~the women of Anglo Street, for example, young women who got up and.

[01:09:22] Janet: Publicly ~took off their, ~took off their hijab, and there were women who in various campaigns,~ um,~ for prisoners rights, for example, and then you had,~ uh,~ in 2019, you had really major,~ uh,~ urban and rural protests,~ uh,~ workers’ rights. ~Very, ~very central to that, right? Just before Covid hit, I mean, almost Covid stopped it ~for, ~for a year or two, and then it ~mm-hmm.~

[01:09:42] Janet: took off after that. So it’s about time that these pieces, various pieces finally came together and they hurt themselves. And really, I think ~what, ~what is stunning is how we’re hearing ourselves. And I,~ um,~ I don’t know if your audience. Got to see this recent statement [01:10:00] by Iranian unionists and ~um, ~social activist organizations.

[01:10:04] Janet: It’s really quite a beautiful statement and it touches all these points on rights of nationalities, no child labor, but also gender recognition of all forms of gender identity and ~mm-hmm. ~, elimination of discriminations against women and men. I mean, just really, and, and workers’ rights in,~ but,~ but the reason that it does that is that cause women are not in all these movements, ~you know, ~we hear them from Baluchistan to Stan to leaders of trade unionism.

[01:10:34] Janet: Of course in various campaigns, because they are there and because they are informed by this, ~you know, ~by feminism, when they articulate these demands, when they’re coming together in coalition building, that’s why we see a statement like this that can address and touch all these issues. ~Mm-hmm. ~, and I think the centrality of women and feminist women to this woman, I cannot underestimate that.

[01:10:59] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. ~, how important it [01:11:00] has been and how crucial it is to hold onto it as the movement progresses. Yeah. We’ve

[01:11:05] Nahid Siamdoust: seen such progressive statements coming out of Iran, whether it’s the, ~you know, ~the union statement that you mentioned, or statements written out of prison,~ um,~ by ,~ uh, you know, ~human rights activists and workers who’ve been locked up for their work.

[01:11:17] Nahid Siamdoust: ~Uh, ~such as Na Mohamed statement, for example. Exactly. Right. ~Um, ~ and ~you know, ~and then you,~ it’s, it’s, it’s, ~it’s an interesting moment in part because, ~you know, ~we did talk about,~ um, you know, ~the kind of support that is coming from the outside. And at the same time that we have these incredible sort of, ~you know, ~progressive statements from within Iran.

[01:11:32] Nahid Siamdoust: We have, ~you know, ~the opposition coalition forming outside of Iran and trying to sway foreign powers into,~ um,~ becoming less,~ uh, you know, uh, ~. I’m giving less collaboration to the Iranian state, so to speak. ~Um, ~and,~ uh,~ I don’t know if I can take this last question ~into a, ~into a bit of a perhaps,~ um, Uh, you know, um, ~political direction, first of all, do you see liberation happening in the near future?

[01:11:52] Nahid Siamdoust: And if so, how do you see you, you told us how the forces came together for the 1979 revolution, right? Where [01:12:00] do you see the forces coming for this happening? If it. Indeed

[01:12:03] Janet: happen. I think the coalition that we see,~ uh,~ what was created in Iran is really the foundation for change. The question is whether the coalition can hold, because the enemies of this coalition are very aware of its weak points.

[01:12:19] Janet: They’re very aware of, for example, the sensitivity of Iranians towards the rights of national minorities of Iran. ~Mm-hmm. ~, they’re very aware of, ~you know, ~they’re remaining,~ uh,~ trauma and anxiety about the sexual emancipation of Iranian women, for example. ~Mm-hmm. , uh, ~they’re very aware of all these things and they’re going to be pushing these issues over and over.

[01:12:41] Janet: ~You know, ~this morning I heard,~ um,~ one of these religious reformers on Iranian television saying on the one end he said the Islamic Revolution is over. . And then on the other hand, he said,~ uh,~ he was basically talking still to the harmony and to the regime. If we don’t save it,~ uh,~ Iran is going to be divided into [01:13:00] multiple nations.

[01:13:00] Janet: ~You know mm-hmm. ~, so you hear that,~ uh, mm-hmm. , ~and I think those are the biggest dangers,~ um,~ to Iran. The other thing is,~ um,~ I mean, ~I, I’m, ~I’m worried about the Monarch tendencies also. I mean, I. To me. I remember my grandfather used to say, eventually there’ll be only two monarchies left.

[01:13:15] Janet: There’ll be the King of England and it’ll be the end of the deck of cards, . That’s right. ~You know, ~but the question is, I mean, where do you have a monarchy that is truly democratic? It hasn’t happened anywhere, wherever it is, it’s basically ceremonial,

[01:13:32] Janet: ~the, the~ The, the reason the British don’t get rid of their monarchy,~ uh,~ is not because it really does anything. It’s because it’s a major tourist attraction. Right. , otherwise who would go and wash those castles and things like that. And that’s true for, I mean, everywhere else, I look pretty much everywhere else I look, I would say.

[01:13:48] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. , know,~ particularly in a country like Iran that has so much oil. ~Um mm-hmm. ~ whole idea. , ~you know, ~having that kind of a regime,~ um, um, in, ~in a country with oil, with no, with very little history of democracy, you know, we’ve had [01:14:00] it small periods, constitutional period, maybe a little bit more south, but we don’t have it.

[01:14:05] Janet: We have a lot of work to do ultimately. I mean, what is it that we want? We want hopefully a parliamentary democracy ~mm-hmm. ~ in which all these voices have to be represented, ~you know, ~so yeah. Is there a place for reformists? Absolutely. They can have mm-hmm. their own party and try to recruit based on that.

[01:14:23] Janet: ~Mm-hmm. , um, ~, they be parties that would be more regional based. I mean, that whole discussion has to be brought up. How do you make a greater representation? ~Mm-hmm. ~, I mean, that was done in the constitutional revolution actually. ~Um mm-hmm. ~, we have a model that there was,~ um,~ representation based on regional representation, for example.

[01:14:37] Janet: Mm-hmm. , uh, how do you have more representation of unionists, for example, workers unions. Mm-hmm. , for example. Mm-hmm. . And then,~ uh,~ with gender, ideally you would wanna have organizations which have strong feminist representations in them, so, ~you know mm-hmm. ~, you have the Kurds for example, but you have strong Kurdish women representing, for example, they’re party or unionists where you have strong [01:15:00] feminist representing them.

[01:15:01] Janet: ~Um, ~and so ultimately, I mean, that’s ultimately. I’m certainly hoping for to see in Iran, cuz I’m hoping that we’ve moved away from some idealistic notion that Iran will tomorrow become a socialist revolution that would undermine every kind of hierarchy in Iranian society. I mean, that’s not, that’s hasn’t happened and we have a long way to go to something like that.

[01:15:23] Janet: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , many western countries. But we have a chance of having a parliamentary democracy that would be social democratic, because that’s what happened in the constitutional revolution. It was social democratic, and that’s what happened with Mossad de era. He was also a social democrat and so were many of his supporters.

[01:15:42] Janet: So we have a history of social democracy in Iran, and we have a history of short, but history of parliamentary democracy. . ~You know, I, ~I don’t have time to go here, but we’ve spent over a century trying to limit the powers of a monarchy in Iran. That’s what the constitutionalist did. That’s what Mosad did, [01:16:00] and in the end, okay, we’re beyond that stage.

[01:16:03] Janet: ~Um, ~and so I’m, I’m hoping we’d have discussions about these issues. ~You know, ~these are important discussions to have. ~Mm-hmm. ~ about the role of monarchy in Iranian history, about the role of religious reformers, about the conflicts we see, even some conflicts we see between the new diaspora generation, for example, and the people who spent the formative years inside Iran or living inside Iran.

[01:16:26] Janet: I mean, there are some genuine differences, which is fine. ~Mm-hmm. . ~Mm-hmm. . But these all, as I. It’s a good time to talk about these differences and just make ~mm-hmm. ~It ~very, ~very open,~ uh,~ as we move, hopefully towards a more democratic, Iranian society

[01:16:41] Nahid Siamdoust: Dr. Jean, thank you so much.

[01:16:43] Nahid Siamdoust: It’s been such a pleasure to have you on this program. We went way over,~ um,~ time and I,~ um, I, ~I’m so grateful for it. I’m so grateful for your time. I, myself have learned so much and,~ um,~ I’m sure this has been so beneficial to our listeners. Thank you so much for giving us all of your [01:17:00] insights. Thank you very

[01:17:01] Janet: much, Dr.

[01:17:02] Janet: It has been a pleasure. ~Uh, ~I very much enjoyed the interview.

[01:17:05] Nahid Siamdoust: Thank you so much. Take care.

[01:17:12] Nahid Siamdoust: Thank you very much for listening. My guest was Dr. Jeanette Aari. She is Mecham professor of Global Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Be well. Until next time

[01:17:33] Nahid Siamdoust: you were listening to an episode of Woman Life Freedom All in on Iran broadcast to you from the University of Texas at Austin. I’m your host, Nahid Siamdoust. Until next time, ADI z Zend, ADI.[01:18:00]