, 'He's so girly, he's so feminine,'" Marie says.
"After the operation whenever I wanted to feel like a woman, or behave like a woman, everybody would say, 'She looks like a man, she's manly.' It did not help reduce my problems. On the contrary, it increased my problems…
"I think now if I were in a free society, I wonder if I would have been like I am now and if I would have changed my gender," she says. "I am not sure."
Marie starts to cry.
"I am tired," she says. "I am tired of my whole life. Tired of everything."
The homophobic roots of "gender-affirming care" could hardly be spelled out with greater clarity.
Would the BBC publish something like this nowadays? Of course not. The only possible way they could present it, given their trans-friendly approach, would be on the lines of, "Iran, our latest report reveals, was years ahead of us in dealing with trans youth, and pioneered gender-affirming care" – but even they should be able to see that presenting Iran as a beacon of LGBTQ enlightenment would be a step too far.
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