FWIW, I have a number of friends that visit Iran regularly. They are not tourists, having family in Iran, and most of them speak Farsi. They say they never encounter any of this stuff, other than being forced to show marriage before a man and woman can check into a hotel.

It's also well-known that the mainstream press is big on hyping any of this stuff-- not that it doesn't happen, but it's pretty rare as to be almost non-existent.

In so many ways, Iran is more like us, especially with its middle-class mores, than they are different than us. I'd be skeptical about any stories of widespread dress-code persecution.

Funny how we NEVER hear any stories about Saudi Arabia, where they really ARE serious about dress code and such.

Reading an article a few years ago about the egyptian city of Alexandria being blocked by a huge traffic jam because two women went on the beach with bikinis: Every male going near the beach stopped their car creating said jam.

The funny thing is, the more you hide peoples' body, the more it becomes a phantasm...

Then again, Iran's authorities also forbided celulars in public baths because teenagers used the opportunity to send naked pictures to each other, and I think that, in the end, the regime will be unable to win against its citizens' libido

right?

...

And why is this any of your business?

For sure dress affect how people feel about self. When wear nice summer dress, feel Svutlana light as dandelion fluff. If wear Svutlana official summer Iranwear for sure feel me oppress weight.

That be said, also hear Svutlana this week that 60% women who try on bathing suit in store would rather do house chore because feel oppress weight of different kind.

Being in a 20+ marriage and looking for a spark and all, I tried to point this out to Mrs. Canuskistan, you know the whole females responding to bonobo porn and all, but sadly it didn't work, seeing as how she grew up on a farm and has seen far more shocking stuff up close and for real at a very tender age.

Like many fundies must have, if they are true to being the rural yokels that mythology assumes. Ever seen horses or cattle go at it? Nuthin subtle about it at all. Plenty of lesbianism going on in your basic dairy herd, and what do you think those sequestered bulls are doing all day? Scariest of all is the equipment that a jackass finds himself equipped with; he may be an ass, but he has junk that is positively frightening (except to a Mrs. Jackass I suppose).

about 95/71 this time of year. 40% RHI which would make 70 feel like 77 or about that. At 3900ft elevation it can feel a bit less oppressive than those numbers at sea level. It can exceed 100 deg F but it's rare.

By comparison Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) is 104/78 deg F @ 80% RHI which is pretty awful. Riyadh is even hotter (109) but arid <10% RHI.

What's the proportion of A/C ownership and Car with Driver ownership in SA vs Iran.

SA is built like an american suburb. It's all about the car and compounds.

Some day the regular folks in Iran will rise up and regain control over their society and its laws. Is this repressive bullshit really as bad as it sounds? Yes, it is.

Iran wants it all: it wants to be accepted as a modern, progressive nation. It wants to be accepted as a modern Islamic state... It also allows the narrowest-minded brutal petty religious figures to legislate the whys and hows of everyday human existence in the country. To an American, the idea of being punished for revealing too much hair or ankle is incomprehensible.

There are too many people in Iran who are nothing short of evil religious fanatics - and they have far more power in Iranian society than they deserve.

The rest of the normal folks in Iran are believers in Islam but also modern citizens of the global economy who realize that exposing a bit of female flesh isn't criminal.

Someday the normal folks - people just like you and me - will regain control of the country and pull it in the right direction.

One hopes that our own American government will react to this change properly when it takes place and embrace the new Iran as friends - not enemies.

So Samlor, how do you come by your knowledge? By visiting? Or by the American media?

I'm no supporter of the mullahs (I have historic roots in being AGAINST them) but I'm still curious why Americans are so interested in demonizing them. It can only lead to self-justified bombing.

I am not qualified to speak on this matter beyond having a friend from Iran with family still there, but when has that ever stopped anyone from giving their opinion on the Internet? I suspect that what Reality-Based Lefty says is true - such laws are probably not a visible part of daily life for the middle class. I also suspect that they are more of a problem in smaller, less urban communities where there is greater likelihood of stuff like this being enforced. Like many such laws, they exist not to be enforced all the time, but to provide another tool and more leeway for the police and government to enforce their will. The point is not how often people are arrested for this, but that anyone CAN be arrested for it.

So let me get this right...Ahmadinejad is the same dictatorial antisemitic clown, the US college crowd seems so enamoured with? Go figure...I'd like to see the girls from Phi beta Yaz, walk around the streets of Tehran proudly displaying their tramp stamps........

Tell me, have you actually gone to college?

I live on a college campus, and no one even knows who Ahmadinejad is. For the most part, no one even knows WHERE Iran is.

But it's this kind of stupid demonization that opens the door to bombing of countries, and the very real effect of stripping the human civilian population of its dignity far more than the occasional idiot enforcing a headscarf rule. We've seen that it's basically OK to kill massive members of those civilian populations, especially if they're in countries with brown-skinned people that we don't understand, if we can justify it with holy righteousness as liberating them from oppressors.

Maybe I'm just nuts, but I believe that societies can evolve. History teaches us this. Compare even the worst atrocities of WWII and Hitler (evil and bad in themselves, make no mistake) with what Genghis Khan did. Besides impaling entire human populations on stakes, he managed, if you understand the DNA evidence, to rape a good percentage of the women along his path of destruction. One man.

And when you look at the brighter side, we have managed to evolve societies that are based more on reason, and less of belief. And those societies are the standard-bearers for civilization in the world today. No one even thinks of going back to the good old days of Genghis Khan.

We have a pretty short historic view of societal evolution. It was only in 1920, less than 80 years ago (3 generations) that women got to vote in the US; only 40 years ago for equal rights. Iran would probably have been way past the headscarf phase had we not overthrown their elected government back in 1953.

But we did, and they're not. Let's give their societies a chance to evolve without war. Let's not dredge up another reason to save all these so-called oppressed people from their government by killing them.