I�ve been thinking of this for few days, that what can I do as an individual for feminism in iran.. what is that can be done, what is the correct move?

As I was reading this post of Baloot , which found as a bitter truth (its name is also �a bitter record, perhaps�), I was thinking to translate it.. it�s not that easy though. And first I need to ask the writer for permission too.

It�s about Iranian feminism, which is getting a real sad story.
I�ll translate this paragraph of Baloot�s for now:

We thought now that American and European women achieved the rights for vote and equal salaries let us get it too. This is good, but do we have the other circumstances of west of that time too? Do we have women who encircle the legislation organ without fearing the outcomes?

I do believe that the root of problem is some where deep in our culture. May be it begins with farsi literature.
There is lots of anti women poems in old Iranian poems. It�s not difficult to find such peotries, lots of them, I don�t remember all of them right now. Ferdosi is a great ancient poet of iran. If today Iranians do not talk in Arabic, it�s because of him and his Shahname. After arabs� attack their neighbors in 8th (?) century, they turn the invaded countries� languages and religions to arabic and islam. After they invaded iran, Ferdosi gathered all Farsi words in his poetry book, Shahnameh, and this way saved them.
He has a line in which he says: Zan o ezhdeha hardo dar khaak beh ie woman and dragon both better be buried (read dead) but, we need them though in some ways, so let�s say a good woman is a silence one.
This ideal face of women is prominent in Aryan culture of all zones. In Iranian ancient stories there is a character named Fatmeh arreh (arreh means saw). This woman is an example of a �harpy� wife, who do things and talks to defend her rights whenever there�s a threatening for them. She ends up with a bitter fate.
They say such stories can be found also in European nations who migrated there from asia (Indian-european race ie Aryan ) in ancient times.
Such silent women are plenteous in India and I see them everyday. A good example is the ideal figure of Indian bride whose head is pointed down like she�s searching for something on the ground all over the wedding party.


Now these women [whose rights we�ve been fighting for]will call us shrews and prostitutes, this very women will notice us as a bunch of spinsters whose thoughts such as this just comes out of the celibacy sorrow Let us not to distance them, not to assort. Who understands our words better than a woman who�s been a violence victim? Who understands us better than that women who�s got half of the blood money for her murdered daughter*? The woman who wants to divorce her husband so bad but can�t simply because her husband does not divorce her, understands the meaning of the �right for divorce� Baloot says in another paragraph.

I need to ask here, when in families still marriages are like a commercial agreement in which bride�s family asks for Mehrieh**, how can be treated the woman who�s been selled like this in a different way?
It�s not like the bride�s father get some money and gives his daughter instead, but they write an amount of money in marriage documentary as �Mehrieh�, which the groom must pay any time the bride demands, or if he decided to divorce her.
On the other hand it�s the only power point the married woman has, since she can�t work or travel without her husband�s permission, must deference to his choice for location of the living place, and even though there are few conditions*** in which she can proceed for a divorce, practically a married woman almost never can divorce her husband.
What could be done, now you say, when such things are not only in family law, but complimented for most people?

I believe in the power of the media in culture changing, and which media is more powerful than broadcasts? and let�s say it�s working in the worst way, showing movies and series in which one man having two wives is ordinary and ok, (in one of them I remember the wives called each other �sister� in a sickening way) women do not leave the house without their husband permission, and men some times �jock� about beating their wives, saying things like do they want some smack?
Stories in which feminists are devastated-failed marriage women whom of course in the happy ending get steered to the �right way�, and women who have no desire but been a mother, even if the medical tests shows they�ll end to blindness if get pregnant (this one was indeed ingenious hahaha).

I can imagine how the potbellied leader of these women must have enjoyed his female agents beating the women who�d gathered to object to anti-women laws in Haft e Tear sq.
Women have become minx these days, as they say, and who can set them right better than the �good� ones?

Now knowing all these, what is the correct move for an individual who has the care of human rights, in a country in which overrunning the rights of half of the population is an accepted fact in the most bottom layers of the culture?

Call me cynical but thinking of all these makes me completely disappointed.





*In iranian laws, woman have the blood money amount which is the half of that of the men. Blood money is the money that a person who has killed someone must pay, if for any reason is not going to be executed, whether it�s because the killing has not been purposely (mostly car accidents) or the family of the victim forgave the killer.

** The money which is mentioned in wedding oration by the mulla for which the bride becomes the man�s wife.
*** for example, if husband is proved that is addicted to drugs, his wife can divorce him. Or if forensic medicine confirm there are tracks of domestic violence on the body.

Painting: The Nativity, accepted as a work of Robert Campin�s 1425, Mus�e des Beaux-Arts at Dijon.