UC BerkeleyLecture | October 18 | 4-6 p.m. | Dwinelle Hall, 370 Dwinelle Hall--Level F
Speaker: Afsaneh Najmabadi, Professor of History and Women's Studies, Harvard University
Contact: 510-643-7172
TRANSING AND TRANSPASSING ACROSS SEX-GENDER WALLS IN IRAN
This talk focuses on current contours of transexuality in Iran and considers the particular mapping of trans-identities and lives in a context where transexuality is legal and homosexuality is not. How does legality of transexuality and illegality of homosexuality shape sexual subjectivities in Iran? How do state-codified notions of proper public manhood and womanhood affect sexualities? The talk will look at how the confluence of classical Islamic discourse on the "true sex" of every human body with the psychomedicalized notion of "truth of sex" — that a natural biological sex determines one's gender behavior and sexual desire — has given a powerful impetus to the acceptability of "curing" transexuality through sex-change medical interventions, while sustaining homosexuality as an unacceptable criminalized deviation.
COSPONSORED BY
Department of Gender and Women's Studies
Townsend Center Working Group on Muslim Identities and Cultures
Center for Middle East Studies
Center for the Study of Sexual Culture
