With nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States at a possible turning point, quite a lot of attention has been focused on Iran in the past months. The regime, widely seen as radical, volatile, and irrationally militant, is trusted by few and liked by even fewer. The international community has been trying to remove the regime for nearly 40 years, seemingly to no avail. With western media covering only the political antics and nuclear developments of the Islamic regime, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that Iranian society was as conservative as its government. The average image of Iran in the eyes of the outside community is that of veiled women, backward beliefs, and strict autocratic oppression with little pushback. The Pew Research Center found that 83 percent of Americans do not believe the Iranian government respects the personal freedoms of its citizens. That number was even higher in European countries.
Yet, what if there was a sexual revolution going on behind closed doors?
While the public life of the Iranian people is severely regulated to conform to the regime’s radical Islamic standards, Iran has a vibrant history of cosmopolitanism and spirituality, not necessarily religious fervor. Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was a fairly open and progressive place relative to the rest of the region. Some within Iran hoped that the overthrow of the Shah would bring more political freedoms, even though Iranians at the time were not particularly dissatisfied with the liberties afforded to them in their personal lives. Yet when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, they lost both. The radical vision of a utopian Islamic society strangled Iran.
Even so, one cannot remodel a culture – especially one as ancient as that of Persia –within a few decades. As a popular saying in Iran goes, “Before the revolution, one went out to drink and stayed in to pray. Now, people go out to pray and stay in to drink.” In a groundbreaking ethnographic study, Pardis Mahdavi revealed that most Iranian young people are partying, drinking, and having sex in much of the same ways they do around the world. Mahdavi, an Iranian-American, is a professor of anthropology at Pomona College. She is widely published, with research interests in health, gender, and sexuality in the Middle East. Her results, founded on in-depth qualitative interviews with 80 young Iranians and extensive field research, depicted a deeply dichotomous social structure. Outwardly, Iranian young people conform to the regime’s moral law because they must. Yet, privately, sex within long-term relationships and one-night stands are common. The University of Tehran found that within the city, on average, women have intercourse for the first time at the age of 16, and men at the age of 15. By comparison, in the United States the Kinsey Institute puts those numbers at 17.3 and 16.9, for women and men respectively. Tehranis are also getting married increasingly later in life: 26 for women and 29 for men. This essentially leaves 10 years of premarital sex and courtship—both of which are illegal.
Mahdavi uncovered some even more striking trends. Among those she interviewed, group sex was not uncommon, perhaps even commonplace. One man from her study added, “Have I ever had group sex? Well, yes, with a few women at a time, but who hasn’t done that? But I’ve watched really elaborate orgies too.” Ironically, because the regime has made any kind of public courtship impossible, romantic encounters must occur in private. When dating only occurs in bedrooms, relationships move far faster than they would otherwise. This also explains acceptability of more provocative acts like orgies. With everything happening behind closed doors, norms shift. The car, too, has taken on a kind of safe-haven status, similar to its role in the American cultural shift in the ‘50s. Cars afford a private space while also allowing for a quick escape from the morality police should the need arise.
Taken out of context, the stories of these sexual escapades are not particularly notable. Yet in Iran, the risks are much higher. Simply being in the company of a member of the opposite sex is punishable with 84 lashes. Extramarital sex is punishable by death.
Mahdavi found that the threat of arrest for sexual deviancy was far from abstract; it was a daily reality. She writes, “Most of my informants had been caught and detained at least once, many several times, and several of my informants had faced the whip at one time or another during their arrests. Experiences with the komiteh (morality police) were a favorite topic amongst these young adults and they often traded ‘war stories’. It seemed that this was both the price of rebellion and social revolution and the marker of success.”
Under a regime where even a lock of hair left visible is subject to legal prosecution, seemingly apolitical choices, like when to lose your virginity, take on new meaning. The Islamic Republic was born out of a radical utopian vision of the ideal Islamic state. As such, every facet of one’s life is under political jurisdiction. This means that even minor rebellions—like teenagers having sex—undermine the very foundations of the state’s legitimacy. Mahdavi writes, “Many urban young adults throughout the social landscape increasingly reject Islamist social restrictions as they feel that religion has been forced upon them without choice, and see their social behavior (including style of dress, sociality and interactions) as political statements.” This has only been exacerbated by the increasing connectedness young Iranians have with the outside world, especially through social media.
One may ask why this kind of sexual revolution is not being seen in other radically conservative states, such as Saudi Arabia. First and foremost, there are fundamental cultural differences between them. The strict, radical vision of Islam, while not universally accepted in Saudi, is at least organic to their culture. The ideology developed out of the deserts of Arabia in the centuries following the introduction of Islam. The Iranian Islamic Revolution effectively imported that Arab-centric view of Islam to an inherently different society. (Indeed, this parallels the original Islamic conquest of Iran. It took over 10 years for Muslim fighters to topple the Sassanid Empire. The resistance was fierce.)
Despite the important cultural considerations, there are also several more subtle causes for this sexual revolution. Iran’s age structure is heavily skewed towards the young. 70 percent of Iran’s populace is under the age of 30. These young people, who lived through the butchery of the Iran-Iraq war and its aftermath, are also highly educated. The regime’s push for free and widespread education, in combination with a baby boom, has created a state in which the majority of its citizens are young and educated. Within Tehran, 84 percent of young people are currently enrolled in university or are university graduates, and 65 percent of these graduates are women. Even across the entire country, about 80 percent of both men and women attend secondary school, with 55 percent of those graduating going on to attend a university. Youth unemployment is high, too. In Iran, over 2.5 million young people are unemployed, and over half of them are university graduates. Unmarried and idle, many young Iranians simply have more time to party and have sex. Coupled with this newly available lifestyle, their education gives them the intellectual background to critique the regime and frame their sexual choices as part of an underground dissent.
Even the most autocratic government must hold some degree of legitimacy, and Iran’s changing sexual mores are a direct threat to this. Women are wearing mini-skirts under the chador. Young people hook up and drink in the face of extreme risk. A new generation, politically informed and unsympathetic to the state, has made sexual rebellion part of their ethos. While the regime has stood the test of time thus far, Ayatollah Khamenei is 75, and the rest of his regime is just as old. Maybe we’ll just have to wait for time to show whose side it’s on.
They say Paris is for lovers… maybe Tehran is too.
– By Bailey Palmer
