Maryam Molkara was a pioneer transgender activist in Iran. She was born in 1950 in Abkenar, Anzali, Iran as the only child in the second marriage out of her father’s eight marriages. Her father was a landowner and she grew up with many influential connections that would help her on her journey later in life.1
Growing up, Maryam always knew she was a girl and hated to wear boy clothes. At just two years old her mother found her applying chalk on her face like it was makeup.2 In an interview with the Independent, she describes painful experiences of being socialized as a boy, “When I was very small I used to scream when they tried to dress me in boy's clothes and when I was taken to toy shops I wanted dolls instead of boy's toys. I played at cooking with the neighbouring happened."3 She was bullied and tortured growing up for insisting on presenting in a feminine way.
In Iran there were no explicit rules about being transgender, so Maryam would consult with religious leaders and explain her life. She also met with then Empress Farah Pahlavi in 1974, who encouraged her to create a society for transgender people, but that society was never formed. While the religious clearics were supportive, they told her that the final say had to come from Ayatollah Khomeini.4 This began her journey of trying to make contact with Ayatollah Khomeini and seek refuge from his religious expertise and authority.
In 1975, Maryam started writing letters to Ayatollah Khomeini. At the time she was working for Iranian state television under her birth name, Fereydoon.5 In these letters, she spoke of her anguish of knowing who she was but unable to fully embody womanhood safely. She poured her heart out to him in these letters, hoping it would soften his heart towards her plight.
Although she knew she could go to London and get sexual reassignment surgery, she wanted the legal protections of an official gender change so she could live safely in Iran.6 She was a devout Muslim and having religious validation from the highest religious authority in Iran (Ayatollah Khomeini) was tantamount to her living authentically as a trans woman. The surgery in and of itself was not the priority, but having religious validation and protection from being legitimately considered as a woman under the law in Iran.
In 1978, Maryam tried to meet Ayatollah Khomeini while he was in Paris in exile, but was unable to have a meeting with him. He had written responses to some of her letters encouraging her to live as a woman, but it was clear that he did not fully understand her position as a transgender woman and that she needed legal and religious protections in order to live authentically.7 The Islamic Revolution posed a new set of challenges for transgender people in Iran because there was not a specific policy against transgender people before 1979. After the revolution, transgender people were condemned as being against Islam and started to become actively persecuted by the state.8 During the Iran/Iraq war of the mid 1980s, she worked as a nurse near the front lines. Maryam was imprisoned several times for presenting as a woman. She was also institutionalized in psychiatric institutions and forced to take male hormones. Due to having connections she was able to be released from imprisonment. She persisted on trying to reach out to Khomeini directly to get help from him.9
Maryam decided she could not live in the shadows, and made the desperate decision to confront Ayatollah Khomeini in his home in 1987. She disguised herself as a man, carrying the Qu’ran, and wearing tied shoes around her neck, a shi’ii symbol reminiscent of the Ashura remembrance, signaling she was seeking shelter. She was beaten by guards and when the Ayatollah’s brother Hasan walked by, he promptly stopped the beating and brought her into the home. Overcome with emotion, she started to yell “I am a woman, I am a woman!” and broke down to the Ayatollah’s son, Ahmad. She surprised those in attendance by showing that through hormone therapy she had grown breasts, and she was given a chador to cover up.10 The Ayatollah’s son was empathetic to her pain when he saw this display and arranged for her to meet his father.
The Ayatollah was disturbed by the beating and was upset that she was abused when she was clearly seeking shelter. When she met with him, he did not know what being transgender meant, but after learning from a team of doctors and from Maryam’s lived experience, he agreed that sexual reassignment surgery was an appropriate solution for Maryam. He wrote a fatwa (religious decree) for Maryam. While Maryam was not the first person in Iran to receive gender-affirming care, she was the first person to receive religious decree that validated this kind of healthcare.11 She left his compound with the legal and religious permission to be able to get a sexual reassignment surgery in Iran.12 This door was not only opened for her but other transgender people who needed the support from popular religious leaders to live in safer conditions. This moment pioneered transgender rights in Iran and throughout the SWANA region.
Maryam went on to found an organization to remove financial barriers to access to gender affirming care. This organization became state subsidized, receiving funding to provide people who could not afford surgery.13 She was the leading advocate for transgender rights and campaigned to make gender affirming care more accessible. In 1997, she finally received surgery to affirm her gender.14 She had previously lobbied to improve standards of care in Iran, but feeling unsatisfied with the level of care, sought treatment in Thailand.15
In spite of having religious validation from the utmost authority in Iran, Maryam lived in fear of violence. She was consistently called to bail out transgender prisoners and feared beatings when she went to the jails. She also had security monitors in her living room and publicly commented that she wished transgender people in the future would feel safer. 16 Maryam died in 2012 at the age of 62. Today Iran continues to be a leader in providing healthcare to transgender people, but this healthcare is considered a pathologization for gender and sexual diversity. Sometimes people who have same sex attraction are coerced into undergoing sexual reassignment surgery to fit heteronormative societal standards.17 Maryam will be remembered as a pioneer for transgender rights and for her resolve and persistence in living an authentic life commensurate with her religious and cultural values.
(This biographical statement written by Soaad Elbahwati from the sources below.)
1 Angus McDowall and Stephen Khan, The Ayatollah and the transsexual. Independent. 2004.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ayatollah-and-transsexual-21867.html
2 Making Queer History, ‘Maryam Khatoon Molkara’, 2017.
https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2017/3/18/maryam-khatoon-molkara-a-woman-who-changed-her-country
3 McDowall and Khan, The Ayatollah and the transsexual. Independent. 2004.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ayatollah-and-transsexual-21867.html
4 Maryam Dehkordi, Iranian Women You Should Know: “Maryam Khatoon Molkara”, Iranwire, 2020.
https://iranwire.com/en/special-features/66920/
5 Robert Tait, ‘A fatwa for freedom’, The Guardian, 2005.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/27/gayrights.iran
6 Ibid.
7 Dehkordi, Iranian Women You Should Know: “Maryam Khatoon Molkara”, Iranwire, 2020.
8 Making Queer History, ‘Maryam Khatoon Molkara’, 2017.
9 Tait, ‘A fatwa for freedom’, The Guardian, 2005.
10 Making Queer History, ‘Maryam Khatoon Molkara’, 2017.
11 Dehkordi, Iranian Women You Should Know: “Maryam Khatoon Molkara”, Iranwire, 2020
12 Making Queer History, ‘Maryam Khatoon Molkara’, 2017.
13 Ibid.
14 Influential Iranian Women: Maryam Khatoonpour Molkara (1950-2012), Iranwire,
https://iranwire.com/en/women/124596-influential-iranian-women-maryam-khatoonpour-molkara-1950-2012/#:~:text=In%20Iran%20she%20established%20an,a%20mental%20illness%20or%20disorder
15 Tait, “A fatwa for freedom”, The Guardian, 2005.
16 Ibid.
17 Mehdi Fattawi and Nasser Karimi, “Iran’s transgender people face discrimination despite fatwa”, AP News, 2018. https://apnews.com/article/a66b2167bb1744e6b12ba8ff1ef97c21
Biography Date: August 2025