Which box do I check?

We’re constantly checking boxes on forms, whether it’s for eye color or sexual orientation. Those categories can be empowering or, they can make you feel invisible, like when Mona painted a portrait of 100 New Yorkers based on the New York Census data, and realized she couldn’t see herself. There was no “Arabic” box to check in the census—the closest being “white” or “other.” So what happens when someone spends their whole life checking that box for “other”? Mona talks with nonbinary British Iraqi drag queen Amrou Al-Kadhi about embracing the contradictions of having multiple, wonderful, identities, that SOME people see as conflicting. You can find the full text transcript along with studies cited in this episode at go.ted.com/AIN6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen to Which box do I check? online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Which box do I check? is an episode from Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi by TED.

This episode is 23:15 long.

This episode was published on Nov 15, 2021.

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