Nick Barlow, Clusterfuck/Keep It Together, 2022

people in every queer and trans community i go to set an expectation: i should ofrever abandon my muslim past, i should explicitly stop associating yourself with it whatsoever, you either get to be queer or you either get to be raised-muslim.

in reality, there's no such expectation for christianity, and none of them are ready to dismantle their "inner christian" in their heads as much as they expect be to dismantle my "inner muslim"

none fo them get to admit how most first world countries are culturally christian, because christianity is "default" to them, as well as first world, as well as white.

me having a complicated relationship with islam doesn't mean i absolutely despise every piece of it. it means i distanced myself from ummah, but won't hear islamic criticism from non ex muslims at all, because you expect us to dismantle "our inner muslims" in ways you aren't ready to dismantle imperialism and racism in you.

your expectation is us "acting white", you don't want us unless we're that, which means you don't want us at all.

a lot of people claiming to want to uplift brown queer voices and such don't procced to do anything meaningful for them, or for brown people at all. it's just virtue signaling, homonationalism. you'd only care of brown people being queer, and you want the "brown" part of it gone as much as possible.

a lot of people say they want the leftist agenda to stop being us centric and imperialist, but then it's just pretending to care about it. you already made is so little and unhearable you'd have to get out of your way to seek for us speaking. then you'd not seek or if you find us, you will just pass by. hoping someone else would amplify the voice you took from us? and that someone else would hope for that too, so what?

you want us only when we agree with everything usa says about us, you want us until our lives don't put you into too much discomfort. when they put you into too much discomfort, you don't ask why, you'll restore the comfort by banishing us again. your tolerability of us is so intricately conditional, to meet those a third worlder has to build themselves into a first worlder mindset. this is your (inter)nationalism hey.