But the Iranian regime's 33-year quest to make Iranian women weak and helpless, to force them into child-like subservience, has failed. Though we in the West often perceive them this way because the hijab and the chador are all we see on the surface, women in Iran are stronger collectively and more assertive individually than the Islamic Republic would have us believe. After all, its laws and restrictions would not be necessary if Iranian women were as powerless as the religious leaders hoped. It is precisely because Iranian women do wield power in their society and homes that the country's reactionary leaders feel compelled to imbalance the playing field, to pass laws taking that dignity and influence away. And one of the places where their failure becomes clear is in the surprisingly vibrant arena of women's sports.

The first two Muslim women to summit Mount Everest, in 2005, were both Iranian; a dentist and graphic designer whose expedition had suffered unusually bad conditions and serious injuries. In 2004, a group of Iranian women started a rugby league that, by 2006, had 1,000 members. "Some of my male colleagues were skeptical but we proved them wrong," one of the earliest players said in a documentary about the harassment and intimidation her team endured. In 2007, when Iranian women began qualifying for the Olympics, an official publicly warned, "severe punishment will be meted out to those who do not follow Islamic rules during sporting competitions." Only three made it to Beijing; Sara Khoshjamal Fekri, the first-ever Iranian women to qualify in taekwondo, rose to the quarter-finals. International women's competitions in wushu, a Chinese form of exhibition martial arts, routinely see Iranian champions. Though many women play soccer, often competitively, the national women's team is held back by under-funding, poor equipment, and gender restrictions that forbid male coaches or trainers.

The state has been doing its best to restrict women from sports, sometimes by simple harassment and sometimes bureaucratically, such as with a 2006 rule that merged men and women's sports administrations, thus forcing most women lower in the organization. It's not hard to see why, beyond the simple habit of repression, they would do this. Athletics can be a means of empowerment, organization, and of asserting self-worth. Women expressed these same traits in 2009, when they played a central and active role in that year's Green Revolution against the regime.

Mastering a Japanese martial art, especially one popularly associated with fearless lone warriors, might hold a certain appeal to Iranian women who have watched their government struggle for decades to weaken them. Learning nunjutsu is not going to undo Iran's medieval gender restrictions, of course, but it sends a message about their futility.

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