Professing Selves is about transsexuality in contemporary Iran, the ebbs and flows leading to its emergence in public, and the process by which it has come to be officially recognized by the state as a biomedical condition rather than a form of sexual transgression.
In this original and in-depth work, the author, who is a distinguished historian of Iran, adopts an anthropological perspective, which, for a study of this nature proves the perfect companion to the historical methodology. At the start of her fieldwork some of the author's initial apprehensions about engaging in ethnographic research are justified when she is confronted, inter alia, with the paradox of the extensive involvement of religious authorities in the legitimization of transsexuality and its treatment. The author finds herself at once to be an outsider to the subject of her study with the advantage of an insider knowledge and understanding of the cultural and historical background—a combination that enables her to trace and explain the background and the emergence of nonheteronormativity in society.
In the search for the history of transsexuality in Iran, the author uncovers the life trajectory of some of the early cases of transgender individuals and provides an extensive account of the public debates on transsexuality and sex-change surgery. The research traces the beginning of the public records on transsexuality to the 1930s, the cases of sex-change surgery in the 1950s, and the ban of sex-change surgery in the mid-1970s, under the Pahlavi regime, when transsexuality began to be grouped together with homosexuality as sexual deviancy. This ban was subsequently lifted and transsexuality was recognized as a medical condition in 1987 through a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomenei. This endorsement led to gender reassignment surgery being reinstated and psychology and psychiatry became prominent components of a more elaborate treatment of transsexuals.
In this meticulously researched book the author brings to light the importance of daily life in defining and contextualizing transsexuality, and it is through such detailed analysis of the interaction between the state and transsexuals and the historical and cultural contexts in which these practices have evolved that the author unravels the enigma of what is often perceived as a “sudden” emergence of transsexuality in Iran.
One of the main themes of the book is the engagement of senior Islamic jurists and the state with the question of transsexuality, and the process by which transsexuality came to be separated from homosexuality and recognized as a medical condition. Although such endorsement may seem incongruous with the Islamic ideology, this positive approach to state-of-the-art biotechnologies by the jurists is not limited to transsexuality alone and extends to several other areas of biomedicine, all of which have the potential for recasting the “personhood” and identity of their users—a decision, which, in Islamic beliefs, is deemed to be within the Divine power alone. This includes contraceptive technologies, assisted reproductive technologies for the treatment of infertility, stem-cell technology, cloning, and sex selection. When introducing each of these technologies, it fell on the senior Shiʿi jurists to explore their permissibility from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence. To do so, the jurists resorted to independent reasoning and interpretation of the Qurʾan (ejtehad) to find answers within the Holy Book. The result of the deliberations, which was issued in the form of legal opinions (fatāwā, sing. fatwa), concluded that the practice of these technologies is allowed as they are mediating between God and his subjects, rather than intervening in “God's design.”
Another key argument of the book is that the landscape of transsexuality has been shaped by not only by official rulings and medical interventions, but also by the dynamics of the interaction between the Islamic jurists, the medical practitioners, and transsexuals themselves. The outcome has been a lack of clarity as to what is permissible and has resulted in the opening up of a space within which transsexuals feel free to choose the lifestyle most suited to them (medicalized or otherwise). These “professing selves” in the author's words, are able to select from and oscillate between their multiple personae, who they are or want to be, depending on the context in which they find themselves. Interestingly, one of the unintended results of such flexibility has been the opportunity for other nonheteronormative individuals—classified as “deviant”—to be able to continue with their sexual practices and live “within the legal shadow of transsexuality” (p. 301).
The freedom for transsexuals to choose who they want to be resonates closely with other areas of bioreproductive technologies too, which also remain in a state of flux in Iran and where similar gaps exist allowing individuals to manipulate the rules to make them fit their own agenda. Examples abound of cases of infertility treatment whereby the infertile individuals, trying to conceive with help from biotechnologies, use the existing gaps and transgress the cultural and ethical norms to ensure that the child conceived through assisted reproductive technologies is biologically linked to them in order to maintain the integrity of the lineage, which remains paramount in Iranian culture. In the case of transsexuals the driving force behind a variety of choices, including that of a partner, whether to live with one's family or opt for an anonymous lifestyle, and whether to resort to surrogacy to have children, are often dictated by what is socially and culturally meaningful, and what kinship, relatedness, identity, and personhood mean to them.
In spite of the “official” endorsement of transsexuality, homosexuality has remained firmly a form of sexual deviancy and punishable as a crime in Iran and, interestingly, with the “normalization” of transsexuality, as Najmabadi observes, it is transsexuals who tend to distinguish between themselves and other forms of nonheteronormative groups, including homosexuals and intersex persons. The book challenges the oversimplification of labeling transsexuals, and concludes that the multiple ways in which transsexuals present themselves is not on account of multiple identities, but rather “one's location in many (in principle innumerable) sites” (p. 297). In other words, transsexuals’ claim of who or what they are remains contextual. This begs the question of whether, in the long run, these “professing selves” will continue to define themselves in these terms or whether they are also the outcome of the state of flux in which transsexuality finds itself currently.
Professing Selves, in addition to its immediate focus on transsexuality, also highlights the subtle dynamics of negotiations between the individual and the state, whereby it is often the individuals who take the lead on what matters to them fundamentally, spurring the state into action. Specifically, Najmabadi underlines the emergence of the various ways in which those who do not fit into the mold of heteronormativity are increasingly using their sexuality to overtly publicize their difference and challenge cultural norms.
What would have enriched this well-informed and highly nuanced study even further is a fuller discussion of reproduction and its centrality to the cultural understanding of sexuality. Historically, in Iranian culture, the paramount importance of reproduction has included strict rules on the control of sexuality as any sexual “deviancy” leading to the disruption of reproductive norms has been considered a threat to the perpetuation of society and its stability. Even though the book includes some passing references to the persistence of values attached to reproduction by citing examples of cases of transsexuals wishing for a family and some even considering resorting to surrogacy to have children, these issues remain understated.
This book is essential reading for specialists of Iran, but even more so for those whose understanding of Iranian culture is formed through superficial observation and analysis of recent changes, leading to a lack of a profound grasp of the historical dimension that forms the cornerstone of such changes.
