Stolen Kisses: Iran's Sexual Revolutions

[Billy Burnett]

Stolen Kisses: Iran's Sexual Revolutions
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/secor/1

A few years ago, in the course of researching her dissertation on changing sexual mores in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a young Iranian-American anthropologist named Pardis Mahdavi stopped by the Ministry of Education in Tehran to inquire about the country's sex education curriculum. Another visitor happened to be there. An older woman named Mrs. Erami, she was covered head to toe in the most conservative form of Iranian hijab: the tentlike black chador, held in place by the wearer's teeth such that it obscures half the face. Under her chador, Mrs. Erami wore another voluminous layer of hijab, including a hoodlike head scarf and a long, loose coat. Hers was the uniform of the government faithful, the traditional-minded and the sexually puritanical--the very image of the older generation that Mahdavi's main research subjects, Tehrani youth, rebuffed with their outsized vanity and sexual libertinism.

But Mrs. Erami had come to the ministry on a mission related to Mahdavi's. She taught courses on health, puberty and relationships at a Tehran high school, and she had come to talk to the minister about her frustration with her students' unwillingness to discuss sexual matters frankly with her. In a country where premarital sex with multiple partners is increasingly common but remains culturally taboo and punishable under the law, this severe-looking, chador-clad woman was, at a glance, hardly the person in whom one might feel comfortable confiding one's illicit activities or seeking intimate advice. Mahdavi didn't even feel comfortable letting the older woman see her nail polish, which is illegal but commonplace in Iran. Nonetheless, Mrs. Erami could not understand her students' reticence. "They are so difficult," she told Mahdavi. "I can't get them to talk to me, but I know what they are doing and what they are not doing. I had a teenage daughter myself, and I know that they are having a lot of sex, but not doing it right. I just can't get them to talk to me about it."

Mrs. Erami, it turns out, is one of the more dramatic products of the generational upheaval in Iranian attitudes toward sex. A conservative Muslim, she was not sympathetic, some years before her encounter with Mahdavi, when her gay son came out of the closet. Her husband threw him out of the house. When their unmarried daughter announced that she had a boyfriend, Mrs. Erami slapped her and called her a prostitute. The daughter left home that day, never to return. And so the Eramis lost both of their children over their unwillingness to accept sexual behavior that had become the norm not only globally but even within many circles inside Iran. A year later Mrs. Erami's husband died, leaving his wife entirely alone and flooded with regret. That was when she devoted herself to sex education reform, both as a teacher and as a campaigner within Iran's education ministry.

article continues at link --> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/secor/1

[TheMadMonk]

1. Republican parents could learn something from this woman.

Self proclaimed Christian parents arrogating themselves the (here's the get out of hell free card)* unconditional love of Christ too.

Hold to your values by all means, but just fucking well accept that the values of today are not those values and put safety first.


*sorry Randy.

[TheMadMonk]

2. The group sex/orgies I think is protective in nature.

It keeps them safe from prosecution, as the scandal involved would just be too disruptive to the smooth governing of the nation, and their relationship with the rest of the world. It is the solo adulterers (particularly women with no significant connections) who serve as "examples".

As does the anonymity. A "dalliance" with a known male is that it gives him lifelong power over your life. A random stranger who does not know you has no handle with which to control them.

When the threat is nearly 100% fatal, anything which virtually eliminates that threat is going to be very strongly selected for. That we can (sub)consciously direct our evolution can only increase the power of that selection.


The western solution was "in your face" pushing of the envelope against powers that be equally as represive in their own way. Peaceful protest, (with admittedy several internal pockets of violence) against violent policing was saved for other matters.

[burning rain]

3. Wow, she sounds oblivious.

Surprised that modern-minded young people don't want to open up on sexual matters to a severe woman in the black cowl that is the uniform of the most conservative Muslim women in Iran. Now that's clueless.