The ceaseless rush of alternately inspiring and terrifying stories and images coming from Iran in the past weeks have likely dominated the attention of anyone who turned on a TV, went online, or so much as glanced at a front page — and rightly so. Beyond the specific cause of a potentially rigged election, though, the protests in Iran are a manifestation of a country at once mired in repression and speeding towards modernity.

While the current demonstrations have captivated the world, they are by no means the only issues surfacing in a deeply divided culture. For in Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death. Yet it’s also the only country in the Muslim world that permits sex-change operations — for “diagnosed transsexuals.” For people who are born into male bodies but identify as women, it’s an enormous boon, and maybe life-saving. For others, however, male-to-female surgery (which involves complete removal of the genitalia) is a terrible price to be with their partners openly, and to stop being physically and sexually abused for their effeminacy.

On June 24, HBO 2 debuts Be Like Others, a new documentary about this strange and poignant cultural phenomenon. The film tracks, with subtlety, the tangle of emotional and cultural issues surrounding these heavy choices. Time and again the film brought me to tears. At some moments, it was for men who’d had the operation and now faced the realities of post-op life, including almost certain rejection by their families. At others, it was for those who felt they couldn’t “alter God’s work” but prayed that God would make no other people like them. I spoke with Be Like Others‘ Iranian-American director, Tanaz Eshagian, at her home in New York City. — Jack Harrison

Your film makes it very clear that a certain segment of the guys are reluctant to have the surgery — for obvious reasons — and yet do it anyway. Why do you think that is?

One of the men I filmed was speaking to an Iranian state reporter and said, “I want to live here [in Iran]; I don’t have any rights the way that I am because I’m too feminine. And I want to fit in one way or another. But why can’t I just stay like I am?” And the reporter says: “Because you might be considered a transvestite or a homosexual. You have to make yourself clear.” So that’s the cultural logic: there needs to be clarity. Anything ambiguous provokes anxiety. In terms of gender, it comes from a line in the Koran that says that it’s everyone’s duty to know what everyone else is, so everyone has to be clear.

So they get the surgery to “be like others,” as your title suggests, but it often doesn’t end up that way, right?

What’s tragic is that the surgery doesn’t really save them. They do this with the hopes of negotiating something with their environment — and also with themselves. Remember, they’ve internalized that culture of shame. They think that now they get to have sex without feeling guilty.

But in most cases they can no longer orgasm.

Unconsciously, [they think], “I’ll pay the price.”

Then they end up having to sacrifice their families as well, which is a much bigger deal there than in the United States.

It’s their only source of support. It’s not like here where you say, “I’m eighteen. Ma, I’m going to go make something of myself.” In Iran, you’re always within your family. Your identity stays part of that. No one moves to a different city — it would be like, “Did you commit a crime?” The connectedness in Iran is incredible; you don’t want to have to leave that.

So what awaits them is the community of post-ops, many of whom, as the film points out, become prostitutes.

That’s often how a lot of them support themselves.

How many of them are really surprised by the life they end up with after the operation? Are they counseled adequately beforehand, and do they know what to expect?

No, they’re not counseled at all.

They give up their genitals, families, jobs, and often hometowns — alienation at a level almost unimaginable to us in the West — for lovers who can still leave them (though one of the guys in the film does marry his boyfriend post-op), or at least for the right to be with men openly.

I wondered if a hundred years ago if there was even a consciousness of this level of personal desire. In a way, what these men do is the beginning of individualism in a communal society; they have enough of a sense of a self to want to keep their own desires, and they’re willing to negotiate with society and make the sacrifice to keep them.

Additional reporting by James Ryan Brady.

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