The Drag Queen Comedian Who Wants To Create a World Where Being Queer Is the Norm

Muhammad Moiz has a number of personas: a brash, outspoken lady behind Snapchat filters known as Shumaila Bhatti, ruminating on household, Rishta Aunties, lip fillers, wedding ceremony seasons and gossip; a drag queen who does soiled comedy all about intercourse and sexuality known as Miss Phudina Chatni; and a podcast the place Moiz and a buddy are simply being their introspective, irreverent selves.

Shumaila Bhatti was Moiz’s first foray into comedy, whereas Moiz was nonetheless in America on a scholarship. Also called the Desi Bombshell – as a result of she made jokes in Punjabi, she’s a Bhatti in spite of everything – her web page has nearly 200,000 followers on Fb. After that unimaginable success, the Miss Phudina Chatni present began – impressed by RuPaul – when Moiz got here again to Pakistan; the identify is a sexual pun in and of itself, a play on Pudina Chutney with the slang phrases for vagina and licking thrown within the midst.

Miss Phudina Chatni. Photograph: Creator supplied

Moiz can also be a Khwaja Sira group member and an activist. Moiz doesn’t use the time period transgender due to the locations and language it comes from. Moiz says that is an anti-colonial, anti-imperial, native identification, not one framed by western terminology.

Khawaja Sira roughly interprets to caretaker of the house, as eunuchs had been to the Mughal courts; in literal Persian, ‘Sira’ means resting place, ‘Khawaja’ means grasp. Extra figuratively, it’s a time period that gives a secure haven and shelter for a whole spectrum of gender identities and sexualities, with out the ‘white labels’ of (LG)BTQI – emphasis purely on the latter – that Moiz says makes the indigenous sound “alien”.

Khawaja Sira encompasses folks born with male our bodies however carrying the spirit of a girl, it encompasses cross dressers, the sexually curious, non-binary folks – folks born with ambiguous genitalia or modified genitalia (just like the eunuchs); Khawaja Sira is a means of being, in spirit, in thought and has little to do with the corporeal kind.

The conservatives converse towards LGBTQI, however they don’t converse towards Khawaja Siras as a result of they had been traditionally ordained in courts, in Islamic scholarship, and known as on by native communities to, for example, have a good time the beginning of a kid. There’s a sufi factor to the time period as nicely. The ‘guru’ and the ‘chela’, the grasp and the disciple. Moiz espouses the time period ‘Qalandar’, as a result of Moiz’s grasp was a devotee of Sehwan Sharif, some of the fashionable shrines in Sindh, the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.

Moiz was born in Abbottabad, a metropolis in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa however one the place Hindko is extensively spoken, notably among the many Hazara group. Because of this Moiz’s personal identification is so fluid. Moiz switches completely between Punjabi, Urdu and English throughout the drag routine. Even Moiz’s pronouns say they/her/him on their Instagram with 30,000 followers. ‘They’ being the popular pronoun.

I met Moiz when Miss Phudina Chatni was performing in Lahore this November. The primary query I requested was in regards to the a number of tattoos. The Hindu goddess Parvati on one forearm, an Imam Zamin over that bicep, and on the opposite forearm, the proportions of the Golden Ratio in its diagram kind, one thing that has fascinated the disciplines of geometry to structure to artwork from historical occasions.

In drag, I noticed Miss Phudina Chatni carrying a glowing orange lehenga choli with an embroidered inexperienced dupatta and a blonde wig. Her comedy is riotously soiled. Grownup comedy is an understatement, she leaves no swear phrase untouched, no a part of the physique unused, no act of delight unmentioned. Most of it’s Miss Chatni’s personal intercourse life, however typically she takes digs on the heteronormativity round her, and heterosexual males basically, the guardians of patriarchy. When the egregious swearing begins, she says, “Earlier than you consider cancelling me, keep in mind Shehzad Ghias remains to be alive.” Ghias is a fellow comic who has been often cancelled.

Simply after that, she takes a minute and asks the room to go searching in any respect the heterosexual males sitting there, “even your important others”. The room goes quiet. After a minute has handed, she says, “Don’t like something you see, na?” That’s the tragedy of heterosexuality, she goes on, it seems so mundane. “It’s higher to develop into a lesbian. Even in case you don’t, I like to recommend you’ve gotten one other lady go down on you not less than as soon as in life, belief me they received’t be as incompetent as these guys.”

“I’ve tried explaining vaginas to heterosexual males many occasions,” she goes on. There’s the outlet the place you’re presupposed to enter, over that could be a tinier gap which is the urethra, and above each of these is the magic button you’re on the lookout for, the clitoris. “Most males can’t appear to seek out it, prefer it’s one thing invisible.” Then she tells the viewers what the clitoris is named in Punjabi – by the way a preferred breakfast alternative – and what’s presupposed to be finished to it. “You possibly can thank me now girls, I’ve simply educated your husbands.”

In the direction of the tip of the present, she takes out a vibrator and turns it on, on the bottom settings first, and places it subsequent to her microphone. Slowly she raises the settings and at last to the utmost the place the room is simply reverberating with the sounds of buzzing. Speedy, overwhelming. Then she says, “Now inform me in case your man can do that”.

In the midst of her routine, she ponders over the phrases penis and vagina being so vanilla, so boring. They lack the descriptive vary that Urdu and Punjabi phrases for genitalia have, she says. For large ones and small ones, for huge ones and slender ones. “Just like the Punjabi phrase for a small penis. You realize, for all of the Aitchisonians [those who studied at the Aitchison College in Lahore] right here.”

Then come her sexual escapades. “You realize you’re on Lahori Tinder when all the great wanting males are from India.” She says of Lahore, which is so near Amritsar that Tinder’s search distance exhibits folks from throughout the border. Her hookups drive her to DHA Section 7 Lahore. “Whether or not it’s Karachi Section 7 or Lahore section 7, all section 7s have the identical goal: to supply empty roads the place folks can have intercourse in parked automobiles.”

On one such hookup, she says, she was in a Suzuki Mehran having intercourse within the winter and the home windows began fogging up, reminding her of that scene in Titanic. She thought why not, “I’ll put my hand on the aspect window too”. Solely when she pulled it again, she was staring into the face of a police officer, peering in. The thulla – as a policeman is named in Lahore – mentioned what are you doing, in a threatening tone. She answered, “Can’t you see?” “This tiny car is shaking left and proper like there’s an earthquake on the market.” She needed to bribe him to go away and the intercourse wasn’t even value it. “Lahori boys, I swear.”

Speaking about intercourse in Pakistan, historically a taboo topic, she says when you peel away the sanctimonious outer layer of a pious society, there isn’t even a gay or heterosexual or bisexual, there’s simply sexual. “They don’t spare anybody or something right here”.

Language and tradition

Moiz has been Khawaja Sira activist longer than they’ve been a performer. Away from the comedy, Moiz is an instructional, a public well being practitioner and has a masters diploma in international well being coverage. Moiz can also be on the streets protesting, and within the courts preventing circumstances.

Muhammad Moiz has been Khawaja Sira activist longer than they’ve been a performer. Photograph: Creator supplied

Moiz was vocal towards a well-known Khawaja Sira movie star, Kami Sid, over the alleged rape and homicide of a 13-year-old who got here to hitch the group. Moiz can also be the survivor of an tried gang-rape by the Beelas [according to Vice, “predominantly ex-lovers or intimate partners of transgender people who seek revenge after being denied sexual or romantic consent”] in September 2021 as a result of Moiz has been vocal towards them too, likening them to an organised crime syndicate, preying on the Moorats – the effeminate, the essence of the Khawaja Sirah group – and different non-binary, ‘effeminate’ males.

In Khawaja Sira terminology, there are those that establish as Moorats, and people who use them for intercourse work, their patrons, the Beelas. Most Moorats’ supply of earnings is from them.

Some from throughout the group aren’t proud of the protests, saying Moorats and Beelas have a co-dependent system going again a long time and the Khwaja Sira group has all the time settled their issues internally, not in courts, which had been imposed upon them by the British, and the remnants of the British in South Asia that at the moment are nation-states.

In truth, their need to stay unbiased and autonomous as a group entails an improvised model of the Farsi language; the Khawaja Sirah Farsi is exclusive, it’s not Persian, it’s not Urdu. it’s a coded, secretive language to speak amongst each other with out worry or judgment, whereas signalling to one another that they’re a part of the commune. However lives are in danger, together with Moiz’s personal, therefore the will to get the state concerned within the safety of all its residents.

In different interviews, Moiz has mentioned they don’t need to mainstream the queer, they need to queer the mainstream, which is what fashionable drag artists like Begum Nawazish Ali and Moin Akhtar’s Rozi had been doing earlier than them. Phudina Chatni’s exhibits are doing simply that: the place being queer isn’t a distinct segment label however the norm. Abolish poisonous masculinity, Moiz says, and embrace femininity. Abolish the gender of the ‘man’, the son, the brother, the daddy, in order that they don’t have daughters, sisters and moms for them to behave as overseers. Abolish these tilted energy dynamics.

On the finish of the Miss Phudina Chatni present, she says to an enthralled and packed viewers, that taking a look at gender as a binary is “idiotic”. It doesn’t make any sense. “The long run is femme, the long run is brown, the long run is queer. Get used to it,” she indicators off.

The author is a contract journalist and tweets at @haseebasif.