WDF's statement on the attacks on Iran

 

I'm not part of WDF anymore. I worked with them from 2019 to 2021. 

This is a really bad statement and this is what I posted as a comment on their FB post: 

1. This is a very problematic statement because it assumes all Iranian women are happy that Khameini was killed or were anti Khameini.

2. Please bear in mind that almost 200 school girls were killed on the first day of the attack.

3. Khameini's wife and baby grand daughter was slaughtered in their home.

4. Millions of Iranian women are with their leaders and with their country.

5. How many Iranian women are you reaching out to in this post?

6. Our only job should be to undemonise the Iranian revolutionary leadership, administration, and entire society which in large parts has been done thanks to feminists.

7. Condemn the assassination and ongoing attacks

8. Point out how Pakistan may be complicit in its relationship with the Empire.

I've come away from all my own problematic views of Iran. I viewed Iranian mullahs as backward mullahs and never saw Iran as a revolutionary country as it is. Liberal ideas of feminism , the liberal sense that women should not be forced to wear hijab, was the only lens through which I looked at Iran. The protests which were reported in mainstream media also distorted reality. 

Mahsa Amini's death showed us a distorted view of reality , that the only that Iranian women care about is the hijab. The protests which apparently erupted all over the country apparently showed frustration of the whole population. Who knows who funded these protestors? 

Can the issue of hijab really encompass everything that a population may be fed up of? 

What changed everything was the genocide in Gaza in 2023. I realised that the only countries who militarily supported Palestine were Iran and Yemen and Hizbollah in Iran. This helped to deconstruct my ideas. 

Feminism really has been a villain - demonising Iran, Islam, whole populations. This type of liberal feminism only seeks sexual freedom, choice feminism, capitalism and consumerism, and so on. 

Feminism has its roots in workers' movements of the 20th century. Marxism's contribution to feminism was to illuminate that domestic labour is labour and, contributes to the social reproduction. That domestic labour is not nothing. That biological reproduction also reproduces social reproduction. This labour is performed by women. And, all this is exploited by capitalism. 

I've listened to many of Catherine Liu's conversations on YouTube and, I really liked a couple of her ideas: 

- that feminism was supposed to help men and women work together, not alienate them from each other
- that feminism in America has merely been reduced to the right of abortion

Where does this leave us?