Putting People in Boxes: Iranian Exiles and Queer Identities

Sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) are no longer uniformly viewed as stable and permanent individual attributes in academic and public discourse. Iran, and Iranian scholarship, has been an important site for this destabilisation. Postcolonial, feminist and queer theorists have mapped changes since the nineteenth century in how Iranian individuals and society perceive sexual and gender identities and behaviours, often attributing shifts in discourse to Iran's engagement with Europe. Without overlooking the marginalisation and abuse of queer Iranians, this scholarship undermines simplistic Western narratives to create a more nuanced analysis of their experiences and related discourses. Meanwhile, and in contrast, in the broader field of refugee law and scholarship, homophobia and transphobia are now recognised as grounds for claiming asylum in Western refugee-receiving states, however the criteria for recognition assumes the stable conceptualisations of sexuality and gender identity that have been disrupted in other fields. This article juxtaposes these two bodies of work. Using data from interviews with queer Iranians in exile, I ask whether the contradiction between law's reliance on categories and the mutability of sexuality and gender as lived is detrimental for queer Iranians seeking international protection, and for asylum claimants in general.