Gaysians, 2021 Monyee Chau Instagram | Website | Prints

flowin

Reeta Loi, London(UK)

Activist, Musician, Writer & Founder of Gaysians

She was featured in the Forbes 100 Women Founders list, has won British LGBT+ Award, and played an instrumental role in lobbying for the repeal of Section 377 in India. “I grew up witnessing oppression of women in my family and chose to follow the path of self-discovery when given an ultimatum for coming out as a lesbian to my family,” she recalls. It was excruciating for Reeta to lose her family, grow apart from her Punjabi culture and be alienated at the age of 18. “I was on a quest to seek out people like me, be an anonymous voice in the media for years before deciding to use my name and set up Gaysians,” she tells us.

The music industry is male-dominated and so is the queer scene—with 98 per cent of music producers and 80 per cent of music artists being men, Reeta informs us. “Our suppression is a product of patriarchy and frankly, it’s so pervasive that we can’t even see it. I continue to make art from love and compassion to reverse this,” she says.

Gaysians, a non-profit organisation spearheading the global visibility and representation of the South Asian diaspora and the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, is almost 5 years old, with a team of seven volunteers and a network of 25 organisations in the UK and North America.

Being a Londoner, Reeta is heavily influenced by the melting pot of sounds of the diaspora—from Reggae, dance music like Garage, Breakbeat, Jungle, Hip Hop, to Bollywood soundtracks from films like Bobby and Mughal-e-Azam and Lata Mangeshkar. Reeta tells us, “I queered my collection of Bollywood records—the only memories I have of my dad apart from a few of his old kurtas. I started using samples from Hindi love songs and distorted my vocals to turn them into same-sex love songs or responses that messed with people’s gender perceptions. I released some of this work in an EP in 2018 called Ek under LOIAL, my artist name at that time. ”

i sent this tiktok to my dad and this was his response HAHA

IG: ryo_oya

UR TELLING ME IM NEVER GONNA SEE KUWEI YUL-BO ON SCREEN FOR REAL

every time you post about modern au zuko you also just post a fact about my life (liberal arts student, jbrekkie enjoyer, shitty diaspora poetry writer). would you give him a tumblr blog. or a blog on any platform? either way your posts do not help me to avoid projecting onto fictional characters and my little sister called me an emo bitch over this. hope u are well

LMFAOO so true. I have talked before about zuko’s tumblr. his blog is borderline unreadable until he’s at least college-aged, and he thinks that it’s a well-kept secret, but unfortunately mai and ty lee do read it every day like it’s the morning paper. they’re gracious enough not to tell anyone else about it, though. if anyone asks, he claims he doesn’t go online unless you count jstor and poetry foundation, and that he would never use social media. and considering that he has like a total of 3 mutuals and never talks to any of them, he’s basically not even lying.

❤️

Hello Tumblr 😘

Idk what to caption this.