Right-Wing White Women Don’t Care About Iranian Women In Burkas. They Just Want to Control You Here
You’ve seen the routine. Some coiffed white conservative woman goes on cable news, all wide-eyed and sanctimonious, saying: “At least here we don’t force women to wear burkas like they do in Iran!”
She delivers it like she’s courageously championing global women’s rights. But let’s keep it 100, she doesn’t give a damn about Iranian women and their oppression. She’s using them as rhetorical props to justify American warmongering in the Middle East and to shut people up about our rights here in America.
From Candace Owens and Tomi Lahren to Laura Ingraham, Dana Loesch, to Fox News panels, and the op-ed pages of places like the Federalist and the Washington Examiner, conservative pundits and columnists have made a whole genre out of scolding people on the left for supposedly ignoring the “real” oppression of women forced to wear hijabs or burkas in Iran. They routinely invoke Iranian women’s state-enforced modesty as a rhetorical weapon to paint U.S. women as spoiled, ungrateful, and hypocritical for fighting for reproductive rights, equal pay, or freedom from sexual violence here at home.
It’s not solidarity. It’s not feminism. It’s a threat dressed up as concern. It’s: “Be grateful for the freedoms we haven’t taken away from you yet. And don’t ask for more.”
The same loudmouths are using a deflection tactic to shut down criticism of their own agenda, which aims to control women’s bodies here with its own brand of theocratic, patriarchal policy.
Iranian women are fighting real oppression. Their government enforces compulsory hijab laws. Women can be harassed, beaten, or jailed for refusing to cover their hair. The morality police killed Mahsa Amini in custody for an “improper” hijab, sparking mass protests under the rallying cry: Women, Life, Freedom. Women in Iran face legal discrimination in divorce, child custody, inheritance, and travel. A married woman needs her husband’s permission to get a passport. This is enforced with violence and intimidation.
But here’s what these conservative pundits won’t admit: Iranian women are not passive victims. They are the ones leading the resistance. They’re smuggling out footage of beatings. Burning their headscarves in the street. Organizing strikes. Risking arrest, torture, and death to demand change. They don’t need a Fox News panel to “speak for them.” They are not political pawns.
You’ll never see these TV pundits asking Congress to make asylum easier for Iranian women fleeing persecution. They’re not funding Iranian feminists. They’re not protesting U.S. sanctions that wreck Iran’s economy while leaving the regime untouched. They’re not reading, quoting, or amplifying the words of actual Iranian women risking their lives. Instead, they get on TV in tasteful blazers, furrow their brows, and say “At least here you can dress how you want!” while working overtime to make sure that won’t be true for long.
Source: Right-Wing White Women Don’t Care About Iranian Women In Burkas. They Just Want to Control You Here
