ABSTRACT
Sexuality is a central aspect of humanity and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships. Whilst sexuality can include all of these dimensions, not all of them are always experienced or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors .
Up until now, the human rights reporting and media coverage of the LBGT community from Iran has mainly been compiled and documented from those who left Iran and are living in exile. There have been very few, if any, research studies undertaken on the LGB community in contemporary Iranian society and how the LGB community is viewed from the individual’s own perspective. In essence, there is scarcely any information about the experiences of LGB individuals in Iran. More specifically, there has been little or no research about their lives and how LGB people in Iran feel that their experiences are affected by their sexual identity. This study attempts to fill this gap on this important subject. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study conducted inside Iran exploring LGB in Iran. The present research study contributes a unique dimension to the literature on LGB by focusing specifically on Iran.
This study examines this unvisited field of sexuality in Iran by looking into the multiple complex dimensions of sexual identity and nuances within the LGB community against a rising recognition of one’s sexual orientation. This study challenges misunderstandings of LGB and sexuality in Iran by scrutinising the myths and narratives that have so often misinformed gender, development policy and practice, in order to inspire a more inclusive approach.
This study is incredibly complex as it gives more than just a simple overview of sexual orientation and thoughts about gender within the spheres of the individuals’ private and public lives. For the first time, this intense research centred on in-depth interviews with over 300 individuals (60% male and 40% female) in 3 major Iranian cities: Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan. This study addresses the challenges arising from contemporary changes in gender relationships and how this is played out in Iran whilst providing readers, LGB communities, universities and research centres, public and social advocates and students with the theoretical and methodological frameworks in which LGB is explored and researched. The purposes and key aims of this research project are to understand the perceptions, beliefs and of LGB in Iran through critical analysis from the individuals themselves and the challenges they face living in a religious, class based traditional and patriarchal bound society that has rejected LGB as an identity. It is here where this study begins to seek why.
The necessity of focusing on the LGB society and the vulnerability of its oppressed and silenced members was the motivation to shed light on the state of affairs of LGB individuals who have been intentionally neglected and socially marginalised.
This study weaves together phenomenological, hermeneutic, post-modern, and depth-psychological approaches to create a methodology of subjectivity suitable for researching the LGB experience that encompasses the examiner's own intuitions and feelings in the research study’s verification criteria for safeguarding “objectivity”. This approach places the individual as the final arbiter of any psychological discovery and, thus, provides unique solutions for the understanding of sacred phenomena that are firmly grounded in the felt-experience of embodied subjectivity.
Methodology (organization of the study, sampling, structures, measures)
The data for this research study was collected over the course of one year between 2016 and 2017. Most projects of this nature lack sound methodology and often suffer under the almost inevitable weakness of convenience sampling. LGB individuals in Iran belong to a silenced minority who often are compelled to hide their sexual orientation from their families and friends out of a well-founded fear of reprisals and social rejection. Although this study that the 300 individuals may not be representative of the general population of LGB individuals in Iran but by far 300 interviews are more than enough to achieve a high standard and credible research method. This research study undoubtedly offers a window into the lives of LGB individuals in Iran who live covert lives. It is the hope that the findings and conclusions in this study will lead to new policies and interventions. Hopefully future research studies should replicate this research with a larger, possibly nationally representative population, and outline the extent to which results vary by individual who identified as LGB.
The study is retrospective; adults provided information about experiences that took place during their adolescent years. This plausibly lends itself to bias recall when describing specific family reactions to their LGB identity. To minimize this concern, this study created measures that queried as objectively as possible whether or not a specific family behaviour or response related to their LGB identity actually occurred. Additionally there was concern that respondents either will not answer sensitive questions regarding sexual orientation or will answer inaccurately. In particular, the study took extra precautions to enhance the privacy of the survey environment to encourage respondents to respond to sensitive questions sufficiently without feeling shy or self-conscious.
A unique feature of the scope of this research study is that it focuses only on LGB and not Transgender and or Transsexual individuals (who possess two different sides of sexuality that operate simultaneously). Transgender is normally part of the LGBT acronym. Transsexuals have been intentionally excluded from this study as their status in Iran is somewhat legally approved. Whilst they are recognized and legitimized in Iran, their situation is still dependent on one Fatwa line that allows them to undergo sex-change operations. In the mid-1980s a Fatwa by Iran's Supreme Cleric Imam Khomeini allowed transgender individuals officially recognized by the government to undergo sex reassignment surgery. As of 2008, Iran carries out more sex change operations than any other nation in the world except for Thailand. The government typically pays up to half the cost (and in some case in full) for those needing financial assistance, and the sex change is duly noted and recognised on the birth certificate.
As promising as this legal permission seems to be it is still not immune from sudden changes. For example, at any time a supreme cleric can issue a superseding fatwa revoking this right and thus deny Transgender basic civil and social rights. This important fact has been one of the reasons to exclude Transsexuals from this research in addition to the fact that transsexuals in Iran have already been studied and widely written about. Although Transsexuals as an identifiable group suffer from the same problems as homosexuals, such as labelling, violations and bullying the crucial difference is that the government does not deny their existence. Transsexuals in comparison to LGB individuals face less stigmatization and ostracisation in Iran. (For further discussion see Chapter LGBT Rights in Iran). There was also a very genuine pressing concern amongst the researchers about sensitization and drawing attention to Transsexuals’ relatively fragile position in Iranian society. This concern equally underlined the decision to concentrate the research study on LGB individuals and exclude trans genders.
Thus, taking into consideration time constraints, it was decided to focus the research study on LGB attitudes, feelings, beliefs, experiences and reactions in Iran in order to gain a larger amount of information over a shorter period of time. The necessity of focusing on LGB society and the vulnerability of its very oppressed and silenced members is of paramount importance. Nevertheless, in addressing LGB in Iranian society this is not to dismiss the various threats the transgender community faces, including being stigmatised, excluded, social or marital rejection, alienation and economic reprisals.
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