Transgender woman in Lebanon allowed to change gender in rare case
A Lebanese judge told AFP on Wednesday that he has allowed a transgender woman to update her personal status record and change her gender, a rare move in a country where LGBTQ issues remain highly taboo.
Lebanon has never been a safe haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer people, but the community has long been visible and outspoken, defying crackdowns on its bars, nightclubs and community centers.
Lebanese law stipulates that official documents may be changed by a judge to represent a person's reality.
Judge Wassim Zahreddine said he based his ruling on a decision by Beirut's court of appeals in 2016 that said a transgender man had the right to change his name and gender on his legal records.
"I acted out of conviction, I applied the law, and out of my own humanity," judge Wassim Zahreddine told AFP by phone.
His ruling to approve the change may still be appealed.
It was filed in April, six years after the woman filed her request, but fear of a backlash led to it only being published in a Lebanese judicial magazine in July with her approval.
The decision was criticized by some clerics, said Zahreddine, but he added that he believed the case of legal gender change remained "within restrictions" as "it is not easy to undergo gender-change surgery, financially or medically".
The transgender woman got a medical report in Thailand in 2019 proving that she had gender dysphoria, and underwent gender-affirming surgery, according to Zahreddine.
She filed for a change in her personal status record in Lebanon in 2020, vying to have her legal status correspond with her physical and behavioral status.
The judge said that when the woman went through a security checkpoint, "they would ask her why her ID said she was a man when she was a woman," adding that her having to repeatedly explain her case constituted a legal breach of her right to privacy.
While Lebanon is considered one of the Middle East's more liberal countries where lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people enjoy a more lax atmosphere, a vaguely worded law that punishes "unnatural" sexual relations has been used to clamp down on the community.
Source: Agence France Presse
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