Scaling Feminist Activism

The continuous protests in the Islamic Republic of Iran since Jina Mahsi Amini’s death in the fall of 2022 are challenging common perceptions of resistance, and even revolution. Through looking at the politics of maneuvering of both exiled feminists, activists, and young people in Iran, this essay highlights how their everyday strategies, practices and acts not only challenge censorship and oppression, but are also integral in the fight for the right to freedom of expression and the right to assemble or roam freely, within the nation state of Iran. Despite the authoritarian regime’s relentless and ongoing brutality, the dispersed activism collectives of exiled ‘foremothers’ and diasporic young Iranians in the global Women Life Freedom movement continue, resonating with and uniting women’s and human rights campaigns across the Global South and North. I argue that the perspectives of transnational flow and transgenerational networks are necessary to make visible how Iranian feminist activists have throughout the past centuries moved from deliberate strategies of scaling up and scaling out towards actions of scaling deep – instigating lasting cultural change in alliance with young Iranians protesting in the streets and on social media.