What Would It Take To Try To Become A Transgender In Iraq/The Middle East?

[Mesopotamian]

Telling a story of yet another different side of my personality.

The story of my desire to become a woman started when I was a child. Probably at age 4 or 5 my parents thought to themselves that it is a good idea to dress me as a girl, put a make up on my face and lipstick, and flip my hair back. They then took me to a photography studio and took a photo of me in a dress. My mom said the photographer was stunned of how beautiful I looked back then and when he asked what’s the little girl’s name, they told him that I am actually a boy!

The memory of this photo always remained in my mind, and luckily enough, this photo has survived the ISIS occupation of Iraq in 2014 when ISIS occupied my city, Mosul and while some of the militant leaders came to live in our family house back then after we fled the city, they started to burn all my family’s photo archive and any personal belongings that we left behind when we fled the city, but this photo has survived miraculously. I wasn’t able to find an explanation of why they were after my family photo archive, but one thing that might explain it is that my family was a minority Christian family, and back then the Christian community was ordered to leave Mosul after the head of church refused to negotiate a deal with ISIS that would’ve enabled Christians to stay in the city under strict conditions that ISIS was about to impose. So maybe they were after erasing the history of minorities in the city when they were burning my family’s archive?

The rest of article

https://medium.com/@iraqi.transgender/what-would-it-take-for-a-man-to-transform-into-a-woman-in-iraq-e3b08fff6910

[itachi uchiha]

 

 

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

Damn that's a crazy story. Really makes me grateful to live in a peaceful and relatively stable country. I hope your family got out of there unscathed.

Even transgender people in the west live under constant humiliation, physical and emotional abuse and other forms of rejection. I don't think life for a transgender person in the middle east (outside the most liberal places) would be pleasant to say the least, especially for a transwoman.

The environment would have evolve a lot in order to make being a transperson realistic. People would have to start deconstructing their preconceptions about gender which is something that even a lot of westerners struggle with. I'm not an expert on this so I can't even begin to imagine what an individual could do to fuel this process. It's something that has to naturally develop over time. Perhaps globalization will lead to some development? The internet is a good start as it allows open minded people like you to access other perspectives. But it will probably take a long time before any major progress will be made.

I think the safest way to become a transperson is to move to the west. I don't know your current situation, so I don't know how realistic this is. You should look at countries with a strong queer community and see if any of those are realistic options in your eyes.

[Mesopotamian]

@DefinitelyNotARobot Thank you for your support and for sharing with me your opinions, which seem to be balanced, and some of the highlights about this topic. I would imagine there's humiliation and abuse everywhere. I can't move to the west right now because of the bloody borders, but one region that has good transgender population who are living in peace is the Philippines! I would easily fit if I could make it there, I am surprised by the emotional support that I am receiving from people there.

 

[hyruga]

That's not becoming a transgender. Just as a crossdresser.

You must ask yourself which gender you prefer.