But you could say I had a talk by a queer woman about queer issues. Queerness is what connects everybody in the community.Not everyone identifies that way, because rule number one, everyone's in charge of their own labels.
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories Or queerness in life.
of their gender presentation. And then feeling like queerness and butch dyke-dom and that radical sort of self presentation was really powerful for me as someone who grew up in various DIY punk rock spaces.
And I just enjoy the vibrancy, the energy, and just the color and, again, the theatrics of it. Just literally the queerness of Bollywood was so enigmatic and so attractive to me that I pursued that, and I've been a dance educator-- a commercial Bollywood educator for 12 years now.
Again, in no way is that the one definitive way. And so queerness then is something that they learn from screen, the depiction of queer actors and narratives and all of that.
But when you look at queer kids, say under the age of 20 what I love about them as a generation is that their queerness is unspecific. There are so many kids out there who call themselves queer and will not declare any other thing about their identity.
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories And whether that's queerness in art or queerness in dance or queerness in visual, in writing, it's an apprenticeship.
demanded to be recognized that you can be queer and asexual, that you can be-- that disability was identity marking, that marker that superseded your queerness or your nonbinariness, but that those two things intersected in really important ways.
And for me, it goes back to the cultural part. And I think the same for the queerness , is that there's something about being denied something in both categories, or being a target, being rejected.
You were-- We used to have something at my middle school, Grady Middle School in Houston, Texas, and it was, like, the Gators Elite. How much do you know about queerness ?
People were furious. They're like, how dare you? How dare you question Dumbledore's queerness ? How dare we question Rowling, I think.
Mind you, this was for a senior position in Black Studies, though, not Native Studies. And then there are also issues there around queerness . So here comes this Black, mixed, and whatever person who's also queer.
I'm like, that's what people look like. We have to push back against what the definitions of queerness and mixed race or even just monoracial categories are. And that's what mixed-race people and queer people, I think, also offer right to conversations about diversity and equity.
And so I'm going to jump to our next question, and I'm just going to ask you to-- let's think about if we had a magical power to transport back into time. And I wonder about his struggles with race and queerness , and what that meant for him.
And so it's only recently where I'm able to unpack that and see that actually the Indian classical dance form in itself is so expansive and there's so much room to explore queerness , to depict it in ways that is suited to you. And so that's something that's been a very tough thing to navigate and unlearn and then be comfortable with.
Not that young-- Very young. And we were talking about this moment of kids just accepting queerness and non-binding expression and "Drag Race" and all this.
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories I mean, I think queerness is a brilliantly wonderfully affirmative identity.
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories I mean, queerness is a style.
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories And that doesn't mean that you adjust your queerness .
to make people more Black, so because we disenfranchise that and make it such this hated anti-Black. So it's this intersection of anti-Indian and anti-Blackness coming together with anti-queerness , well, damn, you're talking about some serious hate, hateration, right? So let me give you all the real tea.
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories I mean, this tradition of queerness in art, which is not on the margins, which is not like people talk sometimes about a gay ghetto.
But broadly speaking, I think what was happening was people would be like, OK, great. But then I am also of the feeling of that kind of idea of queerness as a horizon, and that you should never land anywhere.
And that really made me realize how powerful dance is as a means of communication, as a tool to communicate with people who may not be on the same page as you, who may not understand my queerness , who may not understand how I identify. But look past it, transcend beyond it, and focus on just the joy, the pure essence of dance.
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories I mean, gayness, queerness is not something one is, it's something one does.
But broadly speaking, I think what was happening was people would be like, OK, great. is they kind of escape their racial identity when they are coming out because they feel like queerness is a Western thing.
So does anybody have anything they want to ask me? Or any statements about, I don't know masculinity or maleness or queerness . Yes. You talked a little bit about how you were treated very differently before your transition.
Yeah, there was another one in I think that essay that caught my eye. You talked, I think, at one point about your father accepting your queerness but had other issues. In fact, if we were to look at page 10, it says, "It was the fact that I was born in Los Angeles,
Actually it is a way in which we protect our white relatives or European-descent relatives as well. Because it's about thinking about the ways in which law as a factor, just like our queerness and our mixed-race identity as factors, have influenced how we get treated in this world.
But, again, it really depended on who was guiding me, who the teacher was, who my guru was at that point in time. Because, obviously, they will teach me based on their conditionings, on their values, on their approach to gender queerness and all that. And so it's only recently where I'm able to unpack that and see that actually the Indian classical dance form in itself is so expansive
And I think that's why the story is so brilliant, in that it sort of sets the stage for all the stories So that like, with one sibling, you might be really comfortable with queerness , with another sibling, you might not.
so she's really, really camp. So the Middle East, the first intersection I look at, is how the Middle East, for all its homophobic problems, has this real pocket of queerness that I'm really missing in the UK.
that Islam was presented to you as a young person. And then how you were able to reconnect with Islam later on as you discovered other readings of the Quran, discovering the queerness of the Quran. What reactions do you get from various Muslim communities to the book?
And they feed off of that. So as it is Pride Month, in seeing the show, I was like, I feel like queerness plays a significant role in the show, whether it is the androgynous costuming or the breaking out of traditional gender roles when it comes to some of the dancing.
Because then, I think for the opera world in general, it's like, god, think of all the incredible stuff that you're about to discover of the great works Anyway, so I think that for me, the fact that the queerness of it is very important.