The other day, Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, announced that she has organized a meeting on Iran protests for world’s female foreign ministers. As The Guardian reported, Canada is hosting a virtual meeting of female foreign ministers to discuss the brutal crackdown on the protests in Iran.
In case you are not familiar with the situation, the protests started after the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody, after being detained due to improper hair cover. Since then, there have been demonstrations all over the country and abroad, often led by women, but not only.
Different countries and organizations have reacted to the situation differently, going from abstaining from commenting, to expressing support for the women and freedom in Iran, to enacting sanctions on leaders in Iran. And now the good cerebral Canada has come up with a novel approach: virtual conference of female foreign ministers of the world to discuss the matter. We’ll see if this approach transpires anything, but there is something that has often ticked me off in similar situations, and this one is no exception.
Why is it that our societies always expect those affected by discrimination be the major leaders of protest? Why should it be mostly women demonstrating against the treatment of women? Why should it be gays and lesbians demanding equality for gays and lesbians? Why should it be ethnic and religious minorities that demonstrate against racial and religious discrimination?
I have always thought that Iranian women have been doing a quiet revolution against this regime: they constitute a slight majority in Iranian university students, they are the leaders in startups in Iran, and in general they have become superwomen. They take care of the home, the children, and the economy. By obligation, they had left the politics to men, but they decided the men are not trustworthy so they took over the politics, as well.
But let’s close with Canada’s female foreign minister virtual conference. Does that mean that the Canadian government considers that women’s freedom are the only subject of the demonstrations? Or is it that only women can/should address Iran’s protests? Luckily, men in Iran, and Iranian men abroad, feel also engaged and that is what makes Canada’s discrimination against male foreign ministers in this case a contradiction.
Paris, October 20, 2022
Zeejay