Iranian women’s sexual reconstruction through the internet: Informal education and empowerment

Backdrop on the history of sexual autonomy: then and now

Throughout history, Iranian patriarchal society considered women to be a secondary sex and their bodies tools for male pleasure and reproduction. A woman, a sexual object with virginity decreed to be her most valuable possession, was merely a commodity in a financial transaction between two men, her father and her future husband, who together wielded total legal and cultural power over her person and sexual organs (Afary, 2009). Women’s internalized status as the weaker sex unwittingly contributed to their sexual objectification and subordination. For instance, during the traditional Iranian marriage proposal ceremony of khastegari, women from the groom’s family assess the potential bride’s beauty and body to determine if she was qualified (beautiful) and suitable (healthy) for marriage. Women challenged their secondary sex status by secretly seeking abortions for unwanted pregnancies and by concealing their premarital sexual involvement. However, their autonomous actions were overshadowed by patriarchal cultural values that demanded they focus on earning good marriage qualifications rather than their own liberation (Bamdad, 1977).

The patriarchal desire for modernity in the 1930s reshaped women’s sexuality in comprehension and practice but simultaneously situated women’s bodies as a site of struggle between tradition and modernity. Traditionally, Iranian culture, influenced by Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Jafarism, equated women’s bodies with a source of shame and ritual impurity. More recently, through the influences of modernity, the state attempted to promote body autonomy through public visibility and mobility for Iranian women (Afary, 2009; Najmabadi, 2005). Such a reconceptualization constructed a modern, sexually docile body and mind for Iranian women, in which society dictated obedience from defining the correct way to wear make-up, clothing, and hair, to pleasing husbands. The clash between modernity and tradition created a dichotomy for women’s sexual autonomy during the 1940s and 1950s. On the one hand, a new level of sexual objectification of women was introduced via mass media, which depicted semi-naked and exotic women’s bodies in advertisements, literature, movies, and television. On the other hand, imposed values of female piety and virginity in traditional culture reinforced many families’ beliefs that daughters were sexual objects who had childbearing as their primary goal, and that before marriage they were little more than a financial burden to their families (Bamdad, 1977; Paidar, 1995; Sedghi, 2007).

The often incompatible co-presence of modernity and tradition eventually led to the redefinition of sexual values and practice in the 1970s. The culture of women’s sexuality was reformed, and sexual attitudes gradually progressed: dating, courtship, and pre-marital sexual engagement became acceptable among some sectors of the middle class. Nonetheless, the relentless paradoxical values in the context of men’s authority over women’s sexual autonomy remained preeminent, such as expecting virginity, an indicator of piety, dominance over female sexuality and contraception, and the requirement of the father’s legal permission for marriage (Afary, 2009; Bauer, 1985). Following the failure of the state’s promotion of contraception and population control in 1967, and in compliance with sharia law, the state legalized abortion for fetuses in the first 3 months (Aghajanian and Mehryar, 1999; Sedghi, 2007). While unmarried women could benefit from this law, married women were still required to obtain their husband’s consent (Afkhami, 1984; Sedghi, 2007).

The discourse of sexuality that has been controlled by urf and religion became part of the government’s agenda in 1979. It regulated women’s sexual objectification by promoting virginity, chastity, a young marriage age, polygyny, and temporary marriage, while making pre-marital sex illegal and prohibiting contraception and abortion (Afary, 2009; Hojat et al., 2015; Sharifi, 2018). In this new sexual reconstruction, Article 1108 of Iran’s Islamic Civil Code legally obliged women to fulfill their husbands’ sexual needs and desires, and women who denied these sexual demands without any religious reasons would lose their maintenance, Nosuj (Kaar, 2000).

However, women’s active presence in social, political, economic, and educational realms led to some empowerment, including sexual autonomy at institutional and individual levels in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Women gained an increase to the legal marriage age from 9 to 13, legal abortion for married women if in life-threatening danger, or before the fourth month, mandatory family planning for university students, soldiers, and couples, and easier access to contraception (Jarahi et al., 2013). Despite periodic disruptive protocols at the institutional level such as the reduction of the legal marriage age to 9, the discontinuation of a population control program, and increased difficulty in accessing birth control during Ahmadi Nejad’s presidency (2005–2013), women continued to successfully mitigate the severity of some of the legal restrictions around sexual autonomy.

Increased access to the internet and smartphones in the 2000s brought Iranian women’s ability to resist sexual subordination into a new era. The internet provided women with an alternative educational tool to defy the traditional masculine unilateral sexual rights culture through “connection and communication” and knowledge transformation (Kaivanara, 2016; Nouraei-Simon, 2005; Sreberny and Khiabany, 2010) in their quest for sexual rights. For instance, weblogs such as Dokhtar Boodan (being a virgin girl) and Hamaghooshi-hyae yek zan (One Woman Love Making) claimed autonomy in the online space by focusing on women’s non-pornographic personal erotic sexual experiences and criticizing the duality of heterosexual relationships. Feminist-related channels and pages such as everyday feminism aimed to raise knowledge about virginity, marital rape, and child marriage. Most recently, Hamdam’s educational application aims for the sexual health education of Iranian women.

Some scholars argue that unreliable sources and a lack of digital literacy expose women to untrustworthy and at times erotic material that can be more destructive than emancipatory (Bostani-Khalesi et al., 2017; Noroozi et al., 2014). However, the shift in women’s sexual knowledge, attitudes, and practices in the past 20 years (Mahdavi, 2009; Sharifi, 2018) indicates otherwise. Lack of formal education and the insistence on silence around the discourse of sexuality made the new internet space comparatively safer to seek knowledge. The constructive nature of informal learning enables the raising of awareness and reflection on current situations (Holland, 2019). Globalized information introduced new ideas such as redefining sexuality and its normalcy among many Iranian women and led to the emergence of a new sexual culture (Arjmand and Ziari, 2020). This new way of knowing/accessing information enabled many women to renegotiate sexual inequality through online dating, digital relationships, and discussions on the discourse of sexuality in different online forums. Moreover, pre-marital relationships became more common despite their illegality and the high social value placed on chastity and virginity (Asadi 2006; Sharifi, 2018).

Notwithstanding some women’s successful challenge to the ideology of sexual subordination, the culture of silence and shame, integrated with the illegality of women’s sexual interaction, or lack of legal protection in the case of married women, has placed women in a disadvantageous situation and diminished their opportunity to exercise their body autonomy (Afary, 2009; Latifnejad-Roodsari et al., 2013; Mahdavi, 2009; Sadeghi, 2008). The culture of shame and silence as one of the most internalized mores negatively affects women’s body autonomy, regulates communication about their sexuality, desires, wants, and needs, and equates modesty and self-respect with obedience and submission (Janghorban et al., 2015). While women struggle for sexual freedom, socio-cultural values, culture of silence, and customary scripts restrict sexual pleasure to men alone and assign asexuality as an ideal for women (Merghati-khoei et al., 2008; Merghati-Khoei et al., 2014; Sadeghi, 2008).

Learning shame and silence

As reported, all the participants addressed a lack of access to proper knowledge around sexuality in both formal and informal learning settings in their youth as one of their main struggles. Instead, while society-defined sex education is characterized as inappropriate and a cause of sexual decay, especially for women, they report the learning of shame and silence as a social-gendered message instead. While the participants strongly agreed on the necessity of education around sexuality at personal levels, they describe such education as culturally complicated and entangled with the fear of forbidden sexual involvement and loss of modesty in the eyes of society. Nargol explains: “sexuality is a very complicated matter that no one should mention and there is no proper formal or informal education in this regard.” Furthermore, Mona indicates that “there was never education on sexuality. Sex is bad, sex is taboo, no one should talk about it. I was raised by this ideology from school and family.” Bahareh states:

Sex is a taboo topic, even amongst the family who pretend to be open minded. You cannot even talk about sex hygiene such as your monthly period openly. Instead, I just learned to carry unreasonable fear around sex and sexuality. I am fearful of my family finding out about my sexual involvement. They will judge me.

In addition to a lack of sex education in formal settings, none of the participants had the opportunity to learn about sexuality from a reliable informal source such as a family member. Participants such as Bahareh from less conformist families or ones such as Nargol from more traditional families were both forced to actively practice silence around the discourse of sexuality. Both families played an important role in indoctrinating the shameful and harmful message around women’s sexuality. Lack of conversations around sexuality produces sexual illiteracy, and the silence this engenders becomes a tool to teach and internalize shame and fear of judgment amongst the participants. Mahboubeh, who attempted to break the silence through communication with their family members, mainly their mother, explains:

I attempted to talk about sex with my mother a few times. My mother seemed bothered [to suffer] from the conversation and stopped it promptly. I feel that I need to talk to her and ask her about what I do not know about. But I do not know what will happen if I keep insisting. There are things that I cannot ever share with her.

Mahboubeh’s efforts to depart from the silence were suffocated by reminding her about the modesty that is necessary for her to practice to be accepted and respected as a woman within family and society. As a result, the battle between social values of shame and asexuality and a personal curiosity complicate the practice and awareness of sexual autonomy. Consequently, participants such as Bahareh explain that talking about sexuality was limited to conversations with their peers. Bahareh explains: “I learned [from my friends] what sex is in middle school.” Furthermore, Dena shares: “I always talked about sexuality with my close friends. I initially started to learn about sexuality and women’s bodies from them in middle school.” As the participants above indicated that they exchanged information and learned about sexual discourse within their friend circle, the heavy socio-cultural emphasis on sex as a taboo and a forbidden topic bounded the extent and accuracy of their learning and restrained their sexual autonomy. An example of this is when some incomplete or less accurate information that was secretly circulating placed some of the participants in danger. Bahareh shared how she became pregnant through one such misconception at an early age. Although such peer learning enables the participants to break the silence, the sexual subordination of women remains the focal message within such conversations. The emergence of the internet redefined knowledge seeking and the autonomous learning and practice of women in many ways, including becoming conscious of their varying degrees of sexual subordination.

The internet as a tool for learning

The participants searched for information about their bodies, intimate relations, contraception, women’s sexual desires, different ways of sexual pleasure, sexual harms, sexual health, and personal hygiene on the internet. Moreover, the internet enables the participants to re-evaluate socially mandated values and rethink sexuality in the context of non-masculine rights.

Zahra explains her learning experience as follows:

I learned a lot about sexuality on the internet. I have a much better understanding of sexual diseases, sexual dysfunctions, sexual relationships, sexual hygiene, and orgasm at a personal and practical level. I seek for information on hygiene, sexual desires……You know the stuff that I am uncomfortable to ask anyone or talk about it with anyone. I can freely find any answer that I am seeking.

The relatively free space of the internet, with less surveillance and higher access to broader information, enabled many women—including my participants—to choose and learn beyond the institutionalized shame and subordination of the discourse of sexuality that society had imposed on them. For participants such as Zahra, the internet became a liberated learning space where individuals had the opportunity to expand their learning on the discourse of sexuality as part of their reality, beyond cultural indoctrination and gendered scripts and a lack of trust in institutionalized information.

In addition to seeking relevant information, many of the participants were inspired by the lifestyles other women shared on social media. Such exposure to other women’s ways of living enabled many participants to reflect on their own levels of autonomy, including their sexual autonomy. Consequently, the act of seeking knowledge and learning about other women’s lives empowered some women to reflect upon and depart from the pressure of asexuality toward a renegotiation of their own sexual autonomy. Nargol explains:

I learned a lot about sex and sexuality and my body on the internet. It [learning about sex and sexuality] is a very complicated matter. As I learned more, I realized how much guilt and shame I have always carried in my sexual interaction. But learning more let me get rid of some of these uncomfortable feelings. I know what I want, and I make sure I fulfill my sexual desire [in my relationship].

Elmira explains how learning from the internet strengthens her sexual relationship with her partner:

The internet is great, I learned almost everything [about sexuality] on the internet. The internet opened people’s minds. For instance, my partner read a lot about many things on the internet including sexuality. His way of thinking about sexuality has become more open. I have sexual autonomy and easily express my sexual needs.

The new online learning spaces providing flexibility in both learning subjects and platforms empowered participants such as Nargol and Elmira to depart from traditional sexual expectations by discovering new ideas of sexual autonomy, enabling them to reconstruct their sexual scripts in a less patriarchal mindset. For instance, Nargol found the opportunity to transform from a passive to an active sexual being in her sexual interaction. Moreover, Nargol’s conscious journey of self-construction along with online learning disclosed her true sexual identity and empowered her to become aware of the destructive feelings of guilt, shame, and subordination embedded in the cultural script she had been raised to believe in. The internet allows the participants of this study to defy subordination and suppression through knowledge, and at times empowered some participants to exercise self-expression and negotiate their sexual autonomy. Furthermore, the challenges to cultural pressures around shame and modesty that they discovered while acquiring information on the internet empowered these participants to re-evaluate their own experience of sexual autonomy. As a result, the educational effect of the internet empowers women by broadening their awareness and allows them to reassess restricted patriarchal values such as asexuality.

Shame in online spaces

Despite much literature concluding that online space has become a new site of communication and connection for Iranian women to express themselves in, the culture of silence and shame has permeated into the online realm and negatively affected online communication and interaction. While the participants reportedly gained knowledge around sexuality on the internet, they continued to remain concerned over conforming to social values on women’s expected asexuality and chastity. As seeking to learn about sexuality was equivalent to being improper and shameless in society’s eyes, the participants chose to remain invisible and voiceless online learners rather than submitting to end to their knowledge acquisition. Zahra explains:

I search for information, and I visit many related pages regularly, but I avoid liking the page or leaving comments. I do not want anyone to know that I check this page. You know I am embarrassed.

Zahra’s narration clearly indicates a lack of shame in the act of acquiring knowledge privately, but still a desire to conform publicly. Zahra’s online behavior remained cautious, and they often avoided any activity that could reveal their identity on the internet. Instead of communicating and sharing information online, they chose to lurk anonymously. Dena as a young woman who learned about sex and sexuality online explained: “On sex and sexuality, most of the time I do not follow the pages that I like to view. I search the internet for pages that do not identify the visitors of the page.” Claiming her sexual autonomy while struggling with embedded shame ultimately caused Parisa to search silently for information online about sexuality:

I started to learn about sexuality from my friends in middle school. I tended to search the internet to seek answers to my questions regarding sexuality. There are some pages like…that I regularly check on Instagram. But I do not follow the pages, I do not make any comments or like anything on those pages. People still judge you as inappropriate.

Therefore, learning experiences on the internet are conditional and often exist through a veiled identity to avoid any negative social consequences. The internalized shame led to the practice of anonymity and shifted their quest for sexual autonomy to a silent unspoken type of empowerment. Moreover, such paradoxicality between the desire for emancipation and the culture of shame and silence trapped the participants within an oppressive schema as they mixed internalized fear and guilt with the new liberating information. Trapped within the paradoxicality of personal emancipation and cultural body discipline, women’s sexual desires remained a source of embarrassment and an object of judgment that mandated her to silence in order to remain a “proper and acceptable” woman. Despite Messing’s (2011) argument that women do not suffer from insufficient knowledge regarding gender inequality, passivity, and sexual double standards, this study’s participants’ practices were bounded by patriarchal power and the normalization of guilt induction and control over their behavior.

However, some of the participants adopted such oppressive normalization as a tool to defy shame and renegotiate their sexual autonomy. Their anonymity and invisibility on the internet temporarily eliminated the participants’ anxiety over the social and cultural consequences of seeking knowledge around sexuality. The participants emphasized that learning anonymously allowed them to depart from the fear of judgment and empowered them to learn about their sexuality, and thereby successfully escape from the culture of shame. The participants’ reports on their online learning processes indicated how culturally normalized values faded away at the personal level. This discontinuity between intrapsychic and social mores promises some progress toward sexual autonomy for these women.

Practice of sexual autonomy

Confirming the findings reported in the current literature on embedded shame around sexuality, the participants’ stories demonstrate the struggle between the attempt to avoid social stigmatization and the urge for autonomy. Even though the internet as an educational tool successfully weakened the patriarchal knowledge construction on sexuality, chastity, and modesty, it is not a space free from power and patriarchal indoctrination. When talking about the struggle with shame, the narrators that I present in this section were explicitly and implicitly involved in the practice of conformity rooted in the culture of shame and silence, even though they expressed high satisfaction with their online learning experiences. As Golnoosh mentioned: “expressing your sexual needs and desires mixed up with shame and modesty, even if it does not seem like this anymore, but these things still exist.” Maral makes these points clearly when she explains: “I experience a tremendous amount of guilt in my sexual interaction, and I never experienced the pleasure I should have. The feeling of guilt that is embedded in (sharm) shame that we learned.” Parisa, who describes herself as a sexually autonomous woman in her late 30s, describes how shame silenced her autonomy and gave rise to subordination:

Despite all the information that I have and all the experiences that I went through I still struggle with expressing my sexual needs because I am afraid if my partner will be turned off with my conduct. I feel ashamed/embarrassed.

The above narrations demonstrate how showing any sign of sexuality (even in a conversation to voice your needs or searching the internet for educational purposes) leads to shame and guilt and is also strongly tied to their social respect and social acceptance. Zahra indicates that “talking about sex is considered shameless and people perceive you as improper.” Social consequences and the internalized feeling of guilt regulated the practice of conformity as a part of reality that is reinforced through various degrees of silence. The practice of conformity did not remain limited to their sexual interactions. It extended to their communication about sexuality as well. For instance, the participants avoided using the word sex and replaced it with words such as matter, thing, and it, which indicated their acute feeling of shame and discomfort not just around sexuality but its language as well.

Even though the participants tended to discover new ways of claiming their sexual autonomy, many underlying issues remain untouched through a lack of dialogue and insufficient knowledge, again as a result of the incompatibility between online and offline realms. Most of the participants problematized and reconstructed their awareness and practice of sexual autonomy via the new knowledge they obtained online, but they also experienced substantial struggles over internalized fears of rejection, punishment, and judgment rooted in patriarchal cultural script.

Soha explains: “I know what I want I know it is my right to ask for what I want, but I am afraid if he is going to judge me as immoral and unchaste woman.”

Moreover, the above narrations show how shame is not merely the measurement of modesty and respectfulness but that women employ it to mitigate the stigma attached to sexual autonomy or to any related sexual conduct that is beyond sexual subordination/conformative sexuality. Consequently, censorship of their sexual needs as sources of shame and impurity did not just become the default practice and communication around sexuality but also expanded to their online behaviors. The embedded shame draws our attention to an obscured power that controls women’s sexual autonomy beyond offline realms. The normalized shame (as predictable scripts of a proper woman) embedded in women’s sexual attitudes and actions complicated their quest for sexual autonomy in practice, even for the most rebellious participants, those who successfully pushed boundaries and renegotiated their sexual autonomy. Ziba explains:

We learned [online] together and increase our level of knowledge and awareness [on sexuality], he is open and I talk about what I want. But always at the bottom of my heart I am concerned what he thinks of me, what if he leaves me because I am too vocal or too demanding.

The internet redefines the shared understanding of sexuality that is influenced by social participants’ awareness and practice of sexual autonomy. Institutionalized cultural values, offline socio-cultural power and more liberated online activities complicated the practice of sexual autonomy in online and offline realms. Notwithstanding this, the interconnection rooted in patriarchal ideology created an imbalanced power relation in women’s awareness and meaning making around the discourse of sexuality and sexual autonomy.  Although historically women have challenged sexual subordination, the patriarchal socio-cultural ideology of their families and communities, rooted in a culture of shame and silence, hinder the participants’ desire for sexual freedom.