Najmabadi’s account of gender fluidity in Qajar Iran provides an interesting contextual background to contemporary discourses around Itranian women, a background which is rarely talked about or accounted for. While reading Najmabadi I was reminded of Scott’s account of Le Corbusier and his obsession with straight lines. Two quotes particularly stuck out to me: “Reason…is an unbroken straight line” (Scott, 107) and “I insist on right-angled intersections” (Scott, 108). In many ways, the hetero-normalization of gender and sexuality which Najmabadi discusses reflects a similar desire for straight lines and right angles. According to Najmabadi, the erasure of the amrad from the sexual landscape reduced its complexity to one line; “the screening of the ghilman by the hur now made both positions feminized” (Najmabadi, 41).

The straightening of the streets of Iranian sexual mores may have made them legible to western eyes, but they also obscured nuances of Iranian gender politics. Many westerners did not understand the dynamic of homosocialization, which had characterized Iranian culture. To western eyes, homosocialization was seen as a desire to avoid temptation, thus the need for the veil. However, this does not encompass the whole story, because the amrads did not cover their heads and men would therefore be tempted regardless. It is only in light of the reduction in gender fluidity that homosocial spaces can be seen as regressive and anti-modern. The western narrative on women and their position in Iran sees them as objects of desire and temptation. However, knowing the history of Iranian gender fluidity, this simplified account must be rethought. The female figure has not had a monopoly on eroticism and therefore there were other forces at play in the homosocial spaces of Iran.