Sabah Choudrey is gentle strength and pure grace. They received the GAY TIMES Honour for Future Fighter at our annual awards show in 2021 for lending their powerful voice to trans rights and change, delivered with wisdom, calmness and peace. It’s trans youth who Sabah has dedicated their letter to.
“Again and again you show me all the ways I can be free. Free from judgements, rulings, diagnosis. Free from gender, patriarchy, cisnormativity, white supremacy. Again and again you show me all the ways I can be me,” they write.
“Our spaces are safe, there’s room for it all. And you leave with a community, a chosen family and a name. You remind me that transition simply means to move. And we, trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming people, we move, we push, we pull, we migrate, situate, we diffuse, grow roots, we disperse and transverse across the universe.”
Sabah’s love is a cosmic power that truly is the most gentle of all forcefields. Transformation is seen as a soft awakening rather than a shattering hurricane under Sabah’s loving guidance.
You can read Sabah’s love letter in full below.
Dear trans youth,
Again and again you show me all the ways I can be free. Free from judgements, rulings, diagnosis. Free from gender, patriarchy, cisnormativity, white supremacy. Again and again you show me all the ways I can be me.
You have taught me persistence. That we are a community that survives and persists. We continue to thrive and resist. We will always be here.
You show me how to reclaim uncertainty and to embrace it. You meet us with question marks and shrugs, inviting in the unknown. Our spaces are safe, there’s room for it all. And you leave with a community, a chosen family and a name.
You remind me that transition simply means to move. And we, trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming people, we move, we push, we pull, we migrate, situate, we diffuse, grow roots, we disperse and transverse across the universe.
We call our work trans led because you lead us. We call our communities youth centered because you’re at the heart of what we do. Some call it radical but we just call it youth work, with love.
Love is an action. Love is safety. Love is a protest and love is rage. Love is gender euphoria. Love is finding your name. Love is ‘drink some water.’ Love is unlearning. Love is painful. Love is loss but love fills us up. Love is a fire circle. Love is a pronoun-around. Love is her, him and them.
This is it. This is love.
From Sabah
Through the coming weeks you will get to know more GAY TIMES chosen family member in even more vibrant depth, and in even more Calvin Klein designs – online and across our social platforms.
They all undoubtedly have different superpowers connected to love, but the universal message is the same: Love never stops.
It’s all around us and everywhere we go. Queerness is love. You are love. We are love. This is LOVE.
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