Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1

1. Entering the Scene  15

2. "Before" Transexuality  38

3. Murderous Passions, Deviant Insanities  75

4. "Around" 1979: Gay Tehran?  120

5. Verdicts of Science, Rulings of Faith  163

6. Changing the Terms: Playing "Snakes and Ladders" with the State  202

7. Living Patterns, Styles of Cognition  231

8. Professing Selves: Sexual/Gender Proficiencies  275

Appendix: Glossary of Persian Terms and Acronyms  303

Notes  305

Works Cited  373

Index  391

"Professing Selves is one of the best recent works on contemporary Iran. Arguing that transsexuals' legal and psychiatric negotiations reveal more general processes of proceduralism, negotiation of legal categories, and state formation, Afsaneh Najmabadi challenges the lumping of transsexuals and homosexuals as identical human rights issues, and argues that poorly targeted universalistic campaigns can damage the conditions of life for the people they are intended to help. She works refreshingly at the level of real lives, jurists, and psychiatrists."—Michael M. J. Fischer, author of Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry

"In this important, timely, and erudite work, Afsaneh Najmabadi brings her nuanced understanding of multiple discourses and institutions in Iran to bear on the recent and remarkable visibility of transsexuality in that country. Professing Selves is likely to have a wide-ranging appeal—to historians, Middle East specialists, sexuality and gender scholars, and social scientists interested in issues of state formation and biopolitics. It will be the definitive text on its topic for a long time to come."—Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History

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