The issue with any feminist critique or any other critique of anti-imperialist critical support of an authoritarian state is that the state itself is the battleground on which these struggles take place.

Iran has a gender equality problem. A big gender equality problem. Probably it has other big problems too that make supporting it uncomfortable. It is entirely correct to oppose any regime that is regressive towards any group. It is entirely correct to criticize Iran’s attitude towards women’s rights and Iran’s attitude towards feminism.

And it’s too much of a hand-wave to simply say that anti-imperialism comes first. It’s not correct to create a hierarchy of justice and say that justice against imperialism is more important and overrides justice for women in Iran.

But the state is the vehicle, battleground, for achieving justice for women’s right, or any other rights. The state is the level at which those rights are fought over. It is at the level of the state that public policy is formed and enforced, at which legal rights for women and at which punishment for oppressors of women occurs, so it’s at the level of the state that the battle for legal rights must occur.

Anti-imperialism is not more important than feminism, but it is a prerequisite for feminism.

If the state is destroyed or subjugated then the fight for feminism or any other rights within that state cannot occur. If the state disintegrates into local factions then the fight for feminism also disintegrates into a more local affair. If the state is subjugated by another state then the rights of women in the subjugated state are now at the whim of the occupier. If it doesn’t serve the interests of the occupier to promote feminist rights in the occupied state, then those rights cannot move forward.

Or, if the occupier is not outright opposed to feminism, it may allow feminist rights to progress but only ever insofar as that struggle doesn’t compromise the interests of the occupier. And necessarily shaped towards the interests of the occupier.

Anti-imperialism is not more important than feminism or any other progressive issue. It is, however, the prerequisite. The state must exist and the state must have sovereignty for any local rights to progress.

It’s conceivable that sometimes a state is so regressive that its destruction is a necessary prerequisite to the struggle for minority rights. Like, it’s hard to imagine the rights of Jewish people progressing under Nazi Germany so the destruction of Nazi Germany as a state was the prerequisite for racial/ethnic justice to develop in Germany. So it’s not an absolute to say that the only way to progress feminism is to maintain the state as the battleground of rights.

But that’s a question of material reality. Is Iran so horrid that women’s rights simply cannot progress? It’s not. Women’s rights have progressed there. They are still far behind where they should be, no doubt, still far behind what is normal in the west. But it’s not incapable of change and evolution. So it’s very difficult to say that the struggle for feminism requires the destruction of Iran as a state.

And if you want to argue that feminism would progress under a US occupation then material reality matters again. Would feminism progress under a US occupation? Did feminism progress in Afghanistan? Iraq? Does it progress better in Saudi Arabia than Iran?

Feminism is just as important as anti-imperialism and anti-imperialism does not override feminism. It’s one struggle. The preservation of a sovereign state that is capable of evolving its treatment of women is the prerequisite for the progression of feminism in Iran.

Occupation of Iran or a puppet regime would not progress feminism there and would be counterproductive because it would sideline or, even worse, co-opt the local struggle for feminism in favor of the interests of the occupier.

It’s one struggle. Feminism requires anti-imperialism. It isn’t subordinated to it. Iranian women can only advocate their rights if the state they live in is capable of responding to their demands which necessarily means that for Iranian feminism to succeed then Iran must be a sovereign state.

If the USA really was the army of progressive liberation then yeah sure the USA would be justified in erasing authoritarian and regressive regimes and establishing in their place progressive regimes. If the USSR didn’t stop at Berlin and replaced Europe with sovereign Soviet republics you couldn’t criticize it. But that’s not what the USA is and that’s not what it would create in Iran.

When an imperialist subjugates another state it doesn’t promote internal rights. It promotes internal division. It empowers whoever is most willing to serve their interests. The rights of feminism are, at best, a tangential inconvenience. Iranian women would be incapable of advocating their rights in a subjugated Iran because they would have zero power over the USA.

Imma be real. I found that article unreadable. Like halfway I just lost interest in the neverending tsunami of word salads and buzzwords. So I can't fully criticize it. But by the halfway point the author complains about Iranian internally directed violence ignoring that it was promoted by the US and pissrael. Like not even just indirectly through sanctions. So if you don't want "authoritarian" governments how about you stop fuckig destroying countries so they are forced to militarize and survive in a much worse state, but infinitely better than the state the genocidal west would leave them in. North Korea and Libya are literally the examples of thi. Like I'm sorry. This is atrocious.

is campism even a real word or should i just ignore anyone saying it

campism

Me holding my "neither Berlin nor London" sign while British kids are being blown up by Stuka dive bombers during the Blitz

Know your audience.

There is an extent to which, in the "polite" company of the news mega and other mostly insular leftist/communist/ML/MLM communities, I think there is probably more room for some analysis and criticism of things that the Iranian government has not handled well or needs to improve. Specifically, the growth of their own bourgeois capitalist class that has driven some economic choices that benefit said class to the cost of the Iranian working classes. The vast majority of the economic problems in Iran are still driven by sanctions and the government's inability to interact with the international banking system, but it's not the only cause of economic hardship. It's just the most significant one (by a sizable margin).

It would not be the first time that users here have pointed out that many of the socially conservative norms within Iranian society and certain socially conservative Islamic-based movements create a natural base of potential dissidents among LGBT people, women, etc. The zionists have realized this and used it to their advantage in Palestine by blackmailing LGBT Palestinians into working for them as spies. And that is just from a strategic perspective, saying nothing of the larger ethical imperitives that I would say generally all users here agree with as it relates to feminism, LGBT rights, etc.

I would also say that collectively we have a tendency to sometimes flatten internal political conflicts and issues, and that is not limited to Iran. Protests movements tend to start more spontaneously than I think we give them credit for at times, although yes, they are very regularly hijacked and coopted by outside agitators with motives that have very little to do with the initial causes of the protest. No AES or anti-imperialist state is perfect. Socialism is a process, and it's not always going to go smoothly. Sometimes that is going to result in "organic" or "spontaneous" dissent, unjustified or otherwise.

However,

the Anglosphere, where probably the majority of this userbase resides physically and/or digitally, is dominated by liberals and chuds who could not give a single solitary shit about any sort of Marxist-based criticism of the Iranian class system or the government's relationship with it. As such, any broader public criticism of Iran within the Anglosphere, no matter how heavily sandwiched between otherwise anti-imperialist rhetoric, will be cherry-picked by the libs and chuds as proof that "even the commies think the Iranian government is bad" and used as further justification for the imperialist actions against Iran. It is not lost on me that this Kurdish-Iranian academic at Paris 8 University, who I imagine is most likely from the upper classes of Iranian society, seems more concerned with frankly a number of bourgeois rights over more basic necessities needed by the same Iranian women, LGBT people, and other minorities she professes her desire to liberate.

There is, fundamentally, no meaningful communist/socialist political movement in Iran to replace the current Iranian government. The Shah saw to it that said movement was mostly snuffed out or exiled (to say nothing of whether those exiles, such as the MEK, are the sort of "leftists" I would want to support, they aren't), but the current government has also repressed some others, for better or worse. Regardless, there are no 200k Iranian Bolsheviks waiting for their own October Revolution. Should the Iranian government collapse, it will, at best, be replaced by a repressive neoliberal puppet government subservient to Western/Zionist interests. At worst there will be no Iran as we know it left to govern. By the words of Iran's own enemies, they object to Iran's very existence as an independent, unified nation-state, not just specific policies of their government. This war is existential for Iran as a whole, including the women, LGBT, and other minorities this author claims to care about. What use will not having to wear a veil be to the Iranian woman who now can't feed herself or her family because the neoliberal puppet government got rid of food subsidies? The best outcome is a tenfold amplification of the problems that spawned a number of the initial, organic protests against the government in the first place.

It's no surprise that she doesn't have an answer to what leftists outside of Iran should be doing, because there isn't one outside of "oppose the war". It's funny for her to talk about "forgrounding the critical in critical support". What she seems to want is "supportive criticism" more so than "critical support". What's interesting about her stance, and perhaps I have buried the lede here, is that in looking at a few of her other writings, she seems to be all for "revolutionary defeatism", just in the name of a Kurdish ethnostate.

Kurdish

Ignored. Lapdogs of empire who have been part of the fallen for it again Charlie Brown Lucy football brigade for decades do not get to lecture us or anyone on anything but how to not fall for CIA propaganda and promises.

Probably ghost-written by the CIA. Don't care, shut up CIA lapdog.