The Forbidden Tale of LGB in Iran

The Forbidden Tale of LGB in Iran: A Comprehensive Research Study On LGB

By: Kameel Ahmady

ISBN: 978-1-64945-722-6

First Edition. 338.pages 
Printed in the United Kingdom, 2020 

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This anthropological study seeks to investigate the overlooked gender status in Iran by considering different and complicated aspects of gender identity and its intricacies among the gender community grounded in an increasing identification of gender orientations. Meanwhile, the present study challenges common misunderstandings about LGBT community and gender in Iran and also criticises the existing myths and narratives which have often caused such misunderstandings about gender and led to wrong policy-making in order to underlie a more comprehensive approach.

The current research is quite complicated; for it goes beyond a simple overview of gender orientation and the related thoughts to gender in the private and social life of the individuals. For the first time, this study focused on deep interviews with more than 300 (60% male and 40% female) people from three metropolises of Iran (Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad). In line with that, the challenges caused by changes of the current age in gender relations and their status in Iran were reviewed. The main purpose of the present study is to understand the feelings and beliefs about the LGBT community in Iran using a critical analysis from their own perspective and also to study the challenges they encounter and experience for living in a religious, class-based, traditional, and patriarchal society where LGBT is denied as an identity. Here is thus raised the main question of this survey. The necessity to highlight the LGBT community and also the vulnerability of this oppressed and silent group turned into a motivation to illustrate the status of these people who have been often ignored and socially marginalised.

The present study takes advantage of a combination of methods and approaches in order to provide a theoretical method suited for research on LGBT experience and nevertheless, to encompass the feelings and perceptions of the researcher as an ‘objectivity’ in the research confirmation criteria.