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How a viral video helped Kuwait’s trans women get their fight back
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“And it’s not just their fellow inmates,” said Salmeen, adding that Al-Mutairi claims to have been raped by a high-ranking prison official.

Article 198 of Kuwait’s penal code, the law prohibiting “imitating the appearance of the opposite sex” is vaguely worded. The law, which was passed in 2007, leaves it up to the police to decide if an offence has been committed.

“Leaving a law up to the interpretation of police in Kuwait is very risky. Many officers have huge insecurities and often abuse their power,” said Salmeen. “If a policeman is from a very religious background, he will think [that] me having short hair is ‘imitating the other gender’. Whereas a liberal, open-minded policeman would think even a man wearing a dress is just a fashion trend.”

For members of Kuwait’s trans community, the law is just one barrier towards acceptance. According to Salmeen, many come from underprivileged backgrounds. Trans women are often bullied at school by both students and staff; some decide to leave home after graduating from high school, rather than continue their education. She said that some trans women undergo risky backstreet breast augmentation, often putting them at risk of contracting infections. In some cases, such surgery is funded by sex work, which leaves them hugely vulnerable to violence and blackmail.

“No one would hire them to do a proper job,” Salmeen said. “Not the government, not private [companies]. Some are lucky enough to [work for] cool, open-minded Kuwaiti employers, but not everyone is this lucky. Many girls lose their jobs when they go to prison.”

According to Salmeen, police officers are – ironically – a common source of business for trans women sex workers. At other times, she said, bored officers will phone a trans woman and insist they come to the station for a ‘talk’. Salmeen said that trans women targeted in this way are abused verbally at first, then physically if they talk back.

The man accused of rape by Al-Mutairi is, Salmeen claimed, notorious for doing this. His fellow police officials know about his behaviour but think it's justified, she said – the attitude among many officers is that trans women are ‘asking for it’.

Change the law

Al-Mutairi’s video has brought fresh attention to the plight of trans women in Kuwait. But her own situation remains unresolved. When she arrived at the police station, she was charged – not with imitating the other gender, but with misuse of her mobile phone, because she mentioned the police and the interior ministry in her Snapchat video.

After she went into the station, Al-Mutairi was missing for three days. “I kept visiting them, even giving them her actual legal name – her male ‘dead name’ – and they kept saying ‘we don’t have anyone under this name,’” Salmeen said.

When Al-Mutairi was eventually released, Salmeen was there to collect her. The lawyer believes that her client was treated better than on previous occasions because of the attention she attracted.

Salmeen said that the Ministry of Interior “went to jail to take other trans women’s statements”. “I do not know where the case will go, or if it will go somewhere, but at least they took a step. They heard their voice on this huge, huge accusation and they are taking it seriously.”

Salmeen said that trans people need to fight for a change in the law before they can achieve wider acceptance in Kuwait. One route would be for campaigners to highlight the vagueness of the penal code, and argue that the ban on “imitating the other gender” should be struck out by the country’s constitutional court on the grounds of freedom of expression.

If that fails, another option would be to highlight the position of influential Islamic religious authorities in Saudia Arabia and Egypt, which regard transgender identity as a medical condition. This could at least lead to prison sentences being replaced by medical or psychiatric care.

“A lot of girls go through the whole medical transitioning process, but the court does not allow them to change their [identity] documents,” Salmeen said.

Salmeen said she never expected Al-Mutairi’s case to have had such an impact in Kuwait or abroad. She knows of religious conservatives who have expressed sympathy; she was surprised to find that even her own aunt was touched by the story.

“[These are] baby steps, but we are going to get there,” Salmeen said. “[Trans people] are going to be treated as equal human beings. I hope I am going to be alive to witness that.”

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/how-a-viral-video-helped-kuwaits-trans-women-get-their-fight-back/