Legitimating Misogyny and Femicide: Legal Himpathy and (State) Violence against Women in Iran

Abstract

On the fifth of February 2022, a man gruesomely murdered his seventeen-year-old wife, Mona Heydari, in a city in a southern province of Iran. The man then shocked bystanders by strolling in public spaces while carrying his wife’s severed head. This paper focuses on the case of Mona’s killing and investigates the state, media, and online user-created reactions to the incident. The paper aims to (i) offer an in-depth exploration of himpathy with the perpetrator and (ii) investigate the role of the law and the state in the normalization and perpetuation of violence committed by men against women in the name of ‘honor.’ This paper extends the usage of the concept of himpathy (by Manne, 2017) as a cluster of biases that direct sympathy towards men who commit violence against women to the institutional and legal realms. It also draws on the traditional notion of gheirat, referring to protecting one’s ‘honor,’ and explores its role in Iranian law to show that the Iranian legal system hinges upon it, therefore legitimating misogyny and femicide.

(Gender) Politics in the Field: The Precarities of Diasporic (Women) Scholars of Iranian Politics during and after the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Uprising

“…The lack of official statistics on many issues related to women and other gender and sexual minority groups-for example, all forms of violence against women, illegal abortions, and child marriage (Rahbari 2023)-and the practical impossibility of gathering extensive, reliable data on such topics have led diasporic scholars to adopt strategies to mitigate the challenges posed by remoteness and access restrictions. Some scholars have adapted by leveraging the digital landscape to gather data.…”