so we can hello everyone and welcome to living in this queer body a podcast about barriers to embodiment and how our Collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. I'm a sure pandarus and thank you so much for listening. I have one announcement on January 14th from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern Standard time. I will be hosting a virtual workshop with the Amazing and former podcast guest Ilya Parker of decolonizing fitness and I'm thrilled to be collaborating with them. I think there's going to be a lot for everyone to learn and experience in this two-hour Workshop. The cost is $75 per person. The link is in my Instagram bio or you can go to living in this queer body.com to after the workshop is called finding pleasure and purposeful movement. So this Workshop is an opportunity to explore all the nuances of the provocation. What is healthy movement and Ilya Parker of decolonizing fitness and I are going to lead you through both a discussion about this and also you will have an opportunity to kind of begin to develop. It's about purposeful movement practice in your own life and potentially in the lives of the people with whom you work. We will talk about a lot of questions. Like how do we relate to movements in a heteronormative and the Virgin body of verse Society? What is purposeful movement? What is orthorexia? How do we know what our motivations for movement are Ilya is Is particularly well suited to help me with this really complex question. Ilya is a black non-binary Trans masculine person in a larger body with chronic injuries who works as a physical therapist assistant and personal trainer. Ilya will speak to the ways they felt pressure to medically transition and modify their body through exercise to align with a cyst masculine. Nation leading to many injuries Ilya will also discuss the ways they incorporate pleasure and purposeful movement in ways that feels supportive and I will spend some time talking about disordered eating and specifically orthorexia my own personal journey in attempting to balance quote Health unquote and rest and movements. I also will bring in discourses around interrogating the impact of Health ISM nutritionism and the wellness diet on the overwhelming preponderance of orthorexia in the queer trans and non-binary Community. I really encourage you to think about signing up for this and Ilya is this is basically just a platform for Ilya to be amazing. I really admire them so much and I look forward. To potentially seeing you on January 14th for this Workshop. So now we'll move on to our episode and this is another person that I really admire greatly and in this episode we talk about a lot of things queerness body shame disordered eating islamophobia pregnancy questions around activism and self-care and a lot more. Rage does a million rad things and it was truly an honor to interview them in the midst of their last moments of pregnancy. I'm inspired by them and all they do truly and I hope you enjoy this episode rage is a queer Muslim migrant from Karachi Pakistan there a public defender in organizer around the criminal punishment system and prosecutor accountability with court watch NYC and 5boro Defenders since moving. To Brooklyn almost a decade ago rages work and activism has focused on queer and trans Liberation immigrant Justice and prison abolition there also a visual artist media maker hairstylist and co-host and co-producer of the amazing podcast bad Brown aunties. I hope you enjoy this episode. Rage, thank you so much for joining me today. It's really an honor to have you. Thank you so much for having me. This is really lovely. I love your podcast. Thank you. I love your podcast. We'll talk about that later. But so I like to start. It each episode with you know, some kind of question that you can kind of take any way you'd like to but if you can think about, you know, your earliest memories of having a body or learning about having a body messages you received or stories that come to mind. I love this question. I love it because I think about a lot of my sort of like I was Morning at seven months. I was found my mom had an emergency C-section. My dad wasn't there. I feel like I nearly died my mother and yet you died so much of everything that followed the game sort of links to that and some weird way. So there's you know, I was born completely blue and I was really tiny and I remember all these jokes about how my aunt was there, too. like held me first and handed me to my mom and she laughed about how my mother like both look like looked like she'd seen an alien and it was like stuff that everyone just thought was really funny, but I don't think I realized that it shapes so much of how I thought about one my own pregnancy and then too how it sort of shape the narrative about me as a kid. So then I end up being I still am like a small person. My bones are really small. I'm like built sort of small and I was little I was like, you know, like two years sort of smaller than the average kid. Yeah. It's it's just sort of wild to think that but that has shaped so much of my experience because I think one of the things that's been true for me for a lot of my life is that I haven't thought about my body a lot. on some like on a present level but it's obviously been present right and that's why I love your podcast so much because I think it's a really really helpful to think about obviously this like filter that we navigate the world through but then we aren't necessarily always engaging with consciously or disassociated from or not. That's really helpful information. And so I don't think I think bar. Like some of it is like growing up with this idea that if something is difficult you trudge through it. And so like if you feel small then that's there's a there's a there's a limitation in you if you aren't able to sort of move past that or if you if someone says that like you're really tiny and weak but instead of questioning the fact that that information is actually really complicated and problematic and maybe we need to like receive it differently, or maybe it doesn't need. To be shared, but that instead it must be something in you if you can't receive that and so I think there's a way in which like I remember feeling really ashamed about it or feeling really shy about it. And then like I used to do Indian classical dance as a kid and being small had some sort of currency in that space later on and I remember like my closest friend I asked. come to dance class with me and we just had really different bodies and we were placed in different rows and really far apart, even though it was just a class and it didn't really matter that we were standing in some sort of formation and it just became this thing that like I was always in the front of the class and she was always in the back and we got a lot of information about like how we related to each other really shifted because of it because my dance teacher who is incredible a lot of other ways perpetuated a lot of things that that I think dancing does and so like what Well, like I don't think I'd ever experienced. Someone being told that they should be more like me because I was sort of feel like runt Outcast open right my family and in life and so, you know, it felt funny that this all this person was suddenly being told to be like me and it shifted our Dynamic a lot in terms of power in a way that like neither of us could really help. You know, like I remember my mother having a lot of Shame I'm because everyone Rose comment on whether she was feeding me enough and and so she felt really like I remember her like stressing out about it and saying you have to eat more people keep asking me and that was her own sort of anxiety. Anyway, so I think that's really shaped a lot of things and then I think it's had a huge impact in terms of trauma in my life and in terms of this like belief not going to talk about that specifically, but I think it has impacted sort of disbelief that I thought the smallness makes me a Target or that or it makes it easy or something or something, you know, and I think that's been that's been really huge and then I look back at journals from College even and I think about how so much of them are about getting physically stronger and how I could probably pick up a journal from last month in episodes something that implies that you know, or says that yeah, so so strength like your your solution in some ways the way that you feel like you have Navigate both. External sort of expectations or projections on you and also some traumatic experiences. Like one thing has really been about that you it sounds like that you've maybe reclaimed for yourself. I don't know how what your relationship to it is. But is this idea of strength? Like what that means to you? I actually don't love it. It don't I don't I'm not sure that I mean, I don't mean that in a way to be judgmental. Of myself or anyone else who feels like physical like strength or you know, like learning how to box or like learning hot like all of those things are incredible survival strategies and responses to things and like I don't mean this with shame, but I do think that I don't love the fact that I think it goes back to that initial point that I said about when someone says something to you this like need to sort of like build yourself up as a response, like I don't think that that needs to be the response. I think a lot of things need to change I think People need to probably not say those things or that there's different ways to be strong and like it's like an able to sort of idea to think like, oh I should get physically stronger whatever that means, you know, and like if it's like and Satori it's like a compensatory kind of action that you yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I broke my back when I was about it's been a while now and 2006 and I was looking for an apartment of me in New York and it was it moved back here a few years later and for quite a while Winters were really difficult and a lot of things changed as a result of it like Steps walking up stairs changed. And anyway, I was looking for apartments and we as we were looking I felt really shy to say that like I couldn't do a walk up because it was such a thing in New York right like you what you've gone to a third-floor walk-up. I kind of sort of like bougie individual are you and I really pushed me to try to like I don't know just like not big places that needed to accommodate me and at some point we found a building with an elevator and I remember being like really excited about it, but not wanting to say and then one of my friends saying like, you know, it's fine to just tell the people that you're looking with it. This is a thing that like so I don't know there's a way in which like that Narrative of like, yeah, I need to strip stronger better faster is not It's not helpful for yourself, but it's also really not helpful for other people. Right? And one of the really incredible things about that apartment was that it was one of the only accessible like truly accessible apartments I've ever lived in it was like, um, I imagine what like it was bitter. It was like a built for people to age which I think is like a really not a thing especially in New York City. And so I just had friends on Wheelchairs and I had friends who you know like used. I had a friend who used a cane and was looking for a place to stay in New York and like it was the only place they could stay and I in that year realized of that first year of living there that actually like it was something really, I don't know like I was like a relief that the space product and yeah, anyway, this is pretty circuitous, but just that like It's not helpful for anyone. If you're constantly trying to adapt yourself around spaces versus like very clear information that spaces need to yeah, it's there's a lot of it sounds like in this, you know in your relationship to this. notion of your size and your smallness and your needs all of those things kind of involve a counter discourse around like over, you know, overcompensating or compensating or overcorrecting is the word. I'm looking for you at like overcorrecting for something that is and me. I think we all many many of us do that in all sorts of ways, but I think you know the it sounds like the intersection of the experiences that you've had in your life. There are many different areas. You have felt compelled at least to try to compensate or try to like over correct for something. That is may be perceived as I don't know difficult or I don't know but, you know a problem or strange or different and yet there's this like one, you know, this one example, you just gave of you know being in the dance class and having your smallness sort of valorized and I'm wondering if like you also have kind of at the same time gone through experiences where you've maybe tried tried to remain small in some ways or yeah, that's a big question your Authority. Yeah. I mean I had a really I think you know like eating stuff is really really difficult and I'm just going to talk about how it sort of a lifelong relationship. I have a habit of giving myself deadlines. I'm thinking like in like one year. I'm going to be over this thing. And one of the things I've learned about eating is that it's like a thing you do every day. Sometimes it Your relationship took changes. And so I cannot I think now I just need to think of it as something that's always going to be present for me that like food is complex for me. It was complex for me before I had a name for it, which is like I feel like so many things in my life. Like I was queer before I knew I was queer or I was like like, you know, like I was like making it like my first like queer love and identified a straight for a good couple of years after that and it's just like whatever like our brains are funny. but I think my relationship to food is one of those things and it wasn't till I got to college and I was in my second or second year and I had a conversation with someone that ended up being a conversation that happened all night, and it was the first time that I talked about my relationship to food, but it wasn't it have been like a year since I've had a terrible relationship to food and I feel like terrible is another one of those words, right? But like one that was harmful to me at some point. I hope my mother never hears. This was hospitalized for not eating but I I fooled a lot of people in that moment and it was like, oh it's like really hot and like I forgot to drink water and eat at school and then I played Sports and then I bought like how I got there is that I bust out and like literally how I got there. But how I actually got the crystal like have eaten. I think it was like watermelon for a very long time. Anyway, this is probably intense for people. Who also have hard relationships to food? And so I don't mean to yeah talk about that too much but I like the specifics too much but I think that there is a way in which like I I think that I think that dancing was absolutely the Catalyst for that. Hmm and that like shift from small and it changes right like when you're a small kit when you're a kid like at least in Pakistan, like everyone wants you to be like chubby and like have cheeks and like There's like all this like what is a cute baby? And what is it cute kid, although in my family. I have to say everyone really struggles with I think their body stuff in a way that I have muscles and I'm dull. We're like my cousin had a baby and the baby was like this perfect little chunk and like their dad was like, so at what point are you gonna stop feeding them that much, you know as I've all well that is that is something my family but but in general like culturally right like you There's a lot of affirmation for that kind of a kid and then it shifts when you're a teenager like suddenly you're supposed to have like by a certain point changed your body completely to be now acceptable in this like new framework. And so it was hard for a while kind of right and then like and then I like in dance class. It was fine and then like as dumb as I became a teenager it was like Everyone just kept talking about how I could eat as much as I wanted and nothing happened and that thing of my mother being afraid that people were thinking she wasn't feeding me went from her that being her anxiety to being like really excited that that wasn't that like now, it's helping me out. You know, whatever. That means. Well, I think Yeah, I think there was like a commitment to maintaining that. This first I couldn't do anything about it. Yeah as a kid and then I suddenly could and also I was really coming to terms with some stuff in my life that was had been really difficult as a kit at like throughout my childhood and I felt so out of control as a kid and it was such a in my mind, it was like I had I had reclaimed control and so I didn't even for years. Like I said, I didn't even think of it as something that was like harmful to me despite having gone to the hospital, you know, or like gold like and then coming to college and having that conversation with someone and realizing like, oh, wow. I'm also part of a pretty big network of people like, you know, again, like all of these things feel as real dress as they are true to us sort of so it's like not like telling so I'm not trying to tell people like Oh, this isn't unique to you and you're not not like that. But more just that sometimes it's really helpful to find Community around says because it's less isolating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think you know, I'm glad you Are you talking about this in a way that it's sort of? I think the people who I've who I've interviewed and the people I work with all the time as a therapist, you know, one of the things that feels often feels the most helpful is to talk about that notion of control as help, you know like that this emerged as something very like, you know in the context of a social world that was imposing certain standards, right, but and that you were responsible To but that on a very deeply personal level, you know your relationship to control of food and intake and nourishment sounds like it was it actually served you quite well, like it did help you kind of have a sense of you know, even if it's an illusion, but it a sense of control and that that really, you know, it's we could say it's harmful and it is and it hurts. It's very dangerous and yet I think it's also so a very affecting coping mechanism for dealing with traumatic, you know experiences in the body and it sounds like it was it has been and all of those things for you. Yeah, and I think that's what's hard about survival strategies is that they're really like you build a really strong relationship to them as they as they give you some of the strength that you need in a moment or like as they allow you to just be your exist and then at some point maybe they stop serving you and then it's really hard to let go of that and that's the thing that I find is happening in my body right now. Is that like this feels like a big and mop like pregnancy feels like a Big physical shift that's also like a big emotional shift. I feel like my mind is My mind feels sometimes not like the mind that I remember just from a few months ago or something. My thoughts are different and suddenly things like oh for instance like a relationship to food is a thing that I'm going to bring to a kid right like whether I Whether I want to or not whether it's like it's like I know explicitly and intellectually that I feel like that's the work that's almost easier is that you know, what not to say right and I think these are that's the way in which sometimes we find ourselves like an acting oppression is that we know not to say things and so it's when someone you're saying like I didn't say anything problematic or I didn't but the issue is that like the people around you sort of if they're if they're adapted experiencing that oppression. They know that Carlos of whether you're saying it's happening right and all sorts of waterways and so the idea of having a kid and then thinking about how okay so if this kid is like so this kid is going to be probably big and I'm a small like I'm tiny and I think everyone in my family is going to bend the average size of a baby is just different regionally, and I know for a fact well, I know this because when I first told my mother Other like she panicked about this baby potentially not being tiny and it was just really interesting. Like you look like this like ideal like this idea. This perf is this idea of a perfect sized baby for her. I like not too small not like premature and two and a half pounds and like super breakable or something and then like not too big and like definitely not like super chubby or whatever that means and like I don't know. It's just like, oh all this information that I didn't I sort of had to have the I don't know it's been hard to have those conversations. Like I know that you're going to love this kid, but also like really not helpful to start creating a narrative about what their size means regardless of what it is. There's going to be a narrative right like medium small large in relation to what like, I don't know. But yeah, it's going to create a narrative and then I'm going to have responses to it based on how I've seen myself and there's a way in which like I have had to think a lot about my relationship to food through this pregnancy. I have gestational diabetes and mmm. And I really bad Sweet Tooth and it's like this one of my friends was saying that I'm like the last person on Earth they wish that on because I really could like give up meals and eat candy bars for weeks on him. But yeah, so then suddenly like now I have to monitor my food intake and I have to keep a food diary and all these things are Not good for someone who really needs to suspend a control around food. Yes, right and I'm like, so I'm kind of in a triggered place and then like my mother commenting on the size of a baby that she perceives to be like a harmless Grandma thing to say, right? It just means that like suddenly like my survival strategies are totally in question and my relationship means I need to engage with them and like really think about can I let this go and if I let this go Will everything fall apart and hmm? Yeah, I don't know. I had this I love a therapist therapist save lives and my therapist said something to me. The other day about how I just talked about something really really intense and I'd said before like I didn't want to talk about it initially because I felt like the steaks were too high like in the bust contending with this difficult thing had meant getting really depressed and like getting really sad and really like going all the way to the edge with it and then being really afraid that I didn't wouldn't want to be here. More and then like talking about it again right now. And so part of what I've done is like disassociated and like compartmentalize and like I'm not going to do this thing and then like, you know having to think about it right now. And at the end of it we had this like conversation and she's like well, what was your biggest fear? And I was like that I wouldn't want to be here but I am and it's like, okay and I'm here and I'm alive and I want to be and That's already different. I'm so like maybe I can let go of some of the things and the stakes aren't the same, you know, uh-huh. Uh-huh. I feel like I'm getting very circuitous responses, but everything feels so connected. It's so connected. Yeah. I mean it's and I mean that like as someone who's who has been pregnant who was pregnant and I think there's something about out The unfolding or of the narratives that we hold in our bodies that kind of get all of that gets sort of stirred up in lots of different situations like, you know, in moments of illness or what, you know, there are lots of moments where that happens but pregnancy is also one of them and how we relate to our body. But also how we relate to kind of like, you know, it's so interesting hearing about your mom because it's sort of like a prejudgment. About what what you produce like what your body produces or what it's capable of producing, you know, and there's all sorts of yeah, there's just there's a lot there that I think is really complicated and does drawn a lot of our inherited stories or inherited sense of value that we place on, you know. What we can produce what we're capable of what our bodies do how they perform and you throw in like a history with disordered eating into that mix. Yeah and having to nourish, you know, being told how to nourish yourself right now. It's extremely complex and appreciate I don't think there's like a real solution to it. It's just it's really a momentum kind of the unfolding of that. I wonder if maybe you mentioned your therapist and I wonder if maybe you could talk a little bit about. sir, what currently and and perhaps historically has been a few found to be helpful in terms of Reckoning with or dealing with some of your history with disordered eating or with trauma and Yeah, I mean I know that we you know before the interview talked a little bit about the idea that like healing spaces are so have been in some ways or have always been so co-opted by this by whiteness, you know in a lot of ways and over determined by whiteness and I just wonder how if you could speak a little bit how you navigated that it probably is different in pregnancy than it has been maybe some things are similar. But yeah. oh my God, I think so much about how How digging care of myself changed completely when I came to the United States for instance. I realized that this happened a little bit later, but my sister was assassinated in 2015 and I couldn't go home for her funeral ended up being like this big political mess and I one of the things that happened when I went home the first time after and I kind of avoided going home afterwards. I felt really like I wasn't ready. I just wasn't ready. And the first time I went home everywhere, I went like I get she kind of ended up becoming mild. Well sort of pretty famous at the end of her life and I wasn't there to watch so much of the same and so I didn't quite understand it and Another 21st died. I had so much resentment for it because I was like who are all these people like? Why is everyone suddenly so invested in her and like any way almost like jealous of everyone that had suddenly it was like taming her but one of the things and that's how it felt from afar and then I went home and like everywhere. I went people were like, hey, I've been thinking about you and your sister and I haven't seen you for a while and I realized that something about grief. He's back home that I really appreciate is that when someone dies everyone just like everyone just shows the fuck up like literally just like bodies and bodies of people right? Like there's different like there's like a so depending on your cultural practices, like people you have the thing on the third day or you have a thing but the but the actual burial has to happen if you're Muslim Before Sunset and so, you know depend depending on the time of death or whatever. Within 24 hours You Are Not Alone there is hundreds and I don't mean like you don't have to be I think in her case, it was a it was a much more public funeral and that's not even the part that I get. My mean. I guess I feel sad I missed that too. But you know, it doesn't it's not that it's like 5,000 people but it's tedx 300 people and like what's considered close family or what's considered close that's like, you know, the Pakistani wedding and everyone's like, oh, it's just close family. It's 450 people, you know. And it's so different and I think capitalism whiteness all these things shaped sort of how we show up for people and I just had this major realization when I went home. Like what I really needed was that and I have bad people show up for me and I had people take care of me and it was I was incredibly like I was incredibly supported right like in the context of here, but What I had needed in my body just from having seen it my whole life and having experienced loss of my grandmother and seeing how people had showed up for my mother or like, you know, like was this hundreds of people just showing up and handling stuff. Right? Like all you got to do is take a shower and if you can put on some white clothes and that's and then everyone else got it, you know and That I think is one that I think grief and loss is a big one that like how you engage with and different cultural practices show up. I mean different things to different people but I think if it's something that you know in your body as healing and you have a different relationship to it the same thing with being Muslim is that you know, I grew up with a raging atheist for a father and a cultural context which was increasingly like Pakistan was what people must mostly don't know as it was a secular country for most of it's sort of existence and then like with this military dictator ziyal Haku was propped up by the US government as they tried to gain power in Afghanistan really funded the islamization of Pakistan. And so for a long time people were contending with the fact that this foreign thing was coming in right like people didn't not that I have any feelings about people wearing hijabs. wearing them but he jobs weren't a cultural practice because they just they just weren't there not indigenous to Pakistan people cover their heads and that's indigenous to the desert because of weather and so, you know, there's like and there's like certain moments religiously what you cover your head, but it's not a It's just very different from sort of how the public image of it is. And so. Yes, being Muslim was important and being culturally Muslim was very important. And also like as the country became increasingly politically Muslim my parents. My mother was, you know, it was one of the founders of the feminist movement along with a bunch of really incredible women. They were really contending with their relationship with the slamming being feminists and they landed all sorts of different places, but my mother identified as a feminist Muslim and anyway, so I grew up knowing how to be I'm going to wave it is so helpful. And one of the things that that meant was and often they just met fun. Right like it's like Christmas or on either you go to all your elders and they give you money. Like how can you not like that? And so but one of the things that I really thought my grandmother don't mean it's really helpful was to pray and It didn't occur to me that like how much? Like that had been useful to me not because I Delilah Delilah when I was home. I didn't have to explain it to anyone. Right like praying wasn't some display of biodiesel just kind of was and then I came here and I came here right after 9/11 or the year after 9/11 and we're two years after but it was still so thick in the air and I absolutely hate the fact that I prayed because I suddenly felt like it was gonna good note something that I didn't need it to Cano all that it was was that like It's a it's a space the way that you know, the way that Muslims pray is that there's like you say a bunch of words that are in Arabic and for me as a non Arabic speaker. It's just the ritual of saying them. I know kind of vaguely. I mean a lot of what they mean, but not to the extent that an Arabic speaker does maybe and also it's actually old Arabic so it's who knows and then there's like a ritual in terms of how you move your body and then at the end you kind of get to Say you're on bit. And the way that I was talked to say the bit at the end by my grandmother was like you start off by. Sharing gratitude for all the things in your life. Then you sort of pray for all the people in your life and the things that you want good thing people you want good things for and then at the end of all that you asked for stuff for yourself. But by the time you get to asking for stuff for yourself, you've done this amazing ritual of first having to think about your contacts and think about yourself as like of things bigger than yourself and so once you start thinking about gratitude and once you start thinking about like, oh, I'm really grateful that like, I don't know that I had I had food today or I got to sleep last night and I really comfortable bed them. Like by the time you get to your your asks. It's shifted a little bit, right? You're not like it's really I find it to be really grounding. And anyway, so I really hit that part of me a lot of my friends didn't I friends even now who laugh about how they have no idea that I But praying is a thing that I do and like have a lot of questions about it and ways that like I don't think are like feel to them like dissonance but they're not to me. I've tried to meditate in all sorts of ways, right and sometimes it's helpful and sometimes it's not but I know that something about being dot something really young and having a relationship to it and knowing like if I'm scared at night and I'm I remember as a kid being scared. I'm thinking oh my God, it's time for my nighttime. Prayer it's going to be fine. Like once I sit down and do this like task of essentially meditating. I'll be less scared and I know I'll be less scared. And so now to think about it is suddenly like, oh, wow, it's taken me so long to come back to being able to own something that You know, I think that like being Muslim is it is less trendy than being like maybe going to an ashram and you know Buna or something and but but the idea is the same right and in so many ways like we know it's doing for our brains. We know that like, I know that in a moment of Crisis to say a quick prayer is something that my grandmother would do before she acted and it's that Seconds of like I could react from this place of being really really heightened and not that it's not valid to have a big reaction to something that requires a big reaction, but that if I take the 15 seconds around myself, but my reaction might be more useful relation. I'm so things like that and then like, you know nature was a big one. I went to school in Western, Massachusetts and we were in the woods and you know all I knew. About American Woods was like 90s horror movies. Where why do you take a candle stick into the wood? Like I just it just feels this and I just thought the woods were so creepy and I thought that like Nature was you know, everyone loved to hike suddenly everyone like wanted to go on long walks and acts like this is so boring like I come from a big city. I want to do the thing like this is not an activity, but what I didn't realize so So relatively recently maybe like three years ago with that nature could be mine. Right and then like I've always loved trees and somehow being surrounded by them in Western Massachusetts with like four percent people of color and everyone else being really white meant that I thought trees were white people things versus like Oh my God, I fucking love trees like just as a thing. They're so cool. Like the Redwoods are so cool. They've seen all this stuff their archives there. They Keep Us Alive like Just the even big cities are different like adachi where I'm from is a huge City, but people have it's a low City. It's not super built up and people have space for the space for green and your house or like the idea of Courtyards are like the outside being inside is a thing people have always done. That's because it's like, you know, you build your house around the breeze and around the trees like if there's a really old tree you just build a house around it. You don't go down to build a house. Yeah, there's just a million ways in which like I just started to believe that healing was not. It was not mine. And it became this funny thing. I don't like the more trauma you had or like the more oppression you face like the less accessible healing becomes which is so wild because like, you know, my mother always jokes about how white people love bungee jumping because they don't die naturally enough, you know, and it's like this funny idea of like, Who needs like who needs those spaces and who should have accurate and whose practices have you taken like whose survival way to survive in the world? Have you taken you know, and then made maybe yours and we talked a lot about yoga and sure that that's now if you like yoga is like so gentrified that it's not even a thing anymore. But like I remember having a really negative reaction to people like cleansing the are quote unquote with mmm. Me, I mean like white people using like Palo Santo something right and I just remember feeling like what I don't I'm like this feels something about this doesn't feel right. Hmm and I went home the last time I went home my mother let we call it Le Bon it's called and just looked up the English name for this because I was like have to be able to get it here somehow an Amazon. I didn't say Amazon. I don't use Amazon what you're talking about. But like I was like, where do I get this? Thing anyway, so I was looking for Le Bon and I went home and my mom my mother at the end of the night sort of like lit this Le Bon and walk around the whole house with it. It was like this is hilarious like this what this thing that I felt like first I had a response to it because it was like white people and Palo Santo sure like fine, but then it shifted to the practice itself feeling icky and then I was like, oh, I have no relationship to this and then I went back home and I realized I have had that happen every night of my life. And I'm even things like and I think actually in pregnancy. It's interesting because we have access to incredible like midwives and doulas and like people that can help you navigate pregnancy and feeling like I was so averse to having a doula to lay have a doula and like really love them because it just felt like if also indulgent Like really someone just gonna like show up and like help me figure out how to navigate this like a terrifying thing and that they say that like we're going to talk about how my my biggest fear is like having a super premium, which is like we that's so it's so helpful when your Doula is like well, like maybe that's not about what your body's doing. But maybe it's the story that you've just been told about yourself or like There are so many things that having a doula helped me figure out that I just didn't even know I needed to figure out and once it happened it was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like everybody needs to have access to the stuff but part of it is that like culturally I think we've had people in our Lives who had babies before and are willing to like show up and teach you how to do it. But if you're living in New York, yeah capitalism like you're like, Go go go and got like got me two. Things can't be I don't know. There's like a no space to struggle. There's no space for vulnerability. There is like yeah. Yeah, I think what you're yeah and what part of what you're talking about is especially with the doulas like the Doula becomes like Annex, you know, the narrative becomes that it's like an accessory, right? You know, like you have to you you must have a doula right and what gets lost or what you're experiencing now in a really visceral way immediate and visceral way is that You know the whatever it is. However, it's formulated this particular form of support. It brings up feelings of you know, like deserving and you know, I think there's there's kind of like a as you said Indulgence or an idea that you know being An activist there's an aesthetic, you know kind of rigidity around any kind of, you know caring for the self that feels excessive right? But I guess in some ways, you know, what you're describing is. practices that are that are nourishing for you and that you are identifying our nourishing for you and the whole time that you've been kind of answering my question. I've been thinking about your kid like you're going to have a kid and part of what you're going to transmit to this kid, you know is A sense of prioritizing the idea of seeking out and valuing practices that are nourishing for that kid, you know and they might be different practices but like seeing you doing that and I don't I don't necessarily think this self-care and like self-help discourses or so complicated. Obviously. I'm immersed in them as a therapist but you know even moving away from that just kind of like cutting through and and understanding what All's good and supportive in your body is is something I think that's not prioritized in a place like New York where it's go go go and it's you know overcompensate and it's and it sounds like in part, you know the past couple of years at least you've been discovering or rediscovering the things that have like deep resonance in your body. Yeah. Yeah. It's a helpful time to be thinking about it because I think that I have this urgency right like to figure out so much before the kid comes and I know I'm going to learn all them in a way that I wish that I don't know right like I it's just gonna happen. I'm gonna say a thing and it's going to hurt their feelings and it's going to be really profound and I'm going to go completely shattered by it like a million times a day probably and yeah, I think that Really thinking about having a kid who's going to be the kid like the specific makeup of my kid is going to be that they're going to need a lot of they're going to need a lot of affirmation in the world and they're probably not going to get it from the World At Large and so a lot of it is going to have to come from like within their family unit and like gender race religion like all of this. This like every single and I don't even know anything about their about their body and their relationship their body and like how it's going to feel and there's so many things it's a new person in the world and they're going to have people things and like I've had a lot of people things in my life and I imagine that they will to him. It just feels like one of the things that I really really want them to know is that this feeling of like resilience that isn't about isn't related to being okay all the time more isn't related to being like whatever people's conception of strength is all the time, you know, and just like you and your viewing your body and a new and yourself or enough and you have enough in you and I'm not that's a growing shifting idea. And maybe this is like very ephemeral in vague, but could just like That feeling of indulgences that you're describing that I have. I don't. I realize how much of that comes from oppression and my relationship to oppression. Like what is indulgent is nothing that I would tell someone else's indulgent. But what I conceived it isn't as indulgent for myself is a very different standard. So it's taken me a long time to be someone that like wants to dress up in the world and you know, it's not really happening in this right now at this stage, but it's But like you know that you think about single Athletics and activism my stocking I went to talk that tourmaline and Juliana Huxtable gave and they were talking a lot about Aesthetics and how you know, like to feel valued as an activist. I think tourmaline was talking about how like feeling valid as an activist meant that like you had to where you have to have a certain aesthetic because anything beyond that was indulgent, right and so it's similar to that. It's like I don't know like if you want to wear like if you really want to dress up for like Wednesday morning third grade like it's like a wedding like fucking go for it, you know, and then like let's have a conversation about what that's going to mean when you go to you go and you come back and you realize that everyone thought that was maybe too much and like where are the boundaries of too much and is it really too like what I don't know just like all of Those those like mundane, I feel like you have so much more information about this right because like I don't know tell me tell me things. How do you marry the way I'm hearing you? It's so amazing because I'm like, you're already thinking like a parent you're already aware of how I feel like so many people have these kind of romanticize Notions of I'm going, you know, like they're really they're really skirting around potential conflicts in your you know, your I just imagine you're going to be really in With your kid, which is amazing. I mean, I have a kid who's who basically is the kid who wears the you know, like dress up dress up like a wedding, you know in third grade or whatever, you know, I mean like dressed up out like like she was preparing to go to a club or something for her class picture. You know what I'm saying? Like I have a kid who is it is really pushing the bounds of certain things and it's complicated for her. I mean she Has like certain privileges that allow her to do that. I think in certain ways, but I also think that what you're talking about around permission is so that the permission or the kind of like the yeah, the permissiveness comes from you comes from within the family around like nurturing these parts of the being this kid, you know in a way that that I think is, you know, It's often reparative for me because I grew up in a very constricted and restrained and you know rule-bound and you know, not feminist household. So it's reparative for me. But it also requires a lot from me around like you're saying around kind of Shifting your own locked in or habitual ways that you relate to yourself and your needs and what is too much for you and and all of that so so I think you know, it's really beautiful. Actually. I feel like you're already you're really talking like someone who's in it in it already in the parenting thing. I mean everything. Yeah. Yeah. No for real and I guess I just you know, I want to ask before we get to kind of sum of what you are up to. I guess I want to ask a little bit more about what is it what it felt like To think about I mean you're not as I just said you're pretty much you're already parenting right but what it's like to think about, you know, being a queer Muslim parents in the United States, like what I don't know. I mean there are lots of discourses around having children and deciding to do that and all that, but I'm just curious how you the big question, but maybe there's some aspect of it that that really resonates. For you you'd like to talk about I think when I think the queerness and gender be some also the parents other kid and they're they're black. They're non-binary. I'm an immigrant queer a Muslim both of us feel really Committed to not to thinking about gender in terms of this, baby. And there's this like and then having to contend with like how families going to perceive that and like. How do we how do we talk about? I don't not like pronouns and how like my gender has changed a lot and like who am I going to show up to like, who am I going to show up as a different times of their life? Are they? Are they going to be embarrassed of us? Are they going to wish I mean, I think the answer is this disease. Is there going to be embarrassed of us? Like that's just a give them right? But like is this liberatory? Yeah, are these Frameworks helpful, you know being the kid that like got myself like being the kid that learned about sex before everyone else because my dad was just like we're just going to have this conversation and then going to school and having that conversation. I realized realizing that it didn't quite give me the social currency that I anticipated. It would not with my classmates or with my Teachers and so like or like, you know, like I said my dad's a raging atheist and like his version of Islam was different from we had religion clause that was like mandatory under the government at the time in the early 80s just a bizarre thing to do the six year olds, but you know, I had all these questions like was like, why does my parents were also like super hippie? So they have a lot of like Islamic history ends up being about conquest and so like that's what they're teaching six year old witch. Like I don't know I just think a bad plan but asking in religion class like why why do we keep learning about these battles? Like what's like, what's awesome about them? Like you're just describing conquer and people dying and a lot of violence and you know being like how come we're not talking about the fact that like I show who's a historic figure lead battle and she's one of the few like women historic figures that led a battle like if we're gonna be talking about the stuff like why aren't we talking about some other stuff really pissing people off, you know, and so I'm a little bit nervous. I'm a little bit nervous about I don't think the solution is like do not give gives information but I'm a little bit nervous about what that information is going to mean a different stages of their life. Right like you're like so often I've heard from my friends at they were like outcasts and Weirdos and school whatever like that meant and then they went to college and suddenly it was cool to know stuff and that's a long Line one is my kid going to college to his college going to be a thing that anyone can afford like we don't have a planet. I don't know like there's so many big questions about what the future looks like, but that's like 18 years of waiting. And I know I waited that long at exactly right. Like I feel a little bit nervous about my my own being threshold for watching my kids inevitable and navigate. Yeah. You know, like I don't know what their complexion is going to be that that's regardless of what it is. It's going to be a conversation like yeah, just I mean just like everything and It's funny. I was thinking of hitting about like food allergies and if my kids going to have food allergies and how much my Pakistani family will think that's not a thing right? Like they're going to there's gonna be all these ways in which like they're going to think that my kid is like some psycho there so American they're so so Morgan right now. We're do you know and I'm like, but there's a whole science about why kids here have food allergies. And that this is their context and like I watched a documentary about food allergies in like how these like this this little kid was talking about how they can never fit to carry different color tray at school and then they have to sit in a different get part of the cafeteria. And then anyway, it's just like there's a guy there's just going to be so so much identity and power and like how do you find an educational institution that can hold some of that especially if you're not I don't know like that stuff isn't super accessible schooling is really consider education is really confusing and like what does it mean to have white teachers teaching you about like like indigenous genocide and like even if they're super practiced in that like do I people really need to be teaching that to my child and like hmm just like I don't even know like all the I'm so overwhelmed. I don't know. I feel like you should just like, dr. Me offline about anything you've learned and I'm just going to write it down then look back at it, you know in moments of Crisis. Oh my gosh. I'm learning all the time and thrown off all the time by all by many of those. Questions and I think yes, we will definitely I'm happy to provide some ideas about how I've navigated all of this but I think one of the things that is really hitting me and hearing what you have to say is just what your threshold and I think this is an interesting question just for this like this podcast in this project is like what is your threshold for experiencing the pain and discomfort of your child, right? You know that that where is your control? Where do you Not have control and you know, those have been big questions for you in your own life. I think that figuring out how we relate to others whether it be our children or our partners or whatever, you know, it's it's almost like it's hard enough having this body like this life experience this body and then figuring out how to kind of like deeply and intimately because all of what you're talking about feels like intimacy to me. It's just like you're going to be so intimately involved in the Child's world making you know, and it's a lot it's a lot to kind of contend with right. It's a lot and and yet it's you're already doing it so but it is a lot and so I mean I appreciate just also for the sake of the people listening, you know, I appreciate you kind of expressing some of your vulnerabilities or questions that you have because they think it's it's it's so common for people. To feel these anxieties and to feel them as parents, you know, it's not it never is really over. Unfortunately. We got that kind of you know is like that thing you were talking about earlier where it's like you said a deadline like I'm gonna feel like I'm a good parent at this point. It's just like no reason that it's there is no deadline. It's just it never ends. But you know, I know there's so much more that we could talk about and I really appreciate everything you've been willing to share and I know one thing that we haven't talked at all about and so for people listening, you know, if you enjoy listening to rage speaking about anything you might enjoy the podcast and so maybe you could just talk a little bit about your podcast project. Yeah. Thank you so much for letting me talk about it 12 hours. It was like the pre baby. Yeah. I was just thinking You know, I was just thinking that it's called bad Brown undies. I host it with one of my closest friends coming up with the Jiggy and condo and I both landed in the states on the same day at Logan Airport, and we met our first day here and went off to a small College in Western, Massachusetts together and You know since then became migrants, which so first We Came as International students and then we became my grandson. I don't think either of us anticipated the ladder. I thought we were I think we both thought we were going to go back to our respective homes and what that meant was that we didn't migrate with people and what that also meant was that we became each other's families and I can tell you that navigating the immigration system is deeply traumatizing even if you have a relatively like in our cases probably what would be considered an easy immigration story of filling out forms and then them being approved, you know, but there's still a lot of waiting and there's a lot of anxiety that comes with fake waiting and then rely on to the gums a really interesting Dynamic like who can you rely on can you actually rely on people like Can you ever keep ever like this feeling of constant gratitude to everyone around you for just letting you be here and having to root yourself and simultaneously constantly prepare yourself for the reality that like you might not be able to and I think Tony navigated a lot of that together. We learned like Medical Systems together and legal systems together and like that's predation together and developed sort of a shared but very we have varied. I mean we're different people we have very different experiences. But something about that shared experience was really really helpful. And when we moved to New York, probably both about a decade ago, one of the things that we constantly felt frustrated about was that all the people that talked about any of the things that we had experienced where white people And people that had an experience them themselves. And so we were kind of it was less for us to talk about those things and more for us to just highlight all the incredible sort of like expertise and wisdom in our community around identity and power and like oppression and art and politics but through the lens of like people who actually experienced it versus like the formal Experts of things and so all of our guests are people of color, which is, you know, there's no dearth of incredible people of color and the framework of Auntie is helpful because I think culturally it's meant different things to different people for us as South Asians and on Diaz, you know has historically been defined as someone who like opposed to patriarchy and like gossips and you know sits in a corner and it's like really like Meddlesome and like there's just all these like these negative tropes and both of us realize that in different ways. Our undies had been the reasons we'd survived and also the reasons that we had like we had struggled and both of us have different definitions of Andy's but I think a lot of the a lot of those tropes are just like patriarchal tropes and so like is Miss major and on D absolutely like is our You know, are we giving honest poolan Devi and I'm Dean. Let me don't know about self-identification, but maybe right like are we really giving aunties the place in social movements and struggle that they should have been given right and like one of our guests talks about Winnie Mandela has their on diem like do we talked enough about Winnie Mandela and like why are the reasons that we don't and especially if now we know that like, Winnie Mandela was the sort of like more radical counterpart to Nelson Mandela but is consistently did sort of described as his wife. It's just, you know, just thinking about yeah, just thinking about the power of queer trans. sis, even women who have upheld have not upheld bit shaky but really challenged it, but then it's been boxed into this Narrative of Yeah of being vacuous or not really talking about substance, you know, and so wanting yeah, it's a long answer but I really really like the process of making the podcast. I don't know how it lands for people at here. And I hope that they like it but it's kind of dreamy to talk to people about where they come from and what shape them not so differently from you. Hmm. Yeah, it sounds like since I mean, it's a it's a really beautiful project and I think a lot of what you just described really comes comes through in in how you are approaching the guests and like a lot of that intentionality. But I yeah, I can relate to that feeling of wanting kind of just wanting to have these conversations anyway, and you know, like for selfish reasons and having, you know, imagining that maybe other people want to hear them, but you know that there's something very Sighing about that. Yeah, and I can I can definitely relate to that I you know, we were kind of out of time and I just want to say thank you for sharing your story and also showing up for this project at a time when you have a lot else on your mind and going on in your body. So I really appreciate that. Oh my God, please says been really really this has been really really helpful for me. And you're a really good listener and I I have such a can't even tell you how much I went from not trusting therapists to loving them. Yeah other complicated process. Yeah, and you know that it's not it's not always like I don't think that everyone is going to necessarily reach that place because that's not it doesn't mean that you interacted with the people that you should have had in your life when you needed them. But I've just had the benefit of some really lovely. Awful people in my life recently and I really appreciate you being one of them. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I really appreciate you too. Maybe maybe maybe.
In this episode we talk about queerness, body shame, disordered eating, Islamaphobia, pregnancy, questions around activism and self care and so much more. Rage does a million rad things and it was truly an honor to interview them in the midst of their last moments of pregnancy. I am inspired by them and all they do, truly. I hope you enjoy this episode. Rage is a queer Muslim migrant from Karachi, Pakistan. They’re a public defender and organizer around the criminal punishment system and prosecutor accountability with Court Watch NYC and 5 Boro Defenders. Since moving to Brooklyn almost a decade ago, Rage's work and activism has focused on queer and trans liberation, immigrant justice, and prison abolition. They are also a visual artist, media maker, hair stylist and co-host/co-producer of the podcast Bad Brown Aunties (@badbrownaunties)    LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com  @livinginthisqueerbody   The Host:  Asher Pandjiris Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator   Finding Pleasure in Purposeful Movement with Ilya Parker January 14:  https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/findingpleasure   SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody     Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris  ---   Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris/support 