A Collective Statement by Men Advocating for Gender and Sexual Equality: Let Us End This Silence and Complicity
152
Signatures
500
Goal
11 June 2025
On 31 May 2025, several male athletes from the Iranian national track and field team were arrested in South Korea for allegedly raping a local woman while attending the 2025 Asian Athletics Championships.
All this comes at a time when the Islamic Republic is accelerating its killing machine more than ever before. The blood of Jina (Mahsa) Amini—spilled under the violent enforcement of the state’s hijab mandate—has barely dried, and already, in 2024 alone, 191 cases of femicide have been recorded by human rights groups. We know this number vastly underrepresents reality, as no official institution within Iran documents such killings.
Last year, Iran had the highest recorded number of women executions in the world. The regime has resumed issuing death sentences to politically active women such as Pakhshan Azizi, Varisheh Moradi, and Sharifeh Mohammadi.
Iran ranks 143rd out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index. At best, only 18% of Iranian women have access to paid employment. Regarding sexual and gender minorities, not only is information scarce, but accurate statistics are virtually non-existent. Same-sex relationships are criminalized and punishable by flogging or death; trans people’s gender expression is criminalized via mandatory hijab; and queer individuals face coercion to “correct” their sexual and gender identities, creating a daily climate of terror.
Throughout modern Iranian history, at some of its most critical turning points
- from the 1979 Revolution and Khomeini’s decree mandating compulsory hijab to the mass suppression of women who took to the streets on 8 March that same year in protest;
- from the systematic stripping of rights from women and the queer community to the persistent repression of the women’s movement, including the One Million Signatures Campaign, the more recent protests against forced veiling, and the uprisings against femicide;
- from the “Me Too” movement in Iran to “Women, Life, Freedom,” and the attacks by “‘Man, Homeland, Prosperity” against these movements by the ruling establishment, parts of the opposition, and the patriarchal society;
We men in Iran, including intellectual men, have rarely taken collective, meaningful initiative to push back against political, social, and cultural patriarchy. We abandoned women. We failed queer people.
In this context, we believe that we men need to seriously reconsider the concept of “masculinity”—a term that is being overly repeated these days, as if we have returned to the era of old Iranian films (filmfarsi) that glorified “honor killings.” Our return to such a point, despite having already walked past this path during the “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi/Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, is nothing but a free fall.
We, a group of men advocating for gender and sexual equality from diverse backgrounds, believe that action is necessary. Our silence—at a time when the edifice of patriarchy grows larger and more catastrophic by the day—is a betrayal to women and feminist movements. This silence, this complicity, must end. We must stand up and say loudly: Sir, enough is enough! Enough with irresponsibility, enough with violence, enough with rape, “honor killings” and femicide. Enough with the decades-long occupation of everything, everywhere, by men—occupation of social spaces, jobs, opportunities, and the streets. Let us accept that part of the space we have occupied, the rights we have taken, must be returned to their rightful owners.
Sir, Brother, Father, Husband, Friend, Life partner, Mr. Athlete, Mr. National Player, Mr. Artist, … Let us collectively renounce the unjust privileges we have long held.
We believe silence in the face of a patriarchal system that has long oppressed women, minorities, and other marginalized people is itself a form of complicity with this system of repression. Patriarchy is not just an unjust structure that concentrates power in the hands of men—it is the very foundation of violence, discrimination, and the systematic violation of human rights.
In such a system, femicide, sexual, social, and domestic violence are not merely individual acts but the direct consequences of a dominant order that endangers the lives of thousands of women every day and threatens the very fabric of society.
In these circumstances, we must shout that we men are responsible not only for challenging this structure but also for actively confronting it in practice.
Our silence, indifference, and passivity only perpetuate this cycle of violence.
At this critical juncture, ashamed of all our silences and complicities, we loudly affirm that any concession to patriarchy is a collaboration with patriarchy itself—and that the Islamic Republic is the perfect and complete embodiment of this patriarchal system.
We want to remind you that within the patriarchal system, we have held—and continue to hold—many privileges. Yet the truth remains: patriarchy has shown no mercy even to us men, and it never will. Let us remember:
Today, once again, a woman was murdered.
Today, once again, we stayed silent.
Today, once again, we shrugged indifferently.
Today, once again, we looked the other way.
For years, many of us have lived under the rule of the Islamic Republic, repeatedly saying, “We are not political.”
We shrugged it off. We remained indifferent. And this indifference made us complicit.
Today, we face ourselves—and the man standing before us—with this truth: the liberation of women is the liberation of society.
And us men? We have long been part of the chain that has made this liberation impossible.
We call you out, sir.
Call us out in return.
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A group of men advocating for gender and sexual equality started this petition
