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This profile focuses on the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests and analyzes their transnational implications. I review how the movement rapidly transcended Iran’s national boundaries and catalyzed subnational and international activism, solidarity, and discourse engagement. Through an analysis of social media campaigns and engagement, offline solidarity demonstrations, and transnational grievance framing, this profile illustrates the significance of the Mahsa Amini campaign, galvanizing outrage over women’s rights, oppression, and freedom within Iran, and subsequently activating a global network of activists and sympathizers. The protests provide a unique opportunity to analyze the complexities of transnational activism in the digital age by examining how activists utilized digital infrastructure to mobilize a global solidarity network to raise awareness of gender-based violence and brutality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The murder of Mahsa Jina Amini has galvanized a movement for women's rights and freedom in Iran. Translating political movements and their slogans is often a daunting task, as identities, histories, and struggles are not easily translatable cross-culturally. This movement, too, has provoked frenzied sentimentalism and "feel good" social media activism from celebrities and politicians. From celebrities cutting their hair on social media, to politicians and right-wing activists and leaders denouncing the Islamic regime, the focus of the protest seems to have been lost in the west. The discourse in the west is lacking a critical analysis of the politics of veiling and unveiling in western countries. This commentary points out that the movement spearheaded by Iranian women and schoolgirls is against state coercion. It further argues that reframing the discourse to focus on the protest as being against state control, instead of hijab, will be a more useful way forward for feminist movement globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presenting human bodies in public space against the will of the state is a well-known strategy to protest. Indeed the presence of the body as a materiality bears meaning. Furthermore if the body is doing an act for the eyes of the spectator it has an explanation therefore a performance happens. As Judith Butler claims the body is a manner of doing, dramatizing and reproducing a historical situation. Meanwhile it is subjectivated by culture, power structures and its social environment. In a public protest performing bodies(body) get connected to each other and form a resistant performativity. This enables the subject to vitalize possibilities for social transformation and objection with dominating power structures. However there are groups of humans who are not eligible to appear as subjects. When the subject is defined by elimination then performance is a kind of resistance that reclaims agency and power. Since the Islāmization of Iran revolution(1979), Iranian women have managed to protest in four particular mass gatherings to resist socio-political oppression related to their gender and compulsory hijab. The very first was A five-day protest march starting on March 8, 1979 to prevent legalization of compulsory hijab. The second one was a peaceful gathering of women's rights defenders in June 2006 in Tehran's central business district that ended with violent objection from the state and the third is a solo performance of an Iranian woman known as the Girl of Enghelab Street on 27 December 2017. Aesthetics of these Performances vary according to different strategic and artistic choices. This Article tries to define and explain the surrounding environment and socio-political basis which lead to formation of these different constructions. It studies the performative strategies of these public gatherings of powerful subjects with a common object: social equality through a nonviolence subversive performance. It is essential to mention that by the time of this article's publication, the very last nationwide uprising against compulsory Hijab with the Manifest "Woman, Life, Freedom" is ongoing in Iran. It is ignited by the brutal murder of Jina 'Mahsa' Amini while in the custody of the moral police on 16th September 2022. This article has been submitted by May 2021, hence these developments have not been considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While women have propelled the current protest movement, she desc ribes a snowball e ffec t: 'we are now witnessing the largest anti-government protests in this history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, crossing class and ethnic lines. Photo taiga ildun/ Shutterstock.com THE PROTESTS IN IRAN The 2022 protests in Iran started after the funeral of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in Tehran while in the custody of Iran's Moral Security Police. Iran has witnessed its share of protests over the last forty years or so, as Azadeh Ganjeh's contribution to this issue highlights with respect to women's protests in Iran in particular. First, we would like to dwell upon another protest movement to have arisen since we issued our Call for Papers, still very much alive at our time of writing: that in Iran, in response to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. [Extracted from the article]