Sexuality and concealment among Iranian young women

Previous studies on sexual concealment in Iran

Islam is perceived as a religion with detailed guidelines for its adherents’ lives. Questions of sexuality are not explicitly addressed and resolved. The dominance of religious and traditional values in the construction of sexuality has turned this topic into a taboo, which in turn has affected the realm of research and academic paradigms. There is neither statistical data nor any research to indicate or even investigate pre-marital relations in Iran. For Sedghi (2007: 15), this is a consequence of sensitivity (cultural and otherwise) among the Iranian population.

However, globalized Western values, which are slowly but surely finding their way into Iranian society through new modes of communication and technology, are changing this pattern. Increasingly, “body-centered discourse” is being defined as a new generation’s need, something this population perceives as having been ignored by their parents’ generation. For the new “connected” generation, the Islamic revolutionary society is an example of an outdated defeated religious spartan minimalism. The popularity of Western values has introduced new ideas such as the need for a “redefinition of sexual normalcy”, individualism and “coming out”, to name a few among many. To be connected to the development of these ideas in the global arena has resulted in the redefinition of sexuality and sexual behavior among women in Iran. Hooshmand (2005: 385) argues that, “a new sexual culture is emerging among Iranian youth which may affect the future course of the Islamic Republic of Iran”. Sexual practices outside marriage, including pre-marital and extramarital sex, vary depending upon class, location and the type and status of the marriage. Bahrami (2001: 50) highlights lack of knowledge about sex and sexual pleasure as a means to maintain sexual power and enact sexual oppression in the society.

According to a report by the National Youth Organization (2004), of four main crises among Iranian youth, the top ranking belongs to sexuality. Some 44 percent of respondents strongly agreed with the statement, “I am constantly occupied by thinking about sex”. Studies of this nature are used to shape government policies to address and control sexuality through means like the legalization of temporary marriage (mut‘a, Pr. sighe).

In his thesis conducted among single male students living in a dormitory at Tehran University, Mousavi Nasab (2007) addresses three questions: the importance of (female) virginity, pre-marital sexual relations and masturbation. Mosavi Nasab’s findings suggest that the respondents’ attitudes toward sexuality were most affected by family norms, religious beliefs and learning through formal education and school environment. On entering the university, interactions with the opposite sex and connections with new media, however, are given as factors contributing to changes in students’ attitudes toward sexuality. Despite the changes that the respondents admit, more than 75 percent of them emphasize the importance of virginity and abstinence from pre-marital sexual relations. More than 50 percent consider masturbation to be a capital sin and are “ashamed” or “embarrassed” of engaging in the behavior. Kajbaf (2005) approaches the subject from a religious perspective and discusses the need for sexual education within an Islamic frame of reference. He provides a number of policy and practical recommendations to “minimize risks for sexual deviations and disorders”. Abazari, Fasayi and Hamidi (2008) provide an account of the “awareness about the female body” and how it affects women’s attitudes and behaviors in urban public spaces. The findings of an ethnographical study (Ziari, 2008) based on a series of in-depth interviews with young single female students residing in a dormitory suggest that the majority of respondents considered “entering university”, the “relaxed role of religion in daily life” and “new media” among the main factors changing their attitudes toward sexuality and “making pre-martial relations possible”.

In an in-depth comparative study of sexuality (including pre-marital sexual relations, sex education and family), Iranian expatriates in the United States and those residing in Iran were surveyed. Despite similarities in the “importance of nuclear family, the significant role of the mother within a family, family loyalty and limited sexual freedom of youth”, a series of differences were also observed. Living abroad, for instance, seems to have significantly contributed to the “relaxed attitudes towards pre-marital (or free) relations, more tolerance towards homosexuality and [the] broken [nuclear] family” (Hojat et al., 1999: 19–31).

The impact of migration and exposure to a setting with lenient views toward sexual diversity was studied by Kahen (2005), who compared the views of Iranians residing in Iran to Iranian migrants in Belgium set against native Belgians. Sixty-seven percent of Belgians felt comfortable talking about their sexuality, sexual feelings, desires and orientations, while 75 percent of Iranians felt uncomfortable. Some 89 percent of Iranian males and 70 percent of females (compared to 10 percent of male and five percent of female native Belgians, and 25 percent of male and five percent of female Iranian-Belgians) considered masturbation a “moral deviation”. Another point of significant difference was (female) virginity. Eighty-one percent of Iranians considered virginity at the time of marriage important, while 97 percent of native Belgians and 87 percent of Iranian-Belgians did not.

While there is a relatively large body of literature about the concealment of sexual orientations, mostly in the context of organizational and professional LGBT people, other kinds of sexual concealments have not been addressed much in academic research. This includes sexual practices in such ideological and normative societies as Iran. This article endeavors to address this gap through an in-depth analysis of the methods and tactics employed by women in highly normative post-revolutionary Iran.

Concealment of body and sexual desire

Adolescence is the period in life when a woman encounters her body and herself as a sexual being, witnesses sexual maturation, makes active sexual choices and identifies her body as a vehicle of sexual pleasure. It is also the period when sexual subjectivity is constructed, with sexual desire at the heart of subjectivity. Karin Martin (1996: 10) argues that “sexual subjectivity is a necessary component of agency and thus of self-esteem. That is, one’s sexuality affects her ability to act in the world, and to feel like she can will things and make them happen”. Experiencing the menarche is usually regarded as the first serious encounter with one’s body, memorialized as a way to mark a new period in a woman’s life. For many women interviewed in this study, the menarche is also the first experience of concealment, as part of Iranian social psychology shaped by religion and tradition. Hence, this article focuses on the menarche, sexual maturation and physical changes reflected in the experience of the female body and maintains the premise that the encounter with the menarche and the changes of the female body during adolescence could be two indicators to explain the process and variations of sexual concealments.

Whereas for many, adolescence is the first experience of sexual gratification and sexual pleasure, under the strict religious institutionalized normative and tacit rules of urf (consuetude), Iranian women are expected to make efforts to hide biological changes, find methods to conceal the body and minimize its visibility and exposure. The first practices of concealment are often suggested by female members of the family as part of adolescent ritual, leading to a series of sexual concealments, including concealing sexual needs, desires and fantasies in the later stages of one’s life.

“Suppression” and “lack of knowledge about body changes” are the main themes expressed by the women recalling their menarche. Lack of sexual knowledge, due to the absence of sexual education and to cultural norms which categorize discussion about sex as forbidden and unspeakable, create a situation where women are unaware of the changes associated with adolescence and lack the knowledge to meet those changes. Mojdeh notes:

I knew nothing about my body. I had no idea what menstruation was. It took me by surprise, as something totally unknown to me. Lack of sex education created this, I suppose. When you don’t have the possibility to learn things in a right way, what do you do? Well, you have to learn them from other sources.

The menstruating woman and the account of the impacts of her impurity can “express [social] symmetry or hierarchy” (Douglas, 2005: 3). The orifices of the body symbolize its vulnerable points, exposing a community to unforeseen dangers. Women are considered to be the “door of entry to the group”, and their menstrual pollution is feared as a lethal danger (Douglas, 2005: 122).

In pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran, a menstruating woman was one of the greatest causes of defilement. She was to be segregated in a secluded building (dashtanistan) so that she would not pollute fire and water. Her food, plain and just enough to support life, was to be served to her from a distance of three paces in a metal dish, which could be cleaned and purified afterward, as wood or earthenware could not be (Boyce, 1992: 697). She could return to a normal state of affairs after a final cleansing. Should a period last more than nine days, it was regarded as devils’ work and the woman had to undergo an extensive ritual purification. Childbirth was also polluting and required segregation and cleansing.

Shi‘a regards vaginal secretions occurring during coition as unclean (Algar, 1992: 700), and a significant number of Shi‘i purification rituals focus on regulating women’s bodies and bodily fluids. Sex is ritually unclean, and every act of intercourse requires subsequent ablution. A woman’s body is almost always associated with impurity because of her sexual and menstrual secretions (Afary, 2009: 26). Shiites are not unique in clinging to such views about sexual purity, but the provision of the Muslim purity code known as mulamasa (touching another, otherwise discussed as janaba or intercourse) stands out as unique in relation to the purity codes of other religions and cultures. Intended for the masses and observed more-or-less consistently, the precepts and principles of this branch of the purity code offer a unique window on gender relations and notions of sensuality at different places and times (Maghen, 2005: 133).

The Islamic sense of pollution, which prohibits all acts of worship under certain conditions of spiritual and physical uncleanliness, makes public, and therefore amenable to control, the otherwise private, biological events such as menarche, menstruation and sexual contact, thus preventing and controlling the ability to pray or touch a copy of the Qur’an without first performing ablutions. Therefore, anyone who, through fear of committing sacrilege, has to abstain from ritual recitation of prayers or from obligatory fasting is subject to scrutiny and interrogation by older family members (Maghen, 2005: 220–221).

Sexual practices, hence, are associated with impurity, and should be kept concealed and sanctions observed to minimize hazards. Concealment as a method to cover a sexual practice or orientation is likely to be implemented when family members and teachers force young women to observe religious and social norms and suggest methods to conceal female bodies from the opposite sex in order to minimize the risks of the exposure of body and the impurity or contamination that it entails. Here is Sara:

My mom forced me to wear oversize and loose-fit clothes. I didn’t like them but she didn’t care. It simply meant that no one should know that my body was changing. “Don’t do this”, “don’t wear that”, or “don’t talk like that”. “You are an adult now. Behave like one”. My generation didn’t find enjoyment in growing up.

To advance to a stage where one rethinks one’s sexuality and to make conscious decisions is to become self-aware and a “self-motivated sexual actor” (Miller and Simon, 1980: 383). Unstated, though tacitly acknowledged through urf, is the assumption that girls have to curb yearnings for love, relationships and romance. While young women are expected to hide their sexual desire and feelings, taking conscious measures to do this entails the concealment of such desire from others. In the absence of direct means and mechanisms to justify, legitimize and exercise suppression, some women find the possibility to rethink ideologically-laden and traditional practices: “Why something so natural should be kept covered like a shame or an act of crime? This is ridiculous. It felt shameful trying to hide a natural biological development that happens to every single woman all over the world” (Fatemeh). Any sort of power meets with resistance (Foucault, 1988), and the less-powerful are in a constant battle to “find innumerable, creative, even powerful ways to resist” (Weiler, 1988: 21), to negotiate, struggle and create meanings of one’s own. This is what de Certeau labels tactics, used by the less-powerful in practices of everyday life to resist the power apparatus (Arjmand, 2016). De Certeau (1984) notes that those in subordinate positions can undermine power systems with a form of consumption characterized by its poaching, its clandestine nature, its tireless but quiet activity, in short by its quasi-invisibility (Moran, 2005). Iranian women’s resistance is:

largely through mundane daily practices in public domains, such as working, playing sports, studying, showing interest in art and music, or running for political offices. Imposing themselves as public players, women manage to make a significant shift in gender dynamics, empowering themselves in education, employment, and family law, while raising their self-esteem. (Bayat, 2010: 97)

“Self-acceptance” is an instance of a resistance which appears as an outcome of re-thinking one’s female self. This form of resistance manifests itself in its relationship to determinants of power in the wider social order (Giroux, 1981): “My view toward women and sexuality has changed. Now, I can talk openly about my body. This is my new norm (Maryam)”; “I’ve totally changed since then. Perhaps it took too long, but I finally got there and it’s definitely worth it. Now, I perceive my femininity my blessing. I don’t feel ashamed anymore” (Atieh). Daily life and mundane practices inform defiance. In Bayat’s (2010: 97–8) words, “The effective power of these practices lies precisely in their ordinariness, since as irrepressible actions they encroach incrementally to capture trenches from the power base of patriarchal structure, while erecting springboards to move on”.

Concealing sexual relations and practices

Perhaps concealing sexual relations is the most common type of concealment among Iranian young women. Two factors may affect one’s decision to conceal sexual relations: first, sexual relations are allowed only within the institution of marriage and any other forms of sexual relations are criminalized and subject to litigation and punishment. Secondly, a woman who has experienced pre-marital sexual relations is stigmatized by urf. Many women express “a fear of being judged or rejected by friends and family or their social cohort” as the main concern if their sexual relations were revealed. Many note that they “find themselves in a dilemma where none of the alternatives present a solution”. Farnaz argues, “I am frightened of the legal and social consequences. I’ve seen what they can do to people like me. The law is very harsh on pre-marital sexual relations and people would never forgive such a sin”. Marziyeh notes, “it is considered a capital crime by law. Not a joke. I am not stupid to put myself in trouble”. And Jaleh reflects, “I don’t like to be judged on the basis that I feel no respect for. I’m so afraid of people’s judgment that I don’t dare to share my sexual experiences with anyone. And I mean anyone”. The civil penal code in Iran is strengthened by principles of sharia (religious law) where every act of offence is not only treated as civil misconduct but also a religious divergence. Awareness about the consequences of one’s action makes one reassess the risks and outcomes. Concealment is often the safest way to circumvent religio-legal complications. Women choose two main tactics: either to “disguise” sexual relations through concealment, and “pretend [to respect]… normative values to fulfill the expectations of the family and the society, while doing otherwise”; or to “defy” the normative values by openly fighting against them.

One might choose not to resist the norms for a number of reasons. A recurrent concern is the fear of facing the extreme reactions of the family, effectively destroying one’s ties to them. Women often have good prior knowledge about their family’s reactions and the serious limitations imposed by them, which most likely would be tightened in the case of the family’s knowledge of a pre-marital relationship. Concealment often presents itself as the best method in interacting with the immediate social surroundings. One might also be motivated by the desire to save the family’s honor, to circumvent losing the trust of the family or to ensure that one would continue to enjoy family support.

Whatever the reason, the fear of rejection and exclusion makes one pretend to behave in a way desired by the family in accordance with social values. In Farnaz’s words:

… if I ever told them, everything would be destroyed. This way everything is in peace and everyone is happy. They think that I am the daughter they always wanted, and I do what I want to. So why shouldn’t I pretend to behave the way they wish?

Thus, concealment is a tactic to maintain the existing state of affairs. One chooses concealment “to keep the order of things in place”. This turns one into a major player in the field of everyday life, where agents and their social positions are located, not necessarily by way of explicit contract, but by their practical acknowledgement of the stakes, implicit in the very “playing of the game” (Bourdieu, 1993). Women may take different routes to appropriate their values, with such tactics as concealment, which despite its popularity is not the only method. In some situations, confrontation is the preferred method to resolve the situation. To a larger extent, both concealment and confrontation are consequences of changes in the perspective of the individual. Such changes occur mainly as a result of moving out of the family home (by being admitted to university), exposure to gender-mixed environments at university, the weakening of religious ties (living in a diverse environment and interaction with secular students and faculty) and breaking taboos on the value of virginity and chastity. The change of perspective leads to questioning heterosexual marriage as the sole legitimate institution, as opposed to white marriage (a term often used for cohabitation) which is a rapidly growing practice in Iran today. Choosing other forms of relations than those promulgated by the theocratic system occurs when justifications by the sources of domination fail to convince the individual, and is often practiced as an active form of resistance, confrontation or concealment. These forms of defiance take the form of adapting various methods to stand against an arrangement, an environment or an action imposed or practiced by a specific power apparatus or under given normative, religious or traditional circumstances.

Concealment of sexual orientation is widely practiced among LGBT people, especially in a context where the risk of stigmatization, discrimination and harassment is higher. A number of studies have analyzed and conceptualized sexual orientation concealment tactics among LGBT persons and argue that such tactics tend to contribute to positive individual and professional outcomes (Anderson et al., 2001; Croteau, 1996; Morgan and Brown, 1993; Ragins and Cornwell, 2001). Moradi (2009: 515) argues that:

both concealment and disclosure may be used by the same individual in different contexts and with different people. Thus, concealment and disclosure tactics are not thought to be opposite ends of a continuum but rather conceptualized as two different tactics that individuals may use simultaneously within the same organization.

The “cognitive load” of concealment on the social performance of those practicing it has been the subject of a series of studies, which argue that the act of concealment consumes the cognitive resources and affects the performance of the person negatively. In the present study, however, multiple references were made to concealment as a method to bring peace of mind and to allow the person to perform “normally”.

The practice of one form of concealment affects and endorses other types of concealment and in some occasions results in compromising situations. Concealing the body and sexual desire during adolescence normalizes the practice and turns it to an efficient tactic in challenging the dominant social values. Hence, it becomes common practice to engage in efforts to conceal sexual needs, demands and desires; and while this may lead to gaining space for one’s values, it also results in concealing one’s needs and prioritizes those of one’s partners over one’s own. Time and again, women argue that in most cases this stems from “uncertainty in demands” and “ambiguity in understanding and reacting based on one’s desires”, a result of the constant practice of concealment, and lack of knowledge about one or the other’s interest, lust and desire.

Concealment also puts women in a situation where the “fear of losing a partner” becomes one of the main reasons to continue sexual relations despite sexual dissatisfaction. “Fear of being dumped” is a recurrent theme, resulting in an inability to express one’s needs, dissatisfaction or feelings of being ignored and abandoned. “I know what’s waiting me if I present myself as someone demanding or difficult. I am scared that he dumps me and walks away”, says Jaleh. To counter such situations, many choose to compromise and conceal their own sexual needs and desires, to endure the relationship instead of enjoying it or addressing their own needs.

Exposure to the university environment and experiencing life outside the family in a metropolitan city such as Tehran is given as the most important factor for motivating one to rethink one’s uncertainty in demands and desires and come to “awareness about one’s own body”. Through body awareness, one questions the legitimacy of institutions which have regulated, monitored and controlled one’s body and desires. Exposure to a new environment provides an opportunity and provokes the person to rethink their values. Thus, one may conclude that a different experience during adolescence or the freedom to expose or accept the body and its changes are likely to lead to a different outcome.

The women in this study often argued that society teaches them “the art of deception and dishonesty” as the only feasible tactic to keep them out of trouble. The normalcy of heterosexual relations is internalized by many women, while an emphasis on the difference between female and male has lent itself to the foundation of gender segregation discourse in post-revolutionary Iran. Women’s intimacy becomes a concern of namus (honor), both individual and collective, and a matter of decision/policy making. In such a context, women are compelled to employ concealment.

Concluding remarks

Iranian women, who experience a situation where the female body is at the forefront of normative contestation and its every move is under strict scrutiny, employ concealment as a method of circumvention, disobedience and resistance toward the theocratic regime of power.

Criminalization of sexual relations outside the institution of marriage in Iran nurtures concealment as one of the safest methods to undermine domination. In a context where alternative practices of sexuality are condemned, the concealment of sexual desires, orientations and practices is applied as a tactic for social survival. This study suggests that there is a three-fold model of concealment practiced by women in various social settings in Iran. While body concealment was enhanced by the state and families to reduce the visibility of the female body in public, clandestine sexual practices were used to undermine the heteronormative social structure. Concealments of body, desires and sexual practices are applied by young women with pre-marital sexual experiences to “keep the order of things in place” and to undermine the repressive policies and practices based on socio-religious norms. Escape from the sources of suppression and exposure to alternative views encourage young women to reconsider their female self and turn the body from a cause of shame to a source of pride.