Too Loud a Solitude🏳️‍🌈

they/them | atheist | lived thru the horrors of religious dictatorship and still fighting to survive

[matarsack]

i think the world doesn’t know what it really means to live in a theocratic dictatorship. Let me tell you about our experiences living in the islamic regime of iran.

1. Your parents were born to muslim parents so they’re automatically muslim. You’re automatically a muslim too. You didn’t choose your religion and you can’t opt out of it or you will be executed.

2. The compulsory hijab law makes you a criminal if you choose not to wear hijab even tho you didn’t choose to be a muslim and you don’t consider yourself a muslim but the regime has forced you into that role whether you like it or not. And when you ‘break that law’, they can do with you as they please.

3. little girls as young as 7 yrs old are forced to wear hijab at school even tho the islam itself says the age is 9. and all the schools are gender segregated so imagine how they force you to get used to hijab even when you’re just surrounded by other girls. And all day long at school they tell you horrible stories about what will happen to you in hell if someone sees even a strand of your hair.

4. the regime modifies all the textbooks, story books, cartoons and movies to represent the ideal woman with full on hijab. The iranian media is ordered to photoshop every photo of a woman that may be showing a little skin. And if they’re iranian, no hair is supposed to be seen or that will be photoshopped away. Women are mostly excluded from billboards and tv commercials.

5. imagine going to work or meeting up with a friend when suddenly the morality police kidnap you in broad daylight and force you into a van to take you to a station where they will treat you like a criminal and if you don’t agree to get humiliated and do as they say, they will put you in prison. And in case of Mahsa Amini and so many more before her, they will beat you to death. My sister was barely 18 when she got kidnapped and they didn’t let her call home and she’d been so fucking scared and we had no idea where she was. Imagine all the psychological trauma.

6. If you’re in a car and not wearing hijab they will fine you and seize your car. So when u get into a taxi the driver will ask you to keep your hijab on otherwise they’ll get fined. And if you refuse they’ll ask you to get off the car.

7. And its not just about hijab. In Ramadan, they get even more vicious. If they catch you eating or even drinking water on the street they will give you lashes as punishment and even imprison you for breaking the law. If you work in a state-owned company it’s even worse. They will close the cafeteria and take away the water dispensers. All restaurants are banned from delivering food before iftar. It’s a fucking mess. Everyone has to pretend they’re fasting or they’ll be severely punished.

8. And how could I forget about this! iranian women are banned from singing! the islamic regime prohibits women’s singing voices to be heard by men so imagine the horror of having 50% of the population banned from ever becoming a singer. If they identify a female singer in iran, they will take her to jail and force her to repent her sins in the most humiliating way so that she will never dare sing again.

9. And every time the regime gets wind of a private gathering of men and women trying to have fun and live their fucking private lives, the police crash the party and take everyone to jail bc the Islamic regime bans iranian men and women from having fun.

10. Did you know that the islamic regime doesn’t allow women’s faces to be printed on their obituaries or headstones? They put a flower for our faces instead and if they see a headstone with a woman’s face printed on it they’ll smash it to pieces. That’s how religious dictatorship continues to oppress and erase women even after their deaths.

11. For some reason, women aren’t allowed to ride motorcycles and the government won’t issue any license for them. In some cities, women are barred from riding a bicycle.

So if you see Islam has become for many iranians a symbol of oppression and torture and discrimination, that’s why. The regime uses islam as a weapon to silence and punish anyone who opposes them. You can love islam all you want from the safety of your home in a free country and talk about how kind and benevolent the religion is, but in iran, it’s a whole different story.

Our economy is fucked. All govt officials are corrupt as fuck. Most websites are banned in iran. Even tumblr is banned. The world has cut the iranian ppl from many services. We don’t have intl credit cards like visa card. Amazon doesn’t do delivery to iran. We cant get netflix, spotify or even a gamepass subscription. we don’t get any Apple services here. iran isn’t listed as a country you could choose when signing up for a lot of services. and when we decide to leave iran and escape this hellhole, every country out there will make it sooo much harder for us to get a visa just bc we had the misfortune to be born in iran at the wrong time.

This is the story of iran for the past 44 years. Held hostage by a corrupt regime that uses religion to suppress and torture the people and being abandoned by the rest of the world bc our lives don’t matter.

Please be our voice. Once they shut down the internet completely and silence our voice, they will start slaughtering us to stifle the protests just like they did in 2019. Please help us. We want this fucking regime gone.

[matarsack]

i’ve seen so much horror in the last three weeks and i wake up every day crying over each video or tweet that shows one of my people killed by the islamist regime. I have so many words to say and not enough will and hope left to say them. The pain is so enormous that no words can contain it. The number of protesters killed in just two days could be in the 50000. We lived in suffocating silence for 20 days as the internet was completely shut down and now we are systematically silenced and mocked and erased by the part of the world that celebrates human rights.

So many brutally killed and arrested and blinded and so many families under surveillance and torture and i can’t tell you how just two days was enough to massacre and silence a whole nation. How every day after that has been a walking nightmare.

I still think about those families with their little babies in their arms or holding onto their children’s hands as they were protesting peacefully and unarmed and how the pictures of twin babies brutally shot dead hunt my dreams now. I still think about the blood on the asphalt and how I gripped my friend’s hand tight when a protestor told us not to get near the bodies. and how we started running when the sound of gun shot pierced through the night again. And i keep thinking about how i could’ve been one of those who were shot but i grabbed my friend’s hand and i told him to run with the sound of gun shots behind us.

I think i died that night. And this is my hell. Every minute is torment. I don’t think there’s anything of me left.

[matarsack]

it’s hard coming back here. Facing everything we’ve lost. Having nothing happy to say. Having no hope for a happy future. It’s hard telling you that despite everything, all the sacrifices and suffering and hoping in vain, we didn’t win after all. And everything’s got worse ever since.

Today at work my friend recounted something that reopened all my badly closed wounds. She said in the taxi a middle aged woman asked her if she knew where the martyrs’ foundation was. And then she told her her story. She said her husband had been in prison for debts. Their son, who wasn’t even on friendly terms with his dad, decided to collect the money and pay off his debts to take him out of the prison. But the day he decided to go to the prison was the day Israel for some fucking reason bombed Evin prison. And her son died in the senseless attack. She said her son was about to get married. She was angry at her husband because she was powerless to be angry at anyone else. And my friend and she cried all the way to their destinations.

All those innocent people that died in that senseless war. Just for israel to show off its military power. Just to let khamenei live. Just to keep this fucking bloodthirsty regime in power. Just to keep us suffering and losing hope and fucking everything.

Why? Just why?

[matarsack]

i woke up at around 3:30 am to the sound of an explosion. A few seconds later there was another one and another and another. The sound was so close like it was happening a few blocks away.

i’ve been scared a lot in my life. Living where i do. Almost every day is a terrible day here and you have very little hope for normalcy and happiness. But this time i think i was terrified. Because i was looking at the shocked faces of my sister and my mom and we were all holding our breaths and fearing that the next explosion would hit our home.

And there was absolutely nothing we could do to survive if we were hit.

I followed the news with trepidation and all those houses that got destroyed. yes we feel vindicated that the regime’s commanders, all those that have been killing and suppressing and torturing my people and destroying my beautiful country for the last 50 years have been targeted and killed. But they were not the only casualties. There were children and innocent civilians too. Unofficial reports say at least 78 people were killed in the israeli strikes on iran and some 350 injured.

The nuclear facilities are also being hit and now there’s a fear of radiation.

The attacks are still being carried out in other cities and they say they will continue for the next two weeks. While the people are completely defenseless.

We don’t have any shelters. We never get any warnings. We just have to go on with our lives and pray to survive out of sheer luck.

Three years ago we had a chance to overthrow the Islamic regime n make iran the beautiful peaceful country it was supposed to be. We fought and we sacrificed so much and the trauma and the loss were enormous. But the world abandoned us.

The US and the EU promised us they’d hold islamic regime accountable for its crimes against its own people but they lied. They struck deals with the regime n gave them money and left us all on our own.

And now we have to keep paying for the regime’s crimes.

My people didn’t deserve to live in absolute poverty and isolation and fear and desperation. Just because the world wanted to keep the islamic regime in power for as long as they could.

Im fucking sick of all their lies. We’re just people like everyone else. We have families and jobs and aspirations and dreams. We have history and culture and cuisine and music. We’re just like you.

But our lives don’t matter. Because we have been held hostage by this bloodthirsty regime for 50 years. And we have to pay the price for it. Every single day.

[matarsack]

when you read a post on my blog how does that make you feel?

Because every time something terrible happens to my people, especially to women, i feel like it happened to me.

I see myself in them. I know the way they feel. I feel their rage and desperation and helplessness. I have been there before. And i keep coming back to it. This nightmare is never ending.

Yesterday a university student named Ahoo Daryaei was attacked by the regime’s forces on campus for not having hijab. They grabbed her and her hoodie was torn and stripped off her body in the struggle. Enraged and helpless, she took off her pants in protest. They forced her into a car and drove away. They say she’s been admitted to a psychiatric ward and is under heavy security.

Sure the pictures are iconic and she was extremely brave and the message that her act sent was strong and historic. But im worried about her. And im enraged for the continued oppression and dehumanization of the women of my country. I feel her helplessness and fight for taking back control and feeling like a human in every fiber of my being.

I wish we didn’t have to feel this way. Every single day.

The hijab that women outside muslim countries call a ‘choice’ is a ‘law’ here. And it gives the oppressive regimes the ‘right’ to punish and torture and kill women for choosing not to cover their hair. Its not even about the hair. Its about the control they have over women’s bodies and lives and identities. Its the way they feel powerful by making women powerless. Its the way they are more worthless than a worm without the protection of islamic laws they hide their ugliness behind.

I just hope she’s going to be alright.

[matarsack]

israel attacked the islamic regime’s military sites today. i don’t know how else to tell you how the iranians felt about the attack except for this: the islamic regime didn’t raise any alarms the whole time. there’s no safe houses or shelters for us to keep safe during dangerous situations. some of us woke up to the sound of explosions and went to work and school in the morning. The islamic regime doesn’t give a shit about iranian people. Has never done in the entirety of its existence. we could all die and the regime would only care about saving its own ass.

And the attacks didn’t target the people. Didn’t damage residential areas. and we were just relieved that the Islamic regime’s own missiles didn’t hit any civilian planes as they did four years ago. In a way, we are always more scared of what the regime would do to us than any other country.

I don’t know if anyone else out there can understand our situation. We are a nation held hostage by terrorists that are more willing and ready to kill us than any outside attack. they’d provoke powers thousands times stronger than them, endangering millions of lives and killing us without any consequences.

anything related to the regime and its military isn’t ours. anyone related to the regime, we don’t consider our people. we are at war with an occupying regime that’s been plundering iran’s resources, destroying its heritage, making every country our enemy, imprisoning us here. we just want to get free. and live without constant fear and oppression.

[matarsack]

every country is telling their citizens to immediately leave iran. we don’t have anywhere to go. iranian people are condemned to be collateral damage because some mad men decided to take revenge for someone that has nothing to do with iranian people.

we don’t want the islamic regime. We don’t want to be collateral damage in a war that has nothing to do with us. we just want to be free and live a normal life. we want our country back.

[matarsack]

this nightmare won’t ever end.

On sunday, oct 1st, a 16 year old girl named Armita Geravand was using the Tehran subway to go to school with her two other friends when she was attacked by the islamic regime forces for not wearing hijab. There’s a cctv footage showing her friends taking her unconscious body out of the train. She’s hospitalized at a military hospital due to head trauma and is in a coma. It’s said she’s been pushed by the security forces and her head had hit a metal bar. The regime detained a reporter who was going to the hospital to cover the news and it cut off any access to the hospitalized girl. The regime says the girl’s blood pressure dropped and that’s why she lost consciousness. But the said regime also killed nearly 600 people to say it didn’t have anything to do with Mahsa Amini’s murder.

It’s been some two months since the islamic regime stationed ‘Hijab guards’ and police forces at the entrance to some subway stations in Tehran. They’re there everyday. Usually when it’s really crowded they don’t say anything, probably sacred of the crowd’s reactions. But sometimes when there are a few people around, they warn women who are using the subway to wear hijab. And you never know when they’re going to get violent and hurt you.

I just hope Armita makes it. It’s just been 11 days since schools opened. So many girls and boys were supposed to return to school this year but the regime killed them. It keeps killing us and this nightmare will never end.

[matarsack]

Armita’s parents said they weren’t allowed to see their daughter. They were only allowed to see her through the glass once on Wednesday and no more. When her mother protested, they arrested her. Now the daughter is fighting for her life in a military hospital surrounded by the regime’s guards and the mother is held hostage by the regime. And the violence keeps going on.

[matarsack]

She was declared brain dead today. just like that. 22 days ago she was alive and now she’s not. Why? Because she refused to cover her hair.

Meanwhile the two reporters who covered Mahsa Amini’s murder for the first time, Elahe Mohammadi and Niloofar Ahmadi, who have spent the whole last year in prison, have now been each sentenced to 12 and 13 years in prison respectively. Their crime? Doing their job.

[matarsack]

She is gone now. They kept her in a coma at the hospital for 28 days and now they say she’s gone. They killed her and detained the reporter that wanted to cover the incident and threatened her parents and her friends and her relatives into silence. They forced her parents to appear on tv and say their daughter wasn’t assaulted by them. They threatened the family to never pursue the case.

We don’t just lose loved ones to the islamic regime. We get systematically silenced and threatened and traumatized after each of us is killed.

[matarsack]

i can’t believe one year has passed since the regime killed armita for not having hijab. every day i pass the station where she was murdered and i can’t stop thinking about it. she just wanted to go to school. she could’ve been 17 today. but they killed her instead. And her killers were never punished.

[matarsack]

the islamic regime did it again. showed how little it cares about iranian people. everyone and their mother knew abt their missile attack against israel (which was completely foiled btw) except for iranian airliners. they fired the missiles without clearing the airspace first. There were actual passenger planes in the sky. One saw the missiles and had to immediately land to avoid getting hit. i can only imagine what the passengers went thru tonight, remembering the regime shooting down a passenger plane four years ago. i can only imagine what enormous tragedies could’ve happened tonight. still could happen. we haven’t lived a single day in peace and happiness. the regime has turned iran into a living nightmare.

But its days are numbered. I believe this now more than ever. i just hope it doesn’t cost the lives of any more innocent people when the regime is finally toppled.

[matarsack]

Sarina would have turned 18 today if the Islamic regime hadn’t murdered her for wanting to live freely.

[matarsack]

today at work my manger asked the new staff to upload a new picture for their profile. One of them who works under me messaged me to say if it’s possible for her not to have her photo taken bc the islamic regime demands women to have hijab n she didn’t want to have hijab for a new pic. She told me she actually got banned from leaving the country bc of refusing to wear hijab.

I talked it over with my manager and he reluctantly said ok. Later when discussing the awful state of our country per usual, he brought up the photo incident and said she shouldn’t have insisted on not wearing hijab to the point where the regime banned her from leaving iran. My manager is making plans to leave the country. At the time I couldn’t come up with a good explanation for why some women are willing to sacrifice so much to just live another day like a human being.

But then i realized i knew the answer all along. The case with the compulsory hijab for iranian women is like sexual assault. You have two options. You either struggle and fight the assailant in the hope to break free, but knowing that the struggle would end up hurting you more n you could not be able to break free at all. Or, you could stop fighting and disassociate and let the assault happen bc it means you have a better chance of survival.

Sexual assault is horrendous because it takes away your control of your body. The compulsory hijab is also a way to take away your control of your body. The way they force you into wearing hijab has the same traumatic effect as forcing you to take off your clothes. They take away your most basic rights and treat you like an object, like an animal.

So my manager thinks women should just dissociate and take the abuse because it’s not worth it to risk your life and your future for a meager chance at taking back control. He has never been in a situation where the only thing that still matters to you is taking back control, no matter how small and transient that moment of being in control of your body is.

We as women have been imprisoned and subjected to assault all our lives. Of course we will try to fight for a chance to taste the kind of freedom men take for granted bc it’s never been taken from them.

[matarsack]

Hi! Hope ur doing good!

I have a question about the IR elections

Why not vote? I undrstand its pretty hopeless and there are no options and the results will probably change according to what the regime wants

But is there another reason to not try?

well, aren’t all those things you mentioned not reason enough?

But maybe i can explain it better with this quote from Khamenei himself: “each vote in the election is a vote for the islamic establishment.”

The IRGC air force commander who was responsible for shooting down the Ukrainian flight 752 also said “each vote is a bullet in the hands of the armed forces.”

Iran is a dictatorship. The president and the parliament are a sham to give an appearance of a ‘republic’ to the world. Presidents change but nothing about the islamic regime ever changes because it’s always what khamenei says. When people take part in elections it gives the message that they think their government is legitimate. That iran is a republic if not a democracy. That it’s the people who are choosing their government so even if things go to hell, it’s the choice of the people and it’s on them.

When the former president(socalled really, bc iranians sure as hell didn’t vote in that election either) died in the helicopter crash and i talked abt it here, someone actually responded to the post that now with raeisi gone, you can take advantage of the power vacuum to choose your destiny. But the thing is, there wasn’t any power vacuum. The president didn’t hold any power. All the power is in the hands of khamenei and the IRGC. We didn’t choose them and they don’t change and the election is a joke. But the world doesn’t know that. Because the islamic regime is a dictatorship parading around as a republic.

So yeah. When we take part in the elections, we give legitimacy to the regime and the regime can use the results of the turnout to tell to the world that iranians actually want the regime to stay.

We want the regime gone. We are done with taking part in anything that the regime could use to prolong its life.

[lesorus]

it's not that white liberal feminists truly believed the hijab is honorable, empowering, and a choice, it's just that they care more about "political correctness" than women's rights

Not only the hijab represents purity culture for the middle eastern/muslim woman but it clearly sexualizes every inch of a woman's body, contrary to popular belief. It imposes that unless a woman is covered, she is inherently sexual. And not just her hair, her arms and her legs, in some cases her feet, her face, her hands, and even her eyes. Even the outline of her body has to be concealed because there is always a man who will find it enticing, and this from the ripe age of 9. No matter how inconvenient it is. Not to forget, women are always to some degree pressured if not forced into this "choice" lest they bring shame to their family. How many arab girls have grown up hearing "You can do whatever you want, just keep a hijab on your head."? How many girls have been scolded, threatened, hit, because they were merely talking to a boy? How many girls were forbidden to go to school, to go out of the house until they abandoned their "westernized ideas" and started "dressing decently"? And how many were killed, charged with prostitution, stoned for not not wearing it?

Now, you want to convince me that libfems, the same group that wants to "free the nipple", thought the hijab was empowering for the last decade? Hell nah.

They just don't care. They don't care because they view middle eastern, brown, and Muslim women as lesser. Our suffering and our objectification are nothing compared to their inconvenience. So why would they even think about it? Why would they upset conservative muslim men and women ? They have been overlooking every honor killing for years now to not make muslims look bad.

Today it's trendy to oppose forced hijab, tomorrow, they'll forget about us.

[matarsack]

they have in fact forgotten about us. These days when i talk about my traumatic experiences they label me as islamophobic and call on their friends to block me because apparently i am the epitome of evil for rejecting islam and exposing it for all the harms it has done to me and many other muslim women. The saddest part of this whole thing is that most of those ppl who attack me for criticizing islam are not even muslim themselves. They just heard sth somewhere and don’t realize that by trying to silence the actual traumas of muslim women they are doing more harm than if they did nothing at all. And then they give themselves the absolute freedom to criticize Christianity and all the stupid things that come with organized religions. But to them, islam is special and sacred and no one not even muslims themselves are allowed to criticize it. i just wish when people decide to be a ‘social media activist’, they’d at least educate themselves about it and if they’re too lazy for that, how about not trying to get involved in something you have no idea about? How about not trying to silence the trauma victims?

[matarsack]

the absurdity of living in the islamic regime is that when it comes to light that all the results of the recent election had been multiplied by 3 (and therefore, the announced 40% participation was in fact 13%), instead of it being treated as the enormous scandal it is by the media, it’s just turned into twt memes to laugh at. Because we don’t have free media and election has always been a joke here because the islamic regime is a dictatorship. People don’t have any say in anything related to the government and if you say something they don’t like, well…

[matarsack]

i am sorry mahsa. I am sorry nika. I am sorry sarina. I am sorry armita. I am sorry hamidreza. I am sorry hadis. I am sorry mohsen. i am sorry minou. I am sorry mehrshad. I am sorry ghazale. I am sorry hannane, i am sorry parmis. I am sorry hasti. I am sorry khodanour. I am sorry kian. I am sorry ayda. I am sorry to you who lost your lives, your eyes, your freedoms, your future, your loved ones, your everything. For nothing. the world doesn’t care about us anymore. The world has moved on. And all of our sacrifices and our sufferings and our hopes and dreams turned to ash for nothing. I am sorry.

[insert-some-url]

The world always has ups and downs but we shouldn't lose hope. As the persian saying goes "the wedding will reach our street too". The sacrifices will only become meaningless if we lose hope and stop trying. Remember that's why the regime wants to disappoint us. They're afraid of our hope.

And ignore the racist trolls. They are nothing. They harass everyone. I've seen them harassing Ukrainian activists too. Don't give them what they want, just block them.

Everyone has the right to raise awareness about their problems and speak up against dictators. Trust me the biggest slap in the face of these trolls is continuing your work without paying them any attention.

One day we will get our Iran back together...

(At the end of the dark night, there's light )

[matarsack]

thank you for your words of encouragement. Sometimes i feel so alone like im screaming into an abyss. Sometimes i feel like a demon that people want to purge from the world. i walk the streets without hijab and i have to hide from the regime’s bastard guards that would take my pictures or shove me into a van and threaten and humiliate me and block my bank accounts. I haven’t felt safe not for a second in my entire life. i really want all these bravery and sacrifices and suffering that my people went through to mean something. i will keep going forward because there’s nothing to go back to. But i hope the freedom we’ve been seeking all these years will find us before we lose everything. I hope the world will see us again and remember us.

[matarsack]

i am sorry mahsa. I am sorry nika. I am sorry sarina. I am sorry armita. I am sorry hamidreza. I am sorry hadis. I am sorry mohsen. i am sorry minou. I am sorry mehrshad. I am sorry ghazale. I am sorry hannane, i am sorry parmis. I am sorry hasti. I am sorry khodanour. I am sorry kian. I am sorry ayda. I am sorry to you who lost your lives, your eyes, your freedoms, your future, your loved ones, your everything. For nothing. the world doesn’t care about us anymore. The world has moved on. And all of our sacrifices and our sufferings and our hopes and dreams turned to ash for nothing. I am sorry.

[matarsack]

if you had any doubts about the illegitimacy of the islamic regime , just go see the iranian people’s reactions to the death of their socalled president (whom they didn’t even vote for). We have been making jokes ever since the news of the possible helicopter crash broke out and now we’re remembering all the innocent people who were murdered by the regime in the last four decades and feel a bone deep satisfaction about Raeisi’s death. He was responsible for ordering the execution of 10,000 Iranian dissidents in 1988. He had so much blood on his hands. I hope he suffered in his dying moments and remembered all the suffering and deaths he had caused. I hope the rest of them will have violent deaths.

[matarsack]

Unfortunately there’s no power vacuum. The islamic regime is an authoritarian dictatorship and the majority of power is in the hands of the socalled leader khamenei. People don’t even have any say in who becomes the president and even with raeisi gone, the Islamic regime stays.