The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment(Sex, Family and Culture in the Middle East)

The Iranian #MeToo movement was a crucial form of resistance, with ordinary Iranian women sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and assault in the public sphere of digital media. This is the first book of its kind providing a comprehensive analysis of the Iranian #MeToo movement. Based on archival, empirical, ethnographic, literary and cultural research, the contributors discuss the abuse of women and society's responses to it. Contextualizing the historical framework of Iranian MeToo activism within larger Iranian feminist movements, as well as the historical background within the context of Middle East, the contributors address how the privileged position of men who have been outed as rapists, helps them to aggregate social, political, sexual, and economic capital through various networks in order to delegitimize the narratives of survivors. The volume also covers the intersections of various systems of oppression specifically highlighting marginalized voices. The contributors highlight the power dynamics within digital feminist networks in Iran and its unique attributes due to political, social, and religious structures. The volume ends with a chapter focusing on cultural productions, specifically cinematic works, through which some filmmakers have challenged normalizations of sexual harassment by offering alternative discourses which have arguably paved the way for the #MeToo in Iran movement.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration and Translation Prologue: #MeToo Movement and Redefining the Private Sphere Ziba Jalali Naini Introduction: Bodies, Spaces, and Places Claudia Yaghoobi 1 Like a Wrapped Chocolate: The Islamic Republic's Politics of Hijab and the Normalization of Sexual Harassment Esha Momeni 2 The Iranian #MeToo and the Double Bind of Iranian Feminism: Between Religion, the Global Gender Struggle, and Liberal Feminism Dilyana Mincheva and Niloofar Hooman 3 Rhetorical Listening to the Iranian #MeToo Movement in Diaspora Yalda N. Hamidi 4 Structural and Material Considerations and the Nexus of Power and Sexuality in the Iranian #MeToo Movement Mahdi Tourage 5 Twitter Data Analysis on #MeTooIran Yasamin Rezai and Mehdy Sedaghat Payam 6 #Unveiling_the_Iranian_MeToo: Symptomatic Reading of Iranian MeToo through the Lens of Political Economy Paria Rahimi 7 Whose Voice Is Missing? MeToo Digital Storytelling on Instagram and the Politics of Inclusion Golnar Gishnizjani 8 Sexual Violence, MeToo, and Iranian Lesbians' Censored Voices Mahdis Sadeghipouya 9 The White-Collars' New Masculinities in #MeToo: How to Maintain Gendered Privileges? Somayeh Rostampour 10 Hush! Girls Don't Scream (2013) by Puran Derakhshandeh and the #MeToo Movement in Iran Maryam Zehtabi Afterword: Patriarchalism, Male Abuse, and the Sources of the #MeToo Movement in the Muslim Middle East Roger Friedland, Janet Afary, and Charlotte Hoppen Notes Bibliography List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Claudia Yaghoobi is a Roshan Institute Associate Professor in Persian Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. She is the author of Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Literature and Film (2020) and Subjectivity in 'Attar, Persian Sufism, and European Mysticism (2017).

Review :
At a time when Iranian women have galvanized the world with their audacious protests against the compulsory Islamic dress code, The #MeToo Movement in Iran aptly reminds us of a prior moment when women dared to speak of the many forms of sexual abuse and harassment they have long endured in silence. The contributors offer trenchant analyses that lay bare the Iranian state's hypocritical claim of protecting women through the dress code only to punish them for the acts of violence against them. Inspired by the global #MeToo Movement, the Iranian movement is shaped by local differences, stemming from the theocratic regime's hostility to women's rights as well as the rights of minoritized bodies and longstanding cultural taboos. This book provides invaluable insights into how the digital media amplified the reverberations of the movement across Iranian social and cultural arenas. Inspired by the global #MeToo Movement which has uncovered dark stories of sexual harassment experienced by women and girls across the world, this timely and much anticipated edited volume offers, for the first time, a comprehensive and accessible analysis of sexual assault against women and girls in Iran and its diaspora. Sensitive and nuanced, this book will stand as an essential read for scholars of all disciplines who work on the complex socio-cultural and political mechanisms of gender oppression and sexual harassment as a persistent universal problem and its impact on the private and public lives of women.