Maryam Khatoon Molkara

Maryam Khatoonpour Molkara (; 1950–2012) was an Iranian transgender rights activist, and she was widely recognized as a matriarch of the transgender community in Iran.

Early life Molkara was born with the name Fereydun in 1950, She came out as transgender to her mother, who refused to accept her. This made Molkara decide to take feminizing hormones instead of immediately seeking out surgery. She also dressed and lived as a woman. However, these were not commonplace and were for people with congenital intersex conditions. 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. Thereafter, she met with Empress Farah Pahlavi, who gave her support to Molkara and other transgender individuals wanting sex reassignment surgery. Because of good contacts with religious leaders, among them Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, she was released. she confronted Khomeini in his home in Northern Tehran. She wore a man's suit, carried the Quran, and she tied shoes around her neck. This resulted in Khomeini issuing a fatwa, where he determined sex reassignment surgery to not be against Islamic law. Before this, she used her own property in Karaj to help other transgender people receive legal advice and medical care, including post-operative care. She continued advocating for other transgender people and bailing them out of prison after they were arrested, even knowing she would likely face violence for doing so.

Death

Molkara died in April 2012, after suffering a heart attack at the age of 62.