“When Jalili saw that Ashton has come to an agreement with Zarif, he saved her name on his mobile as ‘sister-in-law’.” This is just one of the off-color and misogynistic jokes about Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, making the rounds these days in Persian on Facebook, Twitter and their various Persian counterparts.
Such jokes started when Ashton was in negotiations with Saeed Jalili, Iran's former nuclear negotiator, but the appointment of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to head the nuclear negotiating team has in no way reduced them.
This trend in online political humor has drawn the attention of Iranian women rights activists, who believe that the degrading innuendos underlying these jokes renders them as gross and meaningless ridicule that subtly promotes a misogynistic view in society. Some even consider such humor as verbal violence against women and believe that if Ashton was a man the satire would undoubtedly have taken a different direction. It is the simple fact that Ashton is a woman that makes such base humor so popular and widespread.
It Always Begins With a Dress
The story began when during the nuclear negotiations in Istanbul, Iranian newspapers Photoshopped photographs of Lady Ashton to raise her neckline (this was not a sartorial-fundamentalist move by editors, but an attempt to abide by the regime's dress codes and publishing regulations). In the next round of negotiation, she wrapped a shawl across her neck when appearing before photographers, and in Baghdad she went even further and donned a long coat similar to the manteaux worn by women under the Islamic republic. Lady Ashton kept up her manteau look at the Geneva negotiations, and in response, doctored pictures on satirical sites and Facebook showed her wearing a with full headdress and black robe, or chador, next to Saeed Jalili. These jokes about her dress were not controversial and directed more towards her flexibility and her consideration towards Iranian diplomats.
Let's Think About Why We Do This
“Before attempting a critique of the people who spread these jokes we must think about why they do it in the first place,” says Asieh Amini, a Norway-based women's rights activist, journalist, and IranWire contributor. “In my view, regardless of whether Ashton is a woman or a man, jokes about her are a response to problems that people lack freedom to talk about and express their views. These kinds of jokes and anecdotes are more a way to confront censorship. When the door to criticism is closed, people resort to jokes and humor.”
Viewed in this light, the Jalili-Ashton jokes may have been partly a result of the protracted negotiations and fruitless sessions. In a society where forthright and clear criticism can cost journalists their jobs and even send them to prison for many years, humor and satire are often the outlets for criticism, and Iranian culture has a rich tradition of both high and low political satire.
The critics, however, argue that the Ashton jokes include no intelligent content and are simply the sex-heavy gutter humor of a culture that finds mocking women too easy and has been unaccustomed since 1979 to women occupying high-ranking positions.
Not that Amini wholly disagrees with those activists. “My views are close to those women's rights activists who state that if Ashton were not a woman, the jokes would go in a different direction,” she says. “Jokes have been made about all political figures, from Ahmadinejad to Hashemi to Zarif, but they were not sexual jokes. I believe people make jokes to criticize. A joke is a caricature, an exaggeration of the present state of affairs.”
A sampling of the jokes that made the rounds on Facebook after Jalili lost in the presidential elections goes like this:
“Rouhani’s Tweet to Jalili: Don’t be sad! I’ll let you negotiate with Catherine again some other time.”
“They say that Ashton is suing for her dowry.”
“Catherine Ashton’s Tweet to Jalili: You bastard, you promised me you'd be elected. Pity me who waited so long for you.”
The jokes portrayed the nuclear negotiations as a kind of marital fracas or courtship, an emotional to and fro that was yielded no fruit. Jalili’s defeat in the elections and the demise of his “resistance” talk about the negotiations, retired him briefly from the scene. With the resumption of talks under Zarif, however, the jokes resumed. This time it was the not only a political, but also an emotional rival who was to meet Ashton. “Zarif saw that Jalili’s back is turned and made a date with Ashton in New York” one of the newer jokes went.
After Zarif reached an agreement with the P5+1 group after just a few sessions and in far less time than Jalili wasted, it was again Jalili’s turn to be ridiculed for his defeat: “Jalili sees photos of Ashton is beaming, and now he is weeping and has wrapped himself up in nostalgic love songs.”
Lady Ashton and Caspian Women
Even if we interpret this humor or, as some women's rights activists call it, mockery, as a criticism of the current state of affairs, we must put one joke in a separate class, the one about “Jalili changes the name of Ashton to “sister-in-law’ on his mobile.”
This is less a joke about nuclear negotiations and more an attempted humor to present Jalili as an honorable man with manly virtues. If we make a story about the event, it would go like this: The tale started when a man and a woman formed an emotional relationship which did not end in an agreement, but another man won the agreement in this rivalry, much faster than the first. The joke concludes by saying that instead of forming a grudge or picking a fight, the first man took a brotherly attitude and officially acknowledged his rival's relationship or, should we say, their agreement. Instead of expressing popular criticism, it seems that this Facebook post has a different objective. The sense is different from other jokes.
Amini has a different interpretation for the origins of sexual jokes. She comes from northern Iran, a lush and fertile area that is associated in Iranian regional humor for the “loose” behavior of its women. “Jokes about northern Iranian women far outnumber jokes about women in any other part of the country,” she says, “but these jokes originate exactly where the women play a major role in household and regional economies. Northern Iranian women are independent women. They carry the heaviest loads in farms and rice paddies. Obviously, they dress differently from the women of dry areas because their job is different. But we see that most jokes are directed at northern women. I see these kinds of jokes as a confrontation with power. Jokes that humiliate to make the other side less powerful. In such cases, the teller of the joke wants to cover his own weakness. The same thing is probably going on here with Catherine Ashton. Among a group of men, she is a powerful women who makes crucial decisions and there are joke tellers who feel weak and helpless before her power. Admitting the power of the other side are crucial to some jokes.”
For Iran, a country where jokes often mask discrimination and cultural biases towards minorities and groups with less social power, from gays to the handicapped to Sunnis and ethnic minorities, jokes are clearly both a reflection of social dysfunction and an old tradition of speaking in a veiled way in a climate where free expression is punished. In the annal of jokes about Lady Ashton, there appears to more shades of the former.
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