Nafiseh Sharifi’s book provides the reader with a thoughtful and profound analysis of two generations of Iranian women’s perceptions of their female bodies and sexuality through in-depth interviews and the author’s personal experiences. Her interest and curiosity in the different ways the 1950s and the 1980s generations of women perceive their female bodies and sexuality led to the creation of a book that is born out of Iranian women’s experiences, a small yet growing body of literature in Iranian women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. In addition to integrating the existing scholarly literature about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) policies toward gender and sexuality, the author focuses on the socio-cultural context to shed light on the complexity of women’s perception of their bodies and sexuality. With regard to women’s decisions on sex and sexuality, she claims that the social stigma of premarital sex and retaining social status prevail over the religious constraints and the state’s policies.

Sharifi organizes her main argument around three narratives of virginity, menstruation, and marriage, and elaborates on them in separate chapters. She lays down the conceptual framework of her research in chapter 2, where she finds the common resistance-oriented approach to women’s sexuality problematic because of its tendency in defining “resistance in opposition to power” (p. 27). Following Foucault’s notion of bio-power, she argues that being subjected to the state’s coercive politics of creating docile individual bodies and regulating the population, women have learned the norms of passive female sexuality. She questions the limitation of the binary approach toward resistance and agency. Following Saba Mahmood’s critique of western theories of agency and resistance,Footnote ¹ Sharifi looks at the bodily autonomy and agency of Iranian women, particularly the 1980s generation, not as an expression of resistance but as a capacity for action that is enabled by subordination. Sharifi criticizes the existing discourses around assuming women’s sexuality as practices of either submission or defiance. She argues that this reductive approach ignores women’s agency in defining their bodies and their sexuality. For instance, in chapter 4, instead of simply deeming hymen-repair surgery as a concept of bargaining with patriarchy, she emphasizes the significance of women’s perception of this operation and values their decision regarding the reconstruction of their virginity.

In chapter 3 of her book, Sharifi studies the different sources that the 1950s and the 1980s generations of women have drawn on in the process of learning sexuality and sexual norms. She argues that the IRI has shifted its approach toward sexuality from the former normalization of sex for the sake of reproduction during Iran–Iraq war era (1980–88), to the discourses of pleasure in the recent decade. Additionally, she astutely reminds the reader that even in the recent narratives of pleasure, the state is using medical and scientific discourses in regulating sexuality in favor of maintaining Islamic moral codes that are based on the patriarchal system which prioritizes men’s rights and pleasure over women’s rights and pleasure. Discussing the norms, customs, and disciplinary discourses regarding virginity in chapter 4, she examines how women of the 1950s and the 1980s generations take into account their religious, cultural, and familial backgrounds in the issues of premarital sex. For instance, she analyzes how some of the 1980s generation women see maintaining their virginity as a price for “prestige” and having a good marriage while some others comply with norms of virginity until their marriage according to the mantra that “it brings ‘no harm’” (p. 67).

In chapter 5, the author studies menstruation as most women’s first encounter with sexuality, and examines its socio-cultural aspects in the construction of their sexuality. Likewise, she explores women’s approach to menstruation issues, among which are examples of some 1980s generation women’s usage of several creative codes such as “Khorramshahr khoonin ast [Khorramshahr is bloodied]” (p. 125) while referring to their menstruation, particularly in the presence of men, as a strategy for keeping it as a secret among themselves. The different ways through which the two generations approach notions of marriage and divorce according to their social, cultural, and economic backgrounds are examined in the sixth chapter. Focusing on the significance of the Islamic Revolution in altering gender roles, economic situations, and political issues, she studies how romantic marriages are seen as emotional decisions while the process of khāstegāri ceremonies—“semi-arranged marriages” (p. 177)—are still the norm even for marriage among the 1980s generation.

Sharifi’s arguments and examples of IRI’s approaches to women’s rights, sexuality, bodily autonomy, and sexual relations exhibit her fastidious attention to detail. For instance, explaining her experience of attending a one-day workshop for married women at Sāzmān-e Tablighāt-e Eslāmi (“Islamic Development Organization”), she draws comparison between the state-supported religious consultant’s advocacy of men’s right to polygamy and women’s legal and religious duty to “tamkin.”Footnote ² Along the same lines, she analyzes the ways the IRI has recently tried to conflate scientific resources about sexual relationship with religious hadith—“stories attributed to the Prophet Mohammad and twelve Imam of Shi’a” (p. 188)—to regulate specific kinds of heterosexual relations inside the hetero-normative patriarchal family structure which bolsters men’s excessive sexual needs and rights. Moreover, she reminds the reader that these institutions of regulating sexuality are to control society’s sexual anxiety by redefining the patriarchal religious norms. In addition to covering the 1950s generation of women’s more conservative approach to matters of sexuality in comparison to the 1980s generation women, Sharifi captures the nuances of these two generations of women’s political demeanors. She points out the 1950s and the 1980s generation of women’s approaches to veiling and “misveiling” in their youth as a symbol of political solidarity with the Islamic Revolution for the former, and as a personal taste and choice for the latter. On the other hand, she finds 1950s generation women behaving more cautiously when they are talking about political issues as they often asked her to pause the voice-recording machine when they were talking about their political activism during the Islamic Revolution. In the discussions pertaining to the notion of hijab and the differences between religious and non-religious people, she deliberately refrains from using the term “secular” when she refers to non-religious people because of the political charges that the term “secular” implies.

On some levels, however, the book reads like a dissertation. Although Sharifi acknowledges that her book is built upon Minoo Moallem, Janet Afary, Afsaneh Najmabadi, and many other prominent scholars’ literature in the field, she prioritizes the women’s experiential knowledge—her own and her interviewees’ lived experiences—by criticizing the aforementioned scholarly works for their drawbacks in incorporating the ways women experience the regimes of sexuality in their lives. For instance, she discusses sigheh—“temporary marriage” (p. 74)—in the sixth chapter of her book and elaborates on what she calls a “contradiction” between the hegemonic religious discourse and her interviewees’ attitudes towards this issue. She argues that despite the IRI’s efforts in popularizing temporary marriages as an Islamic norm to control sexuality in the society, even her religious interviewees mostly deem it socially and ethically inadvisable and amiss, particularly for women. For a similar purpose, carrying out broad-gauged interviews, she approaches women’s personal narratives as a means to “understand their emotions” (p. 10), and to study the ways they navigate themselves in relation to the hegemonic state discourses around women’s sexuality. Sharifi nonetheless ignores the fact that her limited interviews and her snowball sampling method restrains the generalization that she assumes throughout the book. Since her data mostly come from her own experiences and those of her interviewees—who, as she admits, are mostly Shi’a Muslims from Tehran’s middle and upper middle classes—some of her results and arguments may not be generalized to Iranian women, as we see in the topic of the book. She overlooks the fact that the experience of the 1950s and 1980s generations of women in smaller and more traditional cities may differ from her interviewees’ experiences. In other words, her sample of seventy-six Tehrani women and their experiences of defining and negotiating their sexuality may not stand for all Iranian women’s narratives of sexuality. By the same token, the experiences of tens of thousands of Iranian working class women, who experienced sex and sexuality through forced child marriages,Footnote ³ may not fit into the generalized findings and arguments of this book.

Notwithstanding these points, the book provides the reader with invaluable information about the differences between two generations of Iranian women in matters of virginity, menstruation, and marriage. The well-documented interviews and conclusive arguments prompt the reader to take into account the socio-cultural aspects of Iranian women’s lives when thinking about the ways in which state policies form their experiences. The author avoids using jargon and carefully elaborates on the technical terms wherever she utilizes them. Sharifi’s book makes valuable contributions to Iranian women’s and sexuality studies through a standpoint theory and experiential knowledge. The result of her research is a volume with significant potential and accessible language for diversifying the readings in classes on women’s and sexuality studies, and Iranian studies to broaden students’ horizons around notions of virginity, menstruation, and marriage in contemporary Iran. Refraining from using abstruse scholarly terms, providing a short and selected glossary of Persian words in the appendix, and including several interviews, Sharifi creates a highly readable text that is nevertheless permeated with feminist theory.