Passionate uprisings: Young people, sexuality and politics in post‐revolutionary Iran

Abstract

This paper examines the sexual and social practices of young people in contemporary Iran. Young people in urban areas live under the rubric of a fundamentalist, Islamist regime which restricts social freedoms such as premarital heterosexual contact, homosexual encounters, dancing, alcohol consumption and large group gatherings. Drawing on close focus research and individual and group inteviews, this paper seeks to analyse young people's responses to these constraints. Findings suggest that many young adults use their 'rebellious' social behaviour to make political statements against a regime that dissatisfies them; saying, in their own words, that they are enacting and bringing about a 'sexual revolution'.