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 true transsexual and other categories of identification, notably the true homosexual, an unacceptable category of existence in Iran. Najmabadi argues that this collaboration among medical authorities, specialized clerics, and state officials-which made transsexuality a legally tolerated, if not exactly celebrated, category of being-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 trans depends largely on the stories that people choose to tell, on the selves that they profess.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Duke University Press
ISBN-13
9780822355571
eBay Product ID (ePID)
184226113
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Gender Issues
Author
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Publication Name
Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
Zoology, History
Publication Year
2013
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
432 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
229mm
Item Width
152mm
Item Weight
590g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Series Title
Experimental Futures
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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