Sex change woman faces cash crisis
By geoffrey bew
A BAHRAINI woman who is undergoing a sex change and has gone to the courts in a bid to legally recognise her status as a man is facing yet more hurdles.
The case of the 33-year-old, whose identity is being protected, will next be heard at the Third High Civil Court on Wednesday.
However, her lawyer Fowzia Mohammed Janahi told the GDN that she is now facing a potential cash crisis, as well as ridicule from fellow Bahrainis.
She said her client was due to undergo her second major operation at the Yanhee General Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, in May following a mastectomy in September.
But she says the telephone operator, whose employers have allowed her to take a year off work, is struggling to pay for the treatment because she is not earning and comes from a poor family.
"She has got a problem with the money for the next operation," said Ms Janahi.
"She has to make the next operation, if she does not have it then everything will stop.
"It will cost her at least another BD5,000.
"Also, in May they will tell her if she needs any more operations because sometimes you need three or four, but we still don't know."
Meanwhile, Ms Janahi said her client's changing appearance has led to her suffering ridicule and distrust from people in Bahrain, who believe her operation is anti-Islamic.
"When she goes to hospital, bank or any place where they need to look at her CPR she has a problem," she said.
"Everybody is laughing and asking her why has she got a female name when she looks like a man."
But the lawyer argued that the Quran permits the operation in the right circumstances and says she has a report from the Sharia Court agreeing with the sex change operation.
However, no progress was made at the last hearing, in December, as the case was transferred to another judge.
In Wednesday's hearing, Ms Janahi will present her client's latest medical reports to support the sex change decision.
She has already submitted 11 reports from the Al Khalidi Medical Centre, Jordan, and one each from the Ibn Al Nafees Hospital and Shifa Al Jazeera Medical Centre, Bahrain, in two hearings last year.
If the woman wins her case she will be able to get a CPR card, driving licence and passport with a new male identity.
Ms Janahi says her client was born without all the female organs and in her mind believes she is a man.
She is suffering from a condition known as gender dysphoria, where people identify with the opposite sex than the one they were born with.
The woman was born without a uterus and has already filed a case to be recognised as a man by the Health Ministry and General Directorate of Nationality, Passports and Residence.
She was previously engaged to be married, but the relationship ended when her partner noticed she was more like a man.
Ms Janahi, who is a member of the Bahrain Bar Society, won a landmark case of a similar nature in 2005 when the Bahraini courts agreed to another Bahraini woman, aged 30, to be legally recognised as a man.
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