National Student Pride (NSP) has announced the launch of its new podcast Queering the Air, which is headed by NSP student committee members Celine Ponio Bagtas and Reagan Spinks, and focuses on platforming less privileged voices within the UK’s LGBTQ+ community.
The first episode, Across the Sea, centres a trans masculine gay man (using the alias of ‘Mo’) who recalls growing up in the Middle East where his first encounters with queerness came with a secret fascination for Ellen Degeneres on their TV screen, and recognising that women can have wives. He goes on to compare this ‘other world’ to the wider community that surrounded him at the time, where children of opposing assigned genders were forbidden from playing together.
NSP say: “What this first episode details, that is particularly poignant, is Mo’s account of seeking refuge in the UK and transferring into the care of social services. Listen to Mo recount the reasons why he felt that he had to flee his family, home and country, including; his fear of facing persecution through so-called ‘honour-killings’. Videos of which he’d seen circulated online.
“Now attending university in the UK, his journey is a testament to the tenacity of the trans spirit and a yearning to redefine one’s life by your own terms.”
Upcoming episodes of Queering the Air will go on to host a range of contemporary conversations that uncover individual stories surrounding religion, tradition and culture, disability, and sexual health, as they each relate to guests’ minority gender identity and/or sexuality.
The first episode Across the Sea is available to stream for free on:
Spotify, Podchaser, Amazon Music, PlayerFM and Google Podcasts.
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