A demonstration of solidarity with uprising in Iran and reflections on the fight against patriarchy from a sex worker perspective

As members of Mustaselja collective – as anti-authoritarians and as sex workers in Finland – we want to write some words of solidarity for those who have been fighting for their lives in these months in Iran, and still continue to fight.

We also want to talk about how we see this uprising being an uprising against patriarchy, and what kind of other struggles patriarchy is involved with. This takes us to a journey to the stigmatization of sex workers as well as to one revolutionary place where the rights of women are one key foundation of the society.

About the writers

We live in Finland and we are mostly white sex workers, with various gender identities. We do sex work independently and voluntarily*. We are anarchists and we think that as anarchists and as sex workers we have the passion and the responsibility to support different struggles which fight against the same enemies: State control; repression against protesters and prostitutes; and violence against women and queer people.

Our positions differ from the context of Iran’s protesters or sex workers due to different historical, political and social circumstances, so we try to make clear distinctions of our own assumptions and knowledge, so we don’t talk on behalf of others whose perspectives we cannot understand. We are aware that we can’t understand the context outside what we are able to follow and read from the news or social media. So we can speak only from the position we are in: some kind of Western context and especially Finnish context.

We acknowledge that we hold a lot of power and privileges, so we try to be aware of that and we want to use them to raise international pressure and attention on the situation in Iran, for example in the form of this text.

We see it as a necessary task to support the revolution in Iran, especially since Western countries have been, by force and to important extent influencing the country of Iran. However we are not going to open the historical context in this text and we invite you to read about Iran’s anti-colonial history.

* By “voluntarily” we mean that we are not victims of sex trafficking, but we are forced to work to earn a living in the capitalist society, like everybody else who “chooses” to do paid work.

Photo of revolts in Iran. A woman raising their fist in the air on the street.

What is happening in Iran?

The current uprising happening in Iran was ignited by the death of 22 years old Kurdish woman Jina (Mahsa) Amini, in the custody of the Tehran’s morality police. She was arrested for not wearing her hijab by the governmentally approved way.

The uprising and protests happening in Iran didn’t just appear suddenly from nowhere, nor is it the first time in Iran’s history. Since the Islamic revolution in the 1979 there have been thousands and thousands of women and others revolting against the law of patriarchy and oppressive injustice towards marginalized religious and ethnic populations, also several times in the 2010’s. But now the uprising is maybe the most widely known outside of Iran in the Western world too.

Big protests almost never go without repression either. The protests have been followed with cruel violence from the Iranian governmental security forces. Over 16 000 people have been arrested since the protests began in mid-September, around 400 have lost their lives in the protests, and authorities are seeking the death penalty for the protesters in at least 21 cases, according to Amnesty International.

It is also important to note that, the majority of people in Iran are actually opposed to the compulsory covering, and the amount has been increasing in the recent years. (1) The regime is violently protecting a policy most of it’s subjects don’t support. This brings into question the legitimacy of the regime, and it is notable that since the very beginning of the protest, the protesters are not asking for reforms but for a radical change of the current political system.

The propaganda of ”protesters and prostitutes”

An Iranian lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian said recently that the ”rioters” are ”out to prostitute themselves”, because ”removing the hijab, or headscarf, was akin to being naked in public to attract male attention”. And an Islamist thinker Hossein Kachooyan recently referred to “Woman, Life, Freedom” as “Woman, Prostitution, Lechery”, making a some kind of connection between life as prostitution and freedom as lechery. (2)

This is not the first time to compare the protesters on the streets to prostitutes though – the tactic of calling protesters prostitutes and to accuse the political opposition of sexual behavior is a decades old propaganda weapon. The Islamic state has had such campaigns since the 1980’s to gain popularity amongst the conservative part of the society and to humiliate the political opposition. (2)

The effectiveness of the tactic is based on the stigmatization of sex work and sexuality. The fact that they can be used as the worst possible slurs to one’s political opponent — especially for women it is considered as the lowest position — tells us a cruel story about the stigmatization/ of the sex workers.

Our analysis is that patriarchy is the same structure oppressing sex workers, women and queer people. So therefore sex workers are not a separate group whose rights patriarchy tries to diminish but their status tells also about the status of women and queer people.

Jîna Amini died after contact with Iran’s ‘morality police’, prompting worldwide protests in her name. Photo from (4)

The Kurdish question is crucial in the uprising in Iran – the meaning of ”Jina/Mahsa” and ”Woman Life Freedom”

We think it is important to acknowledge the Kurdish question in the uprisings happening in Iran. The protests aim for freedom for women and for other minorities, and we think it is important to not to forget minorities which are affected by the Islamic state violence especially badly.

For example, there has been discussions about why to speak about Jina, and not Mahsa, and why does it matter. The woman who died in September in the hands of the morality police was a Kurdish woman, and her Kurdish name was Jina (which means life, incidentally). Mahsa was her Iranian name. In Iran Kurdish people are often not allowed to have Kurdish names, and if they do have them, they often have to face more discrimination, eg. when applying jobs or to universities. (3)

Ironically, in some solidarity demonstrations around the world there has been a chant saying: ”Say her name – Mahsa Amini”, which just further ignores her Kurdish identity, and the structural oppression Kurdish women have to face in Iran. Jina Amini wasn’t allowed to her Kurdish name during her life and so we think it is respectable to allow it after her death.

It has also been discussed that Amini’s Kurdish identity probably is one of the reasons why she was treated so violently by the morality police in the first place. The fact that she’s Kurdish seems to play a major role in the start of the whole movement, and acts as one example of the oppression of the Kurdish minority have to face in Iran.

Then there is the slogan which has spread now all over the world to be the chant in demonstrations showing solidarity for the uprising in Iran and for the rights of the women, and which has been translated to many languages. But it is often here in the West forgotten where does the slogan ”Woman Life Freedom” actually originally come from.

The origin of the slogan lies in the Kurdish women’s freedom movement and is based on Abdullah Öcalan’s thoughts on feminist, democratic and ecological society. Sometimes in the Western media when you hear somebody explaining the origin of the slogan people don’t actually refer to Öcalan, or maybe even to the Kurdish freedom movement.

Solidarity is our weapon

We see the importance of solidarity especially because it seems that out of the many uprisings in Iran this uprising has had the lowest number of deaths and arrests (even if it is still high). It is suggested that this is because of the active solidarity and media presence from all over the world. In addition to that we know that the internationalist movement and solidarity has had a big role for example in the fights in Rojava against ISIS and Turkey.

We want to show our solidarity with all the protesters in the streets of Iran, fighting for freedom. All the women, trans and non-binary fighters. All those others fighting against the patriarchy everywhere in the world. All the people operating in the sex industry who are fighting for a system that would take the rights of women and other marginalized groups of people into account.

We want to remember all the martyrs who have fell in these fights for freedom, and all the almost 16 000 arrested people in Iran.

Let’s all contribute in the battle against Iranian and Turkish regimes which try to crush the movements of Woman, Life and Freedom, both in Iran and in Rojava. Contribution can take as many forms as there are imaginationary ideas, but it is important not to stay silent.

Thanks to all the comrades that commented and collaborated for make this text possible.

References