Heard an infuriating story on the BBC last week at some point while driving around very early in the morning. Recently, the Pakistani Supreme Court authorized a third gender category on national identity cards:

The reporter, as you can probably hear, is incredulous (and the news host that introduced the story even more so), in a similar way that humans become incredulous when they learn that chimpanzees can draw, engage in limited sign language, etc. The segment, in essence, is treated more as a novelty “human interest” story instead of actual “news” (whatever “news” might mean):

There are number of things that bother me about this, including the patronizing stance taken towards Pakistan and Pakistanis, but what is really bizarre to me is the use of the word “transgenders” as a noun. I have never heard this word before – the T in LGBT to me means “transgendered” or maybe “transgendered community” – and while I like the idea of using “transgenders” as a verb, using it as a noun performs the same easy neutralizing/neutering that the Pakistani government has just enacted.