"Not surprisingly, many have called for a lifting of the boycott on Tehran’s chess tournament and have shunned women from the outside for meddling in the affairs of Iranian women. Once again, women are counseled to turn a deaf ear on their natural allies and trust in “quiet and slow reform.” But Paikidze is doing for the cause of gender equality in Iran what Ray Charles did when he refused to perform in the segregated American South. She is refusing to play by the rules of the oppressors. Where would the civil rights movement be if high profile advocates had not rained on the Jim Crow parade?
There has been no greater plague on human rights campaigns in Iran than “relativism” and its post-modern peddlers. The only thing relativist arguments achieve is to disband the hard-earned solidarity established despite border lines by the idealism of the 20th century. Now relativists are bullying female chess players and their supporters into withdrawing their boycott, accusing them of “cultural meddling.”
Women are women wherever they may be, and as such they have the right to make their own decisions — be it about their dress or their reproductive rights. Those who argue that female activists in Iran should keep their “foreign” sympathizers at bay and opt for slow reform have not suffered under the mandatory veil for the longest 37 years of their lives. No doubt if a well-meaning bus-driver had quietly allowed Rosa Parks to sit at the front of the bus, she would have gotten off and waited for the next bus, for any right that is earned as a mere hush-hush favor, without a binding social contract, can just as hush-hushedly be taken away.
If a movement for equality were to reject global support, it would betray a lack of conviction in its cause. To keep a struggle “local,” is to reduce the gravity of its historic plight, as if fighting for the freedom to choose how to dress were a mere squabble to be settled by the village chief. It infantilizes women by belittling their concerns. To become equal citizens, Iranian women cannot be expected to behave as defenseless minors, at the mercy of governmental masters. As for the rest of us, we must steel ourselves against academic fatwas and relativist opinions. We must keep doing what women do best: stand together in sisterhood."
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