Unlikely Sex Change Capitals of the World: Trinidad, United States, and Tehran, Iran, as Twin Yardsticks of Homonormative Liberalism

I n the turbulent f i r s t decade of the twentieth-first century, Trinidad, Colorado, a predominantly Catholic town with a population hovering around 9,000, came to share its long-standing title as “the SexChange Capital of the World” with Tehran, Iran, a city of almost eight million and the literal capital of an Islamic theocracy. Or so it would seem, if one reads the articles published in international mainstream media outlets (such as the Los Angeles Times and the London-based Guardian) that write in astonished terms of the support for and purported popularity of sex reassignment surgeries (SRS) in Iran. Despite Newsweek’s hint at a global