A leading organization advocating for the rights of LGBTQ people in Bangladesh has come to the defense of a university that fired a professor who spread misinformation about third-gender people and encouraged his followers to deface a textbook for school children that included information about transgender people. Asif Mahtab Utsho, who was an adjunct profession at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, spoke out against a textbook used for 12 and 13-year-olds at a seminar on the new education curriculum organized by the National Teacher Forum, a pro-Islamic teachers’ forum in Dhaka on Jan 19. The inclusion of the lesson ‘the Story of Sharifa,’ in a chapter on similarities and differences between people stirred debate among parents after the distribution of the books earlier this year. Mahtab urged his followers to buy the textbook, tear up two pages about trans issues, and then return it for resale in protest.