We and Lady Iran

In memory of all the children of Iran who have been killed.

Iran has endured centuries of suffering. Her freedom and right to choose her own path have repeatedly been trampled underfoot by powers that have claimed the right to decide her fate for her: God and King, turbaned and bareheaded alike.

Come to think of it, why are both God and King men? Why do they both rule through patriarchy? Why do they both think like overbearing fathers, convinced that they know what is best for Iran?

And yet Iran still fights. She is beautiful. She writes poetry, creates art, and still stands tall—like women.

Iran is Lady Iran: her head crowned with the green forests of the north, her body warm and simmering with the sun and soil of the south and the central lands. A free and resilient woman whose beauty lies not merely in her face, but in her living, untamed spirit; in a voice that demands to be heard, and in a will that refuses to belong to anyone.

Such a woman is a nightmare to those who see women’s autonomy as a threat to their power. Women who say no, make choices, seek pleasure, desire life, and feel no shame in their presence in the world. For a power that considers itself the owner of women, such autonomy is reason enough to silence their voices, control their bodies, seize their futures, and bargain over their lives with other power-seekers—as though a woman were not a human being with a will of her own, but property belonging to others.

Iran is a woman, and her struggle, too, is a woman’s struggle.

But what is our role—and especially the role of us men—in relation to Iran and to women?

First, we must accept that none of us owns another. The power and privilege that, for centuries, have allowed men to make decisions about women’s lives are neither natural nor eternal rights. No one becomes the owner of another person’s destiny simply by virtue of their gender, beliefs, position, or power.

Our responsibility is to create a safe space in which we can hear one another, express ourselves, make choices, and live. A space in which we can disagree with one another’s choices without turning our disagreement into coercion. Supporting freedom does not mean agreeing with every choice; it means recognizing that disagreement, in itself, does not give us the right to take another person’s agency away.

Second, we must be careful not to inherit the logic of oppression as we fight against it. War, rape, hatred, and unrestrained violence are the very tools that can make us fear one another, strip us of our agency, and turn human beings into instruments for achieving an end.

The darkness we face is so deep that staring into it can draw us into its depths, until our entire identity becomes bound to hatred of the oppressor and the desire for revenge. We may then forget where we came from and what we are fighting for.

Our anger at injustice cannot—and should not—be denied. Our demand for justice is a right. But we must not allow the oppressor, even after we have turned away from them, to continue deciding what we love, how we live, and what kind of human beings we become.

We do not fight for death and destruction. We fight for life. For joy, dance, music, art, justice, family, freedom, human dignity, and ethics. For the day when we can live without fear, without holding someone else’s life hostage.

If all that remains of us is hatred of the oppressor, then we have still surrendered a part of our lives to them. We have the right to be angry, the right to demand justice, and the right to move beyond what has been done to us—not by forgetting, not by being forced to forgive, but by reclaiming our own lives.

Perhaps one of the most difficult forms of resistance is refusing to let the darkness we have fought become our only home.

We must live with the full range of our humanity—with all its colors, tenderness, passions, and different ways of loving and being alive. We must be able to care, to create, to love, and to take joy in beauty. We must bring back to life those parts of ourselves that the pursuit of power has humiliated and pushed to the margins.

Long live women. Long live freedom. Long live life. Long live Iran.