Raised as Catholic, with a Muslim father, Riyadh has his own take on religion and being gay. He meets people who have lost their religious communities, found salvation in a new inclusive religious family, or found an unconventional route to having the best bits of their gay and faith identities.
Having himself felt the pressure to ‘masc-up’, Riyadh sets out to explore the fundamentals of masculinity in a bid to understand the growing trend of gay men suffering from increased levels of body dysmorphic disorder, eating disorders and self-harm. From the drag scene and femme-shaming through to taking part in a cover shoot for a gay magazine, Riyadh will be looking at where the pressure for masculine perfection is coming from.
Around a quarter of all homeless people in Britain identify as being LGBT - but once homeless, their sexual identity is overshadowed by the stigma of homelessness. If home is where the heart is, Riyadh asks, why do so many queer people find themselves without a home?
From a mixed-race household with Middle Eastern and Irish heritage, Riyadh with his unusual name and fair complexion knows first-hand how judgemental the gay community online can be. With his perceived ‘white privilege’, he explores the casual racism in the LGBTQ+ community and asks, when does preference become prejudice?
Riyadh immerses himself into the world of pornography. In an age when the average teen is getting their sexual education online, Riyadh wants to get under the skin on what’s on offer. He’ll be looking at why gay men are fetishizing ‘chavs’, the difference between lesbians porn and queer porn, and what it our pornographic appetites tell us about sexual identity.
Riyadh gets to grips with all things ‘Queer’. A once pejorative label, reclaimed by academics and activists in the 80s, it has now become an all-encompassing identity. So, what does it mean to be queer in Britain in 2017?
