Kurdish men in religiously conservation Iran have launched an online protest to push for women’s rights after a man convicted of domestic abuse was paraded around the streets wearing women’s clothes.
Dozens of men have uploaded pictures of themselves wearing bright traditional women’s dresses on the ‘Kurd Men for Equality’ group on Facebook to protest the “sexist punishment”.
The message is simple: “Being a woman is not a means of punishing and humiliating anyone.” So far, more than 150 pictures of men dressed in all types of dresses, veils and scarfs have been uploaded on the page, The Independent reported. The campaign has drawn support from Kurdish communities across the world, and has even spurred women to post pictures of themselves in men’s clothing.
The group has been received over 7,000 ‘likes’. The unusual protest was launched after a judge in the city of Marivan, in Iran’s Kurdish region near the Iran-Iraq border, sentenced a man to wear women’s clothes and be paraded in public in mid-April, RT Newsreported. Afeminist group staged street protests, calling the punishment misogynistic. The matter also reached the Iranian Parliament, with 17 MPs writing to the justice ministry, descrying the punishment as “humiliating to Muslim women”.
To show solidarity to women activists, Kurdish men started posing as cross-dressers. An online protester said: “For many years, women in my country have been side-by-side with men. Tonight I am happy and honoured to wear women’s clothes and be even a small part of the rightful struggle of people to express gratitude and excellence to the women of my country.”
