One would never guess that Iran would be one of the few places in the Muslim world that not only allows transgender people to get “care” but also subsidizes it. But perhaps it’s not so bizarre once you start poking around under the hood and realize that it’s all the same parts you’ve seen before: money being the biggest one, along with propaganda and violence.
For 40 years, Iran has performed more gender transition surgeries than most other countries. What started out as the government pressuring gay and gender-nonconforming citizens to undergo unwanted operations or risk the death penalty has turned into a tourism-type industry for Iran. Now faced with an economy crippled by war and sanctions, Iran is even more desperate for foreign investment, setting a goal of generating more than $7 billion from medical tourism annually. According to Iranian state news media, this is about seven times as much as it earned last year. Lofty goal!
The New York Times reports that the Islamic Republic seeks to attain this goal by “promoting its expertise to a global audience, hoping to attract transgender foreigners with the promise of inexpensive surgeries packaged with luxury hotel stays and sightseeing tours.” This has resulted in a plethora of medical tourism companies pushing nose jobs, hair transplants, vaginoplasties, mastectomies, and penis constructions through polished English-language websites.
“We handle everything from start to finish, providing the best medical services to ensure a stress-free experience,” said Farideh Najafi, a manager of two medical tourism companies, MabnaTrip and MedPalTrip. “This includes booking hotels, hospitals, transportation, and more,” she continued.
But even the Times admits that despite the country’s glittering appeal to the “trans” community, it “belies the abusive history of the operations and the grim reality for most L.G.B.T.Q. people there.” The Times continues, “In Iran, gay men and lesbians can be punished by public flogging and the death penalty. As a result, the United Nations Human Rights Council found, many gay and lesbian Iranians who are not trans are ‘pressured into undergoing gender reassignment surgery without their free consent.’” This makes much more sense in light of the fact that Iran is one of the most anti-homosexual countries in the world. There are no gay people in Iran, just people born in the wrong bodies. It also comes as no surprise that a nation where a violent religion is venerated would have no qualms about supporting and committing violence against perfectly healthy bodies.
Iran’s history with “trans” surgery stems from a fatwa, a formal legal ruling, issued in the 1980s by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. He declared that “transgender” individuals could gain legal recognition of the gender with which they identified, but only on the condition that they underwent transition surgery. The Times elaborated, “Iranians who do not adhere to traditional norms of masculinity and femininity — including trans people who do not want surgery — are subject to violence, extortion or are pressured into operations.”
Despite this reality, due to Iran’s — pardon the pun — cut-rate prices, it is drawing people from all over the globe, but most are coming from neighboring countries where such treatments are strictly forbidden. “In the United States, the cost of surgery is around $45,000, and in Thailand, it’s approximately $30,000,” according to the website of one operator, IranMedTour. “However, the cost of gender confirmation surgery in Iran is lower, with prices less than $12,000.“ Other procedures at government hospitals are advertised for as low as $4,500.
Leaving aside the tantalizing price tag, “trans” surgeries are complex operations that have a questionable track record in Iran. Even in the United States, myriad complications occur with these experimental mutilations. A UN report on transition surgeries in Iran from 2015 described botched procedures that led to complications like “severe bleeding, severe infection, scarring, chronic pain, and abnormally shaped or located sexual organs.” The tour companies also give patients false hope by advertising turnaround times that are impossible, as short as one week. Doctors know these operations take months of planning. The Times says, “Dr. Shahryar Cohanzad, a urologist in Tehran who has performed around 300 transition surgeries, said the companies’ aim to perform as many procedures as quickly as possible was unsafe.”
Regardless of the reason, it’s no surprise that a nation with a long history of inciting and funding terrorism is continuing to commit these evil and heinous atrocities. It’s just as wrong for our nation to allow this violence to occur within our borders, although we have many brave people fighting against it. The difference is that we live in a country where we are free to fight and overcome this wrong. In contrast, Iran is enslaved to a religion that puts ideology before the individual and celebrates violence against any other way of believing, which is — ironically — no different than the trans religion.
