5 ms·

Iran is in the throes of an unprecedented sexual revolution (2013)

56 points by Vigier 12y ago

Retric 12y ago
I remember seeing plenty of pictures of Iran in ~1960 that looked like the us in the 60's. So, plenty of people living in Iran recall a much more liberal time period. ex: http://izismile.com/2014/02/26/a_look_at_life_in_iran_during_the_31_pics.html http://izismile.com/2014/02/26/a_look_at_life_in_iran_during... I suspect the current regime is in many ways a backlash in the first place.
- wsc981 12y ago
  Iran is only a very "young" country (by which I mean lots of young people) while at the same time the ruling class seem to be mainly the older people. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is a very big disconnect between the rulings of the state and the desires of the general populace. For Dutch people the VPRO documentary "Onze Man In Teheran"[0] (Our Man In Teheran) might be interesting. It's a documentary about a Dutch reporter that married to an Iranian woman and emigrated to Iran. --- [0] http://www.vpro.nl/programmas/onze-man-in-teheran/onze-man.html http://www.vpro.nl/programmas/onze-man-in-teheran/onze-man.h...
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Not that surprising given that for most of the time, back when it was Persia, the culture of the region was considered practically synonymous with hedonistic pleasure and luxury.
pluma 12y ago
> When someone mentions Iran, what images leap into your mind? Ayatollahs, religious fanaticism, veiled women? No, that's Saudi Arabia you're thinking of. You know, the "good" theocracy that's one of our biggest business partners. Despite the foreign politics a few years ago, Iran is reportedly rather moderate in practice.
- adventured 12y ago
  Isn't Iran still backing numerous terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, while proclaiming it their goal to essentially kill everyone in Israel? What's so moderate about having an extremely oppressive theocracy as the foundation of your political leadership? One need only look at the revolts of a few years ago and how Iran dealt with that, to see exactly how non-moderate they are in practice. And before you jump to saying: but America does X, and Saudi does X - yes, and such things do not alter or justify the terrible things that Iran does.
  - ancap 12y ago
    >Isn't Iran still backing numerous terrorist organizations, including Hezbolla source? >while proclaiming it their goal to essentially kill everyone in Israel? source?
    - adventured 12y ago
      "Iranian Official Calls to 'Wipe Out the Zionist Regime'" http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190543 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190543 "A chillingly detailed guide to "the proper way of eliminating Israel" – tweeted out by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – is threatening to throw nuclear talks with Tehran into chaos" http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-twitter-plan/2014/11/10/id/606533/ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-twit... "Israel should be wiped off map, says Iran's president" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/27/israel.iran http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/27/israel.iran Re Hezbollah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah "Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Tuesday for the first time that his militant movement received financial and material support from Iran, but denied it took instructions from the Islamic Republic." http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/07/us-lebanon-hezbollah-idUSTRE81629H20120207 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/07/us-lebanon-hezboll... http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.637941 http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.637... http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/24/hezbollah-ready-to-do-whatever-iran-asks-in-support-of-shadow-war-with-the-west-author-says/ http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/24/hezbollah-ready-to-d... http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/hizbollah.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/hizbol...
mirimir 12y ago
In the 60s, many Western hippies went through Iran on their Hippie Trail (Silk Road) tours. Many minds were bent. See Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India by Rory MacLean (2008, Penguin).
user9756 12y ago
And how does this relate to US foreign policy? Or any foreign policy? Or how about HackerNews? I'd like to comment though on the awfulness of the sign up pop up (popsign?) and the clunky website. It's awful.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
will_brown 12y ago
Coincidentally, I recently meet a group of 5 Iranian women (all here on student visas) while at happy hour in Miami. When I asked if there was any comparable night life in Iran, I was informed that in Iran nightclubs where men and women to commingle are non-existent and more generally women may not consume alcohol. There is a thriving underground scene of house parties where young men and women interact (and drink socially), but these too are illegal gatherings that are often broken up and lead to multiple arrests. >Declining birth rates, for example, signal a wider acceptance of contraceptives and other forms of family planning I would theorize the declining birth rates is not a signal of a wider sexual revolution, including, the adoption of contraceptives, rather a signal that State suppression of socializing of the sexes is succeeding. This would probably also account for the increase in average age of getting married.
- adventured 12y ago
  "I would theorize the declining birth rates is not a signal of a wider sexual revolution, including, the adoption of contraceptives, rather a signal that State suppression of socializing of the sexes is succeeding. This would probably also account for the increase in average age of getting married." That conclusion does not follow. The US for example saw a substantial decline in its birth rate over 40-50 years, and it was not due to State suppression of sexuality or socializing. In fact the exact opposite occurred, sexuality was drastically liberalized in the 1960s and 1970s. Women acquired a lot more freedom when it came to divorce, joining the work-force, contraception, and abortion. Divorce rates climbed substantially. I suspect many countries in Europe saw the exact same general trend line as the US during that time.
- ars 12y ago
  > declining birth rates ... suppression of socializing of the sexes I can see why you would think that, but it's actually the opposite. The sexes do not need to socialize to have children - instead they marry. It's really the other way around: Once you have contraception, you can have socialization, and a low birth rate. So easy socialization is an indicator, not a cause.
- discodave 12y ago
  Errr... a high birth rate is usually due to women having multiple children. i.e. they are married. Also, people marrying late is not usually due to 'suppression of socializing of the sexes'... in western countries the opposite effect has been seen. If I were to follow the logic of your argument then we should expect western countries where teenagers mingle freely to have people marrying early... that is clearly not the case.
jcampbell1 12y ago
Prosititution is technically semi-legal in Iran. There is a temporary marriage / dowry arrangement where you can be "married" for as little as 15 minutes. I think it is also okay to have an actual wife in addition to the temporary wife. I have no idea how much this loophole is used in practice.
- smnrchrds 12y ago
  Almost never. The part about temporary marriage most westerners seem to oblivious about is after the end of marriage (for any reason: death, divorce or end of the term of temporary marriage), the woman cannot get married for 4 months and 10 days. It makes "legal" prostitution impractical, as the cost for a "15 minute" sexual encounter should be high enough to cover 4+ months of unemployment. That and the fact that it's the most socially unacceptable thing around here. There is only one situation where temporary marriage is acceptable, maybe even expected. Because of the economic realities of the recent decades, young people may stay engaged for more than a year before they can afford to get married. So, many people "temporarily marry" their fiancé/fiancée upon engagement in order to be able to hang out without offending social and religious values. (Even with temporary marriage, it's still taboo for engaged people to move in together or have sex, but this is different from family to family and from town to town.)
esfandia 12y ago
There's a big difference between Tehran and the rest of the country though. I wonder how much of what is said in the article is true in a city like Esfahan, for example. In fact, there's even a big difference between the North and the South of Tehran itself.
- joosters 12y ago
  Definitely! I don't think these cultural freedoms will have reached Qom, for example... I'd recommend anyone to visit Iran and explore the country. It's not all ayatollahs, you know...
beloch 12y ago
I know at least two Iranian women who came to Canada on education Visa's in the last decade and have refused to go back, even to visit their families. I worked with one of them from when she first arrived. Initially she wore a head-scarf and was extremely nervous working with and even just talking to men. She gradually became more relaxed and one day the scarf went in the bin. The other considered her relatives "dead to her" from the moment I met her. Not surprisingly, she was not from Tehran. Studying abroad is an important thing for Iranian students, but this presents some huge problems for a theocracy where sexual discrimination is so firmly entrenched. For every student that leaves and never returns, there are probably several who go home and try to change things for the better. The fact that Iran allows students, especially female students, to study abroad suggests that things are not as dire there as one would expect from consuming U.S. media. The U.S.'s policy of confrontation with Iran's leaders is, strangely enough, probably one of the few things keeping them afloat. Fear of foreign powers is a powerful tool, as anyone in the U.S. should now know. The best course of action over the next few years may be to reduce the level of confrontation with Iran's leaders and let the Iranian people, who are increasingly at odds with their country's policies, take care of their leaders on their own.
jkot 12y ago
That website is broken, I had to use links to read it.
Mz 12y ago
When someone mentions Iran, what images leap into your mind? Ayatollahs, religious fanaticism, veiled women? Having been friends for a time with an Iranian, the thing I think of is politeness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taarof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taarof The second thing I think of is that Farsi is a genderless language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_genderless_languages#Persian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_genderless... I knew this person well and I learned that Persian culture, unlike American culture, has concepts for sucking up to female authority figures as well as male. The expressions I learned were pretty sexually explicit and I don't know if I remember them well. But I was very struck by the fact that the culture had egalitarian qualities my own culture lacks. For me, it was a growth experience and provided much needed mental models for my own life. No culture is a monolith. The modern government in Iran is being transposed over a culture that is thousands of years old. It is a rich culture and has many fine qualities.
tim333 12y ago
I was surprised when I visited Iran years back how different it was on the street to what you might imagine from TV news. I'd just come from Pakistan where all the women are covered up or mostly kept at home and in comparison Iran felt a bit like France, modern and with women wandering about fairly normally, maybe with some head scarfs. The Iranian people I think are pretty normal and modern. It it the dictatorial government that is all 'death to apostates' and hardline Islamic and quite different in outlook to the populace.
hackertux 12y ago
"The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it's called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine - religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you'll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn't matter; try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia, it works - works all the time. Name me one religion that stands for that, or ever has. Wherever you look in the world and you try to remove the shackles of ignorance and disease stupidity from women, it is invariably the clericy that stands in the way." — Christopher Hitchens

56 points by Vigier 12y ago

I remember seeing plenty of pictures of Iran in ~1960 that looked like the us in the 60's. So, plenty of people living in Iran recall a much more liberal time period. ex: http://izismile.com/2014/02/26/a_look_at_life_in_iran_during_the_31_pics.html http://izismile.com/2014/02/26/a_look_at_life_in_iran_during... I suspect the current regime is in many ways a backlash in the first place.

wsc981 12y ago
Iran is only a very "young" country (by which I mean lots of young people) while at the same time the ruling class seem to be mainly the older people. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is a very big disconnect between the rulings of the state and the desires of the general populace. For Dutch people the VPRO documentary "Onze Man In Teheran"[0] (Our Man In Teheran) might be interesting. It's a documentary about a Dutch reporter that married to an Iranian woman and emigrated to Iran. --- [0] http://www.vpro.nl/programmas/onze-man-in-teheran/onze-man.html http://www.vpro.nl/programmas/onze-man-in-teheran/onze-man.h...

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Not that surprising given that for most of the time, back when it was Persia, the culture of the region was considered practically synonymous with hedonistic pleasure and luxury.

pluma 12y ago

> When someone mentions Iran, what images leap into your mind? Ayatollahs, religious fanaticism, veiled women? No, that's Saudi Arabia you're thinking of. You know, the "good" theocracy that's one of our biggest business partners. Despite the foreign politics a few years ago, Iran is reportedly rather moderate in practice.

adventured 12y ago
Isn't Iran still backing numerous terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, while proclaiming it their goal to essentially kill everyone in Israel? What's so moderate about having an extremely oppressive theocracy as the foundation of your political leadership? One need only look at the revolts of a few years ago and how Iran dealt with that, to see exactly how non-moderate they are in practice. And before you jump to saying: but America does X, and Saudi does X - yes, and such things do not alter or justify the terrible things that Iran does.
- ancap 12y ago
  >Isn't Iran still backing numerous terrorist organizations, including Hezbolla source? >while proclaiming it their goal to essentially kill everyone in Israel? source?
  - adventured 12y ago
    "Iranian Official Calls to 'Wipe Out the Zionist Regime'" http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190543 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190543 "A chillingly detailed guide to "the proper way of eliminating Israel" – tweeted out by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – is threatening to throw nuclear talks with Tehran into chaos" http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-twitter-plan/2014/11/10/id/606533/ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-twit... "Israel should be wiped off map, says Iran's president" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/27/israel.iran http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/27/israel.iran Re Hezbollah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah "Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Tuesday for the first time that his militant movement received financial and material support from Iran, but denied it took instructions from the Islamic Republic." http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/07/us-lebanon-hezbollah-idUSTRE81629H20120207 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/07/us-lebanon-hezboll... http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.637941 http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.637... http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/24/hezbollah-ready-to-do-whatever-iran-asks-in-support-of-shadow-war-with-the-west-author-says/ http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/24/hezbollah-ready-to-d... http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/hizbollah.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/hizbol...

mirimir 12y ago

In the 60s, many Western hippies went through Iran on their Hippie Trail (Silk Road) tours. Many minds were bent. See Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India by Rory MacLean (2008, Penguin).

user9756 12y ago

And how does this relate to US foreign policy? Or any foreign policy? Or how about HackerNews? I'd like to comment though on the awfulness of the sign up pop up (popsign?) and the clunky website. It's awful.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

will_brown 12y ago

Coincidentally, I recently meet a group of 5 Iranian women (all here on student visas) while at happy hour in Miami. When I asked if there was any comparable night life in Iran, I was informed that in Iran nightclubs where men and women to commingle are non-existent and more generally women may not consume alcohol. There is a thriving underground scene of house parties where young men and women interact (and drink socially), but these too are illegal gatherings that are often broken up and lead to multiple arrests. >Declining birth rates, for example, signal a wider acceptance of contraceptives and other forms of family planning I would theorize the declining birth rates is not a signal of a wider sexual revolution, including, the adoption of contraceptives, rather a signal that State suppression of socializing of the sexes is succeeding. This would probably also account for the increase in average age of getting married.

adventured 12y ago
"I would theorize the declining birth rates is not a signal of a wider sexual revolution, including, the adoption of contraceptives, rather a signal that State suppression of socializing of the sexes is succeeding. This would probably also account for the increase in average age of getting married." That conclusion does not follow. The US for example saw a substantial decline in its birth rate over 40-50 years, and it was not due to State suppression of sexuality or socializing. In fact the exact opposite occurred, sexuality was drastically liberalized in the 1960s and 1970s. Women acquired a lot more freedom when it came to divorce, joining the work-force, contraception, and abortion. Divorce rates climbed substantially. I suspect many countries in Europe saw the exact same general trend line as the US during that time.
ars 12y ago
> declining birth rates ... suppression of socializing of the sexes I can see why you would think that, but it's actually the opposite. The sexes do not need to socialize to have children - instead they marry. It's really the other way around: Once you have contraception, you can have socialization, and a low birth rate. So easy socialization is an indicator, not a cause.
discodave 12y ago
Errr... a high birth rate is usually due to women having multiple children. i.e. they are married. Also, people marrying late is not usually due to 'suppression of socializing of the sexes'... in western countries the opposite effect has been seen. If I were to follow the logic of your argument then we should expect western countries where teenagers mingle freely to have people marrying early... that is clearly not the case.

jcampbell1 12y ago

Prosititution is technically semi-legal in Iran. There is a temporary marriage / dowry arrangement where you can be "married" for as little as 15 minutes. I think it is also okay to have an actual wife in addition to the temporary wife. I have no idea how much this loophole is used in practice.

smnrchrds 12y ago
Almost never. The part about temporary marriage most westerners seem to oblivious about is after the end of marriage (for any reason: death, divorce or end of the term of temporary marriage), the woman cannot get married for 4 months and 10 days. It makes "legal" prostitution impractical, as the cost for a "15 minute" sexual encounter should be high enough to cover 4+ months of unemployment. That and the fact that it's the most socially unacceptable thing around here. There is only one situation where temporary marriage is acceptable, maybe even expected. Because of the economic realities of the recent decades, young people may stay engaged for more than a year before they can afford to get married. So, many people "temporarily marry" their fiancé/fiancée upon engagement in order to be able to hang out without offending social and religious values. (Even with temporary marriage, it's still taboo for engaged people to move in together or have sex, but this is different from family to family and from town to town.)

esfandia 12y ago

There's a big difference between Tehran and the rest of the country though. I wonder how much of what is said in the article is true in a city like Esfahan, for example. In fact, there's even a big difference between the North and the South of Tehran itself.

joosters 12y ago
Definitely! I don't think these cultural freedoms will have reached Qom, for example... I'd recommend anyone to visit Iran and explore the country. It's not all ayatollahs, you know...

beloch 12y ago

I know at least two Iranian women who came to Canada on education Visa's in the last decade and have refused to go back, even to visit their families. I worked with one of them from when she first arrived. Initially she wore a head-scarf and was extremely nervous working with and even just talking to men. She gradually became more relaxed and one day the scarf went in the bin. The other considered her relatives "dead to her" from the moment I met her. Not surprisingly, she was not from Tehran. Studying abroad is an important thing for Iranian students, but this presents some huge problems for a theocracy where sexual discrimination is so firmly entrenched. For every student that leaves and never returns, there are probably several who go home and try to change things for the better. The fact that Iran allows students, especially female students, to study abroad suggests that things are not as dire there as one would expect from consuming U.S. media. The U.S.'s policy of confrontation with Iran's leaders is, strangely enough, probably one of the few things keeping them afloat. Fear of foreign powers is a powerful tool, as anyone in the U.S. should now know. The best course of action over the next few years may be to reduce the level of confrontation with Iran's leaders and let the Iranian people, who are increasingly at odds with their country's policies, take care of their leaders on their own.

jkot 12y ago

That website is broken, I had to use links to read it.

Mz 12y ago

When someone mentions Iran, what images leap into your mind? Ayatollahs, religious fanaticism, veiled women? Having been friends for a time with an Iranian, the thing I think of is politeness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taarof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taarof The second thing I think of is that Farsi is a genderless language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_genderless_languages#Persian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_genderless... I knew this person well and I learned that Persian culture, unlike American culture, has concepts for sucking up to female authority figures as well as male. The expressions I learned were pretty sexually explicit and I don't know if I remember them well. But I was very struck by the fact that the culture had egalitarian qualities my own culture lacks. For me, it was a growth experience and provided much needed mental models for my own life. No culture is a monolith. The modern government in Iran is being transposed over a culture that is thousands of years old. It is a rich culture and has many fine qualities.

tim333 12y ago

I was surprised when I visited Iran years back how different it was on the street to what you might imagine from TV news. I'd just come from Pakistan where all the women are covered up or mostly kept at home and in comparison Iran felt a bit like France, modern and with women wandering about fairly normally, maybe with some head scarfs. The Iranian people I think are pretty normal and modern. It it the dictatorial government that is all 'death to apostates' and hardline Islamic and quite different in outlook to the populace.

hackertux 12y ago

"The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it's called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine - religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you'll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn't matter; try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia, it works - works all the time. Name me one religion that stands for that, or ever has. Wherever you look in the world and you try to remove the shackles of ignorance and disease stupidity from women, it is invariably the clericy that stands in the way." — Christopher Hitchens