A young woman walks down a street in Tehran, her hair uncovered, her jeans ripped, a bit of midriff exposed to the hot Iranian sun. An unmarried couple walk hand in hand. A woman holds her head high when asked by Iran’s once-feared morality police to put a hijab on, and tells them: “Screw you!”

These acts of bold rebellion - described to me by several people in Tehran over the past month - would have been almost unthinkable to Iranians this time last year. But that was before the death in the morality police’s custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been accused of not wearing her hijab [veil] properly.

The mass protests that shook Iran after her death subsided after a few months in the face of a brutal crackdown, but the anger that fuelled them has not been extinguished. Women have just had to find new ways to defy the regime.

A Western diplomat in Tehran estimates that across the country, an average of about 20% of women are now breaking the laws of the Islamic Republic by going out on to the streets without the veil.

  • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    You yeah you I recognize you stand still laddie you can’t have your meat if you don’t eat your pudding. Lash me some more, please, daddy. EDIT: THIS is me talking out of my ass. If you can’t handle my lack of knowledge about cold-weather heat pumps and my mixing of F and C, bug off.