By Payal Dhar — 2021
LGBTQ+ Indians who battle family expectations and social pressures to live their authentic lives share their stories.
Read on www.aljazeera.com
CLEAR ALL
For LGBTQ youth in particular, the Internet can be a refuge—a safe place to feel less alone. For queer youth to feel normal, they need to see, read and hear the voices of others who look like them and use the same identifying labels.
Queer culture and the arts would be much poorer without the presence and contribution of butch and stud lesbians, whose identity is both its own aesthetic and a defiant repudiation of the male gaze.
“Representation and visibility is given to us by larger power structures, but what do we give ourselves? I’m more interested in that. What questions are we asking ourselves to grow and heal? To challenge the ways this world constantly teaches us to hate ourselves?”
What began as a proud assertion of identity has itself become a trope; the stereotype of a gay man now is one who goes to the gym and takes care of himself.
Studies vary widely on the percentage of people with autism who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual. One analysis suggested the rate is 15 to 35 percent among autistic people who do not have intellectual disability.
LGBTQ legal strategy has long focused on equal protection. But if identity itself can be political speech, the First Amendment could be our future.
The term “Two Spirit” in Native American culture often describes a person possessing both male and female spirits. And they’ve been around well before the Santa Maria or the Mayflower dropped anchor.
These black women and gender-nonconforming individuals have created a space for other young girls and nonbinary persons to feel seen and heard.
Although society has made many strides in queer acceptance and visibility, coming out at work is still a monumental—and sometimes risky—task for many LGBTQ workers.
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We talked to the writer about his debut memoir How We Fight for Our Lives and his move from poetry to prose.