If we look back in history, we can see how the empire has sought to exploit divisions in its target nations, including the gender division, and sometimes succeeded in doing so. The roles that Poder Femenino and other women's organizations, such as wives of striking copper miners in 1971 and those of striking transportation workers in 1973, some knowingly, others unknowingly, played in destabilizing the Allende administration are the best known example. In the case of Chile, the most powerful component of anti-government women were religious conservative upper-middle-class women; in the case of Iran, secular liberal upper-middle-class women are among those whom the empire wants to use through its "democracy assistance" component of the regime change campaign.
The best response that Iran's government can make to the empire's "democracy assistance" is to reform Iran preemptively, strengthening women's rights, expanding sexual freedom, and so on, but both the government and society it governs are made up of people who have a wide range of opinions about these questions, and some sectors of the population are even more conservative than the government itself, so no change can come about overnight.
In the meantime, therefore, we ought to concentrate on getting Washington to take regime change off the table, so people of Iran can concentrate on reforming the state and society without worrying about social conflicts being exploited by the empire to create a climate of ungovernability and impose its imperial solution.
> If we were witnessing a mass upsurge in the struggle against sexism in
> Iran, and unity against the external threat weren't as urgently felt
> as it is (being Iran bordered by two countries invaded by the U.S.),
> then we could say that leaders like Ahmadinejad were the main
> obstacle to social progress. But that's not the case. Iran cannot
> successfully produce effective leaders to head battles that the masses
> of the Iranian people don't view as immediately necessary. (And, to
> the extent Iran is a society conditioned by its social, economic, and
> religious history, its leaders will carry at least some of that
> baggage with them. Again, too bad.)
>
> While Iranian exiles and other Iranians with an ability to have their
> voice heard abroad may be more immediately concerned about
> sexism and the type of daily oppressions sanctioned by the form
> of Islam prevalent in Iran, that is unlikely to be the sentiment of
> the broader masses of people in Iran (yes, including women).
> For all I know, the stance that Ahmadinejad embodies has vast
> popular backing, not only in Iran but in the whole Middle East and
> northern Africa regions.
It goes without saying that Ahmadinejad does not at all think like us on sex, gender, and sexuality (nor do Khatami, Rafsanjani, Qalibaf, and other members of Iran's power elite, for that matter). What unfortunately does not occur to many leftists is that, if he thought like us, he would not have gotten elected to begin with, for most working people of Iran do not think like us at all.
It is clear, moreover, the Leader and the Guardian Council, in possession of veto power over the legislative and administrative branches, are more conservative on sex, gender, and sexuality than the President and the Parliament, both now and during the Khatami administration.
Regarding economy, too, now the Leader himself has committed the country to the course of "privatization" (albeit mainly in the form of privatizing state enterprises into the hands of the Revolutionary Guard and other state and para-state entities, rather than giving them away to private investors), so the Leader and the Guardian Council no longer do much to check neoliberal economics as they once did during the Khatami administration.
Therefore, it would make sense for both Iranians who desire sex, gender, and sexuality reform and those who favor populist economics to support the elected branches of the government _against_ the unelected ones when favorable policies proposed by the legislative or administrative branch get vetoed by the Leader and the Guardian Council, but protesters, both during the Khatami and Ahmadinejad administrations, have not acted strategically for that purpose. Perhaps the Iranians are not yet ready to challenge the fundamental political structure of the Islamic Republic. -- Yoshie