The author expresses her own opinions, not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

Like many people around the world, I too have been following the events unraveling in Iran since the election results of the June 12th election were announced.  As many of you know, the information that has been filtering through to us in recent days has not been easy to come by considering the crack down on foreign media presence in the country. One story that seems to have exploded onto the international scene due to the common citizens that are putting their stories out there via internet sites such as YouTube and Twitter is the story of Neda, a young woman who was apparently killed in the presence of her father by a single shot through the heart.

I can only imagine that Neda did not want to become a martyr to the cause of democracy in her country. If reports that have filtered out are true, she was probably a young woman dedicated to the efforts of democracy like many of her fellow countrymen, but she most likely did not intend to lose her life to the cause. Perhaps she knew it was a possibility, perhaps not.

Media outlets have been describing the situation in Iran as a “lipstick revolution.” Funny how I have never seen a single woman in any of the protests wearing lipstick. I resent this label and I think it belittles the fact that women of all ages are coming out in force to demonstrate against what they see as injustice. Women in this country are probably well aware of the fact that they make up 65% of university students, but only 12% of the workforce.

By all accounts that I have read, Neda was one of those students.

I was intrigued when I started to read news articles about this young woman who many are saying could change the course of this whole revolution because of her widely publicized death. I did not know that the video I was clicking on would be so graphic and the cries of anguish from her father brought tears to my own eyes.

When the video stopped, I could only stare silently at the screen before me. My eyes wandered to the left of the screen, hoping that I could find a link to an article that would tell me something about this poor young lady’s family.

What did I see instead?

Google advertising had pulled up the following ad:

Sexy Iranian Women Photos
Find your Iranian Soul Mate Today! Browse photos, send flirts & more.

The shocking, voyeuristic, horrific scene I had just seen seemed belittled by this simple link.

I know that advertisements that pop up like this are automated. Some computer somewhere probably found the key words “woman” and “Iran” in the video’s description and this was sent out automatically, but it doesn’t make it any less disgusting to me.

It has been suggested that women are being brutalized at a higher rate than their male counterparts in the course of these Iranian protests. Look at Neda’s story itself. It has been suggested that she was hit by a sniper. Why was she aimed for rather than the countless males around her? She was singled out by her gender.

Whether this is a sexual revolution in Iran, a democratic revolution, or both, how can we expect change within the borders of that country when ads such as the one described continue to tout Iranian women, and women in general, to the rest of the world as nothing more than sexual objects? This ad belittles what happened to Neda and what her female counterparts in Iran are doing.

The women of Iran are fighting for their rights, we need to join their struggle as well by speaking out against things like this.