Maryam Khatoon Molkara

#MaryamKhatoonMolkara (1950 – March 25, 2012): Considered the matriarch of the Trans community in Iran, Molkara was assigned male at birth but always preferred the clothing and toys of the stereotypically feminine. After dressing in more stereotypically feminine clothes in her teens, she came out to her mother as trans then and was immediately rejected. Rather than undergo gender affirming surgery, she began taking hormones and educated herself on what it meant to be trans. It was then that she began writing letters to Ayatollah Khomeini about the feeling of being assigned the wrong gender at birth. Though his response did not change Iranian views towards the Trans community, he did suggest continuing to live as a woman. Soon after, she also met with Farah Pahlavi (the widow of the last Shah of Iran), who also supported gender-affirming surgery for Trans people (these surgeries had been done in Iran since the 1930s, but were then reserved for intersex individuals). After the Islamic Revolution, Molkara became the target of transphobic attacks in Iran and was beaten, forced to wear masculine clothing, and forcibly injected with testosterone. In the mid-1980s, Molkara was able to gain access into Khomeini’s home, where after speaking with doctors, Khomeini issued a fatwa that determined that gender-affirming surgery was not against Islamic law. Molkara herself completed her surgeries in the mid-1990s in Thailand (paid for by the Iranian government) and lobbied for other Trans Iranians to have access to their surgeries. In 2007, she founded the Iranian Society to Support Individuals with Gender Identity Disorder (ISIGID), which was the first state-approved organization for the rights of Trans people in Iran. She died in 2012 after a heart attack. #TransLivesMatter #LGBTQIA #PrideMonth #YouCannotEraseUs