The capital city of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, announced in early March that transgender people should not appear in popular sections of the metropolis.
The Tehran city council directive to ostracize transgender people coincides with US President Biden declaring that March 31 is "Transgender Day of Visibility.”
The US government-funded news organization Radio Farda reported that Tehran city council spokesman Alireza Nadali said transgender people should not congregate at heavily crowded locations such as the Valiasr Intersection.
"We're not sweeping the issue under the rug. There should be an inclusive space for them, just not in this busy area," Nadali said.
Radio Farda said Valiasr Intersection is a “ focal point in Tehran for both its cultural significance and as a site of major public gatherings, including protests.”
Sophie Baron-Amirteymour, an Iranian-American who is transgender, told the Jerusalem Post "The notion of the Islamic Republic being trans-friendly is regime propaganda aimed at naive Western leftists. Gender reassignment surgery is often imposed on homosexuals as a regime -endorsed cure for their 'mental disease.' As long as gender non conforming behaviour remains illegal, and an Islamist establishment reacts with violence towards LGBT individuals, Iranian trans people remain unable to live as they please and truly search for their personal happiness."
Jessica Emami, an Iranian-American lesbian sociologist, told The Jerusalem Post, “The Iranian government as a whole has used transgender surgery as a way to enforce heteronormativity on gay people. They compel gays and lesbians to get surgery to become the opposite sex. That is the only reason why they accept transgenderism.” She added, “Of course, that does not mean there aren’t any transgender people. “
She said the regime wants to “control their presence” and “control their social life.” Emami added, “These announcements by city officials do nothing to improve families who are domestically violent against LGBT people, and the policy does not help or address honor killings against LGBT people carried out by family members."
Gigi Pour, an Iranian-American refugee and LGBTQ+ rights advocate, told The Post that “Regarding transgenders in Iran, clearly the regime has realized being trans is not the same as being gay for whom they have figured the sex tradition operation. The trans community is not safe regardless of the country they live in.“
She added that “Here in the US transgenders are also subject to harsh physical violence and acts of murder. Clearly the regime has realized the trans community can’t be pigeonholed as gay or lesbian. They are creative, flamboyant and fierce. The regime is not interested in including them but rather have them excluded from society.”
A method for shielding regime repression
Many apologists of the Islamic Republic of Iran see the nation’s transgender policy as an expression of liberalism. The Economist noted in a 2019 article that the Islamic Republic’s exploitation of sex-reassignment surgery (SRS) has been used to purge gays and lesbians from public life.
“Gay Iranians face pressure to change their sex regardless of whether they want to, say activists and psychologists in Iran. Therapists tell patients with same-sex desires that they may be transgender, not gay," wrote The Economist. “I thought I was trans until I was 18 because the only information online and in newspapers was about transsexuals,” a psychologist in Tehran who is a lesbian told the magazine. “It is a system where homosexuals are not educated, and the law does not protect them.”
The clerical regime has codified the death penalty in its Islamic Sharia law system for same-sex relations. According to a 2008 British Wikileaks cable, the Iranian regime executed between 4,000-6,000 gays and lesbians since the 1979 Islamic revolution. During the tenure of the Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he declared his country didn’t have any gay people.
The theocratic state’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, authorized SRS after he met a transgender person in the mid-1980s.
The Scottish Jewish journalist Eva Barlow posted on X last week that “The betrayal by groups such as Queers For Palestine and LGBTQ+ popstars and artists for gay Jews like myself isn't just about our expulsion from the tribe, but it's also about their self-betrayal. PRIDE is about confidence and strength in knowing yourself. Not cowering to others. Not desperately trying to be liked.”
The betrayal by groups such as Queers For Palestine and LGBTQ+ popstars and artists for gay Jews like myself isn't just about our expulsion from the tribe, but it's also about their self-betrayal. PRIDE is about confidence and strength in knowing yourself. Not cowering to others.…
— Eve Barlow (@Eve_Barlow) March 30, 2024
Emami, the sociologist, said Western “Queers for Palestine idea is just a fantasy.” She continued that “I do not doubt if unorganized groups of queers went to Palestine unannounced, they would be dealt with violently by the government and the people.”
She said Palestinian LGBTQ only gather in areas that are governed by Israel because they are so endangered in places like Nablus that are under the Palestinian Authority (PA). Emami said Palestinian LGBTQ people meet in Haifa in Israel to avoid persecution by the PA.
According to critics, a telling example of Western naiveté and a one-sided approach to the dire plight of the LGBTQ+ community in the Gaza Strip and the wider Middle East is a slated Sunday panel at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City titled “Reclaiming Queerness, Reclaiming Palestine: A long table session reflecting on queer Palestinian reclamation.”
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art states on its website that it is “a home for LGBTQIA+ artists, scholars, activists, and allies, and a catalyst for discourse on art and queerness.”
The Post reached out numerous times to the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. A press query was sent asking if the panel would discuss Hamas' lethal homophobia, its persecution of gays and lesbians, and Hamas' rape of people on October 7 and after the jihadi terrorist group took hostages. The Museum refused to comment. The US and Europe classified Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization.
Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and the sections in the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority governs are considered the most dangerous places for LGBT travelers, according to a 2021 entry on the travel blog Asher and Lyric.
Israel is widely regarded as the only safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community in the heart of the Middle East.
A 2022 BBC article reported that “Gay Palestinian Ahmad Abu Marhia [who was] beheaded in West Bank."
The report read, "Palestinian police have arrested a suspect in the killing of a 25-year-old man after his body was found decapitated in the occupied West Bank. LGBTQ groups say he had spent two years in Israel waiting on an asylum claim to flee abroad after receiving death threats from within his community.”
In October 2022, an AP report said, “LGBT Palestinians Targeted by Hamas Regime." According to the AP, “Palestinian Authority police have banned a Palestinian LGBT rights group from organizing any activities in the West Bank and threatened to arrest them, saying such activities are contrary to the 'values of Palestinian society.'”
The US-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) revealed that on September 16, 2023, the Hezbollah-affiliated Mayadeen TV network aired a report about opposition in Gaza to the new UNRWA Code of Conduct, which the reporter said promotes homosexuality and asserts that there are homosexuals among UNRWA employees and the refugees.”
Muhammad Shwadeh of the UNRWA Workers Union said that "it started" with equality between men and women, and now the UNRWA are demanding equality for "groups that do not exist among the Palestinian people."
MEMRI also noted that in a sermon that was posted to the Al-Aqsa Call YouTube channel on June 26, 2022, Palestinian Islamic scholar Sheikh Yousef Abu Islam preached that Allah said homosexuals "should be thrown head first from the rooftop of the tallest building, and then they should be stoned."