As the international community persists in its silence, the patriarchal regime keeps burying its daggers of discrimination and violence in the flesh of our societies. Just months away from the murder of teenage Armita Geravand, on behalf of the Iranian morality police; just days away from the murder of Giulia Cecchettin, 105thcase of femicide in Italy in 2023; just minutes away from the denial of safe pregnancies to all those women in Palestine, questions around female liberation and solidarity become vital: femininity, despite geographical distances, is caught in the tight grasp of patriarchal clutches. For our mothers, daughters, sisters, we must unveil violence and learn that love, stripped of rancour, is our only way out of this plagued circle. Amrita Geravand, 16 years old, was seriously injured on 1st October when travelling on a metro in Teheran with two friends, and no headscarf. Here she was approached by some female morality police officers, she was seen falling and being dragged off the platform by CCTV cameras in the station. The morality police was accused of attacking her by various sources due to not wearing a hijab, and the Tehran government released a suspicious information campaign on the matter. Amnesty International analysed the footage shared by Iranian authorities and found there was no altercation, the material had been edited, the frame increased and over three minutes had been removed from the video. After a 28 day long coma due to brain damage, Amrita passed away in the intensive care unit of an army hospital.
These events occurred after Iran had approved a “hijab bill” in September 2023, a new legislation mandating harsher penalties for women who didn’t follow regime rules. Previously, Article 368 of the Islamic penal code was taken to be the hijab law stating that women breaching the dress code faced between 10 days to 2 months in prison, or a fine between 50,000 to 500,000 rials (approximately £1 to £10). The new bill, on the other hand, states that anyone wearing the hijab “wrongfully” faced 5 to 10 years in prison, and a higher fine of up to 360 million rials (equal to £6,850), with millions living below the poverty threshold. As well as this, the bill proposes fines equal to three months of profits for business owners not enforcing hijab requirements in the workplace, punishments to celebrities, exacerbated gender segregation in universities and public spaces, and the use of AI systems to enhance surveillance of breachers. The use of new technologies, such as AI, to promote the surveillance and incrimination of women is a phenomenon that should concern us all on a global scale, with the opportunity of this being used to track people’s reproductive choices, or exacerbate gender gaps in the workplace for instance. What would happen if an anti-abortionist government was able to access private information to use in a court case? Or if a similarly authoritative government suddenly rose to power and had access to information about all women not adhering to its sexist legislations? The question of emerging and established technologies, particularly those dealing with confidential information, must always be scrutinised through the lens of female and reproductive justice, to understand who would be most vulnerable or targeted by these mechanisms. The dreams of female liberation are still distant in the collective conscience, particularly when injustices and violent patriarchal regimes are upheld beneath the eyes of all in the international community. Older technologies, too, must be revised under the scrutiny of the female gaze, considering the recent investigation due to the fact the Danish government was sued by 67 Inuit women for a sterilisation campaign conducted in Greenland, against their knowledge, in the 1960s and 70s. By inserting intrauterine devices in these women’s bodies without their consent, to limit birth rates amongst indigenous populations, the government caused serious health issues and infections, while thieving them of their fertility. With women themselves, turning against this liberating goal, this endeavour encounters even more obstacles. An example of this, is the Italian premier Giorgia Meloni who was compliant, amongst many other women, with her partner’s notorious comment on national tv about the usefulness of reading Red Riding Hood when talking about a group rape on a young girl. He claimed that “if you avoid getting drunk or losing your senses, you also avoid finding problems, otherwise you'll find the wolf”. In other words, the issue is not the wolf and its predatory behaviours, but rather the fact that you may be vulnerable to it, that you are in a position to be attacked and therefore you are responsible for the consequences. This is the logic that governs and enables the practices, narratives, gestures that degrade and endanger women, at the hands of their male counterparts. Over the last week, the body of a 22 year old woman, Giulia Cecchettin, was found along the Bàrcis lake near Pordenone. She was seen meeting with her ex-boyfriend, who attacked and dragged her into his car before driving away towards Germany. She is the 105th woman who was murdered in Italy in 2023, so far. The numbers are horrifying: femicide is an epidemic in its own right, which is often maintained by the shared notion that it is normal for “love” to kill you, if this becomes too jealous or controlling. This is not acceptable: for love to be true, it must ascribe all rancour and resentment. It must embrace freedom. The common narrative, when cases of femicide arise in Italy (once every 72 hours, precisely), is that he was a “good father”, a “golden boy”, an “exemplary young man”; and this is precisely the problem. It is ordinary men, not monstrous sociopathic beasts, who are engaging in such behaviours: for this reason, it is fundamental that men must interrogate themselves first, put their actions and their identities in question, to find the unhealthy seeds of patriarchal thinking before they take root. Similarly, women must be able to find those same seeds, that in this case justify, accept, reinforce and often reproduce the negative effects of violent and controlling masculinity in men, and in themselves. This is why, if you’re a woman, you’re not free until the tentacles of patriarchal thinking have been leashed both globally and locally. You could have been a 16 year old in Tehran. You could have been an indigenous woman in the 1960s. You could have been the unfortunate girl abused by a gang on a night out in Sicily. Similarly, if you are a man, you could’ve been born a woman. You could have been the prey, not the wolf. The work that must be done is to unpluck the splinters of domination and patriarchal thinking that too often get stuck in our sense of place and entitlement. This requires care and boldness, strength and gentleness, to be able to find common ground and abandon all resentment, both as violators and victims. It must not be hatred to move us, but justice, and justice alone. In the words of aboriginal activist Lilla Watson, “if you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” This is the difference between charity and solidarity: one is bound to contextual meaning, whereas the latter is intertwined with the ideal goal of collective liberation, emancipation, participation. But more fundamentally, this is not a question of contexts or luck: we are required to stand for the liberation of all women, because the liberation of some, and not others defies the notion of “freedom” altogether. We are free only if all women, in all places, are free. In the same way we are all free only once the people of Palestine, or Darfur, or Tigray, are free. Liberation is collective, otherwise it is a play of power wherein we find ourselves in a position of privilege. And nobody is justified in being the wolf preparing to prey on the red veils of injustice all around us.
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