Maryam Khatoonpour Molkara ( Persian : مریم خاتون ملکآرا ; 1950 – 25 March 2012) was a campaigner for the rights of transsexuals in Iran . Designated male at birth, she was later instrumental in obtaining a letter which acted as a Fatwā enabling sex change operations to exist as part of a legal framework. As early as 1975, Molkara wrote letters to Ayatollah Khomeini , then in exile in Iraq , asking for religious advice about being assigned a wrong gender at birth and having to break out of it. In 1978, she traveled to Paris , where he was then based, to try to make him aware about transgender rights. After the Islamic Revolution, she was fired from her job at television, injected with male hormones against her will and detained in a psychiatric institution. Because of good contacts with religious leaders, among them Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , she was released. Molkara continued to campaign for being abl...