The Woman, Life, Freedom movement sparked a shift in the scale of visibility from the official Islamic Republic discourse on Iranian women's bodies to that of the defiant voices from within. Undoubtedly, social media is an important tool for the feminist movement in Iran. Just how is it being used? [1]

The movement for Iranian women's bodily autonomy has a long history that predates the rise of social media and that I argue has reached its crux with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement sparked by the death in morality police custody of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini. Previous expressions of Iranian women's right to bodily autonomy, such as the march by Iranian women revolutionaries in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution to stop the forcing of the veil and the One-Million-Signatures campaign two decades later were fought on the local scale, while the Woman, Life, Freedom movement continues to be fought on a transnational scale. I have identified two factors that explain this:

Firstly, social media is a tool for activists to render their movement transnational. Social media is inherently transnational, and as Iranian women picked up social media for their activism, despite the dangers they face in doing so, their movements garnered transnational attention. While this is a strength of social media, the downside is that in order to further repress these minoritized voices, the authoritarian government can also use the tools available on social media in order to instigate attacks on activists, invest in the creation of swarms of bots to infiltrate and ultimately shut down feminist pages and promote misinformation and disinformation (Michaelsen, 2017; Norouzi & Savadi, 2022). Despite this, Iranian women activists remain undeterred precisely because social media as a tool has proven to be vital to contest and challenge official narratives on Iranian women's bodies. Therefore, as the Islamic Republic increases its repression on the ground and online, this renders the act of narration by Iranian women as a political tool of resistance (Narrative as Resistance: Iranian Feminists Protest Narges Mohammadi’s Trial, 2024).

Secondly, I suggest that social media operates on affect and emotion. Such a large network of people committed to following the cause of Iranian women both inside and outside of the country are bound by a shared sense of solidarity with the struggle, harnessed by “transnational affect” (Wise & Velayutham, 2017). The narration and documentation of state repression and police brutality against women's bodies by Iranian women inside the country spark feelings of anger, frustration, and hope transnationally. Iranian women’s use of social media over the past decade for the movement for their right to bodily autonomy has increasingly been able to connect Iranians living in the diaspora with those living inside the country more intricately. Social media has allowed Iranians from the diaspora to connect with those inside the country by sharing, liking, and reposting the content coming out of Iran. Furthermore, with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, Iranians from within the diaspora even took to the streets to protest in solidarity with those in Iran. This is most strongly evidenced by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement which saw a transnational outpour of solidarity in almost weekly marches in support of those out on the streets inside Iran between September 2022 and December 2022. This transnational space occupied by Iranians from within the diaspora and Iran can be constituted as an “affective networked space” (Aziz, 2022).

In the photos that I have chosen for my carousel, one can see the embodiment of the struggle for freedom within Iran transnationally. The first photo is taken in Tehran in September 2022, the first week of nationwide protests after Jina’s death. It is striking, it captivates, and it inspires. The second photo is from Berlin in October 2022 where 80,000 people, predominantly Iranians from across Europe, joined together in solidarity with the brave protesters in Iran. This too was striking; it captivated, and it inspired. Arguably, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement was able to sustain itself for as long as it did because of the mutual support and hope that Iranians inspired each other transnationally.

Furthermore, Instagram pages dedicated to keeping the movement alive were created and are still functioning as collectives and communities continuing the work for the feminist liberation of Iran. Some examples include The Iranian Diaspora Collective, Feminists for Jina, and Jina Collective. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement has proven to be the strongest iteration yet of a united front composed of diverse groups of minoritized Iranians coming together to renounce the forced hijab rule in Iran out of the larger historical movement for Iranian women's right to bodily autonomy,

The personal is political because it is affective. These networks of solidarity that have been created online in the years leading up to, throughout, and after the Woman, Life, Freedom movement were/are not only successful in increasing their transnational audience and reach but in so doing are able to sustain the movement for Iranian women's right to bodily autonomy inside Iran over a longer period, due to the increasing transnational solidarity sustained through hope.

Bibliography

Aziz, A. (2022). Affective Networked Space: Polymedia Affordances and Transnational Digital Communication Among the Rohingya Diaspora. In International Journal of Communication (Vol. 16). http://ijoc.org.

Michaelsen, M. (2017). Far Away, So Close: Transnational Activism, Digital Surveillance and Authoritarian Control in Iran. Surveillance & Society, 15(4), 465–470. http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/index|

Narrative as Resistance: Iranian Feminists Protest Narges Mohammadi’s Trial. (2024, June 6). Narges Mohammadi Foundation. https://narges.foundation/172-feminists/

Norouzi, S., & Savadi, S. (2022, September 22). The Desperate Effort to Silence Iranian Feminists. Ms. Magazine. https://msmagazine.com/2022/09/22/iran-women-morality-police/

Wise, A., & Velayutham, S. (2017). Transnational Affect and Emotion in Migration Research. International Journal of Sociology, 47(2), 116–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2017.1300468