Afghan Muslim Aunties and Their Queer Gifts

Abstract Aunties in South Asia are known for their love, gossip and watchful eye. They are important actors in kinship circles, social fabrics and transgressive possibilities. As a murat/queer person, I always featured in aunties’ gossip and remained under their watchful eye whether I danced, flirted with their sons or crossed boundaries. In discussions of queerness, we oftentimes forget those Muslim Afghan aunties who risk their lives and become armour for queer and trans kids and adults. Through the autoethnography of three Muslim Afghan aunties who each bestowed upon me a gift—a doll, sex education and heels—I situate aunties as central to queer world-making and survival in times of war (and, more broadly, states of emergency and conflict), and I argue that war inadvertently gives aunties the agency to rebel against the heteronormative and masculinist culture of war and create queer worlds for their kinship circles and beyond.