# Introduction - In 2003-2004, transsexuality in Iran became a media hot topic, both in Iran and internationally. - Hormonal treatment and SRS for trans Iranians dates at least to the early 1970s. - For legal and medical authorities in Iran, sex change is framed explicitly as the cure for a diseased abnormality (gender identity disorder) and a religio-legally sanctioned option for heteronormalizing people with same-sex desires. - International media of transsexuality in Iran tends to take a reductive view, emphasizing Iran's most conservative elements. - The dominant interpretations of transsexuality in Iran tend to reduce it to a response to Iran's government-sanctioned project to eliminate homosexuality. Najmabadi will instead emphasize "the art of existence"— how trans Iranians creatively navigate power structures and actively shape their lives. - Najmabadi also seeks to historically map out how transsexuality is both produced and regulated by a complex web on influences. - The category of "trans" in Iran is shaped by a complex nexus of national circumstances and Western discourses of gender identity. ##### Chapter 1 "Entering the Scene" - Chapter 1 discusses the "filtering" process in Iran, where authorities determine whether someone is "really trans," "really homosexual," intersex, or suffering from a psychological disorder. - This filtering process has not succeeded in eliminating homosexuals. Instead, it has created a fluid and porous space in which trans, gay, and lesbian people creatively navigate and define their identities. ##### Chapter 2 "'Before' Transsexuality" - Chapter 2 traces the history of the distinction between acceptable trans identities and deviant homosexual identities in Iran, emerging from the 1930s discourse on intersex bodies. - Najmabadi maps how trans surgeries emerged in the 1930s and 1940s in a discourse of national scientific progress, especially as associated with intersex bodies. - During the 1940s and 1950s, vernacular science began analyzing all bodies within the discourse of national health, educational progress, and the reform of family norms. - By the late 1960s, "physio-psycho-sexology" discourse began to associate trans identities more with homosexuality and transvestism, instead of with intersexuality. ##### Chapter 3 "Murderous Passions, Deviant Insanities" - Criminological discourse associated male homosexuality with deviancy and violence, often targeting adolescent males. - The 1934 case of serial killer and rapist Asghar Qatil (Asghar the Murderer) reinforced this perception. - This association still affects gay males and even trans women. - FtM transitions have a different history than MtF. FtM was not associated with (male) homosexuality until recently. This leads to differences in MtF and FtM transitions. - Chapter 3 traces this history through a 1973 woman-on-woman murder— a "lesbian crime of passion" which was attributed to social causes, a failure of parents and educators, rather than an innate homosexual desire. - The accused woman expressed a desire for a sex change, which the media portrayed as a missed opportunity to prevent this tragedy. - This framing linked trans people less with intersex and more with homosexuality. ##### Chapter 4 "'Around' 1979: Gay Tehran?" - Focuses on the post-revolution period, discussing the changes in gender and sexuality discourses after the establishment of the Islamic Republic. - While the 1979 revolution made trans lives more hazardous by intensifying the stigma associated with homosexuality and gender nonconformity, it also laid the groundwork for the official sanctioning of sex change. - In the 1970s, before the revolution, “woman-presenting males” (mard-i zan-numa) had found relative acceptance in certain professions and spaces. - The 1979 revolution and cultural purification campaigns that followed made gender nonconformity more hazardous. Woman-presenting males carried the additional stigma of newly imposed gendered dress codes under the Islamic Republic. ##### Chapter 5 "Verdicts of Science, Rulings of Faith" - From the late 1980s through the 2000s, legal and medical authorities worked closely with clerics to carve out legal and medical standards for trans people. - The Islamic Revolution shifted power toward Islamic principles in governance, diminishing scientific and medical discourses. - In 1964, Ayatollah Khomeini claimed that sex changes were permissible in Islam. In 1984, he reissued this stance in response to a trans woman's plea. ##### Chapter 6 "Changing the Terms: Playing 'Snakes and Ladders' with the State" - The evolution of legal and medical discourses around gender and sexuality in Iran is often seen as a state-driven project. However, trans activists played a critical and often overlooked role in shaping state policies and institutions. - Social and cultural norms play a significant role in pressuring individuals to conform to heteronormative expectations. - The marriage imperative treats unmarried men and women as not-yet-adult, and pressures individuals to undergo sex change surgery. ### Translation and Transplantations - Najmabadi faced enormous challenges of translation. The lives of her trans subjects became incoherent if analyzed through Western standards of gender and sexuality. - "How did you recognize yourself as trans and not homosexual?" did not necessarily make sense to her trans subjects and only reinforced Western narratives. - In Iran, concepts like gender, sex, and sexuality are tightly intertwined, primarily expressed through the Persian unifying term "jins." - This created lives that were dependent on this non-distinction, and were therefore illegible to a Western lens. - However, over the past three decades, the distinction between sex and gender has emerged within Iranian feminist activism. - The blurred distinction between sex/gender/sexuality has... - ...enabled the work of changing the body to align gender/sexuality with sex. - ...contributed to how trans individuals understand and describe themselves. - Because of this blurring, cross-gender-identified children who later are attracted to people of their assigned gender at birth tend to describe themselves in ways that don't clearly delineate between gender and sexuality. e.g. A trans woman might describe their sexual orientation as part of their gender identity (feeling like a woman attracted to men.) - When the term "gay" first appeared in Iran in the 1970s, it was largely avoided by local men because it translated to "kuni"— a pejorative. - Some twenty years later "gay" began to be embraced as a an identity connected to a global imagined community. - "Jins" carries a historical double meaning of both sex and genus (category of classification, like species), making it distinct from "sex" in English. - The frameworks used to diagnose and treat trans individuals in Iran are heavily borrowed from Western models, especially the DSM from the U.S. However, their meanings are re-contextualized and transformed in the Iranian setting. - In Iran, subjectivity is more about an “I-in-presentation”, or how one presents oneself in a specific cultural and historical moment. Identity may be more about how a person fits into the social fabric, including norms, rather than an internal, core self. - Persian’s lack of gendered pronouns requires translators to make choices that aren’t straightforward and/or totally satisfactory. ### Venturing into Ethnography - Najmabadi was worried that her ethnographic study might replicate an objectifying. - By 2006, the Iranian trans community were used to being objects of curiosity. They had become active agents in shaping their own narratives and engaging with systems that governed their lives. - Trans Iranians were weary of how the media used their stories and even of how other trans people instrumentalized the media for their own selfish purposes. - Trans Iranians worried that their lives were being used for political purposes by outsiders, without sufficient regard for the impact on their safety, reputation, or well-being within Iran. - Trans individuals' lives are already shaped by constant doubt, trying to distinguish “real” from “fake” trans identities. - Najmabadi risks reinforcing this pattern of disbelief, making it hard for her to empathize with her subjects or fully understand their experiences. - Trans Iranians use partial / selective storytelling and adaptability as strategic tools to navigate power structures— legal, medical, judicial, etc. - Much of this creativity and resistance goes undocumented, leading to gaps in historical records. - Najmabadi wrestled with an ethical dilemma: how many details of trans people's lives should she include in her research, especially when many asked for privacy regarding crucial details that affected their safety?