While the Woman, Life, Freedom movement is situated in Iran, its ideas of collective liberation transcend time and space. Particularly with the issue of womens’ rights, other forms of feminist protest from around the world made their way to Iran due the growing role of the internet in freedom struggles globally. This transnational movement further highlights the intersectionality of Woman Life Freedom.

Feminist movements in Latin America influenced the Woman Life Freedom movement. For example, Iranian women took the Chilean song and dance “A Rapist in Your Path,” and performed it in Persian, slightly changing the lyrics to fit their circumstances. The accompanying choreography– combined with other revolutionary acts like taking off the hijab– represented Iranian women reclaiming their bodily autonomy. To do such a powerful dance uncovered, in public---and most importantly, in numbers---represented unity among Iranian women and outright defiance of restrictive hijab laws.

The dance also represented a broader shift in how women are perceived by society, eliminating distinctions between public and private spaces. As Negar Hatami explains in her piece "Heads Without Headscarves" that women had both formal and informal projections, depending on whether they were at home or in public. This dance is one of the many ways the Woman Life Freedom erased the line between public and private, formal and informal, and allowed women to simply exist as they are. To read more about how Woman Life Freedom upended what was "normal" for Iranian society, click here. (insert page about afterlives) 

"It is at the level of the body that a historical impasse has been broken."

                                                                -Manijeh Moradian, "Embodying Revolution"

In the same work, Moradian also points out how the West (and particularly Western media) see Iran, and the Middle East at large, as having only two options: Islamic fascism or pure secularism. She explains how Western feminists develop Islamophobic viewpoints as a result of the Islamic State’s repression, generalizing the entire religion as “backwards.” Lost in their savior complex, many Western feminists end up perpetuating a different form of injustice, only it’s more palatable to Western sensibilities. Rather than enforce this binary between fundamentalism and secularism, Moradian argues we should stand in solidarity with womens’ right to choose their lifestyle, especially with regard to the hijab.

Part of transnational solidarity is understanding, rather than demonizing, other cultures. In this case, long-standing, Orientalist tropes make it easy for the outside world to vilify Islam, the hijab, and Persian culture— with figures like only perpetuating the idea. No one culture is the beacon of women’s liberation, and the transnational nature of the Woman Life Freedom movement exemplifies this.