‘Can You Really Be a Queer Muslim?’: Intersectionality and the Complexity of Identity
From Appropriation to Appreciation to Acknowledgement: How to Respectfully Engage with Other Cultures
Elements of my South Asian culture that I was teased for growing up have become a part of the mainstream. I see fashion, yoga practice, chai spices, meditation, mindfulness and hair oils all bandied around as new ideas and new trends as if they haven’t been passed down through the generations of my family. Often, those adopting these practices have no understanding or acknowledgement of the rich history from which such practices have come…
‘Sent With a Loving Kiss’: Letter Writing and Platonic Love Across Three Generations of Women
It’s nice to indulge in a tradition of celebrating love in all its other forms – whether it’s a fierce, sisterly bond; a proud maternal love; a love that, whilst strained, still has good bones under it; or affection that can only privately bloom once a year before necessary boundaries rise up again. Platonic love in its infinite variety is more complicated and real than any Hollywood ending…
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…
‘I Thought I was the Only One Whose “Dad” was a Woman’: Overcoming Internalised Homophobia After Growing Up in a Same-Sex Household
As time went on the reactions to my ‘fact’ changed, and so did my wording of it. While one probably catalysed the other, I am not entirely sure in which direction this was. In secondary school, the amazement I was used to receiving turned to more questions and often even accusations. I would get, ‘So… you are too?’. I wasn’t certain how to answer this – they meant the gay thing…
‘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…