Firstly, I'd like to say that this is a great documentary.
After watching, I am left curious about FTMs in Iran, however. There was little mention of them. Are there simply more MTFs than FTMs in Iran? Are they less pressured to have surgery? Are they not perceived as "homosexual", and therefore less likely to pursue operation?
Really cursory research suggests that once there's a successful FTM then they would rather not acknowledge their past. It's still somewhat stigmatized despite the openness towards the process and they would rather go about living like any other man free to move on in society and are more or less free to do so. (This could be largely driven by cultural factors where masculinity is privileged but I have no idea.)
It may have been an article in NYT or The Guardian but try googling the quote "I love my life and I'm happy, as long as no one knows about my past identity."
Female to male operations are less successful cosmetically because there is no way to surgically construct a fully functional penis that has the sensation and appearance of that of a genetic male.
The other thing is that this surgery is being promoted by the Iranian government as an alternative to homosexuality, which is punishable by death in Iran. Like many extremely homophobic regimes, Iran is much more obsessed with male homosexuality than lesbianism. This nothing new and there are ample precedents. Some virulently homophobic regimes in the past (Victorian Britain, Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia) criminalized male homosexuality while lesbianism (though certainly not socially acceptable) remained legal. I've never heard of lesbians being executed in Iran, yet there have been numerous public executions of gay men. They probably take the view that (respectable) women hate sex anyway, so their sexual orientation is irrelevant. I imagine that in a place like Iran there is intense pressure on lesbians to marry, after which they're expected to "submit" to their husbands (I'm sure that Iran does not have any legal concept of marital rape).
MTF is far more common around the world, so I assume it's no different in Iran
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