It has been 15 years since she posted a nude picture of herself online. Standing and staring into the camera- directly challenging the male gaze. In a culture where a woman’s modesty is worn like a second skin, Aliaa Elmahdy posed with nothing other than thigh high stockings, red shoes, and a red ribbon in her hair– her form of protest during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings sparked controversy. She described her picture as a “scream” against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment, and hypocrisy. Aliaa faced backlash and criticism from both local conservatives and liberals– both viewing her actions as a disruption to the advancement of the women’s rights cause. This resulted in a heated debate, death threats, and her eventual exile.

If a picture is worth a thousand words- a digital picture is worth a global debate. The Fourth Wave of feminism (started 2012) uses digital activism (which relies on the internet, social media, and viral hashtags such as #MeToo) to bring together women’s movements from all corners of the world in a way that blurs the boundaries between West/ East (easily making the local global, and the global local) and private/ public (easily making the private public, and the public private). Digital activism allows women to form a wider sisterhood based on connecting their struggles to understand patriarchy as one broad system, not an isolated product of a particular culture or religion.

As a result, women’s movements are not just localized. For example, #MeToo started in the USA but has spread globally with variations for different regions e.g. #YoTambién in Spanish-speaking countries, #AnaKaman in the Arab world, #WoYeShi in China. The ongoing “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran sparked by the 2022 murder of Mahsa (Jina) Amini has become a global rally for freedom and international solidarity. What I, as an Arab woman, have in common with an American woman or an Indian woman or an Iranian woman- is that our bodies are all controlled (albeit in different ways) by patriarchy. Digital activism allows us to see that.

Going back to late October 2011; Aliaa Elmahdy’s nude protest image, which she shared on her personal blog, gained over 1.5 million hits within a week and was widely circulating on social media platforms. Her controversial method of protest (combining digital activism and nudity in a conservative Egyptian culture) was covered by major international news outlets including CNN, The New York Times, and the BBC. Two years later in 2013, Amina Tyler from Tunisia followed the steps of Aliaa, posting a topless photo of herself on Facebook inscribed with the phrase “my body is mine and not the source of anybody’s honour” in Arabic. Like Aliaa, she faced intense scrutiny and was eventually forced into exile.

In a 2014 interview where Iranian-born writer and activist Maryam Namazie talks to Aliaa and Amina as they appear on webcam together and topless, Amina says “if our nudity was for pornography we wouldn’t face any problems [] we are not doing this in a sexy way, we are doing this to tell the world that the body that you spent all your life pushing me to hide it or pushing me to show it in sex- I’m using it for a political message”.

This begs the question that radical Uganda’s feminist Twasiima Tricia asks:

“Capitalism continues to profit immensely from womyn’s naked forms, and so the question then is why does nudity suddenly become “unnatural” when used by womyn to stage their political resistances?“

Body politics and the naked truth

During a revolution, traditional gender roles become fluid. The emphasis is on “unity” (the national struggle is more urgent than the gender struggle) as everyone focuses on the shared goal of overthrowing the existing regime perceived as harming everyone. Women take on visible public roles and are often encouraged and praised for doing so. However once the fighting ends, the desire to go “back to normal” often means pushing women back into the private domestic sphere. Women’s resistance to that is met with pushback.

This is what happened during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Women across the region actively participated in demonstrations and protests alongside men. Digital activism helped women play a visible role in the street which was made possible by using digital means to organize and collaborate. However, as countries transitioned after the revolutions, women were largely excluded from decision making and pushed back into the domestic sphere. Aliaa and Amina used the same digital platforms that women mobilized to support the revolution to express their resistance of the post-revolutionary pushback. They chose a controversial form of protest in conservative cultures to force society to look back at women just as it was turning away. This is akin to the suffragettes in Britian breaking windows under the slogan “deeds, not words” or the National Woman’s Party in the U.S. picketing the White House– extreme methods to grab attention and force us to look at the women’s struggles that are left behind.

Protestors like Aliaa and Amina use of body politics challenged the survival of post-revolutionary patriarchal order. Although their methods drew intense criticism deemed counterproductive to their cause- this intense criticism shows that their method worked; they exposed the naked truth of misogyny and forced a conversation about it. The female body “arouses fears of the conservative” because of the negative connotations of shame and promiscuity attached to it. It is for that reason the female body is often addressed only through purity or maternity. Using the female body for political protest is neither about promiscuity or purity or maternity. It sparks outrage because it crosses all those boundaries into a terrain that forces you not to see the body of a woman but to see the woman (the human) inside the body.

Aliaa and Amina’s nude protest thus highlights a broader systemic question that is less about women’s method of protest, and more about women’s protest itself. In other words- the outrage directed at them isn’t about the nude female body per se- but in that transgressive post-revolution transportation of women’s bodies from their private domain to the public domain (made easier with digital means- the online akin to public) that traditionally belongs to men. By taking space in a public domain, women’s bodies force the public discourse to include them thus disrupting and challenging the status quo that focuses on men.

One way that Aliaa and Amina’s body politics is pushed back is by framing their action of using nudity as a Western import. If you’re a feminist in the Middle East, at one point or another, your fight for freedom of any sorts will be labelled as a Western import- as if freedom belongs only to women in the West and oppression is fundamental to an Eastern woman’s identity.

However, let’s correct this myth; the idea of feminism as “Western” in general is inaccurate and the particular idea of nudity as a “Western form of protest” is not only historically inaccurate, but it is also a tool used to dismiss this form of protest in the Global South and specifically the Middle East.

Nudity is not Western; Europeans imposed clothing on their colonies. Nude protesting has been popular in the Global South throughout history. (Examples: 1929 Women’s war in Nigeria to protest colonialism by using their nakedness to humiliate officials, or more recently in India in 2004 the Mothers of Manipur protested against the army’s brutal gang- rape of a woman by stripping naked and holding the sign “Indian Army Rape Us” daring soldiers to commit further violence).

Nudity and minimal clothing as a protest also exists in the West e.g. SlutWalk which started in Canada (April 2011) to challenge blaming sexual assault on what the victim was wearing, and #FreeTheNipple in US (2012) to protest the bias of censoring women’s nipples on social media. The common thread between Eastern and Western women’s body politics protests is that the women involved share the same struggle: fighting against systems that control their bodies, victim blames and sexualizes them. Woman’s desire for bodily autonomy is a shared human need, not a cultural import.

If nudity is truly transgressive and misaligned with persistent norms of modesty in post-revolutionary Arab Spring- then why is imposed nudity justified as a punishment tactic against transgressive women?

Virginity checks, sexual violence, and harassment of women post-revolution are all tactics designed to strip women literally and metaphorically from their modesty. If women’s “nudity as a protest” is punishable/ shameful/ violates modesty- then how is “imposed nudity” justified? This inconsistent application not only exposes the flaw in the relationship between modesty and nudity- but it also highlights that the problem isn’t the method of protest but the fact that women protest. The “blue bra woman” in Egypt (an unidentified woman who was stripped from her Abaya during protests revealing her blue bra) exemplifies this contradiction.

Another more recent example is the reported 2024 Iranian case of Ahou Daryaei where her shirt was ripped off by university security during an altercation for not wearing her hijab correctly. She stripped off the rest of her clothes in protest and was subsequently arrested for that. When a woman is not allowed to strip herself, but the state is allowed to strip her- the deviance isn’t of nudity, but who gets to define it.

The deeper question that remains unanswered is not about the method women use to protest or draw attention to their cause– but rather why are women being left behind in the first place thus forced to “scream” to bring back attention to their struggles? Because this pattern of pushing women aside post revolutions isn’t unique to the struggle of women during the Arab Spring and is evident globally across times and revolutions. By refusing to fully confront and integrate the demands of women post-revolution, men are restructuring the patriarchal structures and traditional gender roles that the revolution momentarily disrupted. The result is a new regime but the same old systemic oppression that marginalizes women. In other words, the system is only “new” because the old dictator is gone, but the foundation of male dominance and patriarchy remains unchanged.

Is a woman’s place in the home?

When I think of revolution, I think of Lady Liberty. A ninety-three meters tall gift from France to the United States symbolizing freedom and democracy. The seven points of her crown stand for the seven seas and the seven continents- an image meant to convey the hopeful spread of liberty around the world. But the most striking element about Lady Liberty’s architecture is her gender. And the fact that no country in the world is on track to achieve gender liberty by 2030. Lady Liberty is 139 years old. Feminism is 180 years old. Feminists have long pointed out the irony of a female figure representing liberty while actual women lack it.

Patriarchy is 12,000 years old. Whenever I bring up women’s liberation in conversation with men, they counter: “well why didn’t women resist in the first place? Why didn’t they fight back? If they did patriarchy wouldn’t persist to date”. The answer to that, obviously, is that women did (and continue to) fight back. When women did speak out, early legal codes (like the Urukagina Cones) explicitly prescribed violence, such as “smashing a woman’s teeth with a brick,” to deter future resistance. Thus, the correct question isn’t “why didn’t women fight back?” but rather “why do men push back women who resist patriarchy?”

Women have been fighting (and continue to fight) for liberty with their sweat, blood, and lives. Women have co-built revolutions. They stood shoulder to shoulder with men demanding change. But once the goal is achieved, women are pushed back into the homes not only by the men they stood against but also the men they stood next to. This is a historical global pattern. The slogan “a woman’s place is in the home” is heavily popularized post revolutions.

During the American revolution, women took on critical roles boycotting, fund-raising, and some even disguised themselves as men to fight alongside soldiers. However, following the 1783 war, women faced a return to strict gender roles often referred to as “Republican Motherhood”.

During the French revolution, women were directly involved in major significant events including the Women’s March on Versailles in 1789. However, as the revolution progressed, women’s political activities became suppressed leading to arrest and execution during what was called the “Reign of Terror.”  

During the 1911 Xinhai revolution, women served as armed combatants, organizers, and advocates for social change. After the revolution, they faced significant pushback and progress stalled as societal norms shifted back to the “good wife, wise mother” ideal confining women to domestic spaces.

During the Russian revolution, women played a pivotal role igniting the February revolution of 1917 demanding “bread and peace” on International  Women’s Day. The initial revolutionary legal gains for women (such as easily accessible divorce and abortion) were eventually systemically dismantled.

During the 1979 Iranian revolution, women from various religious sects and classes participated in street protests, strikes, and demonstrations that overthrew the monarchy. Immediately after their success, women’s rights were severely restricted.

Is a woman’s place in the home? Because if it were her natural place, as patriarchy tells us, she would not be constantly leaving it and having to be pushed back into it again and again. What can we learn from history?

Why is women’s freedom terrifying?

“A woman must be afraid of any venture outside the realm of the home. She must be afraid to go out alone, to travel, to do anything outside the house by herself. And if she is not afraid of doing any of that… well then, she must be feared”.

Those words still ring in my ears, decades later. They were said to me as a young woman dreaming of travelling abroad for higher education (something that was uncommon in my community). Those words were supposed to shame me- to instill in me the desired virtue of being a scared little timid girl or else I’m deviant. But today, those words guide me. Each time I embark on a new exciting scary adventure all alone…I tell myself: I must not be afraid, I must be feared. But then again, why am I feared for being free?

Digital activism has opened a unique window for women- they can be alone at home (in one’s private room) and outside (public online platform) at the same time. Men keep pushing us back into the home; digital activism allows us to start revolutions from there. It’s still not an easy feat, as 70% of women human rights defenders, activists and journalists report online violence. This is another form of women being pushed to “go back home” i.e. stay offline and in the kitchen, as it is common for men to leave us online comments such as “women [coffee mug emoji]” or “go make me a sandwich”.

I sit in my own room (a space I have carved following Virginia Woolf’s timeless advice) as I type those words. A space without the interruptions of being a wife or a mother. A space without the gatekeepers of traditional publishing platforms. A space where I am literally alone and on my own- and yet still connected to the thousands of you following me (and the millions of you viewing my profiles- hello, stalkers!). Here I sit between the blur of those boundaries, between private and public, as I write this article in my own room to eventually post it for the world to read. I ask myself: should I be afraid? Or am I feared?

I wonder whether this is what Aliaa Elmahdy thought of 15 years ago as she posted her nude protest image online: should I be afraid? Or am I feared? Her act of body politics within digital activism remains relevant today almost 15 years later as the broader struggle of women’s bodies around the world persists. It has paved the path to my personal understanding of digital activism and acts of bodily resistance. From Tehran to Texas- from “Women, Life, Freedom” to “My Body, My Choice”- women globally continue to use digital activism to share their need for bodily autonomy and expose from different places that we are all fighting the same patriarchy. The battle for women’s autonomy is universal, and sisterhood is our most powerful weapon.

Men are socialized that patriarchy is natural and the privileges they have are natural rights- not a result of a gendered hierarchy. However, women’s socialization differs. Women’s bodies and their lives are controlled by the oppressive state of patriarchy- we experience the personal as political and it’s impossible to not connect the dots. To men, a revolution is the overthrow of the dictator in the government, but not the dictator they are at home. To women, both must go. We do not want to fight the dictator in the street only to go back to the one at home. Our resistance is only seen as rebellion because our oppression is normalized.

Do women have to resort to extreme (“scream”) methods for their struggles to be seen as essential parts of revolution? Will women continue to be policed and punished for picking the “wrong” protest method or the wrong time to draw attention to their struggles? Is there a right time? Will we keep asking women “why didn’t you fight back” ignoring how they did? Or are we finally going to start asking the question that remains unanswered in most of the world: why does women’s liberation terrify men?

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Farida D. is an Arab gender researcher and poet, studying Arab women’s everyday oppressions for over a decade. Check out her books!