‘Can You Really Be a Queer Muslim?’: Intersectionality and the Complexity of Identity
Love After Care: My Experience of Abuse and Homelessness, and Why We Need to Talk About Trauma
Dozens of adults who were paid to care for me instead abused me too, and I understood this as confirmation I was unlovable. It further normalised abuse. I thought that’s simply how life was for everyone and therefore that’s just how life would always be…
‘Change the World Instead of Changing Who We’re With’: Learning to Embrace Life and Love as a Woman Loving a Woman
There were many challenges to loving a woman as a woman. I couldn’t hold her hand everywhere. I couldn't introduce her to my family: I could lose certain people, or I could be rejected from some of the many communities I was in. With a man, my life would be like everyone else’s. Everything I had a chance to observe growing up – everything I am familiar with and not scared of – would be there…
Community, Cooperation and Connectivity: The Symbolic Importance of Queer Safe Spaces and Why We Must Protect Them
When I started taking notice of how viscerally different I feel depending on the room I am in, I realised how complex the relationship between queerness and space truly is. As queer people, we cannot yet guarantee our safety within spaces. This is particularly insidious for marginalised…
‘I Didn’t Know I was Black Until Fourth Grade’: Growing Into My Blackness After a Blurred Sense of Racial Identity
I learned that I was black during recess. Kids told me that ‘I was the whitest black person they’d ever met’ and that ‘I talked so white’. This was extremely confusing at first. Where I grew up was the hub of any and every race that you could think of, and everybody was friends. So, when I became labelled as a white-black person, it didn’t make sense to me…
(Un)Settling In: Building a Home Away from Home as a Foreign Student
Graduating as a foreign student and settling in as a new immigrant is a unique transition experience. One has the opportunity to carefully construct a future yet embrace the challenges that come with being away from home. I can describe this journey as being aboard two boats with one leg in each. The expectations, values and dreams from home sail parallel to the hope, joy and excitement for a new land…