Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-kwt9d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T12:08:46.159Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Visual Representations of Iranian Transgenders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

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

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.

Information

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The International Society for Iranian Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable