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Visual Representations of Iranian Transgenders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Elhum Shakerifar
Elhum Shakerifar*
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths College, Department of Anthropology, University of London
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Abstract

Transsexuality in Iran has gained much attention and media coverage in the past few years, particularly in its questionable depiction as a permitted loophole for homosexuality, which is prohibited under Iran's Islamic-inspired legal system. Of course, attention in the West is also encouraged by the “shock” that sex change is available in Iran, a country that Western media and society delights in portraying as monolithically repressive. As a result, Iranian filmmakers inevitably have their own agendas, which are unsurprisingly brought into the film making process—from a desire to sell a product that will appeal to the Western market, to films that endorse specific socio-political agendas. This paper is an attempt to situate sex change and representations of sex change in Iran within a wider theoretical framework than the frequently reiterated conflation with homosexuality, and to open and engage with a wider debate concerning transsexuality in Iran, as well as to specifically analyze the representation of transexuality, in view of its current prominent presence in media.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 3: Beyond the Iranian Frame: From Visual Representation to Socio-Political Drama , May 2011 , pp. 327 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The International Society for Iranian Studies

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Footnotes

Elhum Shakerifar is a filmmaker and visual anthropologist whose work explores the status and rights of socially marginalised individuals and the responsibility of representation in film. Elhum is a research fellow of the department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths University, and a co-founder and director of award-winning collective Postcode Films, that works with schools, colleges, universities and community groups to facilitate film projects that promote active citizenship and social inclusion. Postcode's work was most recently screened at the London Film Festival and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

References

1 Hausman, Bernice L., Changing Sex, Transsexualism, Technology and the Idea of Gender (Durham, NC and London, 1995), 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 This can be contested as an interesting parallel can be drawn between the transgender patient and the wannabe, or self-demanded amputee, individuals that the medical profession has difficulty accepting. The similarity lies in the fact that in both cases, it is the patient who convinces the doctor of the need for surgery, not the other way around. For wannabes, the failure to demonstrate that their bodies need surgery is also a demonstration that they are not deemed “sane.” The difference with a transsexual is, as psychiatrist Richard L. Bruno notes, “the notion that a wannabe is a ‘disabled person trapped in a non-disabled body’ is difficult to justify, there being no ‘naturally occurring’ state of disability that would correspond to the two naturally-occurring genders.” See Sullivan, N., “The Role of Medicine in the (Trans) Formation of ‘Wrong’ Bodies,” Body and Society, 14, no. 1 (2008): 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Hausman, Changing Sex, 118.

4 Hausman, Changing Sex, 110.

5 Hausman, Changing Sex, 117.

6 Hausman, Changing Sex, 137.

7 Quoted in Hausman, Changing Sex, 69.

8 Temporary marriage is a form of marriage recognized in Shi'i Islam whereby a man and a woman can contract a marriage for a specific period of time. There is no divorce in temporary marriage as the length of the marriage is determined from the outset, and the woman receives no inheritance or upkeep (as she does in permanent marriage). Furthermore, whilst the woman is bound to the marriage as though it were a permanent union, the man is free to break off the contract at any time. There are many different reasons why a man may contract a temporary marriage, ranging from master-maid marriages, to another form of polygamy, to purely sexual marriages etc. For women, temporary marriages are often resorted to for a form of social protection–to be associated with a man.

9 Hausman, Changing Sex, 10.

10 Doyle, J. and Roen, K., “Surgery and Embodiment: Carving Out Subjects,” Body and Society, 14 no. 1 (2008): 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Ginsburg, F., “Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village,” in Rereading Cultural Anthropology, ed. Marcus, G. E. (Durham, 1993), 368Google Scholar.

12 A pro filmic event is an event that would take place whether the film was happening or not; it would have happened even if it was not being filmed.

13 My emphasis.

14 Most recently, Najmabadi, A., Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards (Berkeley, CA, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Afary, J., Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For instance, an intersexed individual would need to know what their predominant sex was in order to know what position to pray in—men pray in front of women, and should a woman pray amongst or in front of men, all their prayers would be rendered invalid. On the other hand, should a man pray amongst women, and therefore amongst or behind them rather than ahead of them, his prayer would be rendered invalid.

16 Esmaeli's film is a good exposition of this.

17 Sullivan, “The Role of Medicine,” 110.

18 Sullivan, “The Role of Medicine,” 109.

19 Sullivan, “The Role of Medicine,” 109.

20 Quoted in Sullivan, “The Role of Medicine,” 109.

21 Hausman, Changing Sex.

22 Cauldwell, D. O., “Sex Transmutation—Can One's Sex Be Changed?,” International Journal of Transgender Studies, 5, no. 2 (2001)Google Scholar, http://www.iiav.nl/ezines/web/IJT/97-03/numbers/symposion/cauldwell_05.htm.

23 Kapuscinski, Ryszard, The Other (London and New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

24 Monck, A., “Should we Trust Storytellers?,” The Guardian, 28 April 2008Google Scholar.

25 Cauldwell, “Sex Transmutation.”

26 Iran does, of course, adhere to the Harry Benjamin codes of practice. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) is an organization devoted to understanding and treating the plight of transgenders. The HBIGDA Standards of Care of Gender Identity Disorders is the accepted set of standardized guidelines for clinical treatment of gender dysphoria.