Maha Al-Mutairi was tired. Tired of being arrested and thrown in jail, tired of the sexual assault and rape she had been forced to endure while inside a men’s prison. Tired because her best friend, another transgender woman, had killed herself by jumping off an eighth-floor balcony.
For Al-Mutairi, a 39-year-old transgender woman, enough was enough. It was time to tell the world her story. It was time to share her pain.
On 3 June 2020, as she headed to a police station to turn herself in for allegedly contravening Kuwait’s ban on “imitating the other gender”, Al-Mutairi broadcast her story on Snapchat.
