With the “Women, Life, Freedom” rebellion in Iran from 2022 to 203, the feminine our bodies actually grew to become the battlefield.
The protests broke out after 22-year-old Mahsa (Gina) Amini was arrested after being improperly arrested by Iranian ethical police for carrying a hijab.
Her dying grew to become a strong image of presidency patriarchy on girls’s our bodies, sparking protests that uncovered the administration’s use of sexual violence as a weapon of oppression.
Testimony from survivors shared regardless of stigma and concern revealed tragic abuse. Female protesters had been crushed and tortured bare throughout sexual assault, rape (together with gang rape, rape together with objects), arrests, relocations, and detention on each personal websites.
These weren’t remoted acts, however calculated strategies to punish the opposition and instill concern.
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Women’s markings, punishments, domination
One of the coldest testimony belongs to a younger girl who was detained throughout the protest.
“My good friend and I eliminated our veil in public, and we had been chanting. We by no means crossed my concept that safety forces would arrest us… From the second we had been arrested, they defeated us violently… They advised us, “There isn’t any God right here. We are your God.” ”
She was later uncovered to violent gang rape.
The Iranian authorities seems to view girls’s our bodies as territory, disciplined and punished. Its patriarchal ideology reduces girls to bearers of household honor and non secular purity, justifying state management over their look, actions and actions.
French materialist feminist Colette Gilamin was theorized with the idea of “gender,” so patriarchy reduces girls to “objects of nature.” Nicole Claude Matthew additional emphasised how this appropriation works throughout a various context of domination.
In Iran, these insights assist clarify how the state implements the feminine physique as a logo of ideological domination and as a useful resource to be regulated and misused. As Gilamin argued, forcibly eradicating or eradicating girls means public possession over their our bodies, remodeling imaginative and prescient and autonomy into topics of state management.
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The politics of sexual violence
The Iranian state seems to acknowledge the revealed girls not solely as disobedient residents, however as organizations which have fled management and rejected assigned positions of possession.
For this violation, punishment makes an attempt to annihilate them: via humiliation, torture, rape. Media reviews present that safety forces are deliberately concentrating on the eyes and genitals of feminine protesters, additional exemplifying how girls may be lowered to mere sexual and reproductive substances.
Far from remoted acts, rape and sexual violence dedicated by the Iranian nationwide military throughout “girls, life, freedom,” it embodies what feminist scholar Katherine McKinnon defines as a “system of sexual terrorism.”
Stigma, silence, authorized waiver
However, sexual violence doesn’t finish with the conduct itself. The aftermath carries deep and lasting scars within the lives of survivors.
In Iran, rape survivors can face up to not solely trauma, but additionally social exclusion, stigma and judicial abandonment. Iran’s authorized system narrowly defines rape beneath “Zina” (Fornication), typically punishing the sufferer whether it is unable to present delivery to 4 male witnesses. This typically silences the survivors.
Amnesty International was declared as one other survivor interviewed:
“I’ll by no means be the identical individual once more…however I hope that my testimony will result in justice in addition to me…so I could possibly forestall related bitter occasions from occurring once more sooner or later.”
In Iran, bering is just not solely spiritual, but additionally deeply political, and is a public signal of submission to patriarchal rule.
Meanwhile, executions in Iran have skyrocketed to an astonishing stage, with 972 individuals executed in 2024 alone in eight years. Among these focused are girls activists, particularly from ethnic minority teams.
The 2025 report from the UN’s fact-finding mission highlights the continuing incidents of Pavshan Ajitsi, Sharif Mohammadi and Valishe Moradi.
Their lawsuits expose the horrifying patterns of nationwide homicide alongside Iran’s burgeoning execution charges. It is the execution of ladies who intentionally struggle for gender justice and human rights.
Global accountability
These are usually not home Iran points, they’re crimes in opposition to humanity.
As McKinnon reminds us, sexual violence is just not personal, it’s a political weapon and civil rights violation. The world should act by imposing goal sanctions on perpetrators, offering asylum to survivors, and supporting the Iranian feminist motion that calls for justice.
To make these crimes unanswered is to waive the feminine physique to immunity. Iranian girls present extraordinary braveness. Global responses must align braveness with motion.
Iran’s human rights considerations are “broad and sophisticated,” the UN report says