Listen to the interview (in Dutch)
Café Weltschmerz (18 April 2025, YouTube)
Teenage girls in Iran
A word, first, about this remarkable interviewer. In 1993, Shohreh Feshtali managed to flee from Iran to the Netherlands. She is now the director of Café Weltschmerz, an online broadcaster with 137,000 members and its own YouTube channel. The interview was, of course, about our book 'Gender Rebels'. Beforehand I quickly bought and read Shohreh's own (Dutch-language) book about her youth as a teenager in Iran: 'Veiled Years, Lost Freedom – Hidden Love' is a genuine page-turner, gripping from start to finish, and already in its eleventh edition.
Tienermeiden in Iran, en nu met 'Gender Rebels' in Café Weltschmerz. The situation in Iran remains dire, and life is still desperately hard for girls and women — and indeed for men, all of them forced into an Islamic straitjacket. Support their struggle wherever you can. The ayatollahs, Islam, Sharia law: none of them are friends to women. Help Shohreh Feshtali in her fight for free reporting, both here and — one day — there. Tip: she also runs a newsletter.
Another remarkable woman to follow for news from Iran is @MasihAlinejad on Instagram and X. Woman! Life! Freedom! In Farsi: Zan, Zendegi, Azadi!
This is how the Café Weltschmerz website describes the interview:
'In this interview, Shohreh speaks with Sybilla Claus about the tenacity of gender ideology, the role of feminism and the D66 bill known as the "ban on conversion therapy". What looks at first sight like a necessary protection of LGBT people turns out, in practice, to be a dangerous step: the ban targets counsellors and therapists who wish to guide children and young people with gender dysphoria through their confusion — without pushing them straight into a medical transition. Sybilla explains why this bill poses a threat to psychological care, to parental freedom and to the bodily integrity of children. We also discuss how gender ideology has worked its way deep into education, healthcare and the media — and the destructive consequences for our society, in particular for young people who are still searching.'
Sybilla Claus
Anthropologist, journalist and author. Author of Gender Rebels (2024) and the upcoming Rebel Girls (Spinifex, 2026).
Published by Uitgeverij 't Haantje · © Sybilla Claus