Divergent Identities in Iran and the Appropriation of Trans Bodies

Abstract

While gender-based scholarship on the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is largely centred on a woman’s right to unveil, those adopting an LGBT+ framework tend to focus on human rights violations against homosexual males. This paper provides a more inclusive study in its assessment of the state’s oxymoronic approach to trans persons in Iran and the use of gender affirming surgery to reposition its subjects in line with hegemonic notions of “healthy” sexualities. In this context, the Iranian woman, bound by a particular conception of Islamic femininity, and the Iranian man, embodied by the hyper-masculine martyr figure, are promoted as the only genderisms acceptable to the state. This binary of hetero-Muslim male/female excludes all other expressions of gender. Ignoring the country’s historic array of masculinities and sexualities, the IRI criminalises gender “passing” in its limited notion of gender performativity. Furthermore, it utilises gender affirming surgery as a tool for repositioning divergent identities and sexualities within the state-sanctioned paradigm. While the state appropriates trans bodies to promote the ideal gendered subject, the framework of gender performativity is also adopted by regime critics to promote cis-gendered female agency: popular culture employs “cross-dressing” to contest the policing of heteronormative bodies and sexualities. Undoubtedly such methods are complicit in the continuation of discriminatory practices against trans persons in Iran.