Synopses & Reviews
Since the mid-1980s, the Islamic Republic of Iran has permitted, and partially subsidized, sex reassignment surgery. In Professing Selves, Afsaneh Najmabadi explores the meaning of transsexuality in contemporary Iran. Combining historical and ethnographic research, she describes how, in the postrevolutionary era, the domains of law, psychology and psychiatry, Islamic jurisprudence, and biomedicine became invested in distinguishing between the acceptable andquot;trueandquot; transsexual and other categories of identification, notably the andquot;trueandquot; homosexual, an unacceptable category of existence in Iran. Najmabadi argues that this collaboration among medical authorities, specialized clerics, and state officialsandmdash;which made transsexuality a legally tolerated, if not exactly celebrated, category of beingandmdash;grew out of Iran's particular experience of Islamicized modernity. Paradoxically, state regulation has produced new spaces for non-normative living in Iran, since determining who is genuinely andquot;transandquot; depends largely on the stories that people choose to tell, on the selves that they profess.
Review
andquot;Professing Selves is one of the best recent works on contemporary Iran. Arguing that transsexuals' legal and psychiatric negotiations reveal more general processes of proceduralism, negotiation of legal categories, and state formation, Afsaneh Najmabadi challenges the lumping of transsexuals and homosexuals as identical human rights issues, and argues that poorly targeted universalistic campaigns can damage the conditions of life for the people they are intended to help. She works refreshingly at the level of real lives, jurists, and psychiatrists.andquot;andmdash;Michael M. J. Fischer, author of Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry
Review
andquot;In this important, timely, and erudite work, Afsaneh Najmabadi brings her nuanced understanding of multiple discourses and institutions in Iran to bear on the recent and remarkable visibility of transsexuality in that country. Professing Selves is likely to have a wide-ranging appealandmdash;to historians, Middle East specialists, sexuality and gender scholars, and social scientists interested in issues of state formation and biopolitics. It will be the definitive text on its topic for a long time to come.andquot;andmdash;Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History
Review
andquot;In her theoretically sophisticated book, historian Najmabadi investigates the political and cultural evolution of Iranian attitudes toward and#39;sexual deviancy and sexual disorder,and#39; beginning in the 1930s. . . .Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.andquot;
Review
andquot;A fascinating book that... challenges the Western mediaandrsquo;s depiction of transsexuality and sex reassignment surgery as coercive while ignoring the vibrant reform movement and history of progressive activism in Iran.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Under guise of an ethnography of transsexuality in contemporary Iran, Afsaneh Najmabadi has written a nuanced ethnography of the transition of the Iranian state and public sphere from one type (jins) to another. Building on Joan Scottandrsquo;s (1986) observation that gender is a useful category for historical analysis, Najmabadi goes beyond showing that sex and sexuality are also useful categories for historical analysis to suggest that somatic-constitutional transformation can be as well. andhellip; Najmabadi is an excellent guide through this world of nonconforming confirmers of the core gender categories of the Islamic Republic of Iran.andrdquo;and#160;
Synopsis
The Islamic Republic of Iran permits, and even partially subsidizes, sex reassignment surgery. Based on historical and ethnographic research, Afsaneh Najmabadi examines what transsexuality means in postrevolutionary Iran.
About the Author
Afsaneh Najmabadi is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. She is the author of Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity and The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History. She is a coeditor (with Kathryn Babayan) of Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Entering the Scene 15
2. andquot;Beforeandquot; Transexuality 38
3. Murderous Passions, Deviant Insanities 75
4. andquot;Aroundandquot; 1979: Gay Tehran? 120
5. Verdicts of Science, Rulings of Faith 163
6. Changing the Terms: Playing andquot;Snakes and Laddersandquot; with the State 202
7. Living Patterns, Narrative Styles 231
8. Professing Selves: Sexual/Gender Proficiencies 275
Glossary of Persian Terms and Acronyms 303
Notes 305
Works Cited 373
Index 389