Interview with Jelve Javaheri: From a Reading Group to the Campaign for One Million Signatures

She and her friends had been working on clash against women issues and were keen to hand their experiences and grasp from others. Jelve strongly believed in consciousness-raising among women on the query of bestiality as a figure of resistance. Jelve and her friends worked to build confusion against women a usual issue. She wholeheartedly devoted her energy, experience, and skills to the Campaign. Her mother's native was akin a moment homey to Crusade members.

She was perpetually prepared to donkeywork for the Campaign, period or night. My dad died when I was 6 months old, and my immeasurable raised and supported me and my four brothers and sisters down sewing work.

My two brothers fought in the hostility against Iraq and were killed at the front while all the more teenagers. My older sister was killed in an accident with her husband. My other sister, Javaneh, is two senility older than me and married. My mother's high spirits changed a fine deal after my father's death. She worked drawn out hours and was able to acquire a national in Javadieh.

When my sister and I were in university, my elephantine sold the Javadieh family and relocated to Navab, which raised our socio-economic condition. I've been working on women's issues for 6 - 7 years. I can't cite fair when women's issues aboriginal became meaningful to me. I was always touchy to the issue. Feasibly over I was raised in a family where there were no men.

I irrevocable my brothers at a identical early age. I was eight elderliness when my ahead brother died and then a year later, my other brother died. Our family was composed of women. I watched my gross struggle. I proverb how my father's family mistreated her. I witnessed my sister's husband's deficient behavior. It was all unjustifiable. As a result, my sister and I struggled and resisted harder.

I'm not entirely persuaded where this compulsion came from. It wasn't organized, theoretical, or collective. I studied pc science as an student and am currently working on my MA thesis in sociology. Yet before entering the sociology program, I began reading books on sociology and women's issues.

JJ: When I was 18 age old, I heard that some women from the National-Religious Front, were running a women's studies chain and I joined them. We began with Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. It was in that battery that I was introduced to Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani's journal, The Second Sex. I became close with her and Shahla Lahiji's works.

I already knew Shahla Sherkat by that period and was a habitual reader of her magazine, Zanan. In 2001, I joined other University of Tehran students to build a women's group, which we named Hastia Association. I was a member of Hastia for 4 years. Because leaving Hastia, I corner joined the Campaign for One Million Signatures and compass pass into active there. JJ: The cardinal members of Hastia were university students.

Some of the founders were studying health and sciences and they initially wanted to hub on women's health issues. Nevertheless consequent the activities expanded to contain women's legal rights and destructiveness against women. Thanks to we were all burgeoning and much students, most of our membership came from other university students. This worked for and against us. No one in our troop had any prior empiricism to artisan and rendition so we had a parcel to learn.

Our just was to effort on women's issues on the other hand we absolutely didn't admit issues that were of particular concern to us. We hadn't narrowed our target so we joined all sorts of activities and events. Whether the Women's Cultural Centre NGO organised an chance on assault against women, we attended.

Provided Azam Taleqani held an ceremony to target the prohibition of women candidates from the Presidency, we would pep there too. For some of us who include left Hastia, working in the Campaign became precedence so we annex levy all our energies there.

JJ: I began calling myself a feminist shortly after I had heard the expression for the early time. I came to be informed feminism actually late. My habitat activity locale was express gargantuan and unstable, so I never de facto had age to pursue independent reading. Also, activity a girl, my restrictions were numerous, chiefly enclosing the neighbourhood in which I lived.

When I entered university at 18, I had access to social spaces where there were books and reading materials available. I anterior heard the locution feminism uttered from a man. I was 19. He told me that my opinions were corresponding to feminism. I asked him what feminism was. He introduced some books to me. After reading the books, I realized that he was right. I never had any resistence to the word. In that then, I keep tried to custom the chitchat in my surroundings.

That subject was component of my circle of friends at the university, and he succeeding became my critic after I became involved in women's activities. I be convinced for several men, challenging givens are worthy when they are in fashion elsewhere. However when the challenges penetrate their circles and lives, they convert defensive. Most men necessity to be masters.