‘Unprecedented love and support’: Pakistan’s first transgender news anchor appears on air
Pakistan became one of the first countries in the world to legally recognise a third sex but they live daily as pariahs, often reduced to begging and prostitution
A Pakistani TV channel has put the country’s first transgender news anchor on the air, a watershed cultural moment for the marginalised community in the deeply conservative country.
Marvia Malik, a former model who appeared on the Lahore-based private broadcaster Kohenoor for the first time last Friday, said she has received “unprecedented love and support” since landing the job.
“My family never accepted or owned me,” she said, adding that the rift drove her to seek a better future in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital.
“Here I received unprecedented love and support from everyone that I never got from my own family,” she said, adding that the positive response only escalated once she went on air for the daily broadcast.
Transgenders – also known in Pakistan as khawajasiras, an umbrella term denoting a third sex that includes transsexuals, transvestites and eunuchs – have long fought for their rights in the patriarchal Islamic country.
I received unprecedented love and support from everyone that I never got from my own family
In 2009 Pakistan became one of the first countries in the world to legally recognise a third sex. Last year the first transgender passport was issued, while several have also run in elections.