Persian

Shabe Yalda, or why I paid $12 for Nancy Pelosi to read about women’s rights

– San Francisco, Shabe Yalda, Dec. 2023

It’s that time of the year again. Shabe Yalda is the Persian celebration for winter solstice, when families gather and stay up through the longest night of the year eating fruit and reading poetry. In its Zoroastrian roots, Shabe Yalda is about celebrating the return of the light, the victory of light over darkness. Like many Iranians, I only grew up celebrating the spring equinox (Norooz or Persian New Year), but Shabe Yalda has been somewhat rediscovered recently. I, too, have been putting together small celebrations or rituals to mark the return of the light for some years now.

A couple years ago, I was given the opportunity for a perfect ritual and real-world action. In November 2021, I received an email from Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA) titled Deck the Halls of Congress with Feminism. They aimed to raise enough money to mail a copy of the book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each US Senator and Representative. They asked that people sponsor their respective representatives with a twelve-dollar gift that covered the purchase, packing and postage of one book. From their email:

‘Dear U.S. Signatories, As the winter solstice approaches, many cultures celebrate the return of the light after the darkest season. For feminists, the last several years have felt bleak indeed, as most of the media has pursued a blackout policy on covering our objections to “gender identity” in law and society. As a result, many legislators remain entirely unaware of the depth, breadth, and strength of our commitment to the rights of women and girls as a sex class. WHRC USA thinks it’s time to shed some light!

This winter, we will deck the halls of Congress with a feminist critique of “gender identity.” Our volunteers will send one copy of Board President Kara Dansky’s important new book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each United States Senator and Representative, along with a personalized cover letter quoting their constituents and other supporters who understand that recognition and protection of biological sex in law is crucial.’

I liked that they linked their campaign to the winter solstice and to the idea of bringing light into darkness, because the majority of Americans have been completely in the dark as to what’s going on. Even those who are staunch supporters of “trans rights” – maybe especially those who are staunch supporters – very often have no idea of what they’re supporting. So I donated, and I threw in an extra $24 to get copies to Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla as well. To Pelosi, Feinstein and Padilla, I wrote:

“By replacing sex with gender identity in law and policy, California is stripping away the human rights of its most vulnerable women, like those who are homeless or in prison. In San Francisco, our public library hosted an exposition calling for violence against feminists and lesbians, the tech companies we host are censuring feminists worldwide, and I can no longer enjoy an evening out and expect that my local restaurants will have a female-only bathroom I can use. As a woman, California native and San Francisco resident, it greatly saddens me to see the erosion of women’s rights and the increased normalization of misogyny and lesbophobia in a city that was once a global leader in progressive causes. It is time for California political leaders to put women’s rights above woke points.”

WDI USA reached their funding goal, and most of the donations came from first-time donors. Women are sick of the erosion of our rights, the sidelining and censorship of our voices, the vilification of anyone who states basic facts and wants to protect the rights that were won these past decades. People in power have made it clear that they don’t care about women, but it helps to show that some of the public does care and is watching.

We certainly haven’t won yet. Notably of course, in the past two years Roe v. Wade was overturned (which, in my opinion, was not the sole doing of the right). But feminists have been pushing forward. Our concerns and our arguments are making their way into public consciousness. We don’t have a fraction of the funding of the astroturfed gender identity movement, but we are showing that grassroots activism is still possible, that in the face of heavy propaganda, censorship and deeply ingrained bias, speaking the truth can still make a difference.

While I am not personally very active, my inbox is full of calls to action, meet-ups, and local and global news of campaigns, lawsuits and even some wins (I did participate in an action for incarcerated women – and against Scott Wiener’s SB 132 – that I wrote about here). Since my little ritual in 2021, Kara Dansky has written a new book, and WDI USA has held two annual conventions: Reigniting the Women’s Liberation Movement and Accelerating the Women’s Liberation Movement, the latter in San Francisco.

San Francisco has been coasting on its gay-friendly reputation, but the only gays to which it is friendly now are of the male variety. A few years ago, a group of actual lesbians (i.e., of the female and exclusively same-sex attracted variety) was gay-bashed at the San Francisco Dyke March by other marchers. At some point in the 2010s, SF stopped being the city it is reputed to be.

But activism is still in our DNA, and to bring a convention aimed at reviving the women’s liberation movement to a city once progressive and now so captured, is powerful. I couldn’t attend, but it seems to have gone… very well? As expected, the convention drew protests from the anti-feminist pink and blue crew (one delightful protester calling for mass femicide). But unlike other venues reserved by feminists in the past, the hotel did not bow to pressure to cancel the event, and it seems that more than anything, the protesters helped bring visibility to the true nature of our conflict with them (watch Kara Dansky’s account). The women concluded the weekend in front of San Francisco City Hall with a non-violent action for lesbian rights. The same crew arrived to hurl insults at them. We keep ending up back at square 1, having to fight the same fights, but women will simply show up as long as necessary.

It’s going to take a while for the liberals and leftists who are self-righteously entrenched in gender ideology to recognize that theirs is a regressive position, and many will never take personal responsibility. But most of the public – even those who go along with pronouns and mixed-sex bathrooms without a complaint – is not entrenched at all. If we continue to speak up on the harms of gender ideology, and continue to show that there is a resistance, including one that is not rooted in conservatism, and we continue to provide opportunities to transactivists to bring public awareness to their politics and misogyny, we will get through.

Celebrating the Cycle of Life with Death

Alemany Farm, San Francisco’s largest urban farm, is celebrating Earth Day this year by roasting a pig, as they do every year. When vegans have questioned this in the past, their response has been “circle of life”. So while spring is in bloom and the air is full of the scent and colors of life bursting forth, Americans celebrate the circle of life with death.

Meanwhile, Iranians are currently celebrating our new year. Norooz falls on Spring Equinox and revolves around the sacredness of the circle of life. Before Norooz, we grow sprouts (sabzeh) for the haftseen, a table with symbolic items which will be laid until the end of the celebration.

The cyclical renewal of life is celebrated with the vibrancy of life growing from seeds and creating a lush tapestry of green. On our haftseens we also place hyacinths, apples, and other symbols of abundance, health, life and nature. Norooz is celebrated for thirteen days, during which time the haftseens are a joyful backdrop, and people take pride in the beauty they’ve created. Then comes Sizdah Beh Dar (“thirteen to the door”); on the thirteenth day of the new year, friends and families spend the day in nature. The sabzeh is brought along for a final ritual. People tie little tufts of sprouts into knots as they make a wish for the new year and then throw them into a river, looking forward to the gifts that the river will bring back to them.

All the while in my city, young Americans are choosing to honor the Earth and the circle of life by gathering around the body of an animal who will have wanted nothing more than to stay alive. This pig’s life will be violently ended by people who have absolute power over him or her and who have no need to kill to sustain themselves, but who choose to do so anyway because their entitlement trumps their empathy. Domination and death are the values upheld as Alemany gathers around another broken body.

These daily choices and rituals call upon us to question our culture and the connections between the local and the global, the individual and the collective.

Consider that the United States military is a bloated killing machine that receives more than a third of total global military spending. With bases around the globe and the wanton slaughter of civilians in criminal wars, it is the main source of terror in the world. Consider that last year American police killed a thousand of their own citizens and this year we’re already close to 300. This is summary execution at home as abroad, condoned by the legal system and the masses. Consider that in a country of extreme wealth, many die from lack of access to housing, healthcare and basic healthy foods.

As parks became parking lots, as processed and packaged foods replaced fruits plucked from a backyard tree, humans are not the only ones to have suffered. Insects are dying off, the fish are dying off, mammals are dying off. Every corner of the Earth is poisoned as we pursue domination and profit.

Tomorrow for Sizdah Beh Dar, I will bring a plant-based picnic to Golden Gate Park and will spend the day enjoying the sun, the grass, the trees, the flowers, the birds. I will take my sabzeh to Mission Creek and make a wish of liberation for the hundreds of thousands of pigs who are killed every day in the US, most of whom never see sunlight or touch the earth. I will reflect on how we can foster a culture in which we meet life with awe and tenderness, not destruction. If we are serious about Earth Day, nothing else will do. Those who attend pig roasts dressed in feel-good language think that the artisanal butchery of an individual pig raised outdoors can not be compared to the grotesque excess of industrial animal farming. They are wrong.

This equation of destruction and killing with the cycle of life, the logicking out of one’s own compassion, the rituals of domination that make up the fabric of American social life: these are the very basis of the culture of violence that has spawned horrors at home and abroad. The entitlement over the life of another is the same entitlement that drives the trashing of the planet, as we commodify every last part of nature. Kindness is the basis of sustainability–any true celebration of Earth Day will require genuine soul-searching as we begin to change our culture at its very core.

Persian Vegan Food

I didn’t intend to do food posts but I do wish that the search terms “Persian/Iranian + vegan” would bring up more results, so here it is.

A vegan Iranian friend invited me to celebrate Norooz at her house this year and this is the vegan dinner with which we celebrated new beginnings and the new year.

For Norooz, it is traditional to eat fish with herbed rice. We stuck to tradition – somewhat. Tradition is not an excuse for cruelty, so we upheld both tradition and compassion and enjoyed some mock fish. We also had ash reshteh, mast khiar, stuffed eggplant that’s not pictured, torshi, olives and other sides, salad and baklava for dessert. Let me say again for the search engines that this was an entirely vegan Persian dinner.

The main chef was my friend’s 73-year old vegan Persian mother, a woman who loves animals and has participated in several protests with Direct Action Everywhere. Protest is not only for the young, and veganism is not only for the West. There is a notion that elderly people, working-class people, non-Westerners, and people of color are stuck in their ways. They can’t understand animal liberation and they won’t give up their favorite dishes. It’s not true though, people from all demographics are choosing plant-based diets, for health, spirituality, sustainability, and for compassion.

A few years ago, I exchanged a few pleasantries with some students at work. One of them asked me where my name was from. I said Iran and without missing a beat, he asked if Iranian food had a lot of meat. It seemed like such a random question: he didn’t know that I was vegan and we were not in a place with food or any reference to food. He might have been speaking of food with his friends but from my vantage point his question came out of nowhere. Then again, not entirely out of nowhere.

At the time, San Francisco was experiencing the full force of the foodie obsession with meat done right and with the appreciation of tradition and culture as cardinal virtues come mealtime. I was working at a yoga studio that sold copies of the book Nourishing Traditions, which positioned Tradition with a capital T against the unbalanced and déraciné take on food of the modern West. It relied on a few meat-heavy traditions to convey a generic and universalist idea of Tradition and forgotten wisdom, and its populistic tone was effective in delegitimizing vegetarianism in the minds of many readers.

The man who asked about Iran was from Argentina, which is one of the few countries that rivals the US with its obsession with meat. This could explain his enthusiasm for meat and perhaps his implicit adoption of the notion that of course, all traditions are meat based. In the case of Iran, this isn’t true. While most Iranian dishes contain some meat or dairy, I contend that Iranian cuisine is one of the most easily veganizable. It does not seem to have been developed with meat as the central feature. If you take a steak dinner and remove the steak, you’re left with some potatoes and a sprig of parsley. On the other hand, if you take adas polo or ghormeh sabzi and omit the meat, you’re left with complex flavors and satisfying dishes in their own right.

Amongst the Diaspora and in Iran, meat is now consumed often and in relatively large quantities but this is a recent development, as in most of the Global South. The chunks of meat in khoreshs have gotten bigger and more numerous, kebab has become more than an occasional treat. I once asked my dad how often he ate meat as a child and he answered with the impatient tone reserved for stupid questions, “people didn’t have money in those days!” By the standards of a third-world country in the 1950s, my dad wasn’t poor. He had shoes and my grandfather had a decent white-collar job, but meat was not eaten daily. I might as well have asked if everyone had a car.

Remove meat and dairy from Persian food and you still have one of the most sophisticated and flavorful cuisines in the world. But perhaps you have money for meat and you want that umami richness – I get it. It’s a great opportunity to play with new ingredients. Make kookoo with chickpea flour and black salt, learn to make your own nut-based feta and seitan, and divert that meat budget to wonderful plant-based alternatives.

I am not a stickler for authenticity. We’ve seamlessly incorporated tomatoes (“foreign berries”) from Mexico and potatoes from Peru into our khoreshs – why not also adopt the delicious mock meats that our East Asian neighbors have developed for centuries? This Norooz, my friend’s mom tasted mock fish for the first time and said “Why would anybody kill a poor fish when they can eat this delicious food instead?” Why indeed.

It’s often thought that non-Westerners can’t and won’t change their ways, but perhaps more questionable is the idea that they shouldn’t. Westerners have profited off the destruction of cultures and economies around the world and now want to be the guardians of authenticity and maintaining others’ traditions. For the benefit of whom? Somehow it’s always imperative to “experience culture” when it comes to tasting grilled llama or roasted pig but there’s less enthusiasm about partaking in the authentic experience of eating beans three times a day. The westernization of diets also doesn’t seem to concern many when it takes the form of skyrocketing milk and meat consumption, which is the problem that most people are actually experiencing. So what is this trend really about?

The former colonialists want to display their now-enlightened relationship to non-Western peoples by the gratuitous consumption of their folklore. Meanwhile, peoples’ food systems, livelihoods and lifestyles are still being eroded because imperialism has simply taken new forms. If you want to resist this, there are better ways to do it than fashioning yourself into an Anthony Bourdain and shaming people away from animal liberation.

Let’s not selectively uphold traditions – or our idea of them – to resist social change. The beautiful culinary traditions of the world can and should still be appreciated as we build a world where animals are friends, not food. As all living traditions, cuisines continually evolve, and what better reason to do so than compassion?