Holding their black chadors tightly under their chins with right hands and beating their chests with their left fists, hundreds of Muslim women organized and led by men marched in Tehran's streets to express support for their messianic revolutionary leader. They chanted: “Beloved Khomeini, Order Me to Shed Blood for You” (Khomeini-ye Azizam Begu Barat Khoon Berizam). While glorifying Islam and reviling the West, many revolutionary participants warned unveiled women: “Wear a Head Scarf or Get Your Head Knocked” (Ya Rusari Ya Toosari). They then threatened the uncloaked women with: “Death to Unveiling” (Marg bar bi-Hejabi). Other slogans linked unveiling to male impotence. One motto stressed, “Unveiling Stems From Men's Emasculation” (Bi-Hejabi-ye Zan az bi-Qeyrati-ye Mard ast) while another emphasized, “Death to the Unveiled Woman and her Cowardly Husband” (Marg bar Zan-e bi-Hejab va Shohar-e bi-Qeyrat-e ou). So powerful were messages that the hejab (cover or modesty) and reveiling became one of the most pervasive symbols of the revolution, standing for Islamism, anti-imperialism and anti-Westernism. The Islamic revolution was thus turning into a sexual counter-revolution, a struggle over women's sexuality.

Secular women, intensely politicized, participated with a plethora of ideologies. Critical of cultural and economic trends in the subordination of women, they spoke against the recurring attempts at forced reveiling, although none linked it to the control of women's sexuality. Homa Nateq, a prominent and progressive historian, hailed Iranian women's heroic revolutionary activities, as she spoke to a large crowd at the University of Tehran in early 1979.