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Tag: queerarab

Episode 211 [in English]: Mental Health for Liberation

Finlay Sarafa McHale is a queer Iraqi/Chaldean-American clinical social worker currently facilitating a free peer support group for queer SWANA people. They joined us for a wonderful conversation about how mental healthcare can be a tool for political liberation rather than means of detaching from it. 

Finlay discusses censorship and Zionism in the mental health field, the challenges of developing culturally responsive practices in a profession with white-centric roots, and the myth of therapy as apolitical. They explain how traditionally strict expectations of “non-disclosure” regarding therapists’ personal or political perspectives can widen the power gap between therapist and client and place marginalized clients in the position of having to educate their therapist.  

Finlay suggests resources to help queer and trans people of color find a therapist and questions to ask to evaluate if a therapist is right for you. 

We also talk about the icky weirdness of going viral during a crisis in one’s community, such as the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

To view the resource list mentioned in the episode, click here!

 

As seen on a Sussex Directories Inc site

 

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Episode 208 [in English]: Pride for Sarah Hegazi

Hey everyone! We’ve missed you, and we’re excited to return from our break with an episode we’ve had cooking for a while! 

CW: general discussion of suicide

Taim is a student from Syria in Cologne, Germany, and one of the organizers of the organization Pride for Sarah Hegazi. Taim discusses the organization’s second demonstration that took place in the summer of 2023, dedicated to the Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazi and the Saudi trans woman Eden Knight, both of whom died by suicide in conditions of structural queerphobia. 

The protest took place in an Arab neighborhood and involved 50 participants chanting queer slogans in Arabic, with the goal of creating both visibility and discomfort. Taim discusses the importance of putting queer Arabic lingo in the streets—not just in academic settings—and maintaining Sarah’s revolutionary communist ethics in protest organizing. They also discuss future hopes that the organization can work to help queer people still living in the SWANA region.  Taim’s fellow organizers are Fadi, Ahmed and Salman.

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