How Touchingly Nuanced
No, actually, it is commendable, admirable, that minds so grimly set in stone that homosexuals can be consigned to death under strict Islamic law will yet recognize the pain and horror that young men may suffer in the realization that their psyches are more attuned to the female than the male.That sufficient compassion and understanding can be mustered to apprehend that these young people should be helped to find their role in society, not condemned and treated with contempt.
This is so utterly baffling, so peculiar, so out of character as defined by the usual Iranian theological, social and political response to the square nail in the round hole, that it's beyond perplexing.
But then, perhaps even within the most fundamentally rigid mind-set dedicated to divine direction as it is written, beyond human dissembling, there lurks some understanding with respect to the vicissitudes and mysteries underlying human existence.
Here is a country that strenuously insists that its genders be separated. Where homosexuality can earn the unwary - death. Where special squads of morality police wander the streets to apprehend young women unsuitably garbed, to thrash them in public and imprison them if deemed needful. Where public hanging is commonplace, as a solution to crimes against the state. Where student unrest is not taken lightly.
Yet the government has set aside $647,000 for this year alone to help gender-afflicted youth (boys to girls) pay for sex-change operations. Including the opportunity to enjoy the professional ministrations of a psychologist skilled in working with transsexuals. The culture appears to accept the idea of "a female psyche trapped in a male body".
A procedure including medical examinations and psychoanalysis to ensure a candidate qualifies for the transgendering surgery identifies those to whom the state will compassionately offer relief. Iran boasts no fewer than ten sex-change surgeons, one of whom claims to have performed over 460 operations in the past dozen years.
These life-changing procedures were authorized by a 1984 decree issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A cleric, Mohammad Mehdi Kariminia, produced a thesis on the rights and duties of transsexuals. Just think of it: young Iranians itching, through a genetic anomaly, to become female, to live out their lives in the shadow of sharia law.
Who might ever even imagine such a touchingly humane response to a human dilemma of this nature? Under a theistic totalitarian regime, no less.
Labels: Middle East, Religion, That's Life
posted by Pieface @ Friday, February 08, 2008
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