New Book On Iran's Sexual Revolution

Passionate Uprisings, a new book by Iranian-American anthropologist, Pardis Mahdavi, is a fascinating, ground-breaking, and personal look into a society that is poorly understood—if it is understood at all—by the majority of Westerners today.  Mahdavi's narrative provides a first-hand account and insider's portrait into the lives of the 20 and 30-somethings, urban Iranians, who make up a disproportionately high percentage of the country's population. Here is a video presentation on the book by Mahdavi.

The book describes the sexual revolution that began and took hold of Iran's youth over a decade ago with Khatami's election as president on a platform of political transparency and social reform. In the ensuing years, the social and sexual revolution has gained momentum as the country's students have managed to extract more freedom for themselves in their public and private lives. Surprisingly, as Mahdavi's book reports, this desire for social change does not seem to have dampened over the past few years despite a more conservative president in office.  She candidly describes how Islamic dress codes, which would have women covering themselves from head to toe,  are disobeyed. The book details public displays of affection between men and women, and late night orgies and trysts, premartial and extramarital affairs, behaviors which are all banned and punishable by law in Iran.

While these personal/political/sexual rebellions of young Iranians, which Passionate Uprisings so vividly details, have not resulted in a dramatic showdown with the Islamic regime or  even a relatively more liberal and democratic state (and it is impossible to predict what the tipping point will be), Mahdavi remains optimistic. She thinks we should not discount the impact of the sexual revolution taking place in the country, “one needs only to look to Iran’s neighbor to the north, the former Soviet Union, or even to the Czech Republic’s “Velvet Revolution”, to realize that so-called “soft” revolutions (which could similarly be used to describe Iran’s current social and sexual revolution) can result in the collapse of a state due to a lack of governmental legitimacy.”