Pakistan transgenders pin hopes on new rights
There has been little opposition to the decision by Pakistan’s Supreme Court to allow a third gender category, apart from male or female, on the national identity card. The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool meets transgendered people in Karachi buoyed by the ruling, but sceptical about whether it can really end the isolation they face.
In the back streets, in a squalid neighbourhood of Pakistan’s largest city, is a tiny, shabby apartment.
It is where we find “Shehzadi” getting ready for work.
Wearing a bright yellow dress, and scrabbling around her make-up box, she is doing her best to cover up her decidedly masculine features.
Shehzadi is transgendered: physically male, but psychologically female.