Transsexuality in Contemporary Iran: Legal and Social Misrecognition

Abstract

Sex change surgery has been practised in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini’s
fatwa in 1982. Therefore, a medical and judicial process of transition has been
regulated accordingly. However, this has not resulted in either the legalization of
sex change surgery, nor in the recognition of transsexual identity within Iranian
substantive law. Sex change surgery is allowed through Islamic law, rather than
substantive law, in response to the existing social facts and norms, on the one hand,
and structural cooperation with medical system, on the other. In this article, I argue
that the Iranian heteronormative law’s understanding of transsexuality has
amounted to the misrecognition of trans persons’ status within law and society.
Using semi structured interviews, intersectional content analysis, and feminist
methodologies, the findings indicate that transsexual bodies have gained meaning
through religious and medical discourses within a framework of power relations,
and that Iranian transsexual persons have reconstructed and redefined gender and
gender relations in a way that informs their understanding of gender and sexuality
beyond the existing Islamic legal and social norms. Moreover, intersectional analysis
of the interviews demonstrates how the legal misrecognition of transsexuality
creates space for a discourse which in itself leads to the misrecognition of other
gendered identities, such as homosexuals and transwomen.

Full text

Transsexuality in Contemporary Iran: Legal and Social
Misrecognition
Zara Saeidzadeh
1
Published online: 27 October 2016
The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Sex change surgery has been practised in Iran under Ayatollah Khome-
ini’s fatwa in 1982. Therefore, a medical and judicial process of transition has been
regulated accordingly. However, this has not resulted in either the legalization of
sex change surgery, nor in the recognition of transsexual identity within Iranian
substantive law. Sex change surgery is allowed through Islamic law, rather than
substantive law, in response to the existing social facts and norms, on the one hand,
and structural cooperation with medical system, on the other. In this article, I argue
that the Iranian heteronormative law’s understanding of transsexuality has
amounted to the misrecognition of trans persons’ status within law and society.
Using semi structured interviews, intersectional content analysis, and feminist
methodologies, the findings indicate that transsexual bodies have gained meaning
through religious and medical discourses within a framework of power relations,
and that Iranian transsexual persons have reconstructed and redefined gender and
gender relations in a way that informs their understanding of gender and sexuality
beyond the existing Islamic legal and social norms. Moreover, intersectional anal-
ysis of the interviews demonstrates how the legal misrecognition of transsexuality
creates space for a discourse which in itself leads to the misrecognition of other
gendered identities, such as homosexuals and transwomen.
Keywords Fatwa Iranian law Misrecognition Sex change surgery Society 
Transsexuality Trans.
&Zara Saeidzadeh
zara.saeidzadeh@oru.se
1
O
¨rebro University, O
¨rebro, Sweden
123
Fem Leg Stud (2016) 24:249–272
DOI 10.1007/s10691-016-9332-x
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

Introduction
The Euro-American media
1
has widely represented the Iranian authorities as
legalizing sex- change surgery while at the same time imposing punishments on gay
people.
2
The ‘legality of sex change surgery’ has been debated in the literature and
media outside Iran as an alternative way to force non-heteronormative genders to fit
into categories of male and female in order to prevent acts that fall outside gender
binaries (Jafari 2014, 33). In this article, I try to show that this is a simplistic
analysis that misrecognizes Iranian transsexual persons’ knowledge and the socio-
legal historicity of the practices of gender relations in contemporary Iran.
The Euro-American assumption of ‘forced sex change surgery’ in Iran has been used
to re-emphasize the Islamic state’s oppressive gender system for political reasons, by
using gender discourses to re-assert an imperial sovereignty through a general
misrepresentation of the Orient (Mann 2014, 8). Accordingly, two main arguments can
be identified around how sex change surgery is discussed outside Iran. One view
celebrates the fact that the government of Iran forces people, especially homosexuals, to
fit into heterosexual categories of male or female (cf. Jafari 2014; Bahreini 2008,2012).
Meanwhile, the other view emphasizes that the legalization of sex change surgery is the
state’s manipulation of gender and sexuality (cf. Najmabadi 2014).
Initially, this article took shape against the backdrop of these assumptions regarding
sex change surgery in Iran and the misrepresentation of Iranian transsexual persons not
only in Iranian law and society, but also outside the country. Drawing on the information
gathered from fieldwork conducted in Iran (Tehran) between 2014 and 2015, this paper
explores how sex change surgery and transsexuality are discussed in the context of Iran.
Thus, it argues that Iranian substantive law does not recognize transsexuality or the
rights of transsexual persons, including the right to sex change surgery; even though sex
change surgery is allowed and practised in Iran within Islamic legal tradition on the basis
of Ayatollah Khomeini’s
3
legal opinion or fatwa.
1
Tait, Robert (2005) ‘‘A Fatwa for Freedom.’’ The Guardian website, published 27 July 2005: http://
www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/27/gayrights.iran. Accessed 21 May 2014; Tait, Robert (2007)
‘‘Sex Change Funding Undermines No Gay Claim.’’ The Guardian website, published 20 September
2007: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/26/iran.gender. Accessed 21May 2014; Barford,
Vanesa (2008) ‘‘Iran’s ‘diagnosed transsexuals’’’ BBC News, published 25 February 2008: http://news.
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7259057.stm. Accessed 21 May 2014; Tait, Robert (2009) ‘‘Iran Set to Allow First
Transsexual Marriage.’’ The Guardian published 11 September 2009: http://www.theguardian.com/
world/2009/sep/11/iran-transexual-marriage. Accessed 29 April 2014; Von Oldersshausen, Sasha (2012)
‘‘Iran’s Sex Change Operations Provided Nearly Free-Of-Costs.’’ The World Post published 6 April 2012:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/iran-sex-change-operation_n_1568604.html#. Accessed 21
May 2014; Batha, Emma (2014) ‘‘Iran Pressures Lesbians, Gays to Have Sex Change Operations.’’
Thomson Reuters Foundation, published 26 June 2014: http://www.trust.org/item/20140625223238-
i4g9r. Accessed 4 April 2015; Hamidani, Ali (2014) ‘‘Gay People Pushed to Change their Gender.’’ BBC
News, published 5 November 2014: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690. Accessed 20
December 2014.
2
Article 234 of Iran’s criminal law penalizes the act of sexual intercourse between male parties and this
is punishable by death. Article 235 punishes any homosexual acts other than penetration by 100 lashes.
3
Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (1902–1989) was a clergyman educated in Islamic law and
philosophy. He became a political opposition leader to the secular regime of the Pahlavi dynasty during
the 1940s, and later became the leader of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. He gained the highest religious
position among the Iranian population.
250 Z. Saeidzadeh
123
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The overall aim of this article is to investigate how the issue of transsexuality is
represented at an international level; how it is approached by Iranian law and society;
and how transsexual people in Iran understand their gender. I examine Ayatollah
Khomeini’s fatwa as part of Islamic law; Iranian legislation; medical professionals’
practices; and transsexual persons’ experiences to demonstrate their status within
Iranian law and society. I use the concept of misrecognition with reference to Nancy
Fraser, who describes misrecognition as ‘‘the process of being negatively recognized
and subjected to social subordination’’ (2001, 24). Furthermore, institutionalized
misrecognition, as Fraser explains (2000a, 24) takes shape in the form of law,
governmental policies and professional practices that constitute some categories of
people as inferior members of society. Therefore, she states: ‘‘Misrecognition is an
institutional social relation not a psychological state’’ (1997, 280). I argue that the
failure of Iranian substantive laws to recognize transsexuality and further the
medicalization of transsexuality constitute a form of misrecognition, and that
misrecognition has resulted in the status subordination of transsexual persons in
society. Nonetheless, transsexual persons’ struggles to overcome misrecognition take
shape through their understandings of their body, sex and gender in a way that rejects
medicalization and opposes the heteronormative perceptions of gender and sexuality.
In the following sections, I first describe the historical background to sex change
surgery in Iran. I then draw on the Iranian language and understanding of gender and
sexuality before I move on to explain how sex change surgery is allowed under
Islamic law and how it is treated in Iranian law. After that, I elucidate on the
medicalization of transsexuality and the surgical practices that are followed by a
section of the medical profession, shedding light on transsexual people’s experiences
and knowledge about their gender, sex change surgery and their relations with other
genders. Finally, I draw on trans activism in Iran with regards to identity politics.
Background
Transsexual phenomena became a subject of medical literature in the mid nineteenth
century. Magnus Hirschfeld a German sexologist, and pioneer advocates of transgender
people who coined the term transvestite and wrote a book about that in 1910 known for
treatment of transgender (Stryker 2008, 38). The term transsexual became popularized
by Harry Benjamin, Hirschfeld’s colleague, during the 1950s who defined transsexuality
as being clinically different from transvestism (Hausman 1995, 122). However
transsexual was first used by David O. Cauldwell in his article ‘‘Psychopathia
Transexualis’’ in 1949 (Stryker and Whittle 2006, 40). Notwithstanding, transsexual
persons may or may not change their bodily characteristics through hormonal and
surgical means (Enke 2012, 19). The term transsexual is relatively new and continues to
be modified across time and space around the world. Therefore, its meaning is still being
constructed and it varies depending on different historical and socio-cultural contexts.
Some have used ‘transsexual’ to describe people who identify with a gender other than
the one they wereassigned at birth, but others use it to include those whoresist their birth
gender but do not abandon it (Stryker 2008, 19). The concept of transgender is being
used in international discourses. As Enke points out (2012, 20) transgender can refer to a
Transsexuality in Contemporary Iran: Legal and Social Misrecognition 251
123
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social movement, a social category or an identity. Moreover, identities are generally
specific to the community, class, race, nationality, and location of people. Therefore,
gender-nonconforming people, in many parts of the world, who transcend their genders,
may not identifywith this concept. I have used theterm trans in this paper, as it is the term
that was used bythe interviewees in Iran to refer to a transsexual person who chooses to
undergo sex change surgery.
Despite the recent attention, sex change surgery was practiced in Iran during the
1930s (Najmabadi 2008, 25). On the basis of a diagnosis of Gender Identity
Disorder (GID), Dr. Khal’atbari led a team of doctors in conducting the first sex
change surgery in Iran on 18 year-old Kubra, who wished to have her male organs
removed. This case became very significant during the early years of the Pahlavi
4
era (Kariminia 2010, 51). Ayatollah Khomeini (Iran’s supreme leader between 1979
and 1989) sanctioned sex changes in his book Tahrir-al Wasila
5
(volume two, page
627) in the late 1960s while he was living in Turkey as an exile. His fatwa was
translated from Arabic into Persian, and the English translation of it reads:
To change one’s sex from a man to a woman and from a woman to a man
through surgery is not hindered in Islam. And if a woman feels she is
masculine or if a person feels they have desires of opposite sex, and can
change their sex, but are biologically man or woman, it is not obligatory for
them to change and become the opposite sex. (Kariminia 2012, 104)
Iran’s medical system had already certified and practised sex change surgery thirty
years earlier (1930) than it was allowed by Ayatollah Khomeini. However, in 1976,
Iran’s medical council limited such surgery to intersex cases (Najmabadi 2014,49),
but this was changed by Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa after the revolution in 1979.
In 1982, a few years after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini
re-emphasized the legitimacy of sex change upon acquiring a medical certificate by
issuing another fatwa—this time in Persian. This happened when Maryam Khatoon
Mulk Ara, a transsexual woman went to Ayatollah Khomeini’s residence and asked
him about her condition. After hearing Maryam Khatoon’s question regarding her
sex change, Ayatollah Khomeini responded:
There is no Islamic obstacle to sex change surgery, if it is approved by a
reliable doctor. (Kariminia 2012, 78)
Maryam Khatoon was immediately given a Chador
6
to wear (Najmabadi 2014,165),
even though she had not undergone sex change surgery. In the beginning of 1984,
judicial and medical institutions started to regulate the process of gendertransition under
the supervision of Iran’s judicial power. Ayatollah Khomeini allowed sex change
4
Pahlavi dynasty ruled Iran from 1925 to 1979.
5
In 1964, Ayatollah Khomeini decided to write a review of a book called Wasilah at-Alnejat authored by
Ayatollah Seyed Abulhasan Isfihani, when he was sent into exile in Bursa, Turkey. He incorporated new
ideas and turned the review into a book of jurisprudential fatwas. He finished the book and published it in
Arabic in Najaf, Iraq, not later than 1967.
6
Chador has another meaning in Persian, namely ‘tent’, but as a women’s dress code it refers to a long
piece of clothing that covers women’s bodies from head to toe apart from the face, which is the preferred
type of Islamic public dress code for women in Iran.
252 Z. Saeidzadeh
123
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surgery because he believed that there are no indications of its unlawfulness in Islamic
sources, so he involved medics in the process. As a result, transsexuality in Iran is
perceived as a psychological problem known as Gender Identity Disorder
7
(GID), which
describes the status of a person who is not content with their gender and abhors their
physiological structure. A transsexual person is also known as gender dysphoric,
8
which
means someonewho is discontented with their gender and does not abide by the gender
roles assigned to them according to their biological sex (Kalantari and Ebrahimi 2011,
77). Hence, non-surgical treatments such as hormone therapy and psychotherapy are not
deemed to be entirely effective, with surgery being suggested to treat these patients (ibid.
80). This is when the intervention of the medical system and the pathologization of
transsexuality as GID amounts to the misrecognition of transsexuality.The consequence
of this is inevitably the production of a medico-judicial procedure that allows
transsexuals to be certified as eligible candidates for sex change surgery.
The current
9
medical and judicial process for obtaining a certificate for sex
change surgery, and subsequently the legal change of name and gender in Iran,
involves 13 sessions of psychiatric treatment for self-identified transsexual
applicants. These sessions are handled by a team of psychologists and psychiatrists
who follow Harry Benjamin’s protocol
10
at the Tehran Institute of Psychiatry (TIP).
If the experts at TIP are satisfied, the applicant is referred to the Legal Medicine
Organization (LMO) which operates under the supervision of the Ministry of
Justice. If the LMO confirms the diagnosis of GID, this confirmation is followed by
a certificate for sex change surgery being given by the Administrative Court at the
Ministry of Justice. Transsexual persons who undergo the surgery may ask the
family court for a legal change of name and gender. In other cases, if TIP’s
psychiatrists diagnose the applicant as a homosexual, the person will be considered
mentally ill and referred to a different section for more psychotherapy treatment. It
should be noted that persons diagnosed with GID should also fulfill other
requirements to be eligible for sex change surgery, which is different from being
medically diagnosed. These requirements are: legal age of majority (18 years old),
having completed 12 months of hormone therapy, and have lived as the opposite
gender for one year (Saberi et al. 2010, 209). LMO in Iran assesses the diagnosis of
GID based on DSM-IV
11
diagnostic criteria (Aghabikloo et al. 2013, 131). What is
7
Ekhtelal-e-Hoviyat-e-Jinsi.
8
Malal-e-Jinsi.
9
This is based on the fieldwork I conducted in Tehran in 2014.
10
Harry Benjamin was a German born American doctor and endocrinologist. Benjamin was opposed to
psychiatric treatments and defined transsexuality as a state of desiring to be the other sex (Hausman 1995,
122). The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), formerly known as the
Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, has published several collections of
consensus opinions on transsexual medical and health care. The first version was published in 1979 and
the latest version (the 7th) was published in 2012.
11
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) has been published by American
Psychiatric Association since 1952 to classify mental disorders and related problems. DSM has
standardized the diagnosis and treatment of transsexual persons emphasizing the need to investigate the
background of the patient from childhood, clinical diagnosis, psychotherapy, hormone therapy, and body
modification and changing secondary sex characteristics such as breast formation, hip fat, body hair and
voices (Davy 2012, 24).
Transsexuality in Contemporary Iran: Legal and Social Misrecognition 253
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more, based on the fatwa, those who have received the diagnosis and the certificate
for sex change surgery can live as a trans person without undergoing the surgery as
long as they do not fall into sinful acts
12
(Kariminia 2012, 105).
Methodology
I employ feminist methodologies to show and understand the relation between the
production of knowledge among a marginalized group of people and the dominant
power that represents them. I try to shed light on social and legal policies as well as
the experiences of trans persons in Iran. I draw on the work of Dorothy Smith (2005,
123) who maintains that people’s experiences, especially those of marginalized
people, are a fundamental source for examining ruling relations and particularly
social organization. Through the study of lived reality in Iran I try to challenge the
idea that objectifies indigenous people as troubled and oppressed ‘others’ (Smith
1999, 39). I also agree with Diane Richardson (2007, 465) that the relationship
between gender and sexuality needs to be analysed historically, considering the
social and cultural specificities of different contexts, in order to give space to
different understandings of gender and sexuality, and avoid Western essentialist
accounts of these concepts. As Richardson (2007, 470) puts it, gender and sexuality
are formed within intersectional discourses of class, race and ethnicity that are
themselves already embedded in different places, cultures, religions and forms of
governmentality.
The data I have used for this article are from fieldwork that I carried out in
Tehran during two trips; the first took place between December 2013 and January
2014 and the second was in November 2015.
13
Altogether, 30 semi-structured
interviews were conducted with different groups, including: (1) eight FTM
14
trans
persons, six of whom had already undergone sex change surgery, while two were
booked for the operation; (2) five MTF trans persons, two of whom had not yet
undergone sex change surgery; (3) two surgeons with extensive experience of
conducting transsexual surgeries; (4) one psychologist at the Social Welfare
Organization; (5) two trans activists; a non-trans person who is the public relation
officer and website manager of Mahtaa: Centre for Protection of Iranian
Transsexuals, and a transman
15
who is the director of the NGO called Association
for Protection of Gender Identity Disorder Patients in Iran; (6) a journalist who was
12
Sinful acts here refers to same-sex relations that are criminalized by the law, which are the sexual
conducts between two men with male bodies or between two women with female bodies. For example, a
pre-operative transman cannot have sex with a female body. It should be clarified that genital organs
define the sex of person in Iran.
13
I accessed the field and received permissions for interviews through the surgeons.
14
FTM refers to a movement in trans spectrum from female assignment at birth to male gender identity,
and MTF indicates moving from male assignment at birth to female gender identity, which both may or
may not include hormonal or surgical treatment (Enke 2012, 19).
15
Transman or transsexual man is used for a person born with a female body who considers themselves
to be a man and lives socially as a man, and transwoman or transsexual woman is a person born with a
male body who considers themselves a woman and lives socially as a woman (Stryker 2008, 20).
254 Z. Saeidzadeh
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among the first people to cover the issue of transsexuality in Iran; (7) ten lawyers
among whom one has publicly written on the legal issues of trans people in Iran;
and (8) a jurist and clergyman who has published two books on the issue of
transsexuality. In addition to interviews, other materials for analysis include: (1)
legal documents; (2) official writings of Ayatollahs; and (3) media and press
coverage. Textual discourse analysis is used to analyse the primary and secondary
data.
Trans, Gender and Sexuality in Iran
In the Persian language, jins is commonly used to mean sex and to differentiate
between females and males. According to Najmabadi (2013a, 213), the term also
refers to genus, albeit different from meaning opposite kinds. Jins is used in the
Arabic language as meaning kind, sort, product or quality, and these words are also
used in Persian. Jinsi is also used as an adjective to refer to mean sexual. For
example, rafter-e-jinsi in Persian is ‘sexual behaviors’ in English. The word jinsiyat,
in Persian, as a translation of gender, indicates the distinction between biological
sexes. However, it is generally used by Iranian feminists to refer to something more
than sexual characteristics. Jinsiyat is also used to indicate desire and attraction that
could be closely correlated to the English term ‘sexuality’ (Najmabadi 2013a, 214).
In the context of this study, jinsiyat is widely used by trans persons to refer to the
biological sexes (man and woman). Tarajinsi is a relatively new term that has been
introduced into the Iranian language to mean transsexual. The prefix tara is an
equivalent word for ‘trans’ in English, and when it comes before the adjective jinsi
(sexual), it means transsexual.Tarajinsi is basically understood among the
interviewees as a person who is willing to undergo sex change surgery. Tarajinsiyati
is another newly circulating term in Iran that is usually confused with tarajinsi and
means transgender. The prefix tara, before the word jinsiyat and with an additional
i, creates a term which conveys a meaning related to more than biological sexes. In
other words, it denotes desire, pleasure and attraction. Tarajinsiyati (transgender) is
defined as a broader term among transsexuals in Iran, who think tarajinsi
(transsexuality) falls under tarajinsiyati (transgender). However, the interviewees
used the English word trans referring to transsexual.
Addressing jinsiyat, Hamid,
16
an FTM (postoperative), explained:
I was a person who had some extra organs in my body that my soul rejected,
and at the same time I was missing some other necessary parts. With the
surgery I made my jinsiyat compatible with my thoughts.
Taraneh, an MTF (postoperative) defined transsexuality as:
A state of being, which shows a person’s soul, thoughts, logic, reasoning,
mood, and interests are different from his/her jinsiyat.
16
The names of the trans persons interviewees are pseudonym names give to them. However, the name
of professionals are their real names used with their permissions.
Transsexuality in Contemporary Iran: Legal and Social Misrecognition 255
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Hamid and Taraneh used jinsiyat to refer to biological sex, as distinct from the
non-biological meaning (soul, thoughts, interests, mood, etc.), which illustrates that
although jinsiyat is a literal translation of the English word ‘gender’, it does not
refer to gender as it is conceptualized in Anglophone culture. As Rosi Braidotti
(2002, 288) puts it, cultural differences and linguistic diversity shape the practical
and theoretical understanding of gender in different parts of the world. The
interviews illustrate that gender, as a complex concept of self-consciousness and
social identity, is embedded in the soul, thoughts and mind of a person—as opposed
to the biological sex, or jinsiyat. Thus, trans persons change their sex (the material
body) not their gender (the immaterial body).
Like any other, Iranian society has faced various social and political changes
since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and these have created a generation that
experiences sexuality and does gender differently from their predecessors. Despite
the Islamic state’s restrictions on sexuality, young people, especially women, have
challenged ‘disciplinary power’ through initiating strategies of resistance (Farahani
2007, 28). Many women at all social levels in Iran discuss social and legal
inequalities and employ strategies to resist unequal policies. This includes, for
example, not wearing a head-scarf in public, making their manteaux (the public
dress code for Iranian women) shorter and tighter, or pushing to beat boys in school,
and go to university (Hoodfar and Sadeghi 2009, 219). The Iranian post-revolution
generation, as Fatemeh Sadeghi holds (2008, 251), does not necessarily follow the
Islamic ideologies imposed by the government, especially with regards to sexuality.
Sadeghi argues (2008, 251) that sexuality in contemporary Iran is the construction
of discursive practices and the experiences of the younger generation within power
relations in different areas of life. Accordingly, Moruzzi and Sadeghi explain (2006,
25) that there are three main parallel discourses on sexuality in contemporary Iran
which appear at three levels: (1) the state, through the application of Shi’a Islamic
jurisprudence; (2) society and social practices; and (3) the individuals who make up
the post-revolution generation of Iran born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Despite the enforcement of patriarchy and unequal gendered relations within the
private (family) and public (employment and education) spheres, women, especially
young women, continue to challenge the gendered policies and practices of the
Iranian government (Kian 2014, 343).
Transsexuality is poorly discussed within Iranian feminist scholarship in Iran,
which has largely focused on the rights of women and female sexuality, especially
in the realm of law within the family and the public domain. This has made their
work less focused on nonconforming genders and gender relations in society. There
is, however, a significant amount of literature on the issue of sex change surgery
authored by Iranian jurists and medical doctors in Iran.
The existing literature on transsexuality published by Iranian scholars outside of
Iran (cf. Jafari 2014; Najmabadi 2008,2014; Shakerifar 2011; Javaheri 2010;
Bahreini 2008) shows that the debate on transsexuality in Iran revolves around the
issue of medical and psychiatric treatment of GID for assigning the individual to
their desired gender. In representing transsexuality in Iran, Elhum Shakerifar (2011,
329) adheres to the medical discourse of transsexualism, maintaining that most
transsexuals in Iran believe that their subjective experience of sexuality (as existing
256 Z. Saeidzadeh
123
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in their minds) is different from that of their bodily representations. Therefore, the
demand for surgery becomes the first symptom of transsexualism. This argument is
employed to distinguish their status from that of homosexuals and transvestites, who
can claim no medical grounds for treatment. Freshteh Javaheri (2010, 367) defines
transsexuality in Iran as a culturally and historically specific transgender practice, or
an identity that engages transgendered people with medical and judicial institutions
in order to gain access to certain hormonal and surgical technologies for enacting
and embodying the self. Afsaneh Najmabadi in her recent work, Professing Selves:
Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (2014), draws on
transsexuals’ narratives on gender and sexuality in order to examine the process of
filtering ‘real trans’ applicants from ‘deviant homosexuals’. She believes that such a
legal and medical process has productively generated a livable space for other ‘not
normal’ gender identities (i.e. homosexuals) in Iran. On the other hand, Raha
Bahreini (2008, 15) problematizes the patriarchal pathologization of transsexuality
by the Iranian government and argues that the new system of ‘the police force’
comprising psychiatrists, psychologists, and surgeons, along with civilian and
governmental actors, forces binary gender roles through psychotherapy, hormone
treatments, and the technology of the knife in order to maintain heteronormativity
among the population. Bahreini’s radical argument misrecognizes the status of trans
people as active members of society and dismisses their knowledge about their own
bodies, sex and gender. Along with the existing literature, several recently produced
documentaries
17
have depicted Iranian trans people, as being either, as Shakerifar
(2011, 333) puts it, oppressed entities and mostly homosexuals being forced to
undergo sex change surgery, or as the exotic objects of investigation for the media.
Yet, they ignore the issue of transsexual people’s agency, as people who embody
their desired gender within a social and legal system that denies recognition of their
status.
Laws and Legality
Sex Change Surgery Under Shari’a
Shari’a refers to the Islamic sources (Quran, Prophet’s Tradition, Consensus, and
Reasoning) from which particular Islamic law is created and understood by the work
of humankind. Islamic laws are not a set of divine rules preordained by God. As
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim stresses: ‘‘Shari’a is not divine by itself, rather it is
created based on human interpretations of Islamic sources and interactions during
the course of history’’ (1991, 12). After the death of the prophet Mohammad, private
scholars attained authority due to their religious knowledge which enabled them to
provide guidance to people on matters that had remained unresolved during his life
time. Hence, the science of law (fiqh) emerged (Mir-Hosseini 2000, 4). Fiqh (also
referred to as Islamic jurisprudence) is the structure of Shari’a that functions as a
17
‘Inside Out’ (2005), directed by Zohreh Shayesteh; ‘The Birthday’ (2006), directed by Negin Kianfar
and Daisy Mohr; and ‘Be Like Others’ (2007), directed by Tanaz Eshghian.
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process through which Islamic jurists strive to understand divine sources of Shari’a
in order to transform God’s commands into law.
According to Coulson (1964, 76) the divine sources are the principles of Islamic
jurisprudence or fiqh that should be taken into account by a mujtahid, who is a
person exercising ijtihad.Ijtihad is the process of independent reasoning by jurists,
and literally means diligence in English. In the Shi’a school of Islamic thought,
marja’-e-taghlid
18
is a mujtahid and a Grand Ayatollah who provides reasoning on
matters of everyday life by referring to divine sources through fiqh in order to
respond to Muslim inquiries. Taghlid literally means emulation and marja’-e-
taghlid is the person who is understood to be the source of emulation in Shi’a
jurisprudence. Shi’a Muslims should emulate (taghlid) a jurist’s justification for
their inquiries. The source of emulation, who is a marja-e-taghlid provides legally
binding opinions known as fatwa for their followers by using ijtihad and referring to
divine sources. Mohammad Hashim Kamali (2008, 174) defines fatwa as a legal
opinion of a qualified Islamic jurist in response to a Muslim question. Louis Halper
(2006–2007, 1148) maintains that contrary to Sunnis Islamic thought and due to the
notion of Imamat
19
and the responsibility of Shi’a Islamic jurists during the time of
occultation of the twelfth Imam, those who have reached the level of ijtihad issue
fatwas which are binding on their followers.
The sources of law in the Iranian legal system are comprised of both secular and
Islamic components. Legislation based on French and Belgian codes that was
enacted before the revolution have remained in place to constitute sources of law
alongside the judicial precedents, custom (urf) and Islamic sources (Quran,
Prophet’s Tradition, Consensus, and Reasoning) (Maranlou 2015, 58). The Iranian
constitution stipulates in Principle 167 that a judge must use Islamic sources and
authentic fatwas to rule on the matters about which the Iranian law books are silent.
Transsexuality has not been addressed in Islamic sources and there had been no
fatwas issued on the matter of sex change and transsexuality before Ayatollah
Khomeini. Therefore, it is the work of jurists to create new opinions through fiqh
and referring back to Islamic sources.
Islamic law varies with reference to its deferential contexts and should be studied
by addressing human practices not the divine will. As a result, what is known as
Islamic law is produced and reproduced by members of different societies (Dupret
2007, 80). Lawrence Rosen (1989, 2, 40) proposes the ‘‘locality of Islamic law’’
which means that the law differs depending on local customs, conditions and
people’s background. Ayatollah Khomeini’s permission for sex change surgery as a
mujtahid and marja’-e-taghlid during the early years of the revolution was based on
his view of the people’s needs at that time and the way in which he understood
Islamic sources through fiqh. Moreover, because of his social and political status, his
fatwa superseded his opponents’ views. Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa permits sex
change surgery, but it does not recognize trans people’s status either in the law or in
society. This is discussed further below.
18
Different spellings are used by different scholars for translations of the terms taghlid and fiqh from
Arabic into English. I do not follow a particular method for the spellings.
19
Shi’a Muslims believe in twelve Imams after the death of Prophet Mohammad.
258 Z. Saeidzadeh
123
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Plurality of Legal Opinions on Sex Change Surgery in Iran
The legal opinions of Islamic jurists on the matter of sex change differ depending on
their reasoning and understanding of Islamic sources. This means that different
interpretations of Islamic sources can result in divergent legal opinions among
jurists in response to a similar inquiry. In Iran, nine marja’-e-taghlid allow sex
change surgery, but there are many who are against it, but Ayatollah Khomeini’s
fatwa is the prevailing view and after that the view of Ayatollah Khamenei,
20
which
allows sex change surgery, is most important.
21
In an interview with Mohammad, a trans activist, he expressed his concern on the
matter:
There is not a single unified method of legal implementation for Ayatollah
Khomeini’s fatwa. Judges in Tehran are much more open to sex changes, and
people undergo the surgery without much difficulties. However, in cities like
Ardebil,
22
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa has no binding force. Therefore,
people come here [Tehran] for transition.
Half a century ago among Iranian jurists, the Islamic jurisprudential
discourses on the issue of sex change surgery began by discussing matters
relating to hermaphrodites dujinsi (two sexes) and psychological hermaphrodites
or khunsa (a term used in Islamic jurisprudence to refer to intersex individuals).
However, there has been a major shift in jurisprudential arguments over the past
two decades on the state of transsexual people, which is now taken to describe a
disparity between the body and the soul. Therefore, surgery is a way to bring the
body into line with the soul, because one cannot change the soul (Najmabadi
2014, 182). There is no unanimity amongst Iranian Shi’a jurists on the practice
of sex change surgery. Ayatollah Seyyed Yusef Madani Tabrizi, who is a highly
respected marja’-e taghlid addresses sex change surgery in his treatise (1989)as
an unlawful act not permitted by Shari’a. He bases his opinion on the argument
that, firstly, humans cannot alter God’s creation and secondly, the disfiguration
of vital organs in the human body is not lawful and is most certainly beyond the
knowledge of humankind (Mir-Hosseini 1999, 37). Ayatollah Madani Tabrizi’s
explanation is evidently limited to divine sources, which are based on the gender
binary system.
In contrast, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Musavi Bojnourdi (2007, 22) argues
that a sex change does not constitute interference with God’s creation because, if it
did, all of our everyday acts would be unlawful since we alter God’s creation in
everyday life. He explains: ‘‘for making bread, we change wheat to flour and from
that to bread. Should we say that is not lawful?’’ Ayatollah Bojnourdi (2007, 23)
explains that sex change surgery does not change humanity but it does alter the
characteristics of human beings. He clarifies (2007, 22) that, according to the fiqhi
(Islamic jurisprudential) rule of heliyat (permissibility), everything is halal
20
The current supreme leader of Iran since 1989.
21
Interview with Hujatul Islam Mohammad Mehdi Kariminia, 1 November 2015.
22
Ardebil is a city in the west Azarbayijan province, which is located in the northwest of Iran.
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(permissible) unless it is forbidden in the Quran or Hadith.
23
Another fiqhi reason
that he provides for the permissibility of sex changes is based on the rule of taslit
(control), which says that all human beings have control and power over their
property and bodies, which in turn allows them to conduct permissible acts on their
bodies. Therefore, undergoing a sex change is a permissible act (Bojnourdi 2007,
23). Proponents of sex changes also refer back to divine sources to support their
arguments; however, their readings of divine sources and the application of Islamic
jurisprudence differ from that of their opponents. As a result, in some cities in Iran
not only is sex change surgery forbidden, but also the judges do not allow the legal
change of name and gender.
Hujatul Islam Mohammad Mehdi Kariminia, who is known as the most trans-
friendly clergyman in Iran and has been working on the issue of sex changes for the
past 18 years, argues that transsexual persons have healthy bodies, but they suffer
mentally from GID. Therefore, surgery is the way to treat their sickness (Kariminia
2010, 73). For Kariminia, granting permission for a sex change depends on two
conditions. Firstly, it should be an issue of absolute necessity (zarurat) for a Muslim
and secondly, it must be real (haghighi). However, if transsexual persons can live
without committing sinful acts (same sex acts or hamjins bazi), they do not have to
undergo sex change surgery or make bodily changes.
24
Iranian Laws and Regulations
The state’s legislation has remained silent on the legality of sex change surgery and
transsexuality, except on matters relating to the practical processes of transition and
regulation for compulsory military service.
25
Transsexual persons are exempted
from military service. The 2001 amendment to the Military Service Regulations on
Medical Exemption states (Section 5, art. 33:8): ‘‘behavioural disorder (psycho-
logical imbalance), and bad temperaments are not acceptable according to military
principles. This includes moral and sexual deviations such as ‘transsexualism’ that
results in permanent exemption from military service’’. This is an institutionalized
misrecognition of transsexuality in the form of legal policy that makes trans
persons’ status abject. By placing transsexuality in the category of moral and sexual
deviancy, the law misrecognizes transsexual persons’ status in society to the extent
that most of them experience poverty and sexual exploitation. Shahrzad, a journalist
in Tehran told me:
Generally the situation of trans people in Iran is disastrous. The surgeries are
very costly. Families abandon them. They lose their jobs. They live in scarcity.
Most of them have no roof over their heads. They are forced into sex work for
little money. Especially transsexual women…
23
Prophet Mohammad’s traditions.
24
Afsaneh Najmabadi’s discussion with Hujatul Islam Mohammad Mehdi Kariminia in her book (2014),
pp 182–185.
25
According to Iranian law, boys who reach the age of 18 and are not students must undertake
compulsory military service for 18 months.
260 Z. Saeidzadeh
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When I asked Amir, an FTM (postoperative), about people’s attitude towards
him. He said:
I never tell anybody that I am a trans or have changed my sex, because as soon
as they find out you are a transsexual, they either get scared or want to rape
you…
Furthermore, the English term ‘transsexualism’ is used in the state’s legal
document, which implies that transsexuality is a medical term and thus a subject for
medical science rather than the law. In 2007, Iran’s Ministry of Health required the
conscription authority to replace the ‘psychological problem’ with ‘glandular
disorder’. Consequently, in the amendment to Public Military Law in 2011, trans
persons are exempted from the military service on the basis of ‘glandular disorder’
(Najmabadi 2014, 202). However, according to the interviews, this amendment has
not yet been implemented in practice and they still receive a military exemption
card marked with a psychological disorder.
The Civic Registration Law amendment in 1985, article 20, clause 14, states: ‘‘a
person who has changed his/her sex can legally change their name and gender on
the birth certificate upon the order of court’’. The Family Law Bill amendment in
2011, article 4, clause 18 says: ‘‘family court is entitled as a judicial authority to
handle issues related to sex change’’. Both laws mention sex change, but do not refer
to transsexual persons who undergo sex change surgery. Moreover, there has been
no mention of transsexual persons’ rights either before or after the sex change
surgery; for example, matters regarding child custody, inheritance, and reproduc-
tion, to name but a few, are simply overlooked by the law. This is because the law
does not define transsexuality because, if it did, the whole heteronormative system
of law could be disrupted. Shahrzad expressed her view on the lack of legislation:
In the current political atmosphere, Ayatollah Khomeini is a red line
[opposition to the system] himself. That is why his fatwa has not been tuned
into a law…
The law’s lack of understanding of transsexuality, and the legal shortcomings in
the protection of transsexual persons’ rights, have together createdaninferior
status for trans people in Iranian society. The procedural regulations regarding the
process of transition in Iran emerged from official inter-organizational inquiries
within the judiciary. In 1987, the Legal Medicine Organization (LMO) queried the
judiciary’s legal office
26
about sex change surgery due to receiving a number of
applications. The legal office’s response, which came in the form of a circular, was
that, from the legal point of view, sex change surgery is not a problem (bela
eshkal) and according to Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa it is allowed under Shari’a
(Kariminia 2012, 80).
26
Edare-e-Hoghooghi is the Persian term for the organization that I have translated as legal office, which
functions under the judiciary’s power as one of the branches of the judiciary’s legal department
(Moavenat-e-Hoghooghi). It is responsible for the interpretation, clarification and reformation of the
courts’ precedents to identify legal shortcomings and to provide consultative orders. This office answers
the legal questions asked by judges and other organizations.
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Mohammad Ali Tahirkhani, director of the NGO, the Association for the
Protection of Gender Identity Disorder in Iran
27
told me:
We want parliament to pass a law that permits sex change surgery, a proper
law. LMO handles trans cases because of the judiciary’s circular. A circular is
not a law. A circular can be changed by the head of the organization, it does
not have the power of law. We want parliament to make this a law of the land,
so that it is binding everywhere.
For Tahirkhani the recognition of transsexuality and sex change surgery by the
law means that the state and society will know and accept that trans persons exist as
citizens who enjoy equal rights.
Wrong Body, Wrong Gender
Dr. Mina Jafarabadi is a well-known gynaecologist surgeon in Tehran, who also
works as a researcher at the Reproductive Health Research Centre in Vali-e-Asr
hospital. She has been performing around three FTM surgeries a week since 2008.
She defines transsexuality as:
The state of a person who doesn’t accept his/her body and is absolutely sure
that her/his soul is the right one. Therefore, an everlasting struggle takes place
to accord the ‘wrong body’ and everything to do with it (sexual conduct,
clothing, etc.) with the right soul.
The discourse of the ‘wrong body’ permeates the medicalization of transsexuality in
Iran, which holds that transsexual embodiment is a natural error; thus, technology
can reassign gender to bring it into accord with the body (Halberstam 1998, 143).
This is a dominant discourse which implies that the body of a transsexual person
should be made closer to the mind of that person. The religious discourses, however,
say that the ‘healthy body’ of the person should become closer to the soul, because
the soul cannot be changed, but the material of the body can.
Dr. Shahriar Kohanzad is a urologist, specializing in transsexual surgery who has
been performing MTF surgeries since 1998. He told me that it is very difficult to
diagnose what he calls ‘confirmed real identity’ (hoviyat vaghei taeedshodeh),
because there are many commonalities between homosexual and transsexual
identities. This has created difficulties, especially among traditional families, where
social stigmas are stronger. He explained:
It is difficult to distinguish between sexual deviances and sexual behaviours. I
have had patients from the most religious and traditional parts of Qom [known
as the most religious city in Iran]. I do a lot of thinking before I apply the
knife. During the past few years, 90 % of patients whom I have visited were
undoubtedly homosexuals. It is very hard even for them to recognize their
identity.
27
http://gid.org.ir/.
262 Z. Saeidzadeh
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Dr. Jafarabadi’s interpretation is pitched against Dr. Kohanzad’s explanation. She
believed:
Someone who comes to me and asks for the most difficult and painful surgery
to dispose of her breasts and womb is definitely not a homosexual. The need to
change one’s body is symptomatic of transsexuality. By contrast, a
homosexual accepts his/her body but seeks same-sex relations. If she/he
demands surgery, then she/he is not a homosexual anymore.
Dr. Kohanzad claimed that transsexual persons suffer from psychological distress
and therefore they need psychotherapy. He explained that transsexual people are
confused about their gender identities, and suffer from gender dysphoria:
I don’t agree with the word transsexuality: I personally think these people
have a problem with self-recognition that is a form of identity disorder. Their
representations of themselves are different from the real selves. Gender
identity is very secretive, and the therapist is responsible for unveiling the real
identity of the person when he/she is in conflict.
This is a similar argument to Hakeem (2008, 193) who maintains that
transsexuality cannot be explained biologically, because the minds of individuals
experience different conditions during their formative years—an idea that needs
more psychotherapy. Hakeem (2008, 195) states that patients with conflict about
their gender may call themselves transsexuals but deserve psychotherapy for
treatment.
Dr. Jafarabadi was certain that transsexual persons will never have a good
‘normal life’, either before or after surgery. Medically speaking, she argued:
Surgery results in complete loss of sexual desires, especially in the cases of
male-to-female transition. They are not able to satisfy their sexual partners
after the surgery, which causes frustration, depression and, in many cases,
suicide.
Trans people whom I interviewed believed that it is very degrading to lower the
value of humankind merely to sexual desires, so they understand their sexuality as
involving not only sex, but also other social practices, forces and struggles that
challenge unjust institutionalized discourses about them and their status.
Above all, Iranian transsexual persons reject the idea that they are suffering from
a medical condition, but they do not challenge the view of medicalization, because it
is considered the only way in which they can be seen and acknowledged by the law,
family and society. Surgeons play an important role in discussing the option of sex
change surgery with the families of trans people by using medical arguments rather
than religious justifications. It is due to these medical views that many families
permit their children to undergo sex change surgery. Moreover, medics have had an
influence on the formation of some aspects of state law, to the extent that the
English term ‘transsexualism’ has entered into the Iranian state’s legal documents.
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I am a Trans
The interviews with trans people indicate that transsexuality is conceptualized as a
state of the body being in disharmony with the soul
28
or the mind. In his elaboration
on the meaning of the soul, Samin, an FTM (postoperative), said:
The soul is the interests, thoughts and feelings I have. When I say that my soul
is different from my body and they didn’t match, it is more complicated than
what you hear. When your soul wants something that does not match with
your body, you are in big trouble – I mean from choosing the colour of your
socks to the style of your hair…
For Samin, feelings, acts and behaviours can still be meaningful without needing
material bodily significations. In other words, biological sex guarantees nothing and
does not determine his gender. This illustrates that the body gains meaning within
the discourse of power relations, so he has reconstructed his gender by claiming
autonomy over his body. However this occurs once again within the discourse of
power, which misrepresents and misrecognizes his being as a transsexual. For
Hamid, an FTM (postoperative), transsexuality is a state of being misplaced with a
different soul. He believes that the soul is wrong, not the body. Following Noor Ali
Elahi (the spiritual leader of a mystical sect called Ahle Haqq), Hamid described his
thoughts on transsexuality as:
…God is too busy to create souls every second for every person who is born.
Therefore, the souls that we receive are from previous bodies. They get mixed
up in the air when trying to capture the right bodies.
Hossein, an FTM (preoperative at the time of the interview), believed that there is
a verse in the Quran that states: ‘‘there are children whose souls are different from
their bodies; this is a divine command from God to test humankind’’ (source was not
provided). There is no reference to transsexuality in the Quran, but Hossein bases
his definition of transsexuality on a divine source that is more authoritative than a
human’s interpretations. These examples indicate that every person understands
transsexuality according to their knowledge and experiences of gender and gender
relations, which does not necessarily follow Islamic jurists’ reasoning.
The interviews show that, the moment a person self-identifies as a trans, they are
no longer struggling with any type of inner conflict or confusion. Those who self-
identity as transsexual (pre or post-operative) have no sense of confusion, guilt or
resistance around sexual relations. However, transition does not occur at the
moment of realization or when undergoing the surgery. It might take years until the
person feels secure.
Hanieh, an MTF (preoperative at the time of the interview), explained that she
was barely 18 when she identified herself as a transsexual, and although she was
28
The soul is the English translation of ruh which, regardless of its theological and philosophical
meaning in Persian is used to imply the immaterial part of humankind as against the body, which is
material. Transsexual interviewees used this term to express their situation of incongruence between the
body (jism) and the soul (ruh).
264 Z. Saeidzadeh
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determined to stay true to her gender identity, it took her a long time to discover
herself:
Ever since [10 years ago] I identified myself as a trans, I have got more
confident in expressing my desires and feelings without being afraid. I can
openly say that I pluck my eyebrows, remove body hair and wear women’s
underwear, because I am a trans and I live this way.
Najmabadi (2014, 283) maintains that different performances (wearing make-up,
cooking, doing the laundry, clothes, driving, doing heavy work) create a sense of
being either a man or a woman—not genitalia. Therefore, she perceives (ibid., 298)
transsexual gender identity as a form of ‘self-assignation’ based on conduct and
behaviour, including sexual, rather than a distinction between sex and gender. I
would like to add, as the interviews explain, that it is not merely through
performances that one’s gender is constructed; rather, it is the obeying and
disobeying of forced gender relations that constitutes one’s gender and gender
performativity that is, according to Susan Stryker (Stryker and Whittle 2006, 10,
11), the way of being under social and political forces.
Mehran, an FTM (postoperative), challenges social inscriptions of gender norms
on his body, and he simply rejects the social and cultural norms that create his
gendered subjectivity. He said:
I could appear in public wearing men’s clothes, so that others identified me as
a man, but that did not satisfy me. It is important how I see myself. The
problem is the contradiction between my physical self and the image I have in
my mind of myself. I wanted to have congruence between my body and my
mind. It was not an issue for me to have sex with women before the surgery,
because in my mind I did not have a female body, but Iranian women do not
usually have sex with female bodies.
What is more important for Mehran is the self-recognition of his body and
gender, not the way others see him. Society recognizes him as a man if he appears in
men’s attire, but that does not change his views of himself. He claims ownership
over his body, which has been misrecognized since birth through others’
(mis)recognition. He wants to be recognized as he sees himself. Although the
body matters, according to Mehran’s explanation, a pre-operative transsexual man’s
sexual desire for a heterosexual woman constructs the gender, not that person’s
physical body.
Compared with offline politics, transsexual persons have been relatively active in
cyberspace by distributing news and information on transsexuality and the process
of transition, as well as sharing their personal experiences. However, every
transsexual person with whom I spoke strongly resisted being identified as a
member of a transsexual community or being associated with other self-identified
transsexuals in public. This helps them to avoid the threat of belonging to an identity
group in social relations which, according to them, will make their situation worse
than it already is within the family and society. At the same time, transsexual
activists do not intend to discuss ‘human rights’ issues, because they wish to avoid
politicizing their cause. Rather, they fight to be understood and accepted as normal
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members of society with basic needs such as insurance, employment, medical and
health care. Taraneh, an MTF (postoperative) warned me:
Don’t you ever mention human rights when you work on this issue, because as
soon as you do, you make it political and then you are in big trouble. We are
keeping away from going in that direction; it is not good for us…
Clearly, trans people’s struggle for recognition in Iran is not based on identity
politics, but on a status model. As Fraser describes it (2000a, 23), the status model
focuses on the recognition of the individual in full participation in social
interactions rather than group identity. She adds (2000b, 112): ‘‘The identity model
lends itself too easily to repressive forms of communication, promoting con-
formism, intolerance and patriarchism’’.The status model of recognition highlights a
struggle to overcome status subordination and foster parity of participation. For
Fraser, status recognition tackles the problem of gender injustice, which is rooted in
cultural values. Furthermore, it deconstructs the traditional understanding of identity
politics in such a way that it remedies gender misrecognition (Fraser and Honneth
2003, 13).
Transwomen, Transmen
The social and legal misrecognition of transsexuality has created space for
discourses which lead to the status misrecognition of transwomen. The term ‘real
trans’ was widely used by transmen who believed they have truly embodied
transsexual identity. Hamid, an FTM (postoperative), expressed his sadness for
transsexual women and claimed that he was a ‘real trans’, because he was not
playing around:
I think they [transwomen] are miserable and fake, I do not approve of them;
they have destroyed our image in society. They try to get the certificate and do
whatever they want…I am the ‘original product’ (jins-e-vaghei), I am a ‘real
trans’ (trans-e-vaghei) – look at me.
According to the interviews, the dominant perception in Iranian society in
general, and among transmen, in particular, is that transwomen are fake (e.g.
homosexuals) who just want to be prostitutes. Taraneh, a transwoman (postoper-
ative), believed that transsexuals of her type had created a lot of problems for trans
and non-trans people. She referred to them as ‘businesswomen’ by which she meant
prostitutes who use a trans identity just to make money. She said:
…Our kids (bach-e-ha) are immoral, they have problems themselves. They
paint a bad image of us in society. Trans is growing in Iran like a tsunami, and
most of them are these kids who wear tight shorts, cross-dress as women and
go on the streets to make money. Whereas, transmen are good people, because
they only want to have a family, find a job and settle down …
The legal misrecognition of other non-heteronormative genders has amounted to
the social misrecognition of transsexual women as inferior members of society. The
266 Z. Saeidzadeh
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patriarchal regime of gender relations and gender misrecognition within Iranian law
and society have created a space in which trans people can resort to homophobia
that reproduces sexism and reinforces patriarchal cultural values (Msibi 2011, 71).
For instance, many interviewees, particularly transmen showed negative attitudes
towards homosexual persons. They regarded homosexuals as mentally sick people.
Some believed that on many occasions permission for sex change surgery has been
wrongly given to homosexuals by the authorities. Oppression of male femininity in
Iran can be historically traced back to the mid twentieth century. Najmabadi (2013b,
8) describes the cases that were reported in journals about the shame, insult, injury
and arrest of those who refused their manhood. Even heterosexual men actors who
played female roles had awkward social positions. Ali, a transman (preoperative at
the time of the interview), pointed out:
Those who are not really trans misuse the law by pretending to be trans. I
know people who have identified themselves as trans, got the certificates and
have lived without surgery for eight years. They do not intend to get the
surgery anyway…
Amir, an FTM (postoperative), similarly believed:
Homosexuals change their toilets, not their sexes. A lesbian can act as a boy
but can never become a man capable of providing for the family, or take
responsibilities. What’s more, they cannot satisfy their wives.
Creating distinctions between homosexuality and transsexuality is the result of
structural homophobic law and a society that relegates homosexuality to pathology
and relates transsexuality to a new model of masculinity at the individual level.
Sex Change Surgery
According to Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, sex change surgery is not obligatory for
a person who has the desire to be opposite sex (see introduction). However, the law
neither legalizes sex change surgery, nor does it recognize transsexuality. Therefore,
it remains a taboo in society and among the families of trans people because it
breaks the cultural rules of gender. The misrecognition of law has caused many
transsexual persons to live their social lives hidden behind their identities, both prior
to and after the surgery. As a result, covert surgery, without the knowledge of
families, appears to be very common among transsexual persons in Iran.
In January 2014, Fari, a 28-year-old transsexual woman, was considering
undergoing sex change surgery. She explained that she had gone through a lot of
pressure not to be a trans; she was raped by men, battered and injected with
testosterone, to be ‘fixed’ as a man and forced into marriage. Her father and brothers
had threatened to kill her if she had the surgery. None of these extinguished the
flame, which is how she referred metaphorically to her feeling of being a trans. In
March 2014, she underwent the surgery without the knowledge of her family, and
stayed in a hotel to recover. Despite undergoing the surgery, she returned home as a
‘man’ and continued going to work as a ‘man’. In November 2015, her boss found
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out about the surgery and fired her. Her family abandoned her, her child was taken
away from her and she had to move to another city.
Fari’s experience is a clear example of how misrecognition by the law
subordinates the status of trans persons in society and subjects them to gender
inequalities and discriminations.
Amir, an FTM (postoperative), explained why he did not inform his family about
such a big decision in his life:
No one in my family knows that I have removed my womb and breasts apart
from my mother, because she paid for the expenses. As soon as my brothers
and father find out, I will be dead. That is why I haven’t told them. They have
already beaten me severely few times, when I came out as a trans.
Mehran, an FTM (postoperative), also did not tell anyone in his family about the
surgery except his sister, who helped him through the process:
If I come out as a trans and talk about my surgery, my family will have to bear
the shame. Besides, it might cause problems for my other siblings, as they
might lose their jobs and families, and even worse than that is that they might
never be able to get married because of me. That is why I have kept it a secret.
The medico-judicial process governing sex change surgery does not preclude the
misrecognition of transsexual people’s status in Iranian law and society either
before or after the surgery. Hossein, an FTM transsexual (preoperative at the time of
the interview), explained why his parents are against the surgery:
My father says he has no problem with me having the surgery, but he is
concerned that I am doing it without realizing that I will never be able to
function as a man because of my future artificial penis. He says I won’t be able
to satisfy my woman and will be barren forever. My mother always mocks me
about my relationship with my fiance
´e, saying, ‘‘What is it in you that makes
your girlfriend attracted to you? You don’t even have a penis’’.
Nancy Fraser explains:
To be misrecognized is not simply to be thought ill of, looked down upon or
devalued in others attitudes, beliefs or representations, it is rather to be denied
the status of a full partner in social interaction, as a consequence of
institutionalized patterns of cultural value that constitute one as comparatively
unworthy of respect or esteem Fraser (2000b, 113–114).
Many families of transsexual persons use the terms a ‘proper man’ or a ‘proper
woman’ to oppose sex change surgery. According to dominant cultural and social
values, a trans person will never be a ‘proper man’ or a ‘proper woman’ after the
surgery. This form of misrecognition pushes transsexual persons to the margins,
destabilizes their status in society and hence leaves them vulnerable to violence and
discrimination.
Transsexual persons’ insistence on having the surgery does not mean that their
bodies will be welcomed in heteronormatively constructed spaces after the surgery.
On the contrary, those who decide to undergo surgery often know that they will lose
268 Z. Saeidzadeh
123
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their families, job opportunities, future careers and even previous work experience.
Nevertheless, none of the people with whom I talked expressed any regrets, because
what mattered most to them was achieving inner comfort and peace. Ali, an FTM
(preoperative at the time of the interview), was certain that the surgery would not
change him into a man but would bring his body closer to his soul. He said:
Every psychotherapist I have visited so far has told me not to go for the
surgery, because it doesn’t make any difference, because…boys and girls
have almost the same rights these days. But they don’t understand that it does
make a huge difference to us mentally. I might not be able to satisfy a woman
sexually after the surgery, but I am sure I will have inner peace, which is the
difference that matters for me.
Sex change surgery is seemingly considered to be the one and only way for
Iranian trans persons to claim their gender identities, in spite of the social exclusion.
Upon the official granting of the permission from the judiciary to undergo sex
change surgery, transsexual persons can pass as trans by carrying the certificate until
they are ready to undergo the surgery. As mentioned earlier, according to the fatwa,
if there is no risk of conducting sinful acts (same-sex sexual relations), the surgery is
not obligatory immediately after being diagnosed as trans and granted the medical
certificate for the surgery. There are many factors, including financial problems and
emotional challenges with families that can delay the surgery for years. Therefore,
those who take years between receiving the diagnosis and undergoing the surgery do
not perceive their acts and relations as sinful, but healthy.
Conclusion
In this paper I have explored the status misrecognition of Iranian transsexual
persons at the international, national and individual levels through an examination
of international media and literature, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, Iranian law,
medical professionals’ practices and trans persons’ experiences. The paper
demonstrates while transsexuality and trans persons in Iran are misrepresented
internationally, their status is also misrecognized in Iran at the structural level (legal
and social), and at the individual level, among both trans and non-transsexual
people.
Iranian law misrecognizes trans people’s status and regards transsexuality as a
matter of medical science, not a subject of law. Ayatollah Khomeini’s legal opinion
asserts the legitimacy of sex change surgery upon medical approval without
providing an Islamic understanding of transsexuality, because transsexuality is a
relatively new subject in Islamic law and jurisprudence. The current discourses
among Iranian jurists are more focused on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of sex
change surgery in Shari’a rather than the status or social relations of trans people
before and after such surgery. This arises in part because the knowledge of Islamic
jurists and Islamic laws, including Islamic sources, are limited on this subject.
The lack of a legal definition of transsexuality, on the one hand, and the Islamic
law’s heteronormative perception of gender on the other, have inevitably led to the
Transsexuality in Contemporary Iran: Legal and Social Misrecognition 269
123
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misrecognition of transsexuals’ status in society to the extent that they are not
regarded as full members of society even by their own families, because they fall
outside the boundaries of heteronormativity due to the removal of their sexual
reproductive organs.
The medicalization of transsexuality in Iran has been relatively effective in
helping to change the attitudes of their own families, from abhorrence to
humanitarianism. Iranian transsexual persons reject the notion of GID (Gender
Identity Disorder) and other medical representations, while at the same time
believing that the involvement of medical professionals in the process of transition
has helped to strengthen their status in society. In the current climate of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, medical doctors enjoy the privilege of being regarded (or arguably
misunderstood) as contributing to society from a politically-neutral standpoint
which lies beyond religious and ideological debates.
I have shown from the interviews that Iranian transsexual persons have defined
transsexuality and their gender relations through ways that are different from
existing legal and social norms while defying the Anglophone literature and media’s
misrepresentation of trans people’s lived reality in Iran. With reference to Nancy
Fraser I show that the status misrecognition of transsexual persons in Iran results in
institutionalized subordination that in turn leads to inequality and violence.
However, transsexual persons in Iran struggle to overcome this misrecognition by
redefining gender and reconstructing gender relations through their practices both
prior and after undergoing sex change surgery. They believe that the body is not the
marker of one’s gender, and that gender is more fluid than being fixed at birth. This
challenges the idea of a gender binary distinction and the boundaries of gender in
Iranian law and society. Thus, sex change surgery is not understood by Iranian
transsexuals as a way to fit themselves into the category of male or female; neither is
it perceived as the last resort to live as a full member of society. Rather, it is
understood as bringing the body closer to the soul. I have shown that the
misrecognition of transsexuality at the structural level (legal and social) amounts to
a status misrecognition of transsexual women and homosexuals at the individual
level. Transsexual women are misrecognized by transmen as a fake gender
resembling homosexuals.
Transsexual persons’ struggles in Iran are concentrated on gaining recognition by
the law and society, which they believe will remedy their status subordination.
Misrecognizing transsexual persons, or dismissing their knowledge and self-
consciousness about their sex, bodies and gender will not eliminate transsexuality or
transform it into ‘normal’ heterosexuality. I hope that this article gives a real
account of the socio-historically specific understanding of gender by the Iranians
who reconstruct their bodies and disrupt gender relations in a patriarchal system yet
again within Islamic framework.
Acknowledgments I started to write this article in Lund University and finished it at the Gender Studies
Department in O
¨rebro University, which has funded this article as part of my doctoral project. I am most
grateful to Prof. Reza Banakar who supported my project at Lund University and encouraged me to write
this article. I am deeply indebted to Prof. Jeff Hearn at the Gender Studies Department in O
¨rebro
University who reviewed and commented on my manuscript several times and patiently discussed it with
me to the extent that I could produce the final version. I am very thankful to my doctoral supervisors,
270 Z. Saeidzadeh
123
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Prof. Liisa Husu and Dr. Sofia Strid, at from whom I received great support and constructive feedback.
Above all, I would like to thank Dr. Mina Jafarabadi without whom I would not have been able to
interview people in Tehran. Last but not least, I am very thankful to the people who let me interview
them, especially trans people in Tehran.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, dis-
tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were
made.
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