Episode 11 - Queerness, Gender, and Intersecting Identities with Prabh Kehal and Smalls The One with Shabd

Today, I speak with two fantastic guests about queerness, gender, and intersectionality as Sikhs. Queerness and gender are taboo topics among Sikhs and queer Sikhs often experience within their own communities. We discuss the nature of this repression and how we can work together to combat those stigma.
Prabhdeep Kehal is a doctoral student in sociology at Brown University. Their research interests span racial theory, racism, higher education, and organizational theory; their research falls into the tradition of DuBoisian sociology, focusing on how the color line, history, community, and context are critical dimensions for conceptualizing a racialized modernity. Their work is concerned with how prestige is constructed within higher education, and how constructs of prestige and merit serve as mechanisms for maintaining racialized inequality in higher education. Through studying higher education, Prabhdeep is interested in understanding how higher education can serve as a mechanism for structuring inequality. An additional area of personal inquiry pertains to anti-Blackness, anti-queerness, and gender conformity within the Sikh and Sikh-American diaspora and how it manifests itself in political and educational advocacy. @prabhbob on Twitter.
Smalls is an artist, advocate, and abolitionist working to improve the visibility and representation of coloreds and queers while fighting for the improved quality of life and liberation of all oppressed peoples, with a spotlight on Black mental health, OCD, chronic illness, and invisible disability. @hellaSwankky on Twitter.