As an Iranian woman, the lack of support by Western feminists as Iran’s oppressed women struggle to liberate themselves never ceases to amaze and appall me. Isn’t feminism supposed to be about women’s liberation? And yet, with Iran, a country where women are governed by absolutist religious law that hardly treats them as human, so many Western feminists either maintain their silence or end up supporting the regime. As the United States enters the war with the Islamic Republic that has ruined the lives of generations of Iranians, challenging this silence is more important than ever.
On a June 19 episode of The View, host Whoopi Goldberg provided a lesson on what I mean. When cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin accurately noted that the Iranian regime brutally executes homosexual people, Whoopi said: “Oh, let’s not do that, because if we start with that, we have been known in this country to tie gay folks to the car. Listen, I’m sorry. They used to just keep hanging Black people.” Goldberg’s response was stunning: instead of condemning Iran’s record, she deflected with a bizarre false equivalency. When Griffin responded, “I think it’s very different to live in the United States in 2025 than it is in Iran,” Goldberg shockingly replied, “Not if you’re black.”
As my fellow Iranian-American Lisa Daftari so eloquently put it: “It’s astonishing that Whoopi Goldberg would even suggest that life for black Americans is somehow equivalent to living under the rule of the ayatollah in Iran [when] she, as a woman — and a woman of color — has a platform where she can speak freely, express dissenting views, and appear uncovered on national television.” Yet appallingly, many of Whoopi’s misstatements received sustained and enthusiastic applause from the studio audience.
Unfortunately, I was one of the first people to see what kind of world Iran’s new jihadi leadership offered. When I was just 6 years old, my parents decided that it was time for my family to escape the Islamic revolution. My mother hid me and my sister beneath corn and burlap in the back of a covered truck, and we escaped with several others across the Pakistani border — shot at by border guards as we crossed — eventually finding our way to a blessed life of opportunity in America.
Most Iranians were not so fortunate. Does Whoopi not know what kind of lives Iranian women and girls are forced to live every single day? Iran uses electronic surveillance to enforce compulsory veiling laws throughout the country. Teenage girls are raped and murdered by security forces when they fail to comply. The global democracy monitor Freedom House explains that “Women do not receive equal treatment under the law and face widespread discrimination… a woman’s testimony in court is given half the weight of a man’s… women are banned from certain public places and can generally obtain a passport to travel abroad only with the permission of their fathers or husbands.”
In 2022, Iranian government thugs beat 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini to death. The resulting uproar tumbled out of the regime’s control as Iranian women, girls, and others who stand with them took to the streets under the inspiring slogan of “Women, Life, Freedom.” According to some estimates, at least 20% of Iranian women have appeared in public unveiled in solidarity despite state threats of arrest and harassment.
Unfortunately, once again, the West failed to stand wholeheartedly with those seeking change. At least 500 citizens were murdered in Tehran’s brutal crackdown. The actual death toll may be far higher, as there have been an estimated 20,000 arrests tied to the crackdown, and government forces have used poison gas against Iranian schoolgirls. Regime authorities blinded at least 120 people. And for the survivors, the message was clear: The world has abandoned you, and the system is here to stay.
So, where are all the Western feminists who have so much to say about microaggressions, transgender athletes, and the “male gaze” as a form of harassment? Many are bizarrely absent, and some have even explained why. Often, it’s in a quiet, embarrassed tone. Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad explained during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. Alinejad, who has been pursued by Iranian assassins on American soil, shared her experience that Western feminists “don’t even let us talk about our own experiences. Here they tell me, ‘Shh! If you talk about this, you’re going to cause Islamophobia.’ Phobia is irrational, but believe me, my fear and the fear of millions of Iranian women is rational.”
Here’s the truth: The word Islamophobia was invented by Iranian mullahs in the 1970s to make any criticism of their “religious” beliefs, however radical or chauvinistic, immune to criticism and analogous to racism. The Iranian regime has leveraged worries of offending Islamic communities to set up a far-reaching propaganda network across the Western world. When Iran vows to wipe Israel off the map, fear of exhibiting “Islamophobia” may be part of what keeps the response of Western intellectuals so tepid.
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Many feminists are now joining pro-Iran protests with violent and genocidal slogans such as “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground” and “Death to Israel,” which incidentally are also weaponizing global antisemitism. While we’re on the topic, how odd that so many Western feminists who turn a blind eye to the abuses of the jihadi regime in Tehran fail to stand with Israel, the Middle Eastern country where women have the most rights and representation, even when Iranian proxies carried out a mass rape attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Even as the Iranians try to make good their promise by raining missiles from the sky on apartment buildings, hospitals, and universities.
So to all of my feminist friends, I’d like to challenge you now, at the 11th hour, to question the unthinking views that have held your best principles in check. Margaret Atwood, author of the cautionary classic The Handmaid’s Tale, has admitted that the Islamic Republic inspired the repressive dystopia for women that the novel depicts. If that is the future we oppose for modern women, then our goal must not be to deflect or turn our gaze away from the monstrous society that is modern Iran. Instead, we should stand with the beleaguered women who have the misfortune of actually living there, and demand real change: the end of the jihadi regime.
Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician and star of the Emmy-nominated Netflix series Skin Decision: Before and After. She is the host of The Closet podcast. Her family escaped to the United States from Iran.