In Conversation with Felix Mufti-Wright
In this week’s episode of the Comics Youth x Where are the Girlbands Safe Spaces Podcast Ella talks to Liverpool-based creative Felix Mufti-Wright. Felix is a poet, actor, facilitator, activist, writer and scouse icon whose practices are all intertwined and equally important in how they create space for the LGBTQIA* community in Liverpool.
Hello and welcome to the Comics Youth x Where are the Girlbands Safe Spaces podcast, a space for discussions with organisations and individuals who are creating safe spaces within the North West, with a focus on Merseyside.
Something which this podcast acknowledges in its very existence is how entwined creative practices and activism are. Creative spaces and creatives themselves are constantly in conversation with politics, identity and safety, all things which create and exist in symbiosis with activism. A Liverpool-based creative who epitomises this is Felix Mufti-Wright, a poet, actor, facilitator, activist, writer and scouse icon whose practices are all intertwined and equally important in how they create space for the LGBTQIA* community in Liverpool.
Having been involved in theatre since the age of 13, Felix has developed an incredible name for themselves, making waves that have allowed so many LGBTQIA* people to feel seen, supported and fought for by Felix and his work. I remember seeing Felix leading at pride protests when I was just a teenager and Felix was even younger, and it is honestly incredible and beyond inspiring to see how Felix continues to create safe spaces for the LGBTQIA* community, be it through his poetry, his facilitation work, or his activism.
It is hard to know where to start when introducing such a multi-faceted creative, but I will begin with theatre, where Felix has their creative origins. Despite only being in their early-20s Felix has years of theatre experience under their belt having performed in productions such as an R+D at The Young Vic Theatre with renowned Queer Theatre Company 'MilkPresents,', Homotopia (Liverpool’s annual Queer theatre festival), as well as countless performances at the Unity Theatre, having been a central presence in the Liverpool theatre scene for most of his life. More recently Felix co-founded ‘Transcend Theatre’, a theatre company dedicated to being a Queer-focussed, Queer-led and Queer-empowering space for productions that give platform to the experiences of LGBTQIA* people with a focus on the stories of Trans* people. Felix came out as Trans at 13 into an arts landscape that did not offer acceptance or success to Queer people, and rather than letting thediscriminatory nature of the theatre world dim his passion, he has created new spaces for himself and his community.
Alongside creating creative spaces Felix has a blossoming creative practice within spoken word. Having been a part of the Queer Bodies residency, performing at ‘A Lovely Word’ at the Everyman Theatre and being commissioned by National Museums Liverpool, Felix is a seasoned poet whose work is filled with passion and carried by delicately crafted words.
While Felix brings activism and empowerment into all of his creative practices, his work in supporting and fighting for his community does not end there. Felix is a co-founder of Reclaim Pride Liverpool who are fighting to reclaim pride as a protest rather than the inaccessible and ineffective rainbow capitalist venture it has become in many cities. Alongside this he has been the Trans Rep for the national LGBT+ Socialists group since 2020, he is part of Merseyside BLM Alliance family, and also helped create The World Transformed's Trans political education programme. Felix also does community outreach with young LGBT+ people, he is an organiser for Trans Pride Liverpool and Transgender Day of Remembrance, and he has also been involved in the national #KillTheBill campaign speaking at rallies across the country on platforms speaking alongside campaigners and MPs including Nadia Whittome, Caroline Lucas, Richard Burgon and many more.
As you can tell, Felix Mufti-Wright is a creative whose life is dedicated to telling his story and making a space for those who have been marginalised through arts, activism and compassion. It is a real honour to have Felix with us today talking about all of the incredible work he is doing!
Interview Questions:
Ella:
I’m here today with the iconic Felix. How are you doing today?
Felix:
I’m good, I’m good. It’s a nice 2pm so it’s a good time of day, not too early but I don’t like waking up to late do you know what I mean so I feel like 2pm is a good middle ground for me.
Ella:
Yeah it’s helping with my like, you know when you get that slump in the middle of the afternoon?
Felix:
Mm hm. It’s so much better crashing at like 7pm then crashing at like 4 and being like oh where do I go from here it’s still light outside (laughing)
Ella:
And talking about like not knowing where to go, writing the questions for Felix was like so difficult. We were just saying Felix literally does so much stuff. Every single day there’s a new project and they’re not like small projects either, like national, massive, UK-based projects. But I’ve decided to start with Transcend Theatre, which is a Queer-led theatre company that Felix co-founded, and I thought that would be a nice place to start since this podcast is all about safe spaces and facilitating safe spaces. So I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about why feel like it’s important to create spaces that not only centre Queer voices on stage but are led and facilitated by Queer people behind the scenes too.
Felix:
So the whole reason why I really got into acting when I was younger was because I liked pretending to be someone else (laughing) but as I like slowly saw myself in the mirror as I got older, which is something which comes with time with transness, I started realising that there was no character that I wanted to play. There were no characters who fit, that fit me, there was no like little femme-boy characters you know. If you’re like small and quite femme it’s hard and I didn’t want to play the cis-white Gay characters that were being tokenistically written in some theatre. So, I really just wanted to start creating roles that people felt represented in, so I just started writing my own stories down as plays. That’s what happened with ‘How To Kill a Rose’ was us exploring toxic relationships through a trans lens because Trans people are at a much higher rate of domestic abuse than cis people, but I didn’t want a story that was limited by transness you know, it’s a trans story in its context but we don’t actually mention it in the script, and that was something that was really important for me because if I was finding trans scripts it would just be a monologue about them being trans and like I don’t care, who cares, you know the easiest thing about being trans is actually being trans, it’s everyone else’s opinions that makes it hard and volatile. So yeah, like we created Transcend Theatre just with that aim to really authentically tell Trans stories on stage and make sure the whole team was Queer. So everyone we hired for ‘How to Kill a Rose’ was Queer from the sound designers, to the stage managers, to the light and set designers. Obviously it’s me and Christy and Ailís who are in the core team of it, and me and Christie are both Trans and Ailís is Queer AF. So yeah, we just wated to make sure that when we were telling these stories and creating these spaces we wanted it all Queer-centred because I don’t believe people can tell our raw stories ever as authentically as we can.
Ella:
You’ve brought me right onto another thing that I was going to talk to you about which is around representation or just talking about issues to do with safety in a way that’s not through the lens of cis-heteronormative ideas of those things. I know as a youth worker, when you go and receive training around things like domestic abuse, it’s incredibly heteronormative, incredibly like cis-centred, just not good basically, it's awful, and the amount of training sessions I’ve sat through and just been like this is not only not educating people but will be actually damaging people by how limited your ideas of these things are. Obviously, it’s really important that you’re making these things known, and that you’re talking about these things and you’re showing different types of experiences of things like domestic abuse, but I also thought it’d be nice maybe to talk about why the arts are such a good format to have those conversations through?
Felix:
For me I think arts is the only feasible way for me to make my stories accessible to everyone. You know, what I try to do with my scripts is I understand and recognise that cis people will never know what it’s like to live a day in a trans person’s shoes, but, for them two hours or whatever where they come to my plays and suspend their disbelief I can give them an insight. For me, it is the most raw form of self-expression to get a bunch of people in the space and be like this is what I’m going to say and you’re going to listen to me, and that is, as Trans people I believe we have the most autonomy over our bodies in the whole of society, and I believe like this is one of me having autonomy over my speech, over how I take up space and that is through the arts and theatre and I believe everyone should have that output, erm, no matter if they see themselves as an artist or not I believe everyone is the way we see and feel our memories. You know I do a lot of workshops with young people now and I get them to see and feel their memories, see if it stands out visually, see if they can hear things, see if they can touch things, see if it can, you know what sticks out to them, because, every person has a different perspective on how they see the world, and every person has a story to tell, so it’s just about channelling your way of telling your story to try and make it as accessible to people. But at the same time, to not make it digestible for people. I say make it as accessible for people because people will never be able to understand what it’s like in our shoes, but don’t water yourself down for what you expect cis or straight people to hear from you. As Queer people we have to create the art we want to create and not ask for permission, because if artists needed to ask for permission for their art, artists wouldn’t exist, they wouldn’t exist as artists. So it’s just about creating what you, what you want to make, what you want to say, even if it never gets released and you never show anyone, just writing it down can sometimes help to just get them thoughts out your brain. So I just believe for me, arts is the truest most fairest form of self-expression because you don’t need any permission for it.
Ella:
Yeah, something which a lot of people have said when I’ve had conversations like this on the podcast is that arts and especially poetry is not only a way to communicate with other people but also a safe way to have that conversation with yourself.
Felix:
You know there’s so much things going on in our brain all the time that we can, that are in our consciousness and that live in our subconsciousness that we can’t recognise, so, even sometimes just getting them onto paper can clear it in a way that we never thought we could because we can say, oh, that’s what’s bothering me, oh that’s what’s jumping out, oh that’s what my brain wants to write about and we can’t really do that if we’re just keeping it all in our brain sometimes.
Ella:
Definitely, and I feel like your playwriting does that in such a beautiful way where, having watched it, it’s so amazing how your practices sort of entwine with each other, like I feel like as a creative you have so many different avenues of making and of sharing and of like processing and communicating all of these different things. Like I love how your spoken word practice is sort of so entwined with your acting and your writing and how that also like goes into your activism as well.
Felix:
Thank you. I think, I think they are all very aligned you know, and I think as I’ve, as I’ve got older they’ve aligned in more ways than I thought. For a while I was a bit like, what am I doing? Like what is it that I do?And people would be like you know what is it you do could you provide a bio, could you provide an intro and I’d be struggling, but you know now I realise we don’t have to put ourselves in any boxes. We don’t have to call ourselves necessarily, oh, a theatre maker, oh a poet, oh this, and even if you do you can add a few on there, don’t be ashamed to add a few, even if you don’t feel that established in them because as people we are so complex, you can’t expect, especially in the arts it all ties together, it is very very rare for you to only be one type of artist I believe because if you are, you know, a poet, you still have to see them memories usually to create things, you usually have a bit of musical influence if you know it’s spoken word and it has a bit of rhythm to it. You know they’re all so interchangeable and as the arts become more gentrified and capitalised they kind of try to push us away into careers, into cyber, basically (laughing) they’ve basically just pushed us into little boxes saying okay, you want to do this, you stay here in this one and try to make it like you know how they’ve capitalised their society. But, you know, that’s not true, at the end of the day I believe anyone creative is just an artist, and they might have different outlets and stuff but I don’t necessarily believe you can be defined by, by one.
Ella:
Yeah, completely. I had a conversation with a record label based in Manchester called No Such Thing and we were talking about how it’s so like sort of commercial and capitalist based the way you feel like you have to put different hats on to talk to different people and to be validated in certain spaces as well. Like if you’re someone who makes through different outlets why are you limiting yourself to one thing or only talking about certain experiences to like come across better in certain spaces.
Felix:
Yeah, yeah. No it’s true like why would we want to limit ourselves to one thing when we have such a rich, beautiful, arts industry and I believe that is like a way that they’ve really tried to stop us from telling our stories and finding people who also share similar experiences to us, you know what I mean like. They do use it as a tool of separation and art is just about division and bringing everyone together so we just need to make sure no one feels limited by any labels that they never put on themselves, or other people have enforced onto them.
Ella:
Deffo, and I feel like this is a really nice tangent to maybe talk a bit about the work that you’re doing with Reclaim Pride Liverpool in terms of your specific role of thinking about socialism and Queer activism and how that relates to reclaiming pride and then moving it away from the very sort of capitalist charade that it’s become for a lot of cities.
Felix:
Yeah, so basically what has happened to prides among the city, among the world is people have seen ooo this one weekend a year a lot of Queer people get together and try and celebrate their identities and anything that people realise has attention will be capitalised, will be gentrified, and it has been, and it’s been capitalised by those in the Queer community who have the most privilege, who don’t need to protest and it’s been allowed through that, like a lot of cisgendered white gay men, since it might not be as volatile for them in spaces like work places etc. they have kind of allowed this idea of pride being turned into, being turned into a pop concert rather than a protest and it has genuine negative effects every day for Queer people when it comes to like stuff like the council and LCR Pride and other places that have been capitalised, their prides or a lot of money dedicated to the Queer community goes towards them putting on this pop concert which is created for those with the most privilege, and our aim at reclaim pride is to get them funds relocated into stuff like mutual aid projects, education in schools, venues, workplaces, just stuff like creative writing workshops you know meet ups, sober meet ups for Queer people because a lot of the Queer spaces are centered around you know alcoholism and bars and stuff like that and they’re always underground and you know all the problems that come with that, and also the ethical funders policy. So Barclays sponsor LCR Pride and sponsor Prides up and down the country, and Barclays are the number one fossil fuel provider for the whole of Europe, so we see how oxymoronic those things are, they’re saying they’re helping Queer people but they’re harming the whole planet, and obviously climate change you know it affects everyone, but it does disproportionately affect Queer people when it comes to our job opportunities, and it comes to like the areas we live in, the areas we populate, when it comes to stuff like accessing safe shelters and stuff, it does just disproportionately affect Queer people, and obviously it affects Queer people in the ways it affects everyone else. So, our plan with Reclaim Pride is just to say right listen it’s oxymoronic you’re doing this with Barclays because since Barclays is sponsoring their pride they’re like, oh it’s fine we’re destroying the world because at least we give money to fund a pop concert for the Queer every year (laughing) you know what I mean? So, erm, yeah, our job at Reclaim Pride is basically saying to LCR Pride stop paying our council a ridiculous amount of money to block the roads off because that goes against everything pride stands for anyway, paying to block the roads off (laughing) like the whole point is that we block the roads, that is the whole point of the protest is that we block the road. So yeah, that’s basically our job with Reclaim job just relocate the funds in Liverpool to make it a safer space for Queer people day to day rather than focus it on this pop concert that actual Queer people don’t even enjoy.
Ella:
For me anyway as someone who grew up financially marginalised it’s amazing like how harmful it is like as well if you can’t afford to go. Like the fact that you have to pay to enter public Queer spaces like gay village in Manchester for example is just, it’s like unbelievable to me that that’s like the state that pride and like celebrations and like not only Queer joy but like you’re saying a place of protest and a space of solidarity, you now have to pay a fee! To enter those spaces! It’s absolutely bizarre so I think like what you’re doing is incredibly important.
Felix:
The spaces that we have created for us like they have genuinely, as you say, capitalised and gentrified the spaces that are made for us and even the spaces that are still made for us they want to block them off on the weekend that’s meant to celebrate and change our future for the better while Queer people are still, you know, experiencing the same hardships every day, it’s just, you know, it makes no genuine sense.
Ella:
Deffo, and like I think like you said it just speaks to a really just slim view of what Queerness is, like it doesn’t like take into account like you said people who still need to protest, or even just like members of the Queer community who are disabled for example, who are financially marginalised, who just can’t access like these spaces which are so inaccessible on so many levels like there are so many barriers to access for these, like you said, basically big like pop concerts, and it really alienates people from their community I think, especially when, like you said, most Queer spaces are like based around alcohol and nightlife spaces anyway.
Felix:
Yeah exactly like it further, further reinforces that and, and it’s just really thinking about how we can change that and at Reclaim Pride we have genuine ideas, and Manchester have just been successful with reclaiming their pride and I genuinely couldn’t be any happier, and obviously we have all these ideas and we have a sustainable model but now with Manchester reclaiming pride we can actually see, show how that works in affect, show what I believe will really be positive reactions and positive outcomes and when we have that I believe within the next few years we will have genuinely reclaimed pride, and if not, there better be other funding pots and LCR pride have a lot of explaining to do.
Ella:
Definitely, and I think you’re a really good example of, those things are attainable and they’re necessary, and especially organisations that have big pots of funding behind them should be doing the work. You know if people who have full time jobs, have other things going on in their lives, don’t have funding behind them are making sure to be dedicated to these causes then those big corporate forces should be doing the same, at bare minimum.
Felix:
Exactly.
Ella:
And like I said, all the stuff you’re doing is just amazing like, I could just list off for days and days and days and days all of work that you do, and I think something that is fantastic about you is that not only do you facilitate creative spaces and share your story which obviously helps others to feel seen, you know, to have representation, you know, to have their stories told or to open their eyes to other people’s experiences, but you’re also so heavily involved with activist scenes across the UK actually. You know there’s tonnes of stuff from organising Trans Pride Liverpool and a Transgender Day of Remembrance, to working on commissions around Trans history, you’re just constantly showing up and making space for your community. These spaces are often, and pretty much always in response to intense pain and hardship that’s faced by Queer people, but I’d also like to make some space for you to talk about moments of pride or moments of Queer joy that you’ve found within activist spaces. Do you have any moments of Queer joy that you’d like to share with us today?
Felix: (around 23 mins)
Yeah, of course like this is the thing about activism, I think, I think sometimes it gets painted with this brush that it’s all like you know shouting and megaphones and anger and yeah it is but we always have such a good time because if we’re not having a good time while we’re trying to create these spaces then what future are we building, what future are we building? You know we’re always having a laugh because it is about joy and no non-Queer person, no cisgendered straight person will ever understand the Queer euphoria of being with your community all caring about the same thing, and the same cause at the same time and it doesn’t matter what’s brought you to be there, because right now you’re all there, showing up for the same course. No non-Queer person will ever be able to understand that I don’t believe and the amount, the moments of Queer joy, when I see someone at a protest who I haven’t seen in a few months or whatever and they’ve started hormone therapy and they finally look like themselves properly like on the outside to what they felt internally, like, people will never be able to understand that. The feeling I got when I was finally able to take my shirt off in public and take that deepest breath I’ve ever took, people won’t be able to understand that, you know, people don’t. We have so many moments of Queer joy that go, that go, almost just unappreciated by non-Queer people because it’s always been given to them, but there is so much euphoria and so much blessing in being Queer in knowing yourself that well, that even if it can be volatile, even if you can be in a negative really situation, you’re still showing up for yourself, because a lot of people who’ve never faced any barriers can’t even show up for themselves, no matter other people. So when we’re Queer people there, showing up for ourselves, showing up for other people who have the same experience as us, people will never be able to understand that, and I just yeah I genuinely feel so lucky and blessed that I’ve got to a point in my career that I get to share my own experience and other people get to share their own experiences with me and there’s it’s just so, genuinely there’s just so much joy and there’s just so much blessing I genuinely do feel like gender euphoria is, is, you know it is something that is exclusive to Trans people and, and that feeling, that first time you get it, and it comes in waves and it’s not a thing that sticks and, erm, completely most of the time, it is something that comes in waves and it can go up and down and when those waves are high like you know there’s nothing like it, there’s nothing like it, and I feel like it something that needs to be talked about more.
Queer people, we’re so funny. Do you know what I mean? We have such a laugh. Our spaces when we create them safe, like we do and like you do at Where are the Girlbands and like Comics Youth do, when we create them safe spaces effectively, with everyone in mind, no one will ever be able to understand the comfortability and the joy that we find within them. For sure.
Ella:
Yeah, I’d agree with everything you just said and it is just a feeling like no other and I feel like there needs to be another word for like, Queer joy, because it’s just like it’s its own thing like it’s separate from joy or even euphoria it just is the feeling that it is, and it’s so much of community and like there’s no more of a community space than a protest or than a spaces of activism, even if it is a space that you’ve ended up because of hardship. So thank you for sharing that, it was really lovely.
Felix: (26 mins)
Oh I’m glad, I’m glad, and I hope anyone listening, if you don’t feel like you know what Queer joy is yet, you will find it. It will come to you, you can’t go looking for it, you can’t go searching for it, you will find it. Even if it’s looking on your TV and seeing that Kim Petras has a song that’s one of the number 1s, you know what I mean, it’s, Queer joy can be as small as that or it can be as big as a life changing surgery. It can, there’s no way to measure it, it’s just yeah, and just know that when you do feel that joy, no cis straight person can ever feel it (laughing) that’s something they can’t take away from us (laughing)
Ella:
Yeah, gatekeeping joy and euphoria from cis and straight people, I love it. On that note of like joy and community and stuff, what are some things that you’re looking forward to this year?
Felix:
I’m really excited for Reclaim Pride, that will be a longevity project that is, will be very behind the scenes until we do have material things that we can show people how we’re improving. Very excited for all of that because I do believe that if our ideas are successful, which will take a while, but I do believe they will be, I do believe Liverpool can be one of the safest cities with the safest implements for Queer people, not just in the world but in the UK. So I do truly believe that and know that, just because I know what works you know I’ve been out for 8 years I know what works and what doesn’t, I know what works in improving attitudes towards Queerness, but, something I’m really looking forward to is my theatre company Transcend Theatre. I’m writing another musical, I’m writing a scouse, gay, rap, musical about working glass oppression which is told through the eyes of drug dealers (laughing) erm, so yeah it’s a gay scouse rap dealing musical called ‘Be Gay, Do Crime’ and it explores institutional oppression throughout lots of different marginalised intersectional communities that are represented by people, but it’s a lot of joy, it’s a lot of satire, it’s a lot of funniness, it’s a lot of laughs because you know no one knows how to have more of a laugh than working class people do (laughing) let’s be honest. It talks about all the you know, people who live in detached or semi-detached houses or whatever, a lot of the time they keep their lives just like that, detached, separated. But it’s about showing the vibrant-ness, the solidarity on estates, because I’ve, I, people always have this idea of, oh working class people and Queerphobia but I’ve actually been the most accepted that I ever have on estates where I was growing up and estates that I’ve visited since I’ve come out and stuff, so yeah it’s just a big scouse rap extravaganza, doing all that, focussing on all that.
I’m also, erm, performing at the Barbican for, erm, Transpose Joy, the 31st March to the 2nd April, erm, which I am really excited for. I’m just basically rapping for twenty minutes (laughing) I wanted to show them something they’d never seen and I wanted to kind of yeah, and they’ve definitely never seen a little 5”4 scouse Pakistani lad rapping before have they so, erm, so I wanted to do that and then I also do like a ten minute prayer on how being Queer is a blessing and you know all that, all that lovely, lovely stuff so I guess they’re the things I’m looking forward to the most. But mostly I’m just excited to see my Queer people around me blossom and you know a lot of people come to me at different stages of their careers, transitions, so much, and there’s nothing more beautiful for me than when I see someone three months on T and I think oh wow you know it’s been three months and you look so much happier and you know that’s, that’s the best thing about my career. You know I don’t like to call it a job because I don’t really believe that I have a necessary job except to make the world a better place for my communities, not just being Trans but being scouse because I find being scouse really hard when I enter a lot of spaces, erm, but erm, yeah like that is the biggest blessing seeing the people around me happy. Seeing the people around me achieve milestones, erm, coming out to people they never thought they could, wearing things they never thought they could, you know, if I go out for a drink with my friends and they come out in an outfit that I know two years ago they never would have even dreamed about wearing, that’s what I’m excited for, because we have enough Queer sadness, we just need to find that Queer joy wherever we can find it and we do all have it within us, it’s just about finding whatever makes you happy and remembering that whoever you are, whatever you want to do with your life, whatever makes you happy, whatever gender expression, whatever sexuality, whatever, has nothing to do with what other people think of you, it has nothing to do with what other people think. Other people, insecure bigoted people, they might try to inflict certain things on you, and try and make it your problem, but Queerphobia is an external problem, and I say this all the time but it is nothing to do with us, it is nothing to do with us. People make out oh being Trans, being Queer is so hard. No, no, no, it might have been created hard because of the people around us, but it intrinsically in itself is not a hard thing, it is not a bad thing, it is a beautiful thing to know yourself that well. As I was saying before, never, ever, ever, ever, ever feel any guilt, any shame, anything surrounding your identity and how you want to express, and they can be very contradictory things as well, like my gender identity is quite Trans Masculine, it’s quite this, but right now I’m sat here with my acrylics done, lip-gloss on, you know my hair long, dungarees, you know, a mesh top, however you identify and however you want to express on the outside have nothing to do with each other and those things certainly have nothing to do with other people’s opinions even if they can be tarnished, dampened, and your shine might be taken away sometimes, it will come back brighter. So that’s what I always try to say to as many people as I can, keep your sense of self and other people’s opinions separate, and that’s much easier said than done and it comes with time, but that is the only thing in my whole journey that I have ever accepted that has made me be able to do anything.
Ella:
You’re literally making me tear up, I don’t know whether you can see but like, the eyes are welling, they are seriously welling! I think it’s just like, I completely resonate with everything you were saying and I think you know as much as you can celebrate achievements that you can put down on paper there is no better feeling than seeing the people around you like come into themselves and find like self-acceptance and the joy and the euphoria that we were talking about before, it’s just such a beautiful thing and I’m literally going to start sobbing so I need to –
Felix:
No like Ella I’ve known you personally for a long time do you know what I mean like, like there isn’t anything more special than people finding their niche, finding what they love, being the person that they love, or being the person that they can start to accept. There is nothing more beautiful in the entire world and bigoted people, they hide themselves away from wanting to go on that journey and that with people, but they don’t realise what it’s like. You know I have a lot of people come to me who are like, you know, I was genuinely so horrible to you in school because I didn’t know, because I didn’t have the vocabulary around me, because I was insecure and took it out on you, and I genuinely am just like, yeah, it was really horrible that you put that on me, but at the same time you were going through a journey, and I recognise that, and I recognise that, you know, as Queer people a lot of the time we do have to fight our own corner, we do have to stand our own ground, we do have to have a lot of conversations that we don’t want to have, but they don’t define us in anyway, and you might say something to someone and think why have I just said that, but at the same time, you don’t have to explain your Queerness, you don’t have to explain what’s going on in your head to anyone unless you feel comfortable to do so. Even if someone’s intentions are pure, even if someone has the purest of intentions, you don’t have to answer them, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to do that thing, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to sit in a room of cis straight people and want to sit in bed all day, you can, you can do whatever you want. Queerness is something which has been created, that has been turned into a volatile reality for a lot of us, but it doesn’t have to be a volatile internal reality, and that is something that we can all change and if we all change that, it can change. All I’ve ever done for my journey, all I’ve ever done for these things I do now is change my perception of Queerness that had been ingrained into me. That is all I have ever done and stuck by it and known that I’m right and had people who supported me eventually around me, so all you have to do is stick to your guns and know that you’re on the right side of history. Us Queer people, we’re not going anywhere, us Queer people have always been everywhere, colonialism just ruined it, took it out of our culture, took it out of cultures all around the world, ripped it apart of cultures (if anyone wants to hear more, I did a commission for the museum which sums it out quite well called Memories Burnt if you’re interested in hearing more about the colonial rule of gender and how it’s enforced these negative opinions into our societies). Queerness is, there’s nothing wrong with it, there is nothing wrong. So we can’t have any negative, shameful perceptions of ourselves, there’s no room for it in your brain with enough that’s going on outside. When we talk about creating these safe spaces, we can create these safe spaces and it’s gorgeous that we’re making them outside, but we have to make sure that we’re centring them inside. We have to make sure our brains are a safe space for us to live in personally and safe spaces externally can help us get there, but at the end of the day you have to create it internally or at the end of the day you’re going to live a life conforming to what you think other people want you to live, and there’s no Queer joy in that, only Queer oppression, and don’t let them oppress your thoughts as much as they’ve already oppressed our lifestyles to an extent.
Ella:
I feel like that is such like an important and like powerful statement to end this interview on, so thank you so much for sharing all of that with me, you’re just so amazing and doing so many amazing things and you’re literally like this close to ruining my makeup and I spent so long doing this white eyeliner on top of the black one this morning.
Felix:
It looks fab so I’m glad I didn’t ruin it (laughing)
Ella:
Well, thank you very much!
Felix:
Thank you, thank you for having me, those were great questions (laughing)
That was the incredible Felix Mufti-Wright. You can find Felix on socials as @felixmufti be sure to check out @transcendtheatre and @reclaimpridelvr too.
Our song of the week is ‘Better Light’ a beautiful and empowering single by Louis Cross a Trans* Disabled artist who uses song writing to share his life experiences, including his neuropathy, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, which weakens his arms and legs. Inspired by the likes of Hozier and The Lumineers, Louis Cross’s acoustic style is paired back and emotive in all the best ways. Louis Cross aims to raise the voices of disability and the LGBTQ* community through his personal and relatable lyrics. In 2022 Louis Cross is planning to release his debut EP which talks about his experience in various situations with his disability. In this first single, “better light” Louis talks about how his disability affected him and his mental health in the past, and how he looks towards a bright future.
Play Better Light by Louis Cross
We are Ella and Eve from Where are the Girlbands working in collaboration with Comics Youth to bring you interviews with local organisations and individuals who create safe spaces. You can find us on Instagram as @wherearethegirlbands where we celebrate women in music and discuss how to make local music scenes more accessible for everyone through reviews, video series, interviews and events! You can find more about Comics Youth on Instagram at @comicsyouth or via the website comicsyouth.co.uk. Comics Youth is a youth led organisation that aims to empower youth across the Liverpool City Region to flourish from the margins of society, creating safe spaces where young people can harness their own narratives and find confidence within a creative community. Comics Youth provide a range of creative services designed to support and amplify the often diminished voices of young people, from zine creation to youth led publishing hubs and projects such as this podcast which highlights the voices of those working within our community to create safe spaces! Thanks for listening.
