brdgt | Brainquake

"Let’s create a “Brainquake” and show off our resumes, CVs, honors, prizes, accomplishments (photo evidence) because the Hojatoleslam and the Islamic Republic of Iran are afraid of women’s abilities to push for change, to thrive despite gender apartheid (Did you know that over 64% of students studying at universities in Iran are women?) Let’s honor the accomplishments of Iranian women by showing off our abilities, our creativity, our ingenuity, and our smarts on our blogs, on Wikipedia, on Twitter, on Youtube, on Flickr and all over Facebook. Remember to use hashtag #brainquake on Twitter."

Brainquake group on Facebook

From 'Boobquake' to 'Brainquake' from Radio Free Europe

Why I Won't be Joining 'Boobquake' at Salon

Brainquake: Why I Won't be Joining 'Boobquake' at Negarponti files

One of my earliest mentors in both feminism and history was an Iranian-born visiting professor at UVM, Shiva Balaghi. We read Imperial Leather and watched Wide Sargasso Sea. I would never disappoint her by confusing objectification with politicization.

*ETA* I've been reacquainting herself with Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest and realizing how much the "boobquake" participants and the Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi have in common:

"The following chapters explore, in part, the historically different but persistent ways in which women served as the boundary makers of imperialism, the ambiguous mediators of what appeared to be - at least superficially - the predominantly male agon of empire. The first point I want to make, however, is that the feminizing of terra incognita was, from the outset, a strategy of violent containment - belonging in the realm of both psychoanalysis and political economy. If, at first glance, the feminizing of the land appears to be no more than a familiar symptom of male megalomania, it also betrays acute paranoia and a profound, if not pathological, sense of male anxiety and boundary loss."