Drastic surgery for Iran’s gay men

If you are a man who wants to become a woman, then the Islamic Republic of Iran can help." This extraordinary proposal comes from the publicity material for a play about to be premiered at the Edinburgh Festival.

Called Plastic, it is written by the acclaimed Iranian playwright Mehrdad Seyf, who in an interview this week with The First Post helped explain how Iran, land of Ahmadinejad and nuclear stand-offs, has become the world centre for sex change surgery.

The starting point is straightforward if shocking: homosexuality is a crime in Iran, punishable by death. Human Rights Watch has reported that as recently as November 2005 two men in their twenties were publicly hanged for homosexual conduct in the northern town of Gorgan.

But while the government persecutes gay men, it sanctions sex change operations - even subsidising 50 per cent of the cost - on the grounds that the operation will 'cure' them of their homosexuality.

Mehrdad Seyf explains how this came about. "Ayatollah Khomenei actually decreed it in a fatwa 25 years ago," he says.

Khomenei was confronted in his living room by a distraught young man called Fereydoon. Due to hormone replacement therapy, Fereydoon already had breasts. He was covered in blood, after being beaten badly by the Ayatollah's bodyguards.

"He tied his shoes together and put them around his neck," Seyf says, "which is a sign to Muslims that you must be heard. The Ayatollah listened and decreed that anyone who feels trapped inside someone else's body has the right to get rid of this body and transform into the other sex."

Since sex change operations became legal, many men have sought the help of Tehran's best-established 'gender reassignment surgeon', Dr Bahram Mir Jalali, who has carried out about 460 sex change operations in the last 12 years. Relative to population, this is seven times the average number performed in the West.

It was Jalali who pioneered the idea that transexuals have a medical condition, which puts them beyond moral judgment. Feminine men in Iran are vulnerable to be pulled up by the authorities for anything that is seen as "corrupting society". Yet as transexuals they are even allowed documentation declaring their new identity.

But are ordinary gay men being forced to have the operation in order to conform to Iranian society? This question is examined in the award-winning film Be Like Others (right), directed by Iranian Tanaz Eshagian.

Tanaz pointed out becoming transexual does not free the men from persecution. Seyf agrees, saying that many transexuals find it hard to find work in Iran, forcing them into prostitution. Jessica Stern of HRW states that the police have "created an atmosphere of terror for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people throughout Iran".

Seyf also points out that many men who have the sex change operation come from very traditional, conservative Iranian families. One mother told him: "I am looking forward to my son becoming a nice Muslim girl". Her son-turned-daughter became so traditional after the operation that her liberal male lover left, finding her too conservative.

And that's just one of the complexities tackled in Plastic, Seyf's entertaining, absurdist production.

'Plastic', August 1 - 24, Pleasance Under Grand, Edinburgh ·