What’s Current: Iranian women face 10 years for sharing photos without hijab online

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  • Iranian revolutionary court officials announce that women who send images of themselves without a headscarf to a dissident social media page will face up to 10 years in prison. The warning specifically references US-based activist, Masih Alinejad, who founded a campaign encouraging women to post photos protesting the mandatory hijab.
  • A woman who accused her husband’s relative of rape has died after setting herself on fire at a police station in India to protest alleged police inaction.
  • South African Olympic athlete, Caster Semenya, has been blocked from competing at the 2019 World Championships after the IAAF designated the runner a biological male due to high testosterone levels.
  • The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is expected to take several months to rule on the case of Jessica (formerly Jonathan) Yaniv, who filed a human rights complaint against 16 female estheticians for declining to wax his male genitalia. Jay Cameron, lawyer for five of the respondents, states:

“There are cultural and religious components, there’s a lack of training, there’s a lack of comfort, there’s a lack of safety because they work out of their own homes with small children… a woman cannot be compelled to wax physiologically male genitals against her will and that it would be improper for the state to compel women to do that.”