Abracadabra

-A series of protests and civil unrest began in Iran on September 16, 2022, as a response to the death of Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by the morality police for wearing an improper hijab in violation of Iran’s mandatory hijab laws.

-I believe that what we are observing in Iran, is one of the most significant and subversive feminist movements of our times, one I would go as far as calling a fourth wave feminism, one that is in praise of the ethics of life. Of a feminine erotic ethics.

-This subversive feminist revolt is the scene of the return of the repressed. We know from Freud that the repression of femininity is a remarkable feature of the psychic life of human beings, equally applicable to both sexes. We are observing the return of the repressed female body that refuses to be covered symbolically, and that says: face the fetishistic/phobic cause of your desire, and look at me, in my ordinariness, in my hunger for an ethics of woman, life, and freedom. It is a hospitable invitation toward cohabitation for it does not exclude, it is in praise of an ethics of life, an ethics of the erotic. They want to live, they are not apologetic for their hunger, they do not feel mad, bad, or sad; this return of femininity, the return of the repressed is not here in a hysterical manner, it is not here in a voyeuristic, exhibitionistic way, it is not here in the name of need but that of desire.

-I do not believe we have seen anything like this subversive feminist movement before. It has disturbed us in a revolutionary, magical, carnivalesque manner. The people who have taken to the streets are mourning together, celebrating together, and they want to dance, sing, and live. We are observing the magical resurrection of the witches.

-And then, a few months later,

This happened;

-The mass poisoning of Iranian schoolgirls in a series of chemical attacks, when students in dozens of schools in Iran were reportedly poisoned in an undetermined manner by unidentified perpetrators. These