Over the last decade, with high-profile clerics and academic centers advocating for trans rights, social awareness on the issue has grown, says Schumacher. Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl Government-issued identification placed on a desk as a mosque in Tehran. In other words, while Iran does not mandate that all trans individuals have the surgery, it is not possible to change your gender marker on official documents without undergoing the surgery.
If an Iranian is officially diagnosed with gender identity disorder, the government issues the authorization for them to legally start the sex reassignment process, and at the end of that process the court issues a new identity card, with a new gender listed. told me to “get out and close the door behind ,” as if I was a dirty and untouchable person. I was convinced there was a way and I was just looking for some kind of confirmation, from someone, who would tell me “yes, it’s possible!” Instead, one of the doctors gave me pills, and another other one injections…. They would tell me: “It’s not possible, you were born like this.” But I knew I had to do this operation and change my sex. They said things like “you will die if you undergo ,” or “many girls who wanted to become boys died during the surgery”Īll of them treated me like I was delusional…. They just told horrible and terrifying stories to shut me up. My parents took me to see a doctor because I kept saying I was a boy. It all started when I was eight or nine years old.
Even if you somehow figure out how to navigate this process-and Sarah did not-it can take over a year, according to a report compiled by OutRight Action International, a global LGBTIQ-rights organization.
Officially, an Iranian can be diagnosed as having gender identity disorder only after a complex series of medical tests and legal procedures including obtaining a court order, multiple visits to a psychiatrist, and physical and psychological examinations at the state’s Legal Medicine Organization. Even though she continued to live as a man, she grew more confident in her gender identity thanks to the more tolerant atmosphere at the university, and from her academic successes-though she was still years away from realizing she was trans. So she enrolled in university in Tehran, and began to study languages and translation skills. “If I’m not a woman, if I’m not a man, I thought at least I should be a productive person and live a…happy life,” she says. Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl A woman walks past mannequins covered with Islamic clothing designed by Iranian designers while visiting an Islamic fashion exhibition in central Tehran March 1, 2012.Īt 16, she decided to make a change. “You are alone against all the social norms that dictate what you should do, what you should wear, how you should live,” she says.
“If you’re born a man and your body is a female then in order to protect you and the wellbeing of society,” says Schumacher says, “the government is responsible for fixing the issue.” An uncomfortable truthįor Sarah, life in Iran was divided into two very distinct parts: before and after she had gender confirmation surgery.Īs a young child growing up in the late 1980s in Tehran, Sarah (who, because she is not openly trans, did not want to publish her full name) was uncomfortable wearing the clothes and playing the games traditionally associated with being a boy, and felt she did not belong at the all-boy’s school to which her parents sent her. The policy is based on Islamic notions that gender is binary and that social responsibilities should be split between men and women. “The Iranian government doesn’t recognize being trans as a category per se, rather they see trans individuals as people with psychosexual problems, and so provide them with a medical solution,” says Kevin Schumacher, a Middle East and North Africa expert with OutRight Action International, a global LGBTIQ-rights organization.