The Body Revolts.

Author wishes to remain anonymous.

This sentence was written on a wall in a city in Iran last year during the Woman Life Freedom movement. It has many meanings, and besides, this sentence, consisting of only a noun and a verb, is so powerful that it can depict both the real and imaginary revolutionary atmosphere.

The body was and is the foundation of the Woman Life Freedom movement. It all began with the image of Mahsa Jina Amini's innocent, suffering body on the bed of Kasra Hospital in Tehran. The first signs of the revolution manifested in this body surrounded by tubes, infusions, and life-support measures. Jina's tortured body became the flag of the revolution. It appeared everywhere, seen in every city, every neighborhood, and every house in Iran. It transcended borders and became universal. On her tombstone, it is written: "Dear Jina, you will not die, your name will become a secret word," and so it happened. The physical death of this body ignited a revolution that was entirely physical.

The initial signs; the first headscarf removed and twirled in the air by a woman; the first hair in the wind; the first body dancing around the fire on the first night of the movement; standing upright together, hand in hand; the Kurdish dance; the collective singing; the repeated X-rays of bodies riddled with bullets; eye sockets that initially resembled bloodshot shells and then became empty; the small body of Kian, preserved on ice until dawn; the athletic body of Mohammad Hosseini, laid to rest in the earth; the bodies that all became witnesses to the dark destruction and killing machine; the one body that multiplied and united not hundreds but thousands, millions of people from around the world; all these bodies became the incarnation of a revolution born out of the oppression of the body. The suppression of a woman's body, as Barbara Kruger wrote in her work: Your body is a battleground. The body of a woman; the result of oppression, discrimination, and exclusion; the result of threat and restriction. But this imposition and humiliation were and are not the story of women in Iran today and yesterday. The resistance against this oppression is also not the story of today and yesterday.

A hundred years before the day when women in the Woman Life Freedom movement burned their headscarves on the streets of Iran, in the winter of 1922, women belonging to the "Society of Patriotic Women" gathered in Tupkhaneh Square in Tehran and burned an insulting brochure titled "Treachery of Women." In this way, they protested against the spread of this misogynistic publication, recently sold in the city, which degraded the social role of women and associated them with superstition.

"Jam'iyat-e Nesvân-e Vatankhâh," "The Society of Patriotic Women," was one of the first and most important women's rights organizations that operated in Iran after the Constitutional Revolution. In Iran, there are many organizations, associations, and groups that have been active both publicly and privately for the rights of women in the last hundred years (and even earlier). Also, in recent years, many civil movements have formed in line with the protests of various groups in Iranian society. These movements have formed independently of whether their demands led to results at different times and in different places. They are immensely important because their dynamic, vibrant nature allows the population to be active and proactive at any time.

The pluralistic atmosphere created by the Woman Life Freedom revolution brought together many groups inside and outside Iran. In this revolution, not only women and their right to their own bodies and a free choice of clothing were at the center of attention, but also the different groups in society and their common desire for freedom. Thus, the Woman Life Freedom revolution stirred the bodies and gave rise to many movements, allowing sexual, religious, and ethnic minorities, who were marginalized and never had the opportunity to express their opinions, to be heard.

Furthermore, this movement mobilized bodies that were always under supervision and surveillance. Right on the first day of this movement, there was rebellion and resistance against surveillance in any form and framework. Removing the headscarf became the most common form of protest. Burning the headscarves added another dimension to the movement. The message of burning headscarves was not just a protest against compulsory veiling but, in a performative way, a rebellion and refusal against all other discriminatory laws.

While the difficult conditions imposed by the government limited and threatened the space for any form of protest, various forms of performative protests still emerged: dance, free embraces, street art by anonymous artists, disregard for gender segregation at universities and public places, slogans shouted every night from houses, and the use of every opportunity to demonstrate solidarity and unity against the existing rule. Above all, in the funerals for those killed in the Woman Life Freedom movement, solidarity among people was evident, despite their belonging to different ethnic groups with different mourning rituals.

But one thing was common between the burden of mourning for the dead and the dance of a girl with flowing hair on the street of a small town in northern Iran: resistance. Resistance for life. The Woman Life Freedom movement is a revolution of bodies for life; a revolution of bodies in turmoil and resisting to achieve life, freedom, and the freedom of life.