Episode 289: Arohi Kumar

Coming Out Pod

Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Comedy, Mental Health

4.9 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2024

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Arohi Kumar has been a HERstories participant for the past several years, and in that time, Lauren has seen her confidence and happiness grow exponentially! Arohi (whose identifiers include transfemme, poly, and "bi enough") is a child of Indian immigrants, and the prevalence of male/female separation when she was growing up led to her feeling ostracized on both ends. When it came to attraction, Arohi knew she was attracted to girls, but describes the experience as wanting to be "attracted to girls in the way lesbians are attracted to girls, which is like a very specific, different thing." We debate gender roles vs. gender, and muse on why so many people (including Arohi!) came to terms with their queerness during lockdown. Plus, we talk anxiety, dissociative identity disorder, and OCD...but in a fun, quirky way, like the fun, quirky girls we are!

(TW: discussion of suicidal ideation in childhood, but nothing descriptive)

Speaking of fun and quirky, Arohi made a fun, quirky board game! It's called Grad Rush, and you can check it out at grad-rush.com.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi y'all, welcome to coming out pod.
0:09.5	Okay, queer root shout out today is a little dip back in the archives, but an essential,
0:17.8	I would call it.
0:18.9	Shout out to you if your queer root is Cleo Duval as Graham in the movie,
0:26.3	but I'm a cheerleader.
0:28.0	This is a late 90s movie.
0:32.1	This is a queer classic, if you've never seen, but I'm a cheerleader.
0:36.0	Natasha Leon is in it.
0:38.2	Clitoval plays, I would say, mask of center character named Graham. It's a funny take on queer
0:45.6	conversion camps. I know that doesn't, that doesn't sound funny, but it's like, it's a very funny
0:50.8	campy movie. RuPaul is in it. You try to see it if you haven't seen it.
0:56.7	But yeah, the character of Graham was very notable for our community.
1:01.4	Cledevall famously, an actual queer actress, friends with Natasha Leone in real life.
1:07.5	It's a great movie.
1:09.0	And Graham is a foxy character. And no one actually gets converted. It's a great movie, and Graham is a, is a foxy character. And no one actually
1:13.7	gets converted. It's a funny movie. Okay. So, y'all, I am here today with Arohi Kumar. Hi,
1:23.6	Arrohi. Hi. Welcome. We've been talking about having a Rohe on for a while.
1:31.3	So as you know, if you are a long-time listener, I facilitate a group for the LA LGBT
1:36.3	Center called Her Stories.
1:38.3	And Rohi is a longtime participant, what, like three years maybe, two, two and a half, something? I think so close to like two.
1:47.7	I feel like it feels weird because I'm so on and off, but I mean, I do come back on. So
1:54.7	it does seem to be pretty long. You are what I would call a regular. You dip in and out. You have a life.
	...

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