The Transgender Issue in Kuwait

I do feel terribly sorry for these poor transgender people. Beaten, raped, imprisoned? This is making news worldwide now [link].

I found these older details on Wikipedia;

In 1997, Dr Alia Shoaib was dismissed from her professorial chair in Kuwait University for suggesting that homosexuality existed in the emirate. Her comments were printed in the al-Hadaf magazine, which faced charges for obscenity. The Kuwati Information Minister said the professor's comments had "defamed the University" and that, "We know that there are gays in Kuwait, they are hidden and should remain so". That same year the famous Kuwaiti novlist, Leila Othman, faced obscenity charges for her novel titled The Departure which included stories featuring same-sex relationships.

In 2000, the Kuwaiti appeals court overturned the lowers court's criminal convictions against these two women, but upheld the heavy fines.

Newspapers are not expressly prohibited from dealing with LGBT topics, provided that traditional Islamic morality is respected, Kuwaiti Internet blogs, chat rooms and message boards have also been known to discuss LGBT topics.

Gender identity/expression

 

As of 2007, cross-dressing in public is expressly illegal.

In 2003, Kuwait's Civil Bench of the Court of First Instance dismissed the case of a 25-year-old woman who wanted to change her name on official documents after undergoing a sex-change operation in  Thailand. Although a year later, subsequent reports stated that it is possible for some transgendered persons in Kuwait to have their documents changed to reflect their surgery, provided that sufficient evidence exists that the person suffers from a rare medical condition.

LGBT rights movement in Kuwait

In 2007, the Al Arabiya news service reported that a group of Kuwaitis had applied for a permit to form a new association that would stand up for the rights of LGBT Kuwaitis. All such interest groups or clubs have to be approved by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which has not formally replied.

I have seen quite a few transgenders here in Kuwait especially in the wig shops of Salmiya. They are in every society. When looking for details on this subject I was really, really surprised and quite horrified at the content of a Facebook page set up for gays in Kuwait, the one I saw was so sexually explicit that I've reported it to Facebook. Sites like that do absolutely nothing for the LGBT case!