All hail the heroines of Tehran!

Across this great nation, the media rejoice at the stunning bravery of Iranian women who have taken to the streets to protest their faulty election.  In a country where women's rights are viciously curtailed and their voices silenced, these progressive ladies have taken a stand for women everywhere-- challenging a repressive regime that treats them like second-class citizens.

Sure.  But the most excited congratulations these women have received has been from conservative commentators.

Why are pro-Democracy, pro-freedom conservatives so eager to support women's rights in the Middle East while they voice their discomfort with abortion and equal pay laws over here?

It's because the Iranian women aren't slutty enough.

Notice the breathless descriptions of the valiant Tehranian females-- they are the ones with the "loose" head scarves, the ones who dare to reveal more of their bodies.  Surely, such actions can be seen as protest, and daring in a country where girls aren't even allowed to hang out with boys on their own.  But the patriarchy-- ours, not theirs-- only want Iranian women's lib to go so far.  The problem with the burqa and the veil aren't that they relegate women to near-inanimate object status-- it's that they prevent the further objectification of women.

How can you keep a woman safely in the realm of a conquerable sexual item when her whole body is covered?

That's the dilemma for conservatives.  Part of the reason women choose to cover themselves in the Middle East is to protect themselves from men.  Segregated subway cars are seen as a way to shield women from the rapey eyes and hands of men, who can't be trusted.  Part of that is self-fulfilling prophecy:  treating women like delicate flowers whose purity requires safeguarding while treating men like lecherous hounds means that everybody may just play their prescribed roles.

Women shouldn't be discriminated against for not choosing to wrap their bodies in garb many Westerners find excessively modest.  But for conservatives, the women's movement is not about choice.

They feel more comfortable with women who overtly seek acceptance from a man's world by making themselves as sexually appealing to straight men as possible.

And so Neda, the martyr who has inspired the Twitter revolution and tugged on Obama's heartstrings, becomes the symbol for American men everywhere who want Iranian women to have the same opportunities to be hypersexualized (and demonized for it) that Western women do.  The conservatives cloak their distate for the veil in feminism-- but their true motivations lie in an opposing orthodoxy.

Off with the burqa!  Now hike that skirt up.  Loosen your bra straps.  Don't worry if your heels are too high.  We'll call you a whore later.