Some religious and conservative forces in the Iranian government, whenever the issue of hijab and chastity is raised, speak from a woman’s instinct and rely on statistical or psychoanalytic analysis of a single case, rather than a discourse analysis of women’s text. They use a lazy source that refers to the text “Narina – Axis”: religious texts, without being able to find their references or speak with them. This is where sacred texts become important because their assumptions are not to be questioned and their rulings are untouchable taboos.

In fact, the government believes in its own anonymous resources that women are inherently rebellious and self-promoting. Women constantly strive to attract male attention in competition with other women and feel the need to display themselves and their sexual attractiveness. (Of course, this discourse does not allow any sexual pleasure for women and considers women who seek pleasure and satisfaction as promiscuous and immoral. This is where understanding the desire to offer one’s body to men becomes difficult and may have masochistic aspects.) Women need to be seen. Iranian religious rulers believe that men are also inherently voyeuristic and seek to see women. These are two instincts that God has bestowed upon humans, but in two different forms in the two genders.

According to the rulers of Iran, as we are followers of Islam, we believe in sexual satisfaction only within the framework of our family, whether it be through verbal, visual, or physical means. As women are only allowed to display themselves to their husbands, we choose to wear the hijab and defend it, and we do not condone the use of force or coercion in this matter. We seek security in our society and do not want our society to become westernized or Europeanized. Now, keep in mind all the questions such as whether the state of security in families and society is different in Islamic Iran and Western countries. I will not address these points and arguments in this text. Such points are often seen in the policies of the Islamic Republic.

“What I am pondering is this question: What do all the devices and tribunes of authority and clergy, who have become united in calling for guidance (from the fear of earthquakes to concerns about societal security, especially for women), and the government that resists with a “defiant!” say?”

From the perspective of religious forces, a woman is most likely nothing but a sexual object, which can of course be manipulated by her desires and wrapped up in her own desires, placed on the stage of her body, and torn and removed from various aspects of society and returned to her kitchen. In this view, a man is nothing more than a primal animal, whose eyes are probably fixed on his unquestionable rights. He does not possess even a particle of will to control these instincts, so it is necessary to clean up the problem and keep sexual objects away from his claws. This right to uncontrollable gazing can be understood in various forms, respected, and even satisfied through temporary marriage and polygamy for the sake of satisfaction and the veil of women for the sake of control.

In fact, the government says that we change and manipulate the position of women so that things are according to the desires of men. The point here is that the rulers of Iran believe that just as controlling the gaze of men is difficult, not showing off is also difficult for women.

And what about men? This insect-like creature that cannot control its own instincts and cannot see women as anything other than sexual objects. This objectification is not important at all if you are just a man on the street or online. The religious, cultural, and political system in Iran has been trying for years to cultivate this disgust towards women in men, from childhood to old age.

But let me clarify our task here. I do not want to portray women as passive and fixed in the role of innocent victims of promiscuity, and accuse some women who may enjoy some of these verbal and visual actions of being something and impose a label on them in the moral system. Women are not creatures without desires and sexual desires that are always victims in any situation, nor are men always the dominant and aggressive subjects, and they will not always be the victims and possibly the oppressors in this discourse.

The Iranian patriarch wants men and women to play these conflicting and static roles. He wants them to understand each other on a sexual level. There are also men who are capable of enjoying dialectical pleasures. They are capable of understanding the aesthetic beauty of bodies, speech, and writing, and accepting the otherness of others. However, we are familiar with this “phallocentric” and divisive perspective. A perspective that deprives women of many human experiences and considers objectification as their right, leading to the elimination of others. They gaze at women’s bodies, make them “honorable,” and keep them hidden and satisfied for their own pleasure, while boasting about the security they create for their women.

We are familiar with poverty that has been imposed upon us through our education, experience, and subjectivity in the positions of our homes. This result has been our domestic security. This result has been inevitable and has been caused by the constant surveillance of our “beloved enemies” who have preserved it and have considered the dark corners and hidden corners of our homes as a better place for us. Despite all this, there have been women among us who have remained. They have stood in this narrow field to bring about a change in our way of life and current situation. What elevates the gaze of the ruling powers over this street literature is a position that some traditional and religious forces hold, in the position of someone who can exert power and impose their systemic gaze on the woman’s body and subject it to scrutiny and criticism. Both in words in the media and in practice in institutions and on the streets. They can exile a woman from her own body. They can create a legal system of surveillance and

The government can defend the society’s security in the position of a legal entity, and eliminate the issue and remove women from the sight of [sexual predator animals] in a manly manner, in order to restore security. This interpretation signifies the meaning of woman and man in a binary exchange, similar to other language binaries such as private/public, general/particular, white race/black race, etc.

Here, in the midst of these dual conflicts, is where, as Socrates puts it, violence is born. This essential perspective believes in a linear linguistic system for the man who is its explainer and enforcer. In Morteza Motehary’s view, by returning to the essence of these conflicts, it is like femininity, where one can take a stance against gender equality and speak of similarities and differences, with reference to the same eternal sources that were mentioned.

This is where the dignity of a woman lies in “hijab, polygamy, the honorable roles of motherhood, sisterhood and wifehood” and not in “being a woman”. The dignity of a man is also secured under the shadow of “hijab, polygamy, temporary marriage, motherhood, sisterhood, and worship of the husband (chastity) and rivalry at the same time”. This is the result of an essentialist perspective. The traditional and religiously-oriented dominant perspective in Iran invites women to inner seclusion and self-denial of their bodies, portraying the female body as a hidden secret. This taboo would likely label a woman who wants to explore and recognize it as promiscuous, obscene, immoral, and shameful.