Transjordan: Traversing Gender in the Middle East

Danna Sweidan
8 min readDec 3, 2018

“They just mess with you, it’s just to be cruel. Sometimes if I renew my ID they’ll just keep it to delay me, I’ve sat for three or four hours before. Some of it is from not understanding, but it’s not right.”

Dany Sweidan is telling me about one of his experiences trying to deal with his identity and its documents in Amman, Jordan, where he lives. Dany was born Diana, 38 years ago.

“I’ve felt since I was 14 years old that my mind doesn’t accept that my body was female. I refused to wear anything that looked feminine, and even my gestures and behavior I tried to avoid anything feminine because my mind was convinced I am male.”

For full disclosure, Dany is my cousin, and his quotes are translated from conversations we originally had in arabic, about his experiences living in a fairly conservative society in the Middle East as he explores his transgender identity.

Of course, Dany isn’t alone as a transgender man in Jordan, but options and support for the LGBT community are already scarce, and living openly through your transition is almost statistically nonexistent.

While a legal precedent to allow for gender changes on identification has been set, the drawn out case of Chantal also relied on the proof of physical misgendering at birth. As this wouldn’t be the case for every person transitioning, the government’s commitment to that type of medical record would not provide protection or precedent for everyone.

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Danna Sweidan
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Freelance writer, travel consultant, Jordanian immigrant with many ideas about many things. Let's talk.