Calla Gilligan's Week Seven Blog Post

In this weeks reading, Sima Shakhsari discusses in her article “Weblogistan goes to war: representational practices, gendered soldiers and neoliberal entrepreneurship in diaspora” how Iranian diasporic bloggers use their blogs as a free enterprise resource during the war on terror. Sima then describes Weblogistan, and its affect on cyberspace. Weblogistan is defined as being composed of a large number of Persian-language weblogs, the Iranian blogosphere, and a “cyber-territorial designation which has become the fastest growing cyber sphere in the Middle East” (Shakhsari, 8). Weblogistan provides a world of supposed freedom for Iranian bloggers, one where they can speak their mind on different issues without being punished. The lack of freedom of speech in print media in Iran has drawn the younger generations, especially women, to the so-called “democratic” world of blogging. Yet intriguingly, many Iranian bloggers live outside of Iran, where freedom of speech is a mostly guaranteed right to every citizen. Also, in Weblogistan, Persian-language blogging is very popular among well-educated Iranians but the most famous Persian blogs are not even written in Iran, but in North America and Europe.

Sima also argues throughout her article how Weblogistan produces different gendered subject positions for Iranian bloggers. For example, men seek freedom through blogging by participating in proper politics whereas the women blogger seeks freedom by writing about sex and telling the truth of her sex but only in a confessional mode. If a women’s subjectivity is discussed, it is with shock and awe, whereas the man’s subjectivity is discussed, it is with honor, because he is a warrior. The woman is just a rebel and her content, although real and accurate, is viewed as scandalous. “Not only does this form of representation produce and juxtapose the sexually liberated woman in the ‘west’ to a repressed and cloistered Iranian womanhood, it is also informed by the recent hype about a ‘sexual revolution’ in Iran” (Shakhsari, 14). This provides the mentality that Iranian women are unaware of their sexuality and therefore, are in need of sexual liberation.

While Weblogistan creates a world of supposed freedom for the many bloggers who use it so spread their political, sexual and emotional ideals, it also comes with a cost. The gendered binary roles created by society are still prevalent online to these bloggers, and are enforced daily by the things male and female bloggers write about.