Russian/Polish/Scottish | Indian
I’ve never hidden part of my identity, but I’ve learned to be more discerning about the spaces I talk about my identity in. When I was growing up, strangers felt comfortable asking me ‘what are you?’ or guessing my ethnicity in Ubers, at parties, or on the street. An older man on a plane once told me I must have a beautiful mother, and asked if my dad met my mom ‘in the war.’ What war? There’s a fetishization of mixed people in our society, because we’re seen as exotic, which has a sexual element to it. There’s also a lot of politics around having a white Dad and a non-white Mom. When I was a teenager and still trying to understand beauty, gender, and race, I entertained comments about my ‘exotic’ look, even thinking they were flattering. I’ve since realised how invalidated they make me feel, and I no longer choose to engage.
My relationship with being mixed-race has always been dynamic. I didn’t think about it much as a child, other than knowing that it made me different from other kids at my school. I went to a Jewish sleepaway camp when I was ten and remember one girl asked why I was there if I was a fake Jew. Even though I had Indian friends, I felt like an outsider at their houses as well and I was always asking questions about the food we were eating and shows we were watching. Being biracial and bisexual, I’ve felt like an intruder in any space that I’m a part of, whether it be Indian, Jewish, straight, or gay. For so long, I worried that feeling was cliche or that by admitting I felt out of place, I was overdramatizing my experience, but there’s so much truth to it.
Finding other queer, mixed people and queer people of colour has been a lifesaver. I’ve found community in them and we’ve embraced each other for who we are. Reading books like “The Buddha of Suburbia” and “Queer Phenomenologies” by mixed race, queer authors has also made me feel proud of my identity. I’ve developed an undying obsession with Charli XCX, who’s half Gujarati like me (and an absolute icon). More and more, I’m starting to see my identity not as an aberration from the norm, but as something beautiful that gives me a unique perspective on the world.
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