Trans Around The World

Many trans people face imprisonment and even worst for just being themselves. Many face violence by the police while everyone looks away.

Transgender community in Jordan faces abuse, discrimination
Journalists for Human Rights
By Staff
September 19, 2018

LGBTQ rights in Jordan are tenuous, to say the least. Although the country decriminalized “same-sex behaviour” in 1951, cases of abuse and widespread discrimination continue. Senior government ministers in the conservative country make public remarks against what they believe to be “sexual deviance” tarnishing the decency of the state.

In June, JHR Jordan supported local journalist Hiba Abu Taha in producing an in-depth story on transgender rights in the country. Abu Taha spoke with two transgender individuals about the challenges of transitioning in Jordanian society. Both have faced abuse, discrimination and persecution for identifying as transgender.
[…]
In Jordan, sex reassignment surgery is also difficult to obtain; its legal status is currently unclear, though some activists are working to change that.

The article then takes you to the original story…

Transgender Men and Women Forge their Way towards Unprotected Rights
By: Hiba Abu Taha
This story was originally published in Arabic in My.Kali Magazine, a conceptual webzine for/from the Middle East and North Africa. The below is a translation. To read the story in Arabic see: https://bit.ly/2N8aYBx
When Muna met with the reporter, he started to describe the difficult days he had filled with fear, humiliation, frustration and insults, as he was discussing his gender identity.
[…]
Muna is not the only one who has suffered on his transition journey. There are many people like him in Jordan, those who are unable to seize their right to determine their identity because of restrictions from religion, social norms, and more recently, the law.

Social Struggle
“Why should we lose the people we love just because we are different than they are?
Why do they stand between us and the fulfillment of ourselves and our freedom?” wonders Reem, who would like to transition to male.

Reem did not speak randomly. Their comments were the result of society standing between them and their right to determine their gender. Reem told us with sadness that “…we [transgender men and women] are not causing society’s destruction. We are part of society, and by entrenching freedoms we will build it together.”

Human rights activist Lina Jazrawi attributes society’s negative views towards transgender men and women in Jordan to prevalent social norms. The Jordanian society is conservative and does not accept any form of behavior that is not perceived to be ‘normal’. Anything outside the norm is considered a violation of religion and traditions. For many, this is sufficient cause to reject them.

In Jordan you can put locked up for being trans,

“What I remember was that the psychiatrist was very nervous,” he recounts, “and I firmly believe he needed therapy himself. I will never forgive him for the horrific way he treated my case”.

The physician referred Muna to a Psychiatric Hospital for Mental Illness. He says, “I felt that I was in a large prison, I could not talk to anyone because everyone was crazy. Additionally, there were repeated insults by the physician. He made me sit in a room among trainee students and provoked me with his questions in front of them. They would then mock me.”

Life must be hell!

I cannot even imagine what life must be like in a strongly religious country when you’re trans.

We complain about not being able to sever in the military, we seek our legal protection when we are denied service in a restaurant, but imagine what it is like to live in a country where violence against is common and the government looks the other way and imprisons doctors who try to help.

 Last April, the Jordanian Parliament passed the “Medical Responsibility Law” which stipulates in Article 22, “Anyone violating the provisions of paragraph H of Article 8 of the same Law shall be punished by temporary hard labor for no less than 3 years and no more than 10 years”. The paragraph prohibited “service providers to conduct sex reassignment surgeries”.

Advocate Al Khayyat commented on this saying: “Considering sex reassignment surgeries as a crime raises an important point in our penal legislation that allows for punishment to be made harsher. Harsher criminalization is being prioritized over acceptance. This is very dangerous and does not entrench the rule of law instead it leads to a vengeful society”.

I have to stop and wonder if here in the U.S. we are becoming a “vengeful society” with the way that the Republicans are trying to legalize religious persecution against us.

Are we becoming Balkanized where members of religious organizations don’t have to follow the laws that everyone else have to obey?

I will be turning 70 shortly, if I am lucky I will have another 20 years to live but I wonder what life here in the United States will be like then. Will I be forced to live in exile? Will I be forced back in the closet? Or will the pendulum swing back toward the middle? Or will the world be run by a theocratic plutocracy?