Against the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement: Anatomy of a Backlash
Recent protests in Iran have been increasingly dominated by voices that represent a backlash against the feminist foundations of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. What began as a movement centered on women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and resistance to systemic gender discrimination has gradually been reframed through a masculinist narrative that frames itself as the sole voice of Iran. In doing so, this backlash not only marginalizes the voices of feminists and reduces diversity, but also introduces a new layer of harm by normalizing war as a pathway to change.
A man is sitting alone in the middle of the street, facing a wall of security forces and anti-riots police ready to speed up their motorcycles towards him. This image—described by some as Iran’s Tiananmen moment—was the first to circulate widely on social media during the latest wave of protests in Iran, which began on 28 December 2025. Initially a series of demonstrations triggered by the collapse of the national currency, the protests once again expanded into a broader uprising against the Islamic Republic and its authoritarian rule.
However, many social media users shared the image with sarcastic captions, such as “The second feminist revolution in history is in the making”, or simply, “Man, Homeland, Prosperity”. These captions were not coincidental or without context but were intended to set the tone and framing for the uprising and thereby limit who can participate and how. Such actions reveal old resentments resurfacing with this round of protests, in particular a backlash against the Woman, Life, Freedom movement of 2022. Described as a “feminist revolution”, the movement also gave rise to grudges and resentments among masculinist currents of the movement—positions that are now finding expression in the wake of the most recent protests.
Was a Feminist Revolution in the Making?
The Woman, Life, Freedom Movement began its life in September 2022, when the whole country was shocked by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini while in the custody of Iranian regime’s “morality police”. The violence of the morality police was nothing new; they already had, for example, an extensive record of beating, dragging, degrading and prosecuting women over issues related to the mandatory wearing of a hijab. But the death of a young woman over an “improperly” worn hijab, marked a threshold few had imagined would be crossed so openly. Thus it became another reason for people to protest not only against the morality police, but also against the Islamic Republic’s authoritarian rule. Protests spread rapidly across the country. From Mahsa’s (Jina’s) hometown of Saqqez, a Kurdish city, a slogan emerged and spread inside and outside the country as a signature of the uprising: Woman, Life, Freedom.
The origins of the movement, and particularly its central slogan, with its Kurdish roots, history and connotations, established an explicitly feminist tone to the movement. These were not merely protests in which women participated, but in which women’s bodies, experiences, and forms of resistance became the primary site and subject of political struggle. At the core of the movement’s slogan lies a foundational claim: that “life” and “freedom” are unattainable without women’s liberation. It is this assertion that takes gender equality from being a peripheral concern and reframes it as an indispensable condition of broader social and political transformation. The movement, built on years of resistance and activism by women’s rights and feminist groups, also expanded the scope of contestation and implicated structural and institutionalized forms of gender inequality, including discriminatory legal frameworks, entrenched patriarchal norms, and what many activists have termed “gender apartheid”.
As part of this movement, collectives of women from historically marginalized regions began to articulate forms of resistance that had long been suppressed or rendered invisible. While the initial spark was widely framed through a gendered lens, the fact that Mahsa Jina Amini was Kurdish created an entry point for foregrounding the intersectional nature of state repression in Iran. In this understanding, gender could no longer be analyzed in isolation from ethnicity, geography, and class. As the movement evolved, other marginalized groups began to assert their own situated experiences within this broader uprising. Collectives such as Dasgoharan (A Voice of Baloch Women) emerged to document and analyze the specificities of gendered marginalization in regions like Sistan and Baluchistan, showing how in these contexts, gender oppression is compounded by ethnic discrimination, economic deprivation, and political exclusion.
What is especially significant is that these voices did not simply “join” the movement, they transformed it. By insisting on the recognition of layered and differentiated experiences of repression, they challenged any homogenizing narrative of systems of oppression. Instead, they pushed the movement toward a more nuanced and structurally grounded understanding of power and the resistance against it, where the periphery is not just included but becomes central to redefining the struggle itself. Based on these discussions and forms of resistance, on familial, community or societal level, we can argue that yes, a feminist revolution was in the making. The movement was feminist in its core, which also exposed it to backlash.
Reclaiming the Narrative: Backlash against Woman, Life, Freedom
The movement’s explicit feminist framing did not sit well with certain groups. Backlash emerged early, not only from the state—whose violent response has been recognized by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran established by UN Human Rights Council, as amounting to crimes against humanity. It also arose from segments of the opposition uneasy with its anti-patriarchal core. Since the movement broadened, some actors sought to dilute the centrality of “Woman, Life, Freedom”, arguing that its emphasis on women excludes other groups—namely, men—from this movement. Therefore, unable to displace the slogan once it had taken hold, these actors instead sought to reframe it by adding a second line: “Woman, Life, Freedom, Man, Homeland, Prosperity”. An added phrase that, unlike the original, lacked the conceptual grounding and organic roots and was reinforcing gender binaries; an attempt to reassert patriarchal balance, claim the movement, and redistribute participation and ownership.
This resentment persisted as protests continued in the streets, until the repression became too violent and hopes for political change too dim. Between 2022 and 2025, with the increased repression, economic and social regression, the impacts of the 12 Day War in June 2025 and growing geopolitical tensions, exhaustion eventually set in for people in the country. By the time of the recent wave of protests (late 2025-early 2026), the discursive terrain had shifted in favor of backlash actors and against the fundamental promises of Woman, Life, Freedom. The dominant voice, introducing itself as the only voice, relied on a singular, homogenized vision of the “people” and their demands, enforcing it through exclusionary language and hostility toward dissent.
Following the protests initiated in late 2025, this shift became even more evident in the aftermath of the 2026 protests and the subsequent massacre. As the situation in the country further deteriorated and despair deepened, dominant voices within these currents amplified calls for external military intervention in response. While such calls were not the sole drivers of the war led by the US and Israel against Iran on 28 February 2026, they played a role in legitimizing it within public discourse as “help” given to the Iranian people in their resistance against the state and for their liberation.
In this sense, the backlash does not merely contest the values of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, but tries to detach it as a whole from core demands and approaches to resisting the state violence and authoritarian rule, silencing diverse and intersectional voices. As a result, the singular and masculinized narrative of resistance has been elevated as the dominant voice, amplifying calls for military intervention to “save” the Iranian people. In doing so, the backlash not only rendered the gendered dimensions of resistance invisible, but also reproduced deeply gendered harms by legitimizing forms of violence that disproportionately impact women and other marginalized groups. The gendered impacts of the war intensify and exacerbate the very patterns of discrimination and prosecution that women had long resisted, also through increasing militarization and securitization of the regime, now solidified in defense against external threat.
While this backlash in Iran has taken particularly drastic forms, it is not an isolated phenomenon. A growing body of evidence points to a broader pattern of backlash against feminist movements, threatening hard-won gains. In parallel, strategies for confronting such backlash are being articulated and re-imagined across different contexts, including within Iran itself. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement promises in dismantling the power structures and systems of oppression, carried a transformative potential that provoked a forceful reaction. Yet the voices that emerged through that movement persist. They continue to resist not only internal repression, but also war and militarization.
The reverberations of that movement endure, even as they are sidelined and silenced by the dominant voices of the backlash. Across fragmented and constrained spaces, these voices continue to seek one another out, forging new forms of solidarity and collective resistance. Today, many are occupied with supporting one another through the devastating impacts of massacre and war, and with finding ways to communicate despite the country’s internet blackout and enforced isolation. In these fractured spaces of survival and connection, these voices will continue to find revolutionary ways to resist regressive currents, both within the state and beyond it.