Intersectionality
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, a foreign concept to the average Westerner.
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. While the Islamic State still has a lot of control over women, “it is at the level of the body that a historical impasse has been broken,” as scholar Manijeh Moradian says in “Embodying Revolution.”
In the same work, Moradian also points out how the West (and particularly Western media) portray Islamic fascism and Islamophobia as the only two options. She explains how Western feminists develop Islamophobic viewpoints as a result of the Islamic State’s repression, generalizing the entire religion as “backwards.” The solution to this kind of thinking, Moradian says, is solidarity with everyone’s right to choose, especially with regard to hijab.