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Title: The Subaltern is Fucking Speaking!
Author: merc
Date: November 3, 2022
Language: en
Topics: Islam; Islamophobia; anarcha-feminism; imperialism; internationalism; Solidarity Across Borders; solidarity; anti-racism; insurrection; anarchism; Iran; queerness; queer rights;trans liberation; Iranian anarchism
Source: https://immerautonom.noblogs.org/the-subaltern-is-fucking-speaking/

merc

The Subaltern is Fucking Speaking!

I’m writing this because I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated with the

responses to the uprising in Iran. I’m frustrated about how sadly

unsurprising they are given the landscape of the discussions surrounding

hijab and feminism have been developing for decades.

The current popular understanding of hijab, especially on the left, is

one that insists on it being an inherently neutral piece of clothing,

with an unspecified personal and spiritual meaning that everyone is

wearing by their free choice, unless we’re given overwhelming evidence

to the contrary. But as we see from the reactions to the uprising

against the mandatory hijab in the Islamic republic, even then, we must

find a way to say that the uprising is ultimately “not about hijab”. And

I just wonder why. Why is it that this uprising cannot possibly be what

it appears to be? Why is it so impossible to imagine that people forced

to wear hijab their entire lives, from the age of six, regardless of

their religious beliefs, or their personal desires, might just hate the

damn thing?

Our protests are never engaged with on our own terms. They’re always

filtered through someone else’s lens. Either through the American

Right’s “damsel in distress” narrative, or the left’s narrative of a CIA

or NED funded coup, and at best, the most bland and hollow statement of

“solidarity”, before immediately pivoting to talking about how we’re

getting disproportionate coverage, or about the European bans of hijab

and how they’re equally bad. Even many anarchists are hesitant to talk

about hijab and Muslim patriarchy as the cause of our problem.[1]

For years, what’s been called “Muslim Feminism” and a large part of

post-colonial feminism has been centered around the perspectives of

diaspora Muslims. There’s hardly ever a recognition of the fact that

diaspora Muslims are in a different social context from Muslims at home.

This means that they have different concerns in their daily lives,

different priorities, and yes, gaps in their perspectives that are a

result of them just not being surrounded by a Muslim patriarchy with

political power anymore.

It’s very easy to speak of hijab as a choice when clearly, it’s a choice

for you. It’s easy, and oh so costless, for you to imply, for your

benefit and your benefit only, that hijab is a choice by default. Even

when it’s being forced through the word of law and constant

state-enforced surveillance. Even if they’re sentenced to jail for not

wearing it. Even if at every scale, from home, to community, to

government, there are mechanisms of control compelling them to wear it,

this could all be fine, as long as we imagine that everyone compelled to

wear hijab, through a very convenient accident, just happens to just

love it! Wow, our communities are so harmonious! Just functioning like a

well-oiled machine, and the will of the people happens to fortuitously

align with the will of the state. There is no internal struggle.

Of course, it’s never stated in that exact, glaringly Orientalist terms.

There’s always some bone thrown at the idea of an internal struggle and

our autonomy. But this struggle is always portrayed as incomprehensible

to onlookers. We’re doing our feminism our own way. But rest assured!

Our concerns are never what you think they might be. We don’t actually

care about hijab. It’s not high on our list. It’s just part of our

culture you see. It’s just clothes. Look at all these women in Tehran

wearing colorful and pretty hijab! Surely, if they didn’t like it so

much, they wouldn’t make it into a fashion statement!

This added “complexity” might guard against accusations of Orientalism,

but ultimately functions the same. It tells you that we’re all either

fine with it, or we’re just sorting it out among ourselves. Mind your

business, don’t look (even when you’re asked to), don’t help (even if

they beg you for solidarity), just zip your mouth. Kind of racist to

intrude you know.[2]

This is an “in-house” matter.

Nothing to see here, move along!

Ignore the shadow of the patriarch taking his belt off.

They say that our protests are about “the government’s control” over

women’s bodies, as if “the government” is the only entity that can ever

have control over the bodies of its subjects. As though transferring the

management of patriarchal violence from the state to the family or

community is a massive improvement. With this tepid “solidarity” we see

with the protests against state-controlled patriarchy, I don’t hold much

hope that they show any commitment to the end of (or even

acknowledgement of) Muslim patriarchy at these levels.

This framing of “government control” also allows for a frankly

misleading comparison of the European hijab bans and mandatory hijab. It

is also a different form of oppression. It’s intracommunity, Muslim

patriarchy. It’s not the racial patriarchy of white Europeans imposed on

racialized women. Muslim women experience both. But it seems that it’s

never the right time to speak of the former, even when it’s happening.

It is bizarre to hear Muslim women express solidarity by talking about

European hijab bans, as if that’s the only reference of comparison they

have for what it’s like to experience coercive control. As though there

is no patriarchal control in their communities, and all compulsory hijab

can remind them of is when white people try to ban hijab. It has the

appearance of a statement of solidarity, but coming from people who must

have a similar struggle to us, not talking about that struggle feels

more like deflection. It’s never just a statement about the cruelty of

compulsory hijab. It always comes with the addendum of “hijab bans are

just as bad!” It’s as though it’s impossible for diaspora Muslims to

show solidarity to us without centering the struggle we’re just not

talking about. And coming from people who experience both, it doesn’t

seem like an ignorant sort of self-centering. It feels like a silent

redirection of attention away from Muslim patriarchy.

I must emphasize, none of these “feminists” said a word in these last

forty years about coerced hijab. They didn’t lift a finger for us. The

struggles of women, queer and trans people, religious minorities and

oppressed ethnicities in Iran are politically “inconvenient” for the

left to talk about. We are alone in our struggles. Despite all the

outcries on the left about disproportionate media attention to us,

that’s brought us nothing. Last time there were massive protests, 1,500

people died. Do you even remember? We have more to grieve every day and

we’re told the world pays too much attention to us, and that this

attention must be approached with suspicion.

Compulsory hijab has a history much longer than any hijab bans in

Europe. It’s existed as a tool of Muslim patriarchy since its inception,

on an unbroken line between then and now.[3] The more widespread

phenomenon of “modesty” imposed on women is even older. It’s frankly

baffling how pervasive the idea of hijab as a “free choice” is, to the

point of denying such a long and painful history of patriarchal

oppression. It’s at best seen as a pointless theological debate that

would alienate Muslims if discussed. But this is a discussion of

history, and our present. And it’d be a disservice to all the victims of

Muslim patriarchy, present and past, if we ignore and erase their abuse

and label its discussion as off-limits, especially in the presence of an

active push to reframe and erase it.

I was so confused when I first heard people like Yassmin Abdel-Magied

saying “Islam is the most feminist religion”[4] as a young queer person

in Iran. I was perplexed when people spoke of hijab as empowering. It

was like I was being asked to ignore all I’d learned about Islam,

feminism, and the histories and present states of both. And I was given

nothing except for the most generic Islamic apologia talking points that

I’d already been fed by the Islamic Republic’s education system in

middle school as a kid growing up in Iran.

For a long time, I believed that they simply subscribe to a different

version of the faith, a more progressive one. And as someone who had no

religion, the question of the validity of their version of Islam was

immaterial. As long as they arrive at the conclusion of full liberation

from patriarchy, I need not investigate the inner workings of their

faith. But when I saw how these “feminist” Muslims treated the women,

and queer and trans people who left the faith due to the immense weight

of Muslim patriarchal violence, and the way their priority was mostly on

defending their faith and there being no contradiction between Islam and

feminism or queer liberation, often at the expense of these victims, I

realized that these Muslim “feminists” and “queer liberationists” simply

didn’t see Muslim patriarchy as harmful enough to warrant any focus.

They didn’t see the depth of its roots and its pervasiveness.

Their focus was on reframing the violence of this patriarchy so as to

make it seem on par in its intensity and its nature to western

patriarchy (or less severe!), and to frame responses to this patriarchal

violence as motivated by Islamophobia and racism instead of genuine care

for these oppressed groups. Even when this response came from these

victims, they were branded as traitors who aided imperialist aggression,

presumably just by talking about their suffering. In practice, these

feminists and queer theorists just happened to do nothing but wash the

blood off of the hands of Muslim patriarchy by developing an

understanding of feminism that acted as an ideological cover for these

harms.

Hijab has been a tool of patriarchy since it was codified as a religious

mandate in the beginning of Islam. We must all be free to do with our

bodies as we wish, and that includes wearing hijab. But any reclamation

of hijab as a form of empowerment should at least start with the

understanding of hijab’s oppressive current and historical function in a

most parts of the Muslim world. But I don’t see any recognition of this

history or present. All I see is the denial of the idea that hijab is or

has ever been, to any extent, patriarchal.

I am tired of people acting shocked that we would be disturbed by seeing

others wearing our chains as a source of their pride, while denying that

they were ever chains to begin with. I’m tired of your expressions of

disdain for those of us who break this chain. I’m tired of people

flowing with the current of patriarchal expectations and calling it

subversive feminism.

I don’t know how hijab fits in a future where the coercive notion of

gender will no longer exist, and that’s the future I want. I have

trouble believing a gendered expectation of clothing will fit when

gender isn’t what it is now. How far from womanhood must a transmasc

person feel to stop wearing hijab? How close to womanhood should a

transfem person feel to have to wear it? What will happen to hijab when

man and woman are no longer reference points in the landscape of gender?

I ask these not as hypotheticals. I ask this because I remember the

doubly painful experience of my transmasc brothers having to fucking

wear hijab in Iran. I say this because I knew transfem people who

wouldn’t wear hijab, and their response to the question of “why aren’t

you wearing hijab if you’re a woman” was “I’m trans”. This might sound

nonsensical within patriarchal understanding of gender, but it makes

perfect sense to me. Because what the fuck do your rules mean for

someone who rejects their basis? How does hijab work for people who

don’t WANT to assimilate into the coercive notions of femininity or

masculinity? Will hijab be hijab if it’s truly a choice? I know there

are answers to this question, but I know who ISN’T looking for it: those

who pretend hijab is already a “free choice” by default. It’s bizarre to

me that we feel free to discuss how the superficially “free” choices

women make in the west about their clothing, such as wearing or not

wearing bras, are influenced by patriarchal coercion through many

mechanisms. But we are expected to assume that the choice of a Muslim

woman to cover almost her entire body is free of all forms of

patriarchal expectations. The range of choices Muslim women are assumed

to want to make are always limited to what they’re allowed to under

Muslim patriarchy, but somehow, that narrow range is also assumed to be

an expression of a free choice, unburdened by the weight of patriarchal

control.[5]

For me to consider hijab a “neutral choice” in the Muslim world and

Muslim communities as they exist today, requires me to not only abandon

all I know about gender, hijab, and its history, but it also requires me

to abandon half of my commitments as a brown queer trans nonbinary

anarchafeminist.

For once, let go of our chains.

For once, listen to us on our terms.

For once, see our problem as it is: Muslim patriarchy.

For once, show us solidarity without centering yourself.

My people are fighting and getting murdered. For once just have our

backs unconditionally.

– merc

[1] On the one hand, white American reactionaries pretend to care about

our oppression so they can morally license bombing us "to save our

women"---the "damsel in distress" narrative. On the other, white

American leftists deny our oppression even exists, because they think if

they acknowledge we---queer and trans Iranians, Iranian women, Iranian

children---are oppressed, then it means they'll be morally obligated to

bomb us. Far from combating the Right's narrative, white leftists,

entrenched in the "white man's burden" paternalist patriarchal frame,

cannot imagine solidarity that doesn't look like "taking control of the

situation." That does not look like intervention "for our own good." The

fact that white leftists cannot imagine "solidarity" with the oppressed

and marginalized of an imperialized region without coming to the

apparently inevitable conclusion that the bombing of our homes is

completely justified to "save us" does not signal that you can see past

"Western Propaganda" so much as it signals that you are incapable of

imagining solidarity at all.

[2] In an exchange with Iranian feminist Attousa H., Foucault somewhat

infamously demonstrates the ways in which white European cis male

academics often enact forms of white supremacist patriarchy through

epistemic violence. Foucault insinuates that Iranian feminists, in

criticizing the Khomeini regime's misogyny and speaking out about the

terror of mandatory hijab enforced by violence, are simply Islamophobes

(though obviously he does not use that much more recently-popularized

word), blinded by an irrational (one might be tempted to say hysterical)

"hatred." In so doing he frames resistance to mandatory hijab as though

it cannot possibly be "authentically Iranian," as described by "Against

White Feminism" author Rafia Zakaria in a review of a 2005 book about

Foucault's engagement with the Iranian revolution, available here:

https://kevin-anderson.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/anderson-book-review-foucault-zakaria.pdf

(retrieved November 3, 2022.) In "Oppression," David Graeber (available

here:

https://immerautonom.noblogs.org/files/2022/07/David-Graeber-Oppression.pdf

retrieved November 3, 2022) describes the subtle bait-and-switch game

played by the white anthropologist who, in giving himself the right to

decide what is and is not authentically "native culture," is still

positioning himself as the epistemic authority with the ability to

decide what is "authentic" to an Indigenous culture, and thus to deny

the authenticity of dissident Indigenous perspectives, because what is

"authentic" is always conveniently also that which conforms to the local

"authority." Iranian women are thus twice epistemically overwritten: by

their own patriarchy, and by white supremacist patriarchy that comes

along to tell them they are not authentically Iranian if they tell a

different story about their lives than the story their patriarchs tell.

The usual argument from diaspora Muslim Feminists goes that the white

gaze is obsessed with "unveiling" the hijabi woman, in a fetishistic,

Orientalist way, emphasizing that women can wear hijab of their own

choice, but restricting the critique to that point obfuscates the

equally fetishistic and Orientalist, but ostensibly "benevolent" gaze of

the white liberal--obsessed with "re-veiling" and "re-silencing" the

SWANA woman, putting her back under her patriarch's authority, and

re-creating the illusion of consent. If she does not consent, she must

not be "authentically" a member of her culture, after all. With this in

mind the burning of hijab becomes an act of permanent, unambiguous

resistance: Iranian women and trans men are not only removing their

enforced hijab, at the risk of their own goddamn lives, but stating that

they cannot and will not ever be "re-veiled," even by white liberal and

Muslim Diaspora Feminist insistence that actually, veiling is the

"feminist" thing to do.

[3] In "Status Distinctions and Sartorial Difference: Slavery, Sexual

Ethics, and the Social Logic of Veiling in Islamic Law," (available

here: https://brill.com/view/journals/ils/28/3/article-p125_125.xml

retrieved November 3, 2022) Omar Anchassi argues that in early Islamic

law, hijab functioned as a means of distinguishing between slave women,

who were marked as "free game" for sexual harassment, and "free" women

who are protected by the authority of their fathers. Free (non-enslaved)

Muslim women were thus marked as legally "free" in somewhat ironic terms

precisely by their being coercively constrained by hijab, whereas

enslaved women were not veiled and thus "exposed" to the whims of

others.

[4] Staff, S. (2017, February 18). 'Islam is the most feminist

religion': Two Australians have a shouting match on TV over Sharia law.

Scroll.in. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from

https://scroll.in/video/829637/islam-is-the-most-feminist-religion-two-australians-have-a-shouting-match-on-tv-over-sharia-law.

[5] Patriarchy (rape culture in particular) famously manufactures and

enforces a form of apparent "consent" on the part of oppressed and

marginalized genders, or the appearance of consent--even the appearance

of "enthusiastic consent"--through various forms of physical, social,

economic, and epistemic violence. One means of doing this is by

constraining the oppressed or subordinated subject's available forms of

agency to a restricted set of choices in which the oppressed subject

does make a choice, and thus it can appear they are exercising "free"

will. Another means through which "consent" is fabricated on the part of

the oppressed is through forms of epistemic injustice--injustice done to

a person in their capacity as a knower, in their ability to interpret

and narrate their experiences of the world--for reference, see Miranda

Fricker's work on epistemic injustice. Hermeneutical injustice describes

the ways in which patriarchal societies epistemically constrain

marginalized genders by taking away the language and terms in which we

could describe our oppression, and by trapping us in a system of

"knowledge" and belief--or religion, as the case may be--where the only

available interpretations of what happens to us all tell us the same

thing: you liked it, you agreed to this, you consented to this. Taking

the example of the claim that women would not make a fashion statement

out of wearing colorful and pretty headscarves if they did not "consent"

to wearing it in the first place, women in Iran are presented with the

choice: wear colorful and pretty hijab and have a way to express

something of your interiority and individual personhood, or wear plain

hijab. The "choice" is theirs, so when they choose one, the patriarchal

manufacturing of consent concludes that must be acting freely, it must

mean they have "consented" to and enjoyed wearing Hijab, regardless of

whether they really do or whether they are making such choices within a

situation where the alternative is to get killed by the Morality Police,

so they might as well make the best of the situation. Even religion

provides a system of interpretation in which hijab is rendered as the

"desirable" choice, at least if women are to view themselves as faithful

and respectable. But in a more subtle way, diaspora Muslim Feminists who

make themselves unelected "representatives" help to create (and trap

Iranian women within) a system of knowledge in which women must affirm

that they wear hijab of their own free will or else be construed as

"making us/our culture look bad" and betraying their people, who are

being slandered as "barbarians" and "brutes" by American conservatives.

This isn't to say there are no hijabi women who wear hijab of their own

authentically free will, but rather that there is no external position,

even that of the diaspora Muslim Feminist, from which it is possible to

reliably "interpret" a woman's consent to hijab in a context where she

must wear it or die. It is necessary to both: 1. understand the

structures of power in which she makes her decisions, and 2. actually

listen to her speak for herself. Hence, women and trans men in Iran

burning their hijab are in fact speaking very clearly, and the efforts

of unelected diaspora feminists to overwrite them and re-impose the

manufactured appearance of "consent" are themselves a form of colonial

epistemic violence in the classic sense articulated by Gayatri Spivak.