Bad Brown Aunties, Fagony Aunts and Resistance Aunties: Centring Queer Desi Aunties in Diasporic Social Movement and Justice Work

Abstract This article offers an urgent complement to the trope of the South Asian aunty as an agent of discipline, shame, heteropatriarchy and tradition by exploring the counter-archetype of the resistance aunty—the radical feminist aunty who holds down social movements—in the South Asian diaspora. This article centres a queer lens on transgressive and activist aunties, and analyses digital and in-person queerings of the aunty in contemporary social and cultural movements. Examining resistance aunties in the writing, performances, interviews and other digital and in-person cultural work of four queer South Asians in the US and the UK, this article asserts the aunty as a core agent of resistance. It develops the notion of the resistance aunty in conversation with activist aunting in Black American organising and scholarship, and locates the legacy of the resistance aunty in queer and trans movements in the Global South and in the diaspora. By applying a new theoretics of resistance auntyhood to studies of aunty labour, this article argues for the importance of queer activist aunties in nurturing and propelling transformative social movements.