After years of militant bravado in my art and politics, I now seek to empathise with people I used to write off as enemies<\/p>\n
When I look back at some of the opinion pieces I wrote<\/a> and the art I made in the 2010s, I can\u2019t help but cringe at the conviction with which I presented myself and my work. Like many of my twentysomething contemporaries, I spoke with delusional ferocity about the \u201cevils of the straight cis white man\u201d and described anyone who disagreed with me as an out-and-out enemy. As a queer and Arab person in Britain<\/a> who had long felt excluded from the mainstream conversation, it was thrilling to be making forceful and oppositional interventions in public debate.<\/p>\n Thinking back to this version of myself, I understand now that my combative approach to political disagreement \u2013 which was admittedly part of the spirit of the age, marked by culture wars escalating across the social media landscape \u2013 was, in my case, a response to personal trauma. <\/strong>In my mid-20s I was a struggling artist carrying unprocessed feelings from the conservatism of my childhood. I had been raised in a religious environment where my sexuality<\/a> was not only suppressed but outright prohibited, and I lived so much of my childhood genuinely terrified of losing the support of my family (and God). I had also moved to the UK at the start of Britain\u2019s invasion of Iraq \u2013 my family\u2019s home country \u2013 and internalised much of the racism I encountered.<\/p>\n Amrou Al-Kadhi is performing Glamrou: Drag Mother<\/a> at the Soho theatre in London from 20 to 25 January. Their feature film Layla is available to stream now<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After years of militant bravado in my art and politics, I now seek to empathise with people I used to write off as enemies When I look back at some of the opinion pieces I wrote and the art I made in the 2010s, I can\u2019t help but cringe at the conviction with which I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}