Flipping the narrative

I’m Asad, I’m Muslim, 6 foot 2, I speak English, Urdu and Punjabi. I’m pretty hard to miss! 

My theme is: flipping the narrative. I was raised in a bubble in east London, wearing clothes for Asian women, and being told “boys don’t dance like that”. But now I’m flipping that narrative and getting my nails done. 

In this episode, I listen to a story from Amar about how they no longer feel the need to choose between being queer and being Sikh. Also, Xing teaches me dirty words in Chinese, and Sam and Piero have a chat about how language influences how we have (gay) sex. We love that for them.

This episode contains stories that include homophobia, sometimes within a family setting, and homophobic and transphobic language. 

I’d also like to highlight Trans Actual UK, who work to address and highlight issues affecting trans people whilst raising trans voices. You can find more information on the work Trans Actual uk do on transactual.org.uk. Trans lives matter. Black trans lives matter.

You can find a transcript of this episode in pdf and text here.

Queer Roots and Routes is an Aunt Nell Production for The Love Tank, a not-for-profit community interest company that promotes health and wellbeing of under-served communities through education, capacity building and research.

Produced, edited and engineered by: 

Tash Walker 

and

Adam Zmith

Assistant producers: 

Saaqib Afzal 

José Carlos Mejia

Amardeep Singh Dhillon

Chase Edwards

Stanley Iyanu 

and

Rad Konieczny 

Creative design and artwork by:

Richard Kahwagi 

Music by Edoy

Recorded at Pirate Studios in Dalston and Hackney Wick, east London

Executive producers:

Marc Thompson 

and 

Dale Taylor-Gentles

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.