Anthropology / Pardis Mahdavi
Iran's Sexual Revolution

By Cynthia Peters

Pardis Mahdavi, assistant professor of anthropology, has spent the last seven years studying the sexual and social practices of young people in Iran. What she has found is a rebellion against the traditional mores promoted by the nation’s Islamic regime.

“Sex and the body are used as tools of resistance,” says Mahdavi, “and there is an intellectual architecture to these sexual and social behaviors—including being fashionable, heterosocializing, drinking, dancing and wearing lipstick and stilettos [at underground parties]. It’s more than fashion and partying.”

Demographics are spurring the sexual revolution. Half of the population is between the ages of 15 and 30. “It’s a numbers game,” Mahdavi explains. “You cannot arrest 15,000 girls wearing lipstick and stilettos. … They are no longer punished for wearing lipstick. Five years ago they definitely were.”

Since her study began, young people have changed the nation’s discourse. “People talk about sexuality openly. The word ‘condom’ was never uttered three years ago. Now it is.”

People now are standing up for young people, explains Mahdavi. “They used to stand by and figure that the kids deserved to be arrested if they did something wrong. Most people are saying they should just get rid of the theocratic rule.”

Madhavi says she has had her own run-ins with the theocratic regime. Despite encrypting her field notes and other security measures, Mahdavi was followed during a 2004 trip. Another time, she was brought in for questioning. “It was terrifying,” she says, “but I got data that no one else got.”

Mahdavi’s book, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution, is due out later this year from Stanford University Press.