Difficult Hospitality: Transgenders in Iran

Public talk by Ahoo Najafian, Department of Religious Studies, Stanford

Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1984 fatwa that allowed sex reassignment surgery in Iran paved the way for the transgender community to seek legal rights and be recognized as a separate gender identity, distinguished from the previously recognized “difficult hermaphrodites” in Islamic jurisprudence. While the activists have been rather successful in opening discussions regarding their legal rights based on Islamic laws, the larger Iranian society still views the community with suspicion.

This talk discusses the ways in which the transgender activists in Iran draw on the Quran, Hadith, and other legal texts in order to de-stigmatize gender non-conformity and the ways in which such attempts are accepted or rejected by the society.

Ahoo Najafian specializes in the relationship between religion and literature in contemporary Iran, with an emphasis on the development of ʿerfan. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from the University of Tehran, Iran, and holds an M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She recently defended her dissertation, titled “Poetic Nation: Iranian Soul and Historical Continuity.” She teaches a course on Gender Relations in Islam at Stanford. 

This event is part of the Abbasi program’s Young Scholars Series