When two 17-year-old twins rose from their seats and walked toward the concert hall stage at the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, the audience clapped while wondering who they were. They were the children of Iranian activist and journalist Narges Mohammadi, recognized for her tireless campaigning for Iranian women’s rights and opposing the death penalty. Mohammadi would have accepted the accolades herself, but she was more than 2,400 miles away—trapped behind the tall and cold walls of Iran’s infamous Evin prison. AP News from January 15, 2024 explains: after being convicted on five counts of spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic regime, Mohammadi was sentenced to 31 years in prison. Even in the face of damning prison conditions, Mohammadi’s advocacy is unwavering. On October 6, 2023, CNN shared a letter she smuggled out of prison with the help of intermediaries. This feminist protest detailed the sexual abuse against female detainees calling out the Iranian government for misusing religion to strip women of their basic freedoms. Mohammadi risked everything to take a final stand against the hypocrisy of the Iranian military system. Considering that Iran International of March 28, 2024, spotlights that in the last two weeks alone, eleven more female Iranian activists were sentenced to over sixty years in prison, this letter isn’t just a protest, but a plea for survival, prompting the research question: how does Mohammadi’s transnational act of resistance impact women’s rights in Iran? To answer, we will refer to University of Greenwich professor Gillian Young’s article, “Private Pain/Public Peace: Women’s Rights as Human Rights” featured in the Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Young examines how feminist campaigns have politicized the private pain suffered by women and mobilized it into public concern, exactly what Mohammadi is doing now. So today, let’s examine Young’s model, apply it to Mohammadi’s letter, and develop implications. Because while Mohammadi has a Nobel Peace Prize, she expects to spend the rest of her life in prison.

Patriarchal systems have traditionally classified violence against women as private. With distance and protection from the legal gaze, these systems lack accountability and punishment, illustrating three tenets: reputation preservation, limited state change, and global campaigning. First, reputation preservation. Violence against women often occurs privately to preserve perpetrators’ reputations. Though governments claim to protect women from torture or ill-treatment, many abusers are agents of the state, such as police officers, prison guards, or soldiers. By claiming to protect the public’s peace and using their authority to manipulate the media, state agents are able to silence the women they’ve terrorized and revoke their agency to seek justice—all while keeping their image pristine.

Second, limited state change. States operate between maintaining power and protecting the rights of individuals, a tenuous balance. For feminist activists, this balancing act makes enacting change difficult. States are at a crossroads when considering feminist policy changes; either they refuse to protect women from violence or they hold their own members accountable for their crimes. Choosing the latter is counterproductive, as abuse against women maintains the patriarchy that upholds the state. As a result, feminist activists go unheard and violence-induced power structures stay in place.

Third, global campaigning. Public and private forms of violence require global scrutiny to actually move the needle on gender politics. Communication networks from Facebook to memoirs help to maximize the number of witnesses to the atrocities committed by the state against women. By using an accessible channel of communication, women activists around the world can connect, share information about the local campaigns they’re a part of, and ultimately amplify the feminist movement.

Mohammadi worked tirelessly to ensure that her letter made it out of prison; let’s see how her plea illustrates the three tenets of Young’s model. First, reputation preservation. The sexual violence that Mohammadi details in her letter is representative of her push for Iranian women to live dignified lives, free from persecution. Feminism inherently criticizes the male centeredness of traditional outlooks on torture, because that’s what makes it so difficult to call out violence against Iranian women as ‘torture.’ If the state keeps Mohammadi’s torture private, her captors gain complete control of the narrative and preserve their reputations. Mohammadi is silenced, as Iran revokes her agency to seek justice.

Second, limited state change. Mohammadi’s letter addresses severe torture inflicted upon imprisoned Iranian women, demonstrating Iran’s inability to function as an agent to its own change. Mohammadi underscores in her letter, “The fear, anxiety, and sense of insecurity resulting from the attacks by security forces and transfer to unknown solitary cells inflicts devastating blows to the individual’s psyche,” leaving Iran’s military at a crossroads, between prosecuting women, and their own anti-violence policies. Mohammadi’s letter reiterates that the state is limited in its ability to change because there is no incentive to—the violence prevents more protest.

Third, global campaigning. Mohammadi has become known for her efforts to advance women’s rights as human rights, utilizing global communication networks strategically. Her plea was sent straight to CNN, a western media source—capitalizing on her well-received reputation in the west and spreading global awareness about the plight of Iranian women. Her strategy, however, flattens the fight for empowerment within Iran. CNN and other western outlets are unpopular amongst patriotic Iranians—meaning they can’t hold Iran accountable for misogynistic violence.

Earlier we asked, how does Mohammadi’s transnational act of resistance impact women’s rights in Iran? Spreading awareness does indeed provide important avenues for advocacy. But the truth is, Mohammadi’s choice to focus her pleas to the west doesn’t alleviate the plight of Iranian women. Until her message breaks from its Western silo, the Iranian government will continue to silence women, raising two implications: perceived betrayal and necessary martyrdom.

First, perceived betrayal. While Western audiences quickly backed Mohammadi’s message, the same exact people she is trying to protect view her as a threat. While the West views the treatment of women in Iran as inhumane, many Iranian women fear losing the little freedom they do possess, going so far as to actively oppose the Western idea of total liberation. Western arrogance prevents one critical understanding: Most Iranian women are willing to suffer minor abuses to preserve their sanctity in daily life. Mohammadi simply envisions a reality where her fellow women don’t have to suffer at all. But until that day comes, she is willing to put her life on the line for people who welcome her death.

Second, necessary martyrdom. Society demands either our lives or our freedom to prove our commitment to the cause. From Martin Luther King Jr’s imprisonment to Mohamad Bouazizi’s self-immolation literally sparking the Arab Spring, society has posed the question, is the cause really that remarkable if you’re not willing to lose your life for it? And Mohammadi has answered. In December 2023, Mohammadi smuggled a second letter where she admits her death might be the only thing that catalyzes the fight for women’s freedom in Iran. To be a martyr is one thing; to be a willing martyr is another thing entirely—one that reflects a person’s deep and morbid understanding of the reality of state-sanctioned violence. The Iranian women’s movement has existed for two hundred years, but it took Mohammadi illustrating Iran’s torture from the inside to gain any traction. When self-sacrifice is demanded from activists, it creates a precarious scenario where a movement is only deemed worthy of attention if someone dies for it.

Today, we examined Young’s model, applied it to Mohammadi’s letter, and developed implications. While the world has defined Mohammadi’s actions as worthy of the Nobel peace prize, until Iran agrees, real peace will be an unattainable prize.