Transgender rights in Iran

Surgery for intersex conditions have been practiced in Iran since the 1930s.[3]^:252[4]^:25[5] In 1963, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wrote a book in which he stated that there was no religious restriction on corrective surgery for intersex individuals, though this did not apply to those without physical ambiguity in sex organs. At the time Khomeini was a radical, anti-Shah revolutionary and his fatwas did not carry any weight with the Imperial government, which did not have any specific policies regarding transgender individuals.

The new religious government that came to be established after the 1979 Iranian Revolution classed transgender people and crossdressers with gays and lesbians, who were condemned in shah's era and faced the punishment of lashing or even death under Iran's penal code.

One early campaigner for transgender rights was Maryam Hatoon Molkara, a transgender woman. Before the revolution, she had longed to become physically female but could not afford surgery and wanted religious authorization. In 1975, she began to write letters to Khomeini, who was to become the leader of the revolution and was in exile. After the revolution, she was fired, forcibly injected with male hormones, and institutionalized. She was later released with help from her connections and continued to lobby many other leaders. Later she went to see Khomeini, who had returned to Iran. During this visit, she was subjected to beatings from his guards because she was wearing a binder and they suspected she could be armed. Khomeini, however, did give her a letter to authorize her sex reassignment operation, which she later did in 1997.[6] Due to this fatwa, issued in 1987, transgender women in Iran have been able to live as women until they can afford surgery, have surgical reassignment, have their birth certificates and all official documents issued to them in their new gender, and marry men.[7]

Khomeini's original fatwa has since been reconfirmed by the current leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and is also supported by many other Iranian clerics.[1] However, there is still a great deal of stigma attached to the idea of transgender and gender reassignment in ordinary Iranian society, and most transgender people, after completing their transition, are advised to maintain discretion about their past.[1] Trans people are subject to employment discrimination, rejection by their families and communities, police abuse, and depression.[5] Because they are typically rejected by their families and social networks, where Iranians usually look to for financial support and employment opportunities, they are often forced into sex work and sometimes commit suicide. [8][9] People who would like to engage in sexual relationships with people of the same gender may feel pressured to undergo operations to have their relationship legitimized by the state through marriage because marriage is a very important institution in Iran.[4]

The process of undergoing sex reassignment surgery is extensive and rather arduous. People who so much as question their sexuality are encouraged to see a psychologist, and they are usually recommended to undergo sex reassignment surgery in order to fit in with the strict gender binary that is present in Iran. The individual goes through four to six months of therapy, hormone tests, and chromosomal tests to undergo a process known as "filtering". Filtering is the separation of homosexuals, who are deemed as "deviant", from transsexuals, who are deemed as "curable" by undergoing surgery.[5] Once a transgender individual has undergone sex reassignment, that person legally becomes the new sex. All legal documents, such as birth certificates and passports, are also changed accordingly.[1]

Hojatoleslam Kariminia, a mid-level cleric who is in favor of transgender rights, has stated that he wishes "to suggest that the right of transsexuals to change their gender is a human right" and that he is attempting to "introduce transsexuals to the people through my work and in fact remove the stigma or the insults that sometimes attach to these people."

Transsexual surgery is not actually legal under Iranian civil law, although the operations are carried out. Iranian law has both secular and religious components, and secular jurisprudence says nothing about transgender issues. In this case, Sharia and fatwas take up the slack until it does, and it is under the religious law and Khomeini’s fatwa during the interlude that surgery can be carried out.[3]^{:250, 258}

UNHCR's 2001 report says that sex reassignment surgery is performed frequently and openly in Iran, and that homosexual and cross-dressing men, although unrelated to trans identity, would be safe as long as they keep a low profile. However, the Safra Project's 2004 report considers UNHCR's report over-optimistic. The Safra Project's report suggests that UNHCR underestimated legal pressure over transgender and LGBT matters. The Safra Project report further states that currently, it is not possible for presumed transgender individuals to choose not to undergo surgery - if they are approved for sex reassignment, they are expected to undergo treatment immediately. Those who wish to remain "non-operative" (as well as those who cross-dress and/or identify as genderqueer) are considered their gender assigned at birth, and as such they are likely to face harassment as being homosexuals and subject to the same laws barring homosexual acts.

A 2016 study analyzes European and American literature about the topic as characterizing legalized transgender surgery at least partly motivated by a desire to enforce a heteronormative binary conception of gender, including 'forced' surgery for some gay people, and critiques that view as an oversimplification.[3]^:250 The belief that cisgender homosexuals have actually undergone sex change due to social pressure is not supported by evidence.[10] Increased international attention to the Iranian transgender community and their legal status may have been a result of 2002 award winning film Juste une femme (Just a Woman) by Mitra Farahani.[4]