“Maniacal slaves:” normative misogyny and female resistors of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Iran

Feminist scholars the world over are increasingly aware of the importance of analyzing popular discourse, especially regarding women’s involvement in proscribed violence. Yet few have looked at Middle Eastern organizations, and fewer still at the Mojahedin-e Khalq Iran (MEK), a longstanding resistance group whose all-female leadership and sizeable female membership present a compelling challenge to prevailing gender norms. How do popular media portray female MEK resistors and what might these representations signify for our gendered conceptions of violence? In examining the MEK’s female leadership, this article undertakes a close reading of western and Iranian news coverage in an attempt to analyze the degree to which these women are painted as willful political agents or, as is often assumed, irrational actors incapable of autonomous political participation. Following Sjoberg and Gentry, I develop four cognitive frames to describe female resistors, while also challenging the media’s victimizing and sexualizing gaze. I thus problematize these women’s portrayals as “maniacal slaves,” and explain how such gendered rhetoric operates to preclude the notion that members of the MEK might practice legitimate political resistance worthy of analysis or understanding.