Context
The English term ‘trans’ and the acronym ‘TS’ are both used in Iran by trans*1 people and experts to refer to people who were not assigned their desired gender at birth, regardless of whether or not they have undergone gender affirmation surgery (GAS).
The term dojensi, which literally means a person with two sexes, has been used for trans* people for many decades in Iranian society, referring to bisexual, transsexual, transgender, and intersex or hermaphrodite persons in Iran (Najmabadi 2014). Dojensi has a derogatory connotation, too, that is used for people who are known to have two personalities (do shakhsiyati).
Trans* people, including trans* activists in this study, use the term tarajinsi2 in Persian to refer to someone who wishes to change their gender through surgery, in contrast to tarâjensiyati,3 which is used for people who do not conform to gender binaries, nor do they want to submit to body modifications.
It should be noted that the term jins literally means ‘kind’ or ‘type’ in Persian, and has been used since the early twentieth century to mean sex (Najmabadi 2005). The suffix -i at the end of the word jens creates the adjective jensiwhich literally means ‘sexual’. On the other hand, the suffix -yat at the end of the word jensicreates the infinitive noun jensiyat, which indicates the quality of the kinds; being a man and woman. Therefore, the term jinsyat in Persian is used to refer to gender.
The prefix tarâ- in Persian means ‘trans-’ in English. When the prefix tarâ- comes before the word jens, it creates the noun tarâjens, or ‘transsexual’ in English. On the other hand, when prefix tara- is added to the word jensiyat, it creates the noun tarâjensiyat, which is ‘transgender’ in English. A relatively recent Persian term, digarbash, is used by activists to refer to people in queer community. Digar in Persian means ‘different’ and bash means ‘being’.
The notion of ‘sex change’ (taqyire jensiyat in Persian) refers to the individual, social, and legal transition, regardless of the surgery. The concept of sex-change surgery in Persian (‘amale taqyire jensiyat) concerns the change of biological sex. Thus, it refers to changing the material part of a human being (i.e., the biology), in contrast to the immaterial, and unchangeable, part of a human being (i.e., the gender, or the soul). Currently, the terms ‘gender confirmation surgery’ (‘amale tatbiqi jensiyat in Persian) and ‘gender affirmation surgery’ (amale tasdiqe jensiyat in Persian) are used by Persian trans* communities and activists online.
During the early years of the Islamic state and under very hostile sociopolitical climate towards gender nonconforming people, Maryam Khatoon Molk Ara, a trans woman who had started her advocacy for trans* people's recognition during the Pahlavi dynasty, lobbied the Grand Ayatollahs after the Islamic revolution, including Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader at the time. It was due to her advocacy that Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwā in Persian on gender affirmation surgery, which has since created a liveable life for trans* people in Iran. Maryam Khatoon sought for religious recognition of trans* people in Iranian society under the Islamic state.
Consequently, Ayatollah Khomeini permitted gender affirmation surgery in 1982, by saying (in Persian): ‘There is no Islamic obstacle to sex change, if it is approved by a reliable doctor. May you be protected, and I hope the people you mentioned will understand your situation’ (Kariminia 2012: 78). After obtaining the fatwā, Maryam Khatoon lived in Iran as a trans woman without undergoing the surgery for twenty years and only underwent surgical transition in 2002 in Thailand.
Ayatollah Khomeini relied on the knowledge of medics for his legal opinion, knowing that the medical system in Iran had previously certified the performance of gender affirmation surgery for intersex and trans* people since 1930s. He therefore involved the medical system to decide on who is allowed to change gender through surgery.
Islamic jurisprudence's understanding of trans* in Iran is confined to surgery and biological transition, resulting in a medical conceptualization of trans* based on gender affirmation surgery. Iranian Islamic jurists address gender transition and gender affirmation surgery through the emerging field of medical jurisprudence (feghe pezeški) within Shī‘a law, focusing primarily on altering physical sex characteristics, rather than recognizing trans* identities as transcending gender binaries.
In this article, I examine trans* people's status in society through investigating how the legal, jurisprudential, and medical systems in Iran understand trans* citizens and their needs in society.
Production of Knowledge on Trans* in Iran
Early discussions on the production of knowledge about trans* identities in Iran began before the Islamic Revolution, primarily led by medical professionals. Medics were the first among others who started writing about trans* people in Iran between the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, Jahanshah Salih, an American-educated gynaecologist, who was appointed as the dean of Tehran University School of Medicine in 1948, trained a generation of medics about sex and gender based on biological essentialism. Salih published textbooks for medical students in which he set reproductive organs and heterosexuality as the criteria for fitting trans* people into male and female categories.
During the 1960s, Salih and many other physicians claimed that ‘sex change’ is not scientifically true, meaning that it is not possible to change gender due to the inability to reproduce and the impossibility of penile-vaginal intercourse (Najmabadi 2014). This form of objective understanding of gender led to the medical council's ban on gender affirmation surgery for non-intersex people in 1976. However, this ban was lifted by Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwā in 1982. Subsequently, after the Islamic revolution, jurisprudential interpretations and medical practices on gender transition began to develop. Therefore, educating the public about trans* became a priority of the state's apparatuses, as the country's main printed media (i.e., newspapers, magazines, journals), national TV, and satellite portrayed trans* people as patients of a gender disorder whose existences, practices and relations are religiously legalized, in contrast to gays and lesbians who are regarded as criminals.
In the early 2000s, jurisprudential interpretations of trans* and gender affirmation surgery were gradually debated among jurists in Iran, to the point that Islamic jurists became engaged in public conversations alongside the medics to advocate for trans* people's acceptance within family and society. The dominant Islamic jurisprudence understands trans* people as those who wish to undergo surgery because they either suffer from dojensi (‘two sexes’) or are khunsâ (Kariminia 2000). Khunsâ is a term used in in Islamic jurisprudence to refer to a psychological hermaphrodite (cf. Fortier 2017).
From 2006 to 2008, the national media in Iran started systematically covering cases of gender affirmation surgery, stressing on the body modification. During this period, public medical and jurisprudential debates on gender affirmation surgery travelled to bigger cities, such as Tehran and Mashhad, to the extent that two first ever public seminars were organized by medics at Ferdowsi Hospital in Mashhad in 2005 and Iranshahr Hospital in Tehran in 2007 (Najmabadi 2014).
Around 2010, after a decade of discussing trans* lives, the judicial understanding changed to the point that Hujatol-Islam Mohammad Mehdi Kariminia, who is known as the first most ‘trans-friendly’ clergy member in Iran, and who advocates for trans* people's rights, in his book, Sex Change from Law and Fiqh's Perspective (Kariminia 2010), explains that a ‘transsexual’ – that is a medical term, person has a disparity between their body and their soul.
In January 2011, the Law School of Mofīd University4 in Qom held a seminar titled ‘Sex-Change Surgery from the Perspectives of Jurisprudence, Law, and Medicine’ for the law students. Qom is the most religious city in Iran, and Islamic seminars are organized there by grand Ayatollahs across Iran. The seminar's panel5 included a jurist, and two surgeons who discussed the permissibility of sex change in Islam and the need to understand trans* people's rights to undergo surgery within family and society.
In December 2012, Mofīd University organized another event for screening a movie called Facing Mirrors (Âyenehâye Ruberu), which is about a trans man who faces different challenges in his life prior to surgical transition. This event was held at the university despite the fact that Qom's municipality had forbidden its public screening. Organizing such seminars by Mofīd University on the one hand emphasizes the engagement of law and medicine with trans* issues, and on the other indicates advocacy of Islamic jurists for a normative way of being trans* that follows the medical model.
Sociological debates on trans* in Iran began to focus on trans* people as medical subjects. In 2014, the Sociology of Medicine and Health Department at Tehran University organized a seminar titled ‘The Lived Experience of Iranian Transsexuals’. It emphasized that trans* people who wish to undergo surgery are born with both psychological and physical diseases. Thus, the seminar advocated for the idea that trans* people are patients who suffer from nature's error, an error that can be cured through surgery.
However, in October 2015, the Department of Sociology of Medicine and Health organized another seminar6 titled ‘The Interdisciplinary Views on Transsexualism in Iran’, this time with a panel7 that included social scientists who spoke about important social issues and challenges faced by trans* people in Iran, including the lack of support from family and society, especially intellectuals outside of biomedical and psychological spheres.
There is a growing interest among graduate students and researchers in the social sciences and humanities in Iran to conduct research on trans* people. Nevertheless, the majority of research in academia revolves around medical transition. Thus, academics and Islamic jurists advocate for the acceptance of trans* people in society as patients of an incurable disease who need to be cured by undergoing surgery.
Producing such knowledge stems from the epistemic misrecognition of the knowledge and experiences of trans* people, who are discredited and devalued in the process of knowledge production. It also resonates with trans normativity, which deems some trans* people's subjectivation and practices of gender and gender relations as legitimate while making other trans* people invisible and unintelligible (Johnson 2016).
In the process of knowledge production, apart from the jurisprudential and medical interpretations, several documentaries have been produced about trans* people's lives in Iran which are only screened publicly outside Iran. For instance, 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. In these documentaries, Iranian trans* people are depicted as oppressed individuals, and mostly as homosexuals, who are forced to undergo gender affirmation surgery. They are also, conversely, presented as exotic objects of investigation for the media (Shakerifar 2011).
Moreover, Emily O'Dell (2019) points out that these documentaries depict trans* people as objects of pity, focusing on negative sorts of Orientalist assumptions. Moreover, due to being misrecognized as gay men and thus highly stigmatized in society, trans women are not staged in Iranian cinema or theatre. Therefore, trans men characters are dominant in popular culture (O'Dell 2019).
The first box office hit in contemporary Iranian cinema is a film about the life of a trans man titled Âyenehâye Ruberu (Facing Mirrors, 2012), written and directed by Negar Azarbayjani. The film portrays the social and legal challenges faced by a trans man from a middle-class family in Tehran, sparking significant discussion and debate, particularly among trans activists who were critical of its portrayal. Another film that successfully explores trans* issues is Nafase Sard (Cold Breath, 2018) by Abbas Raziji, which also focuses on the life of a trans man in Iran who is poor, disabled, and raising a child, shedding light on the complex realities of his situation.
Both films are criticized by the trans* community for focusing on the surgery and not completely showing different matters related to gender transition (Kjaran and Saeidzadeh 2024). In an interview, Saman Arastoo, an Iranian actor, playwright, and performance artist in Iran O'Dell (2019: 160) states: ‘In Facing Mirror and Cold Breath, the directors did not consider that all of us are on the gender spectrum. […], but the directors just indicated the men and women in these films’.
Saman Arastoo, who is a trans man himself, has written, directed, and acted in two autobiographical plays called Hamatun Mano Mišnâsin (You all Know Me) and Hamun Bâš Ke Nisti (Be the One Who You Are Not), which were staged between September and November 2015 at the City Theatre of Tehran. In these plays, Arastoo pictures the everyday life challenges of a trans man who tries to survive. Arastoo's plays are inspired by drama therapy and the Theatre of the Oppressed (O'Dell 2019), with the aim of raising awareness about challenges faced by trans* people in family and society.
A more progressive portrayal of trans* lives in Iran is found in the play Âbi Mayel Be Surati (Pink-Like Blue), written and directed by Sanaz Bayan, which ran from December 2017 to March 2018 in Tehran. In this play, Bayan challenges the biologically deterministic view of gender and highlights the various interrelated factors that shape one's sense of gender beyond genitalia. However, the depiction of trans* individuals still centres on surgical transition and the binary concepts of masculinity and femininity, which implies the exclusion of non-binary trans* people from societal recognition. Epistemic justice is achieved if the knowledge and experiences among diverse groups of people are valued and respected.
Theory
The concept of ‘epistemic misrecognition’ refers to hermeneutical injustice, as framed by Miranda Fricker (2007), as well as status misrecognition, as developed by Nancy Fraser (2000), to detect and remedy social injustice experienced by trans* people as equal citizens in Iran. According to Fricker, ‘epistemic injustice’ refers to how people are depicted as being intellectually inferior with no agency and are treated less credibly than other members of society (Fricker 2007).
Fricker explains ‘epistemic injustice’ in testimonial and hermeneutical forms. Testimonial injustice happens when the capacity of a person as a knower is undermined. ‘Hermeneutical injustice’ happens when the capacity of a person's experience is obscured from social resources. ‘Epistemic misrecognition’ as a conceptual tool helps me to analyse the ways in which Iranian trans* people's knowledge and experience about their existence are not acknowledged, not understood, and precluded by and from collective epistemic resources. Moreover, ‘epistemic misrecognition’ helps me to highlight the systemic ‘epistemic injustices’ at institutional and structural levels which render trans* people's social status as inferior, take away their agency, and marginalise them. Fricker (2007: 154) maintains: ‘Hermeneutical injustice is a form of epistemic injustice which occurs at a structural level when one's experiences or subjectivity is obscured from collective understanding of an entire system’. Furthermore, Medina (2018: 1–2) describes ‘epistemic injustice’ as occurring when some groups of people are affected negatively by dysfunctionality of recognition within a social and moral context, which undermines their ‘intelligibility’ and ‘incredibility’.
Nancy Fraser (2000: 114) maintains that misrecognition is about being denied the status of a ‘full partner’ in social interactions as the result of ‘subordinating institutionalised patterns’ that make some groups of people ‘normative’ and some ‘deficient’. Some members of society are denied the full status of being able to participate in society; that is, they are denied ‘parity participation’ with the rest of its members. Furthermore, ‘institutionalised misrecognition’, as Fraser explains, takes shape in the form of law, governmental policies, and professional practices that constitute some categories of people as inferior to the others. Therefore, Nancy Fraser (1997: 280) states: ‘Misrecognition is an institutional social relation, not a psychological state’. For Fraser, status recognition tackles the problem of gender injustice, which is rooted in wrongful values. ‘Hermeneutical injustice’ within ‘epistemic misrecognition’ leads to the loss of one's voice, the loss of agency, as well as the loss of status in society; Medina (2019: 41) calls it ‘hermeneutical death’ and Fraser (2001: 24) explains it as ‘status subordination’.
Methodology
I draw on the data I collected during two fieldwork trips to Tehran in 2014 and 2015, as well as online interviews with people in Iran in 2017. In 2014, I conducted 16 face-to-face semi-structured interviews: seven trans men; five trans women; one psychologist; one trans activist; and two surgeons. In 2015, I conducted 16 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews: one surgeon; one cleric; one journalist; two trans activists, one of whom was the NGO director; one lawyer working specifically on trans issues; and one trans man who is a lawyer. In 2017, I conducted 10 telephone interviews with 5 trans men and 5 trans women. My initial contacts in Tehran were made through the website manager of the ‘Centre for Protection of Iranian Transsexuals’ (Markaze Hemâyat az Tarâjensiha or Mahtaa) and Dr Mina Jafarabadi, a gynaecological surgeon in Tehran.
During my fieldwork in Tehran, I realized that it was much easier to meet with trans men than trans women, the latter of whom were less comfortable to meet in person and in public. During the interviews, trans men were more outspoken and confident than trans women. I met two trans men, who had not undergone legal transition in Tehran but wore a masculine outfit – that is, a cap, jeans, and a T-shirt. This is a significant indication of comfort among trans men, considering they did not abide by the compulsory Islamic veiling. However, the two trans women whom I met in Tehran did not dare to appear in their feminine outfit, because they had not undergone legal transition yet. The real names of research participants are protected except for the surgeons and Hojatol Islam Karimina who consented to the use of real names.
I have applied thematic analysis to analyse the interview transcripts. The themes are identified inductively with regard to the important issues in relation to the research questions and at some level of prevalence across the whole data (Gareth et al. 2017). Thematic analysis searches for themes that emerge from the data, or for information to describe the phenomenon. The identified themes in the data become categories for analysis (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane 2006). The researcher moves back and forth between different phases of the process of analysis as follows: 1) familiarisation with the data; 2) generating codes; 3) constructing themes; 4) reviewing potential themes; 5) defining and naming themes; and 6) producing the analysis.
Medical Misrecognition
The conception of trans* in Iran is based on the interpretation of medics who use the term ‘transsexuality’ and define it as a psychological condition rooted in gender dysphoria, which describes the status of a person who is not content with their physiological structure (Najafipour and Najafipour 2018; Vahedi et al. 2017; Alirezanejad et al. 2016; Alipour 2017; Hedjazi et al. 2013; Aghabikloo et al. 2012; Ahmadzadeh-Asl et al. 2011).
Gender dysphoria is translated as malâle jensi or nârezayane jensi in Persian. Malâl in Persian means ‘a feeling of psychological discontentment’, and jinsī means ‘sexual’, which translates into English as ‘sexually discontented’8 referring to people who do not abide by the gender roles assigned to them according to their biological sex. Therefore, when non-surgical treatments, such as hormone therapy and psychotherapy, are not effective, surgery is the way to treat these patients (Kalantari and Ibrahimi 2011).
Diagnosis is necessary and should be done. That is the job of the psychologist, not me. It is not like anybody could come and say ‘I am a TS’ […] The need to change one's body is symptomatic of transsexuality. Someone who comes to me and asks for the most difficult and painful surgeries to dispose of her breasts and womb is definitely not a homosexual. Above all, a homosexual accepts his/her body but seeks same-sex relations. If she/he demands surgery, then she/he is not a homosexual anymore. (Face-to-face interview with Dr Jafarabadi, Tehran, 2014)
There is no law on this matter. This is only a judicial process that requires the person to remove their gonads. The reason for this is to forbid the person from misusing trans status to live a bisexual or a homosexual life. (Face-to-face interview with Dr Jafarabadi, Tehran, 2014)
Medics who understand trans* people as gender dysphoric (Vahedi et al. 2017) draw on both the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), published in 2013, which defines ‘transsexuality’ as a mental disorder called gender dysphoria, and the ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases), published in1999, which defines and classifies ‘transsexuality’ as a mental disorder known as gender identity disorder. However, on 20 June 2018, the ICD-11 declassified transsexuality as a psychiatric illness and discussed it as a type of gender incongruence under the chapter titled ‘Conditions Related to Sexual Health’.9
There are two practical views among surgeons in Iran who see trans* people as those who suffer from gender dysphoria: one that supports psychological treatment to help people find their real identity, and another that advocates surgical means to eliminate the person's inner conflict (Saeidzadeh 2016). The medical discourses and practices among medics in Iran reinforce a normative understanding of trans* as undergoing surgical transition from a man to a woman or vice versa (Johnson 2016; Nicolazz 2016). Therefore, medics’ advocacy for trans* people not only limits trans* embodiment to symptoms and diagnosis, but also creates a medical model as the one and only way to be trans*, which in turn misrecognizes their status, reinforces invisibility and renders them unintelligible if they do not fit into the medical standards.
The state sees trans as a medical issue that should be ruled by Islamic jurisprudence […] because Sharī‘a sets rules for how to be a woman and a man and nothing in between. It is medical because it involves hormones and surgeries. (Face-to-face interview with Moh, Tehran, 2015)
This issue entered Islamic jurisprudence fifty years ago [referring to ayatollah Khomeini's fatwā]. I have been working on it for seventeen years now. I have held more than twenty seminars, conferences, and workshops in Qom in clerics’ seminaries, universities, and state organs. Because this issue is medical, clerics do not know about it. Clerics know more about intersex and hermaphrodites, not trans. I have been training clerics on various occasions. (Telephone interview with Hojatol Islam Kariminia, Tehran 2014)
The medical system has been influential in changing legal policies, especially with regard to exemption from compulsory military service. The latest modification of the Regulation on Medical Exemption from Military Service in 2014 (section 5, art. 33:12), under the category ‘neuro-psychiatric’, exempts trans* people permanently from military services on the grounds of ‘TS’ (which is mentioned in English), or gender identity disorder.
Moreover, in section 5, art. 33:7, gay men are also temporarily (six months) exempted from obligatory military service on the grounds of sexual deviancy. The law mentions the English term ‘homosexuality’ as abnormal behaviours against social and military norms.10 When people are granted a military exemption card on this basis, it is marked with ‘psychological disorder’. In Iran, the military service exemption or completion card is a crucial identity document for men, necessary for managing various aspects of daily life. It is required for purchasing property or a car, renting residential or commercial space, securing employment, traveling abroad, and even, at times, for marriage. Consequently, if a psychological disorder is indicated on the card, it can severely disrupt the lives of individuals whose status is institutionally misrecognized due to a diagnosis of a mental disorder.
Jurisprudential Misrecognition
The majority of Ayatollahs in Iran do not allow sex-change surgery. Indeed, only nine Ayatollahs permit the surgery under Shī‘a jurisprudence. The fatwās that allow gender affirmation surgery follow the medical justification of ‘transsexuality’, which is the incongruence of the body and the soul, but Shī‘a jurisprudence conceptualises the ‘healthy body’ as dissonant with the ‘wrong soul’. Moreover, jurisprudential discourses are limited to the discourses on whether the surgery is allowed under the Islamic rulings.
‘Markaze Mozushinasi Ahkame Feqhi [‘Centre for Epistemic Jurisprudential Rulings'] identifies new issues within people's lives. Sex change is one of the issues recognized as a subject of jurisprudence for Islamic ruling. This means jurists should know how to direct people towards Islamic rulings on matters related to sex change, for instance, marriage or custody. (Telephone interview with Hojatol Islam Kariminia, Tehran 2014)
Medical jurisprudence is growing as a new research area […] ‘Markaze Feqhie A'ema Athar’ (‘A'ema Athar Jurisprudential Centre’) in Qom has formed a research group called ‘medical jurisprudence’ (feqhe pezeški) in 2010. In this group clerics discuss the issues that have not been addressed by Islamic sources. For example, IVF or gender assignment before pregnancy.12 (Telephone interview with Hojatol Islam Kariminia, Tehran 2014)
Medical jurisprudence addresses the social and legal matters related to medical transition among trans* people. Hence, the Islamic jurisprudence and medicine's heteronormative perception of gender reinforces the gender knowledge in a heteronormative binary system. In such a gender system, the status of trans* people who do not undergo gender affirmation surgery is not discussed among Ayatollahs.
However, in 1964, in his first fatwā, Ayatollah Khomeini maintained that surgery is not required for people who feel opposite to their birth sex, but do not want to change their body (Kariminia 2012). Ayatollah Khomeini did not explicitly define gender transition either in his fatwā or later interpretations, but according to the medical customs in Iran, gender transition involves surgical procedures on the genitalia and removal of reproductive organs (ibid.). Nevertheless, for Kariminia (2010; 2012), undergoing surgery for a trans* person will not be obligatory if they can live without committing sins, that is, engaging in same-sex sexual acts and relations. Thus, a trans* person is deemed unintelligible without undergoing the surgery. The jurisprudential knowledge production and advocacy revolves only around the surgery and those who wish to undergo gender affirmation surgery.
Epistemic Injustices
On a sweltering summer day, a few of my colleagues and I were waiting for a taxi on a busy street in Tehran when a police car suddenly screeched to a stop in front of me. Two officers jumped out, shouting ‘dojensi, dojensi’, and grabbed me as if I were a criminal. They took me to prison, where the court convicted me for violating the dress code because the top button of my manteau was open. I was sentenced to 30 lashes and a fine […] subsequently I got fired. (Online interview with Shahrzad, 2017)
They [the state] keep saying it is shar‘ī [allowed by Sharī‘a], it is shar‘ī, it is only the surgery that is shar‘ī. They do not care about the rest of our needs after that or even before the surgery. They could just give us permission to work while we are going through transition, for example. (Online interview with Niaz, 2017)
As most interviews show, surgery is not needed by all trans* people. It is not certainly the solution to social injustices in society. Moreover, many trans* people undergo surgery without the support or even the knowledge of their family. Even though it is focused on the issue of surgery, advocacy for trans* people is concentrated on obtaining the family's consent. For those people who decide to undergo the surgery, it is important to have access to resources in society beyond having their families’ consent.
The kind of advocacy that is based on trans normativity not only pathologizes trans* people, but also restricts trans* people's agency, makes them invisible, and limits their access to resources. Epistemic misrecognition amounts to social invisibility or distorted social visibility, as José Medina (2013) puts it. Being advocated as a mentally ill person and as someone who wants to change gender with or without surgery distorts the social visibility of trans* people, while it brings shame to the family (Saeidzadeh 2020). What is most needed is to have access to the job market, employment, financial benefits, and healthcare, none of which is advocated by the jurists who allow the surgery under Islamic laws.
The law should give us citizenship rights like other citizens. They [the state authorities] don't have to do much. Like patients with a rare disease […]. It does not matter if they [the state authorities] want to help us as patients of some sort of rare disease or whatever. (Face-to-face interview with Mr Taherkhani, 2015)
It is difficult to distinguish between sexual deviances and sexual behaviours. I have had patients from the most religious and traditional parts of Qom. In fact, I do a lot of thinking before I use the knife. During the past few years, 90 per cent of patients whom I have visited were undoubtedly homosexuals. It is very hard even for the person to recognize his/her identity[…] (Face-to-face interview with Dr Kohanzad, Tehran, 2014)
According to the interviews, many trans men perceive themselves to be real trans* while considering trans women to be fake because they live under the label of trans*. In fact, trans men construct their masculinity through heterosexuality and disassociating themselves from trans women (Saeidzadeh 2019; 2020; 2023). The notion of ‘real’ trans*, linked to heterosexuality and surgical transition, is reinforced as the dominant narrative of trans* experience.
A trans woman is considered as a ‘businesswoman’ in Tehran. I mean prostitute. Eighty per cent of trans women are prostitutes in Tehran. They are in the streets of Tehran every evening. Why? Because someone who has no ID, is abandoned by family, has nobody but themselves becomes a prostitute to survive. (Face-to-face interview with Taraneh, Tehran, 2014)
Epistemic injustice disadvantages people systematically and renders them inferior and less credible members of society (Kidd et al. 2017). The inferiority of trans women's status in Iranian law and society due to stigmatization of male to female transition has made trans women invisible in the workplace, public events, media appearances, cinema, and to that extent they are less present than trans men in social activism. The epistemic misrecognition of trans* in Iran has negatively affected the social participation of trans* people in civil society and activism regardless of whether or not they undergo gender affirmation surgery.
The assumption about gay people being forced to undergo gender affirmation surgery in Iran seems crude because, firstly, it implies that trans* is about undergoing gender affirmation surgery, and secondly, it infers those who don't change their biological sex through surgery are not trans*, which provokes a narrow understanding of gender, that if people are not trans*, they are gay. There are multiplicities of social and legal practices that configure people's gender. Trans* people who wish to keep their genitalia also exist in Iran, but they are often categorized as gays and lesbians, and yet their status is misrecognized as inferior. Misrecognition of trans* people's status due to epistemic injustices leads to various forms of harms against trans* people.
The problematic lies in the limited understanding of gender and sexuality and lack of awareness about trans* people's knowledge and experiences. This kind of epistemic misrecognition is advocated by Islamic jurisprudence as well as the medical and legal systems in the country.
Conclusion
In this article, I have discussed how knowledge production on trans* in Iran is rooted in different discourses and practices, including jurisprudential, medical, and legal, as well as in pop culture, at structural, institutional, and individual levels in society. The process of knowledge production (re)produces a form of distorted knowledge due to misrecognition of trans* people, which harms them significantly in society.
Moreover, the ‘epistemic misrecognition’ found in the discourses of advocacy for trans* people in Iran have fostered a normative understanding of trans* which affects intelligibility and participation of trans* people in society whose practices of gender and sexually do not fit into the normative medico-jurisprudential model.
Moreover, the patriarchal anti-LGBTQI+ discourses in society have advocated for trans* heteronormativity and trans* masculinity in society while marginalising other trans* identities, including trans* women, who continue to be deemed as unintelligible members of society.
Notes
The notion of trans* (with asterisk) in this article emphasizes the inclusive understanding of trans*, which accounts for binary and non-binary people regardless of whether or not they undergo surgical or medical treatments.
Tarâ+jensi creates an adjective tarâjensi or transsexual.
Tarâ+jensiyat+i creates an adjective tarâjensiyati or transgender.
Mofīd University was founded in 1989 as a private university by the former head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili. It is located in the most religious city of Qom, but has proven to be a reformist university in social sciences and humanities dominated by clergymen.
The panel comprised Hujat ul-Islam Kariminia (jurist), Dr Yamutpoor (surgeon) and Dr Zamani (surgeon's assistant).
Organised by Dr Shirin Ahmadinia, a sociologist at Tehran University.
Dr Anvar Ahmadi from Alame Tabatabi University, Farzaneh Yaghub, the Head of Social Work at Ministry of Health and Elahe Farsad, a researcher on transgender.
Malâle jensi and Nârezayane jensi in Persian are used interchangeably to refer to ‘gender dysphoria’.
World Health Organization, ICD-11, Chapter 17, ‘Conditions Related to Sexual Health’: https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en#577470983 (accessed 23 September 2024).
Medical Examination and Exemption Regulations for Military Service 2014: https://www.ekhtebar.com/آیین-نامه-معاینه-و-معافیت-پزشکی-مشمولا/ (accessed on 26 September 2024).
Mohammad Mehdi Kariminia, Taqyire Jennsiyat az Manżare feghi va hoghugh, [Sex change from jurisprudential and legal perspectives]. Iran, Qom, Markaze Feghhi A'ema Athar, 2010.
Medical jurisprudence is now being taught as a three-year program at the centre for clerics who have accomplished five to ten years of advanced studies on Islamic jurisprudence under the supervision of an assigned Grand Ayatollah.
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