Persepolis

Question 1

Hijab

Answer 1

Multiple meanings in different national contexts, but can broadly be defined as 1) the practice of modesty in Muslim cultures 2) the articles of clothing that pertain to that practice

Question 2

Transnationalist feminism

Answer 2

Remind us of the importance of listening for the voices of women, of letting them speak for themselves, and of being attentive to difference in constructive ways

Question 3

Burden of representation

Answer 3

People who are often ‘othered’ may have their personal work politicized based on how they are stereotypically seen in the media.

Question 4

Difference

Answer 4

Differences are points of divergence, characteristics, and qualities that make one person or group of persons distinguishable from others.

Question 5

Othering

Answer 5

To turn someone into a stereotype, into someone, (or sometimes, something – think of how many racist or sexist slurs you know that characterize people as animals) that is unrecognizable and so utterly different from us that they are incomprehensible, bad, devalued, disempowered. As Downe also points out, difference therefore, is often the source of great inequity.

Question 6

Privilege

Answer 6

An advantage that not everyone has the ability of having. So for something to be considered a “privilege,” there has to be people in the world without that advantage.

Question 7

Unearned privilege

Answer 7

Accident of birth/luck, works systematically to overempower certain groups and works systematically to disempower others.

Question 8

Intersectionality

Answer 8

A way of taking into consideration all of the factors that together make up our political identities: our gender, our race and ethnicity, our class and status in society, our sexuality, our physical abilities, our age, our national status, and so on.

Question 9

Oppression Olympics

Answer 9

When two or more groups compete to prove that they are more oppressed than one another. Makes the more oppressed people ‘worthier’ and ignores that idea that multiple groups can be oppressed and in different ways.

Question 10

Whiteness

Answer 10

It supplies the norms and categories against which all groups are measured. But the categories of whiteness are invisible as constraint because we keep focusing on what is inside them — the water and the fish, rather than the fish bowl itself