Sep 18, 2019
How My Community Showed Me I Could Be Both Muslim and Queer
“It was this Islam, the Islam of authenticity, community, justice, and love, that showed me how to be a truer version of myself.”
“It was this Islam, the Islam of authenticity, community, justice, and love, that showed me how to be a truer version of myself.”
As euphoric as my queer epiphany felt, I’d had it as my mother lay sick. It felt like I was reentering the world as my mother was leaving it.
For queer writers, the discovery of this literary lineage is essential to our very existence, to our very expression of self. We can’t find the words without them.
Well, what does it mean to be a boy or a girl? The answer so often is, simply: I don’t know. And I’m not sure that it actually matters, anyway.
What was I getting out shame, anyway? So I walked away from it all: going to church, reading scripture, prayer, even the Christian music I loved so much.
There was nowhere to go back to. Oklahoma was out of the question, always out of the question. But then, where was home?
There’s nothing more queer than cobbling together something fabulous out of very little.
My trans friends rarely come home, and when they do, it is for brief bursts of time. They question why I’ve chosen to keep living here.
I want to believe that I inherited too ways of feeling joy, ways of finding pleasure, ways of being with other queers in raucous and wild ways.
I was leaving femininity behind, grateful to have an example like my grandpa to grow toward.
Who are we if not kin through our deviations? Street hustler and femme queen, macho and maricóncito, variations on a chulo aesthetic.
I know that I’m living in a ticking clock, and all of this—dinners with my parents, peaceful conversations—will likely be gone one day.
For me, homosexuality is an invitation to opt out, to abstain from the trappings of heteronormativity, a gift of eternal boyhood.
I don’t want to take time away from your book, she said, but the book could wait. My writing was always there. She might not be.
Trans people have rights because we’re human—not because we’re special. So why does having those rights recognized require a flood of trans tears?
I have dated long enough to see a change, and I am still young enough to work at the craft.
I wanted to tell him that, if I could, I would give him my body to use however he saw fit. It meant nothing to me. If only bodies were like gloves you could peel off and lose.
Today tongzhi is seldom used in a political context, if ever: The Beijing LGBT center is called Beijing Comrade Center; 同志村, or comrade village, translates to gayborhood. So yeah, everyone knows what comrade really means—everyone except the president of China, apparently.
