News.BBC.co.uk – By Vanessa Barford – BBC News
Homosexual relationships are banned in Iran, but the country allows sex change operations and hundreds of men have elected for surgery to change their lives.
“He wants to kill me. He keeps telling me to come home so he can kill me. He had put rat poison in my tea.”
For Ali Askar, at age 24, the decision to become a woman came at a heavy cost. His father threatened to kill him if he went ahead with surgery.
Now renamed Negar, she says she would not have had the operation if she did not live in Iran.
“If I didn’t have to operate, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t touch God’s work.”