traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns

i mean... its technically true that they have only improved. iran, iirc, has the third most transgender surgeries, behind USA and Thailand. of course, if you are gay or perceived as gay, its fucking awful there. real acceptance of transgender people, despite the legal status, is not very good because sometimes it is perceived as being gay.

ive had the pleasure of talking with a trans woman in iran that actually had an accepting traditionalist family. basic thing is that her family was so fervent in their shia beliefs that if khomeini said it was fine, it is fine. but of course this also resulted in her family arranging her a marriage with a man, who himself was a traditionalist war veteran and infertile due to a war (so it resolved an issue for both of them). she also is lucky enough to pass. despite this traditional upbringing, support, having a 'beard', and passing, she was harassed many times on border crossings, by bureaucrats, by police before her surgery and gender marker changes, and her spouse was accused of being gay. these things can all be fixed by having the right documentation, but its certainly not good to be harassed all the time with what is essentially a death threat / a threat of severe harm (accused of being gay).

plus side is she described the trans healthcare as absurdly affordable for most city dwellers and the surgeons were very kind. she said she felt like she got a good result from the surgery.

i have actually discussed in detail iran's decision on why this is OK. their decision actually goes back to something i say a lot here, that in the bible and abrahamic religions, the term 'eunuch' refers to a wide umbrella of people that includes transgender people (in fact it even goes beyond this, the british referred to the hijra in india as eunuchs from the 1700s to the 1900s, and we know for a fact that hijra see themselves as transgender or a different gender). iran is one of the few areas of the world that actually recognizes this history for what it is and codified it into law. the bible, and other abrahamic texts, expressly say to assist and help eunuchs with their troubles and to accept them.

it's a joke. I saw it on twitter and thought it was funny.

If there's a bunch of "Actually Khomeini was great for trans rights!" info out there, I'd genuinely love to hear it. But I'm not holding my breath.

weirdly enough there is, read about Maryam Khatoon Molkara

Molkara started to write letters to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile in Iraq, asking for religious advice about being assigned the wrong gender at birth. In one of these letters, she said that her gender had been clear since she was two years old, as she used to apply chalk to her face to imitate putting on makeup.[3] Khomeini had already written in 1963 that corrective surgeries for intersex people are not against Islamic law, and his answer was based on this existing idea rather than developing a new fatwa for transgender people. He suggested she live as a woman, which included dressing as one.[6]

...

Molkara continued to campaign for her right to get gender-affirming surgery. In 1985, she confronted Khomeini in his home in North Tehran. She wore a man's suit, carried the Quran, and she tied shoes around her neck.[3][6] This was a reference to the Ashura festival, and also indicated that she was looking for refuge. Molkara was held back and beaten by security guards until Khomeini's brother, Hassan Pasandide, intervened.[3][6] He took Molkara into his house, where she pleaded her case, yelling "I'm a woman, I'm a woman!"[3] His security guards were suspicious about her chest, as they thought she could be carrying explosives. She revealed they were her breasts, as she developed them using hormone therapy.[3] Having heard her story, Ahmad Khomeini was touched and took Molkara to speak to his father, where he asked three of his doctors about the surgery in an attempt to make a well-informed decision.[3][6] Khomeini then decided that sex reassignment surgery was needed to allow her to carry out her religious duties.[8] This resulted in Khomeini issuing a fatwa, where he determined sex reassignment surgery to not be against Islamic law.[6] Molkara lobbied for the according medical knowledge and procedures to be implemented in Iran, and worked on helping other transgender people have access to surgeries. She completed her gender-affirming surgery in Thailand in 1997,[2] due to "unhappiness with procedures in her native country''.[3] The Iranian government paid for her surgery, and she was able to help establish government funding for many other transgender individual's surgeries.