Beneath the surface of fear: an autoethnographic exploration of leisure, gender and political fear in post-revolutionary Iran

This paper employs evocative autoethnography to explore the leisure constraints experienced by Iranian women. Drawing on the author's lived experiences, the study integrates the hierarchical leisure constraints model, feminist leisure theory, and political fear theory to argue that leisure constraints in post-revolutionary Iran cannot be understood solely through structural barriers. Rather, they must be analyzed as manifestations of state-produced fear that becomes internalized, embodied, and carried across borders. The autoethnographic narratives reveal how gender segregation, moral policing, surveillance, and the criminalization of mixed-gender leisure systematically erased Iranian women's access to leisure. Beyond documenting constraint, this paper demonstrates how political fear colonizes the body, stunts leisure socialization during formative years, and persists as embodied trauma long after relocation to contexts of apparent freedom. The findings propose political fear as a fourth, foundational tier of constraint, and call for a more politically attuned understanding of women's leisure in authoritarian theocratic contexts.