In memory of Sarah: Reflections on violence, fear and pain

The same regime that grounded its legitimacy on rescuing Egypt’s secular identity from Islamist fanatics, the same regime that professes itself as Europe’s inevitable bulwark against floods of refugees and Islamist terror, has terrorized and persecuted Queers and trans people on a regular basis to purport moral rectitude. Yes, patriarchy is also secular.

[…] Queer fear is sometimes contagious and relentless. It can be temporarily soothed, it can be made dormant; the physical conditions that allow it to unfold can be abolished or suspended, but it continues to nag you in distant places. It continues to live under your skin. You smell it in the cold air of your exile, it lies on the surface of the things and bodies you touch. It can pop up in the corners of a city, when you suddenly realise that it will remain alien, no matter how often you walked the streets and cherished the company of its people. It inhabits our contemplations on longings and loss, it manifests itself in the sheer absence of home, the same home that we – oddly enough – escape out of fear. More here.

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