The regime’s encouragement of sex-change surgery is related to its intolerance of homosexuality
early on that I was gay,” says Soly, a 25-year-old chef from Tehran. As a young boy, he would strut about the house in his mother’s high heels and developed crushes on male cartoon characters. But after he was expelled from school for wearing eye-liner, his parents took him to a psychologist who offered a different explanation. “He told me I was transgender and had to change my sex.”
Attitudes towards sexuality can be rigid in Iran. A conservative former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, once declared that the country didn’t have any gay people. So it seems an unlikely hub for sex-reassignment surgery. But the procedure has been permitted since the mid-1980s, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini met a trans woman called Maryam Khatoon Molkara, who had been thrown into a psychiatric institution and forcibly injected with male hormones.
Before going under the knife, patients must receive counselling to ensure that they have gender dysphoria and are prepared for the procedure. But often this process is rushed and standards are not properly observed. Shahryar Cohanzad, a urologist who performs the operation, received 75 referrals in 2017, but only operated on 12 people, having concluded that 63 were gay or confused due to a lack of information.
Even though the clerics allow it, those who transition say there is still a stigma associated with being transgender in Iran. Some tell of being disowned by their families and having to work as prostitutes, for lack of other choices. “For almost four years after my transition no theatre director hired me,” says Saman Arastoo, a well-known transgender actor and director.
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