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A priority in Iraq should be web access. Sometimes even the Guardian can surprise you.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1273092,00.html

The post was about Iran, Jay, not Iraq (both have a fair amount of web access, evidently). But your link to the Guardian was v. interesting.

I read the NYT article and the one Jay pointed to.

When I read the NYT article I couldn’t help wondering how bad it must be to be a woman in that society that somebody would go through all those operations.

Then when I read the Guardian piece I couldn’t help wondering if the Guradian missed the point for at least some people. The point, or the great gain, for the “gentleman” in Iran may not be to physically become a functioning male but, rather, to culturally become a functioning male.

I fear failed to express myself well. There is absolutely zero chance of the NY Times story playing in Tehran, still seen as the prime example of the purity of the Islamofascist state. That’s why we need to encourage Iraqis to discover the reality of the fraud of the militant Islamic fantasy.

No U.S. propaganda could be more effective than that story to puncture the that staple of Islamofascism — the self-righteous condemnation of the decadence of the West as the work of Satan. I suspect few “insurgents” (read: Mullah-encouraged terrorists) would stap on a bomb in defense of their transsexual brothers-now-sisters.

The fact that the New Yawk Times wrote the story makes the credibility unimpeachable, although knowing the Times, the intent of the the story is, no doubt, to promote a hardline resurgence in Iran. Apparently the present regime isn’t nearly vicious enough for them.

How is it that I can’t find it in myself to get all hot and bothered about the agonies of transexuals, here, or in Iran, or anywhere?

Just not sufficiently sensitive I guess, THANK GOD!

SoÖ somebody’s gonna get a surprise with their 72 virgins?

Jay Rice ó Can you count the euphemisms in that Guardian article, boys and girls?

I’ve only known one genuine transsexual. She made the classic argument about “being a woman trapped in a man’s body.” Had the full surgeries. Now she’s a lesbian…

But getting back on-topic, is the Times seriously asking us to assume that everything is improving in Iran because some clerics are implementing an arbitrary ruling of Khomeini’s? Sure, gay and cross-dressers are still assaulted and killed, but that’s really only offensive in places like Wyoming and Texas, and we really shouldn’t worry about Iranian nukes and anti-semitism because, hey, they support the transgendered?

ricpic,

Thanks for the chuckle. I was passing by those pages and spotted it and my first inclination was “why on earth should I care” (different words crossed my mind, but that’s the DP-14 version) but it was so far “out there” that I had to stop and rubberneck. Very odd world we live in.

Jay Rice writes, “There is absolutely zero chance of the NY Times story playing in Tehran.” As someone who reads Iranian papers on a daily basis, I have to say that Jay Rice’s comment is simply odd. The NYT article on transexuals is actually quite mild compared to stories published in Iranian papers (e.g. the Shargh newspaper) on topics such as prostitution, prevalence drug abuse and addiction, corruption of government officials, etc.

Iran is not a free country by any stretch of imagination; however, the exaggerations of people like Jay Rice (who I have noticed have a taste for the slur “Islamofascist”) have no relation to reality either.