Elias Jahshan

Kinship and Culture in This Queer Arab Family A new anthology from Saqi Books explores queer, trans and bi Arabs and their families from ten points of view.

'Queerness in these accounts is not an identification that an individual holds despite being Arab; rather, queerness for these authors is inextricable with what it means to be Arab.’

Thank you @markaz-review.bsky.social for the review! @eliasjahshan.bsky.social

themarkaz.org/kinship-and-...

Ending the week with having This Queer Arab Family being reviewed in @markaz-review.bsky.social was not on my bingo card - what a nice surprise 🥹

Read it here 👉 themarkaz.org/kinship-and-...

Join us on 19 February for a panel discussion analysing and deconstructing notions of the family in the Middle East through a queer lens.

Register here: www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-...

@polly-withers.bsky.social @adelatolla.bsky.social @eliasjahshan.bsky.social @hsw.bsky.social

Good morning. Your regular reminder to drink more water, moisturise, and free Palestine ✌️

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Fun fact: my mum says Marie & her late husband, Aussie rugby union legend Nicolas Shehadie (also Leb), were part of the church my own family is linked to: St George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral in Redfern (loads of weddings, funerals & baptisms there). But don’t take my word for it, not verified

I met Marie Bashir a few times during my stint as editor of Star Observer, way back when I used to live in Sydney. She always remembered my name and said it correctly, too - possibly (though I could be reaching lol) because she was related to an Elias (or two) like every other Lebanese person 😂

Vale, Marie Bashir. The first person of Lebanese descent to become Governor in Australia — in this case, the Governor of the state of NSW (where I’m from). She was also the first female governor of NSW, in office 2001-2014

A distinguished doctor, and ally for the queer & Indigenous communities. RIP

Australia politics - the left, the right and everything in between - is so parochial & cringe. The way they pander to blatantly unintelligent talking points, catch phrases and “moral panics” is evidence of this. Unless it grows a backbone & self-awareness, may #auspol burn in a dumpster fire of shit

What a mess. This could’ve been completely avoided if the board, y’know, didn’t make such a woeful decision. You reap what you sow etc

Solidarity with Randa Abdel-Fattah, to Louise Adler, and the writers who have withdrawn in protest.

💯💯💯

A good news story because, blimey, we need one…

A lovely and honest thread about one deaf person's experience of a cochlear implant.

A lovely thread about one person's experience with cochlear implants.

A genuinely life-changing, life-enhancing invention.

All praise forever to Professor Graeme Clark. It was a wonderful day when my implanted kids got to meet him.

And hooray for the NHS. We never received a bill.

Yeh. It’s just because I was never part of the Deaf community nor lived Deaf culture, I’m always conscious of what I say about my experience and don’t want to perpetuate a reductive, essentialist perception that a lot of (hearing) people have of D/Deaf people. I’m all for the nuance & shades of grey

Thank you for the lovely replies and sharing those anecdotes about your kids 🫶🫶

Yeah, and from what I understand his character had full hearing before he lost it all suddenly? It’s not something I could relate to, it’s a very specific experience that speaks to hearing people imo. Deafness is more nuanced than that. I’m still down to watching it! Just not sure when it’ll happen

Little bit of joy on a bleak day

Great thread about one person's experience of cochlear implants.

But looking back on the last two years, I can only say the cochlear implant has been a positive experience for me. It was a choice I made and to have easy access to this level of technology (via universal health care) in this day and age is not something I take for granted. I am beyond grateful.

Each I talk about my cochlear implant journey, I’m conscious I’m promoting oralism - the idea that deaf & hard of hearing people should use oral communication over sign language. I do not condone or support oralism at all. My experience is mine only; it’s not representative of the D/deaf community.

For me I genuinely needed it as I don’t know sign language (neither BSL nor Auslan, not even SSE) and oral speech is my preferred communication. This is because I was brought up removed from the D/deaf culture and other D/deaf people. I do wonder how different my life would be if I knew sign, though

While getting the implant was life-changing for me, I should stress that it’s not a cure for deafness and should never be viewed as such. I’m still deaf and I have no shame in it. It’s a part of who I am.

Cochlear implants are also not for everyone. It’s a choice, and should be respected as such.

My audiologists were floored by how quickly I had adjusted to the cochlear implant. My understanding of speech was near-perfect, something that rarely happens to people with longtime hearing loss before cochlear implant. On activation day, things sounded so weird for me. 4 months later: really clear

I was determined to be part of that 60%. I listened to music everyday, starting with familiar music and doing listening exercises on a music lyric app I had downloaded.

After 4 months, I was back to enjoying music again. A stark contrast to the year prior, when music sounded like white noise to me

It took a little while longer to finally be able to enjoy live music, but that was honestly a bonus for me. My last “obstacle” - and my biggest anxiety - was the basic ability to listen to and enjoy music like I used to. I was warned that only around 60% of cochlear recipients can enjoy music again.

Myself and the audiologists agreed that a 9 month timeline to adjust to my cochlear implant was realistic, given my hearing loss history and religious, daily use of my hearing aid (which kept my hearing nerve stimulated, maintained “sound memory”, etc)

In the end, it only took me 4 months to adjust

Cochlear implants bypass all of that, stimulating the hearing nerve directly with electronic impulses across all sound frequencies. It’s not “natural sound”. I literally had to re-train my brain to understand these electronic signals as “normal” sound. And it worked. It took a while, but it worked.

Hearing aids only amplify natural sounds, and only the frequencies you have access to via the little hairs that remain inside your cochlea. This is why hearing aids eventually stopped being helpful - I had lost so much access to frequencies that hearing aids only made things sound tinny or distorted

It took a few months of adjusting once the cochlear implant was “activated”. I was hearing things I hadn’t heard since a kid, usually high-pitched (eg: morning birdsong) or soft sounds (eg windswept autumn leaves rustling along the footpath). I also had to adjust to this new way of hearing sounds.