When the controversial Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed New York’s Colombia University in 2007, he was asked about the situation of gays in Iran. He replied that “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals. In Iran we don’t have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you we have it” (Whitaker 2007, September 25).1 These remarks caught the headlines in the Western media and drew widespread criticism, as well as cries of disbelief. Once again the Islamic Republic of Iran was in the spotlight regarding its treatment of sexual minorities, particularly due to the fact that same-sex sexual acts are punishable by death in Iran. Well-established discursive themes about the “barbaric” and “evil” nature of the Islamic Republic re-emerged in the Western media: Iran, because of its inhuman treatment of sexual minorities, is depicted as “uncivilized” and “primitive” in comparison to the progressive and civilized global north, where gays and lesbians enjoy freedom and full civil rights. In fact, this discourse about the “civilized” global north depicted against the “uncivilized” global south, particularly the Middle East, in terms of the sexual/civil rights of gays and lesbians, is part of a wider neoliberal political discourse, which has in the aftermath of 9/11 changed the political discourse in the West and the concept of “good” citizenry (Puar 2007). For instance, in many Western liberal democracies, certain “respectable” LGBTQ subjectivities have now been included as part of the “national imaginary,” which then presents those societies as tolerant and open, in contrast to allegedly homophobic and barbaric Islamic countries. This kind of rhetoric, which Puar has defined as homonationalism, has in the first decade of the twenty-first century, contributed to inciting racist, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic discourses in many Western countries—both with regard to foreign and domestic policy/politics.
The question thus remains as why President Ahmadinejad renounced that “this phenomenon,” referring to homosexuality, existed in Iran, knowing that it would raise anti-Iranian sentiments based in part on homonationalistic rhetoric? Was he unaware of the reaction his comments would cause or was he evading this sensitive topic altogether by declaring that homosexuality did not exist within Iranian culture/society? Of course Ahmadinejad knows that there are gays, lesbians, and other members of the LGBTQ community living in Iran today. It is an “open secret, everybody knows about it,” as one of my informants told me. Moreover, Iranian cultural history gives plenty of examples of same-sex desire and homoerotic love, which can be found in classical Persian poetry and literature (Homosexuality iii. In Persian Literature 2012, March 23). However, this kind of love or desire has always been expressed figuratively, and throughout Iranian history homosexuality/same-sex desire has been an open secret, something neither talked about nor expressed in public. It is to be kept within the private sphere, where one can express one’s true feelings and remove the “social mask.” In fact, when Ahmadinejad was publically denying the existence of gays and lesbians, he was indirectly referring to that kind of cultural division between the private and the public, which many Iranians still embody today. Moreover, gays and lesbians are not officially recognized in Iran and in that sense they do not exist, and therefore in that sense Ahmadinejad was referring to the official rhetoric and erasure of sexual minority subjects. In fact, gays and lesbians in Iranian society are a hidden minority, as one of my informants told me:
They don’t actively try to kill [gay] people they just want to hide it. They don’t want these activities to become public. … [Thus] you have to put up a mask and you have to do everything in order to hide yourself. You have to lie to survive. So Iranian gays are perfect liars and perfect actors.
The book is therefore about masking/unmasking, the construction, and enactment of gay identity and same-sex desire in contemporary Iran. In that respect it addresses the livability of self-identified Iranian gay males, who are not actively being killed by the state, although executions of gays and men who have sex with men have been reported by various NGOs, but are forced to live in hiding and without any official recognition or social support. The book tells the story of a masked existence. It explores the strategies, which Iranian gays use to survive and pursue their lives within the limits set by the legal-religious discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thus, the following research question, which has guided my work on this topic, and has previously been formalized in a paper with my co-author Wayne Martino, emphasizes the nuances which need to be taken into consideration when studying sexuality in a cultural context such as Iran: “How are the terms of recognizability, enactment and livability of same-sex desire […] understood and negotiated by gay Iranian men under historically specific social and Islamic jurisprudential conditions of disavowal and criminalization of homosexuality?” (Martino and Kjaran 2019).
The book draws on ethnographic data and it engages with self-identified gay Iranian men’s lived experiences. Keeping in mind that studies on men and the intersection of masculinity and sexuality in (and from) Middle Eastern contexts remain few and insufficient, the focus of the book on gay Iranian men is important, as it contributes to research on queer issues in the Middle East and extends the knowledge of the experiences and livability of this group within that region. The ethnographic data was collected during several fieldtrips to Iran, mostly in the capital city of Tehran. It consists of interviews with gay-identifying men, field notes, research diary, as well as historical and online sources. In analyzing and interpreting the data the focus is on different theories on space in connection to Foucault’s analytic perspectives on power, self-knowledge, confessionary practices, and ethical relations of subjectification, which have the capacity to draw attention to sexual embodiment and identificatory possibilities. Through these analytical lenses, different spaces will be examined in order to draw attention to how they are constructed in terms of gender and sexuality. Furthermore, the focus will be on how the gay Iranian subject has been constituted through discourses, both in the past and the present, both within and outside of Iran. Although being positioned by different discourses, the book emphasizes how the gay Iranian male positions himself as an active agent in taking care of the self and in terms of queering/resisting dominant norms in their social environment through their embodiment and actions.
“Tintin” in Tehran—Entering the Field
It is February 10, 2015, and I am waiting for my flight to Tehran at the departure gate at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul. After going through security and immigration I sit down close to the boarding gate, making the final preparations for my second trip to Iran and my actual fieldtrip over there. Right in front of me is a screen, which indicates the boarding time and the destination: Tehran, this large, modern and multilayered city that captured all of my senses when I first arrived there in April 2014. Looking at the screen and seeing my destination, where I will be in a couple of hours, all kinds of feelings start to flow through my mind, feelings of fear about the unknown, but also curiosity and enthusiasm to start my fieldwork there. I start to recollect how I first became introduced to Iran, and how my perception and understanding of its history, society, and culture has evolved and changed over time. I remember that I first heard about Iran when I watched with my father the mini series called On the Wings of Eagle, based on a non-fiction thriller by Ken Follet. It is set against the Iranian Revolution and tells the true story of the rescue of two executive managers of the company Electronic Data System. At that time, the American billionaire Ross Perot owned the company. He is said to have paid Follett to write the book, which he based on conversations with people that directly took part in the rescue operation. It is estimated that at least 25 million Americans watched the mini series (Posner 1996). For those millions of Americans who saw the series, it influenced their perception of revolutionary Iran, and in many ways established the current stereotypical image of Iran and Iranians in the West: an uncivilized fanatic mob, demonstrating on the streets, burning the American flag, and hating everything coming from the West (Beeman 2005; McAlister 2005). At the time, I also internalized this image of Iran, being a young teenager living in the final era of the cold war during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, on a small island in the North Atlantic, between the two superpowers. However, at the same time I wanted to learn more about this mystical country, which raised feelings of both fear and curiosity. Consequently, I started to read and follow news about Iran, which during this time was mostly related to assumed terrorism, and the war between Iran and Iraq. The news coverage about Iran in the West mostly depicted the country in a negative light. In fact, as William O. Beeman (2005) has pointed out in his book The Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs, since the Islamic revolution, the discourse of demonization, particularly regarding the relationship between Iran and the US, has been part of the official political rhetoric and discourse of both countries. This discourse has then been cited by the media in both countries, and contributed to the stereotypical image of Iran, which most people have in the West.
Coming back to the wait for boarding the plane to Tehran, a friendly old man in his late 80s woke me up from my contemplation and asked me if he could take the empty seat next to me. I smiled to him in approval and he sat down. He started to talk to me in German, assuming that I was from Germany. I speak fluent German, so we were able to converse easily. He told me that he was on his way to Tehran to visit his family there. He was actually from Afghanistan and lived in Munich. He had studied epidemiology at the University of Tehran in the 1950s, and after that he worked in Iran and in different Persian Gulf countries, before returning to Afghanistan. When the war in Afghanistan culminated with the intervention of the Soviet Union in December 1979 he moved back to Iran. In fact, many Afghans immigrated to Iran during that time and today there is still a continuous flow of Afghan migrants and workers over the border to Iran. I met some of them in Tehran, where they work in low-paid jobs, such as in restaurants or on building sites. Many Afghans speak Farsi quite well, and in fact Dari, one of the two official languages in Afghanistan, is related to Farsi and is often referred to as the Afghan Persian. They can therefore quickly adapt to Iranian society. However, they face some prejudices in Iran and until recently, children of migrant workers were not allowed to attend public schools (Moinipour 2017; Undocumented Afghan refugees get a chance at school in Iran, 2017, October 26).
The old man continued to talk to me: “I lived as a young university student during the time of the Shah [the last emperor of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi] and then I experienced the [Islamic] Revolution—and I am still alive.” He talked rather positively about the Islamic Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini, of whom he referred to as the “full moon.” In Iranian culture, “full moon” (mahe shabe chahardah) is normally used to describe the beauty or perfection of a young woman. In the context of our conversation, the old man was not using mah or moon in that sense, but rather citing the rhetoric (metaphoric language) of the revolution, which portrays...