Iranian Women are Tweeting Their Sexual Assault Stories
By Cate Malek
In recent weeks, dozens of women in Iran have taken to social media to call out sexual harassers and hold perpetrators of sexual assault accountable. Some are comparing the wave of allegations to the #MeToo movement in the U.S., but others say there are crucial differences at play.
Among the first women to come forward on Twitter were two high school students who anonymously accused their biology teacher of assault (they then apologized, possibly under pressure, shortly after). Soon, though, other women began to go public with stories of harassment and assault, including a group of journalists whose video describing the regular harassment they face from colleagues and sources went viral.
Several accusers have named powerful men, including a well-known painter in Tehran, Aydin Aghdashloo. Sara Omatali, a former journalist now based in the U.S., described meeting him at his apartment, where she found him wearing nothing but a cloak. She wrote that he grabbed her and tried to kiss her before she escaped. In a series of tweets, she wrote, “All these years I was scared of those who would say, ‘You have no evidence to prove your claims,’... and I remained silent. But now I feel I don’t want to give in to this silence, which is forced on me by fear…”
While Iranian women have used Twitter to talk about sexual assault in isolated cases before, it was nothing like the volume of recent accusations, and there have been consequences too: Tehran police arrested a bookstore owner accused of drugging and raping multiple women. The private sector has also started to investigate claims – a new step in a country where sexual harassment training is uncommon in the workplace.
Some people have compared the wave of allegations to the #MeToo movement that brought down Harvey Weinstein and other famous figures in the U.S., and Iranian women have sometimes used that hashtag in both English and Farsi in their tweets. But there’s a striking difference between the movements, others say.
“In Iran, you're dealing with a culture that is more patriarchal [than in the U.S.] – the legal system still criminalizes consensual sexual relationships outside of marriage,” said Tara Sepehri Far, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who focuses on Iran. And if a survivor of sexual assault comes forward and authorities don’t believe her, she could be prosecuted in Iran (this is the situation in a number of other countries as well).
In addition to the legal issues, the Iranian women who’ve come forward have done so on their own, without backing from the media or other institutions.
As one Twitter user wrote: “Farsi media have fallen behind in covering the rape survivor stories circulating in social media over the past few days because they do not have a clear protocol for it. That’s why they’re sitting still and watching ... By pooling their stories, survivors have turned themselves into members of the media in their own right.”
There’s also the fact that alcohol is illegal in the country, and the government has put up billboards telling women that modest dress will protect them from harassment. Many of the women who have made allegations have been criticized online by both men and women for breaking social norms, such as going to men’s homes or drinking before they were assaulted – all of which is to say that coming out to accuse powerful men of sexual assault in Iran is fraught in unique and different ways.
But, as with the #MeToo allegations in the U.S., the accusations have led to a public dialogue about what consent means. “What constitutes active consent is not taught in any formalized way in Iran,” Sepehri Far told me, but she’s now seeing people on Twitter starting to ask questions, and some seem open to learning more.
Experts have posted advice on what legal action survivors should take, and lawyers have offered their services to survivors free of charge in response to the movement. “I was pleasantly surprised by how supportive this [social media] space was,” Sepehri Far told me.
While the movement has not died down yet, Sepehri Far believes that now is the time for journalists to step in and start investigating.
“Trusted media can be a bridge between the court of public opinion and those who have experienced harassment,” she told me. Until then, women say they will continue to raise the stakes for perpetrators of assault. As one person on Twitter wrote, “We should raise the cost ... A harasser should not be able to go to work to be treated by his friends and colleagues the same as he was before.”
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