#trans arab

DOB :1950

Known for :Iran's first Trans muslim woman who successfully change her gender legally.

Occupation :Trans Activist,Rights Advocate

Spouce :Mohammad

Religion :Islam

Gender :Woman

Sexuality :Straight

Ethnicity :Persian

Death :2012

Maryam Khatoon Molkara (also known as Maryam Khatoonpour Molkara) was a campaigner for trans rights in Iran, where she is widely recognized as a matriarch of the transgender community.She was later instrumental in obtaining a letter which acted as a Fatwa enabling sex reassignment surgery to exist as part of a legal framework.

Early life

Maryam Khatoon Molkara was born in 1950, she was the only child of her father's second of eight wives.Her father was a landowner. Maryam says she always preferred clothes, toys, & activities that were traditionally for girls.In her adolescence, Maryam went to parties dressed as a woman.She was often tortured & bullied for her feminine behavior. When she came out to her mother,her mother refused to accept Maryam's gender identity.This made her decide to take feminizing hormone, instead of immediately seeking out a gender affirming surgery.

Legal Recognition of Gender Identity in Iran

In 1975, Molkara traveled to London where she “learned about transsexuality & realized that she was not a passive homosexual. Molkara started to write letters to Shia Cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile in Iraq, asking for religious advice about being assigned the wrong gender at birth.In one of these letters, she said that her gender identity had been clear since she was two years old, as she used to apply chalk to her face to imitate putting on make-up. Khomeini had already written in 1963 that corrective surgeries for intersex people are not against Islamic law, & his answer was based on this existing idea rather than developing a new fatwa for transgender people.He suggested she live as a woman, which included dressing as one.

After this, she met with Farah Pahlavi, who gave her support towards Molkara and other transgender individuals wanting sex reassignment surgery.In 1978, she traveled to Paris, where Khomeini was then based, to try to make him aware about transgender rights.After the Islamic Revolution, Molkara started to face intense backlash due to her gender identity. She underwent arrests, and death threats. She was fired from her job at the Iranian National Radio and Television, forced to wear masculine clothing,injected with male hormones against her will, & detained in a psychiatric institution. Eventually she was released from jail because of her good contacts with religious leaders, such as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Molkara continued to campaign for her right to get gender-affirming surgery. In 1985, she confronted Khomeini in his home in North Tehran.She wore a man's suit, carried the Quran, and she tied shoes around her neck. This was a reference to the Ashura festival, and also indicated that she was looking for refuge.Maryam Khatoon Molkara was held back and beaten by homophobic security guards until Khomeini's brother Hassan Pasandide intervened.He took Molkara into his house, where she pleaded her case, yelling "I'm a woman, I'm a woman!" His security guards were suspicious about her chest, as they thought she could be carrying explosives.She revealed they were her breasts, as she developed them using hormone therapy.After listening her story, Ahmad Khomeini was touched & took Maryam to speak to his father, where he asked 3 of his doctors about the surgery in an attempt to make a well-informed decision.Khomeini then decided to permit sex reassignment surgery by issuing a fatwa.She left Khomeini’s house victoriously. She had a letter in her hand addressed to the Chief Prosecutor & the head of Medical Ethics giving a fatwa (a religious authorization) for her & for all those like her to have their gender surgically reassigned. That one daring step by Maryam changed the dynamics and made history in Shia Islam.

Maryam lobbied for the according medical knowledge & procedures to be implemented in Iran, and worked on helping other trans people have access to gender-affirmative surgeries.

However, Maryam completed her gender affirming surgery from Thailand in 1997, due to "unhappiness with procedures in her native country''.The Iranian govt paid for her surgery, and she was able to help establish government funding for many other trans individual's surgeries.

Trans Rights Adocacy

Maryam was a prominent advocate for trans rights & gender affirmative care.Maryam started her activism in Iran during the early days of the Islamic revolution.

In 2007, she founded and subsequently ran the Iranian Society to Support Individuals with Gender Identity Disorder (Persian: حمایت از بیماران مبتلا به اختلالات هویت جنسی ایران).This was the first state-approved transgender organization in Iran.Before this, she used her own property in Karaj to help other trans people receive legal advice & medical care, including post-op care.She continued her fight to advance the situation of transgender people in Iran.She also helped many incarcerated trans people in Iran.

Marriage

Maryam got married in a traditional Islamic way (nikah) to a government officer named Mohammad, in Tehran.

Death

This is a drawing expressing my experience being trans. For a while the fact that i very much look like a cishet man who you should be uncomfortable around + living in Egypt where trans healthcare is essentially a myth was pretty saddening to say the least. Everytime i get out of the shower and try to do my hair, looking at my face in the mirror for extended amounts of time, would just make me feel bad as a harsh reminder

Cw: coming out thoughts