A Bangladeshi satellite television station has hired the country’s first transgender news anchor, saying it hopes the appointment will help change society.
Tashnuva Anan Shishir, who previously worked as a rights activist and actress, debuted on Dhaka-based Boishakhi TV on Monday, International Women’s Day.
She read a three-minute news bulletin, and after finishing cried as her colleagues applauded and cheered. “I was very nervous, I was feeling so much emotional, but I had in my mind that I must overcome this ordeal, this final test,” Shishir, 29, said in an interview Tuesday.
In her early teens, she began to live publicly as a female. She said family members, relatives and neighbors started teasing her and she was bullied and sexually.