Transsexual's memoirs breaks new ground in Arab world

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i46rJsPjXcAl1BVyTSVFNDE7lgsg
By Natacha Yazbec
6/26/10

BEIRUT — In a daring, unprecedented move, a pioneer of the Arab world's underground transgender movement has released her memoirs, recounting her struggle to become a woman against all odds.

"Mouzakarat Randa al-Trans", or "The Memoirs of Randa the Trans", is a brutally honest narrative that traces Randa's battles with family, society, country, religion and abuse in her native Algeria.

Co-authored by Lebanese journalist Hazem Saghieh, the 144-page book released this year in Beirut unflinchingly details Randa's life from childhood as a male to her first sexual experience with a man and the consequences of her choice to live as a male-to-female transsexual.

unfortunately as randa stated in that article , people there are too ignorant to understand anything about transsexualism , they think it's about a sexual orientation or something , transsexualism is not against muslims' religion if it's considered a medical case , homosexuality is particulary stated in their texts to be something you go to hell for and the usual yadda yadda though.
but unfortunately arabs and muslims consider transsexualism a taboo and one actually might get killed if there was a lot of extremists in their country , surprisingly and ironically ,they are more tolorent of GLB if the G , L or B person doesn't state they are one , or if it's in stealth .
meh , if only they understand  =/
i really admire that woman so much because what she did is even beyond brave , it's super brave , i understand because i live in an arab country , and i couldn't even imagine that someone can do what she did
also i didn't know that Lebanon was that open *ponders about going there*
thanks for the article

I will have to keep my eye out for it in some of the larger bookshops here, as it sounds very interesting. She is a courageous woman.