Hello my dears! Welcome to this new episode of JINS Podcast.  When I was a young child, the media portrayed queer people as devilish people. Words in Arabic didn’t even exist till a few years ago. You’d only hear about insults like “shaz” in Jordan, “zamel” in Morocco, “louti” in Lebanon, linking homosexuality to bodies who are penetrated, passive and perverted as the people of Loth in the Biblical and Quranic passages say. Words can be mean. Words mean something. Sometimes they mean the world to someone.  Meanwhile, you would hear people being incarcerated in Morocco, under article 488 of the Penal Code, because they were caught kissing in public or crossdressing or just suspected of being too “effeminate”. You would hear news about people being hanged publicly in Iran, catfished and then arrested in Egypt, kidnapped in Syria, shot dead in the street in Iraq, and imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Queer people were never shown as heroes nor as champions. Yet, the whole world knows that the art world is full of queer people. The world itself is full of queer people. So why is it so important to hide them, their creativity and their beauty when they also have so much to show to the rest of the world? Why is it so urgent to give them a platform of self-expression in this part of the world? Why is it so allegedly dangerous for the status quo to show more emerging talents on international stages or magazines, who break all the rules and let their identities shine? To discuss all of this, I’m very happy to welcome Khalid Abdel-Hadi. Khalid was born and raised in Amman, Jordan, and has family with Palestinian and Kurdish-Turkish-Beduin roots. He graduated from Petra University in Amman in 2014 with a degree in graphic design and visual arts. Khalid Abdel-Hadi founded My Kali Magazine when he was in his teens, with the aim of providing LGBT-related content. Established in 2007 by a group of passionate students with various interests -- from arts and design to politics and activism — My Kali is the first LGBTQIA-inclusive conceptual webzine in Jordan and one of the most consistent in the region. My Kali strives to address social problems, homophobia or transphobia, to document the stories of the community, and to empower the youth to defy mainstream gender binaries and heteronormativity in the Arab world. Khalid is the Editor-in-chief and the Creative Director of My Kali, an activist, and a curator.  🚀 Season 2 produced by Kikina Studio Voir Acast.com/privacy pour les informations sur la vie privée et l'opt-out.