City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran

Chapter Six: Morteza

Morteza’s story, of a member of the Basij having a sex-change operation, is based on the story of a colleague of a friend. However, as she was too scared to give much detail of her life, I have drawn on the experiences of three former members of the Basij and two transgender male-to-female Tehranis from conservative basiji families, all of whom I interviewed.
As she was from a religious family, the catalyst that really encouraged Morteza to embrace her transsexuality and act upon it was a fatwa given by Ayatollah Khomeini himself, condoning sex changes. In 1984, a hermaphrodite called Fereydoon sought counsel from Khomeini, describing his mental and emotional state and explaining he was a woman trapped in a man’s body. Fereydoon asked Khomeini for permission to change his sexuality; Khomeini agreed. A number of mojtaheds, high-ranking clerics who are able to issue fatwas, also accepted transsexuality, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Since then, thousands of gender-reassignment surgeries have taken place in Iran, but there have been many reports of botched operations. Dozens of male-to-female transsexuals have filed complaints of being left unable to have
sex after surgery, their sexual organs having been butchered or built the wrong size (www2.ohchr.org/English/bodies/cescr/docs/ngos/JointHeartlandAlliance_IRQO Even though the Iranian health service claims to have allocated a budget of 350,000,000 tomans for gender-reassignment surgery throughout the country (ISNA, 21 November 2012), operations are still expensive, costing at least 3,000 US dollars – nearly double someone like Morteza’s yearly family income. Several cases have been reported of gay men who have been forced into having sex-change operations by their families, as being transgender is more acceptable than being gay. Many people from the transgender community have spoken of daily abuse and persecution.
‘Shireen’ had her gender-reassignment surgery in Thailand. She is no longer in touch with her family as they have been unable to come to terms with who she is.
ISRAEL ANNOUNCES DATE IT WILL ATTACK IRAN: Khabar Eghtesadi newspaper, khabareghtesadi.com, 9 May 2012; Imam Jomeh, Jiroft, 24 July 2013; Supreme Leader’s response: IRIB 1, Supreme Leader’s speech in Mashhad, 21 March 2013.
The references to the Ayatollah’s lectures are drawn from Rasa news website, based on the words of Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, 26 May 2012.