Author: Khalil F.

Feeling loneliness in a city of lights

Khalil F.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

In both the book Neuromancer and the movie Blade Runner, the setting where all of the story takes place are very similar in ways. They are both very monumental works in the Cyberpunk genre, and so have very similar themes. In both works, the story takes place in a big dystopian city. In one of the first iconic shots in the movie Blade Runner, the futuristic city of 2019 Los Angeles is shown. There are huge towers and lights everywhere, giant screens with ads and flying cars. The streets are filled with people who are not as high tech as the towers around them, and everything is not as beautiful and bright as it seems.

In Neuromancer’s Chiba, it is a very similar place. Chiba and its sub city called Night City, is a huge place in Japan filled with new technology and many people from different cultures. Again, it is described with a lot of flashing lights and colors, but the people itself are trying their hardest to make a name for themselves. In Neuromancer’s world of technological innovation, the people living in it are modifying themselves or choosing to live in the shadows.

Blog Post #3: More Human Than Human

Khalil F.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

With Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”, she explored a world where there is a utopian idea that had no need for the labels that gender brought. It dreamed of a concept where cyborgs have no sexual development and don’t need to be organic have the specific identities that people face in real life. I think that the idea is really cool, the thought of no need for certain pressures for how to live and love people, and how to be a person based on what people thought of your own gender. In Janelle Monae’s album “Dirty Computer”, there is a very similar idea when it comes to the conflict. In “Dirty Computer” the idea of being a woman, being queer, being a minority, was seen as something bad, or “dirty”. The main character that was shown throughout the album that was supposed to be “cleaned” of all of those thoughts and ideas. I think that it is very similar to how “A Cyborg Manifesto” was about, but in the opposite sense.

In the film that goes with the album for “Dirty Computer” the android Jane 57821 is seen struggling with her own identity as the society she lives in tries to remove all her ideas of being queer.


While “A Cyborg Manifesto” has the idea of a perfect place that doesn’t have complex ideas on what it means to be a person, “Dirty Computer” punishes people for challenging those beliefs. It is seen as something bad to a lot of people in the real world just to be different, and Haraway thought to challenge those beliefs and the concept of what identity means. I think that Monae also has a similar thought, dreaming of a world where these things do not matter, and people are simply free to be who they are. In “So Afraid”, Monae sings about how she feels scared to even admit the feelings she has. Considering that it is fine for her to stay in her shell and not be proud of who she is. But these fears are presented as a normal thing. It is okay to be scared to challenge peoples beliefs, but as seen in “A Cyborg Manifesto”, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It can actually make everyone feel more comfortable, and not weighed down by certain labels.

The Shifting of my Queer Experience

Khalil F.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

For the longest time, the fact that I was a queer man just did not matter to me. Not even in the way that it was not a big deal in the world, but merely the fact that it was never something that I talked about. I think that as far as I knew I never really had a preference when it came to gender, and it was only later that I found out that it wasn’t normal, and that there was a name for it. But even when I knew these things, it was always something I just wasn’t supposed to talk about. Growing up in a strict Christian household, I sometimes wondered if my queerness was never mentioned simply because it was something that was supposedly “forbidden”. My parents make it seem as though it wasn’t something I ever shared, and for the longest time, I just assumed that would stay the same. My friends knew, but even then it wasn’t really something I would just share with people, really out of that fear that it was a “forbidden” thing. But all of that sort of changed in the last few years. 

As queerness becomes more normalized, more and more queer people will feel comfortable being open with their indentity.

I don’t think I’ve ever really considered the option of being open about that part of my life with people that haven’t known me for a while. But during college and sort of living on my own, it just didn’t really seem like something that I needed to hide anymore. And for some reason, that feels really weird. I think that as time is going on, the idea of queerness is getting more and more normal to everyone. Although it is very slow, I just never thought it would be something I would experience in my life, especially living in a southern place that was generally homophobic. I think that being around people my age in new places has shown me that things are changing. Maybe they’ve already changed, but it is nice to see that in a world that used to think that being queer was a mental illness, more and more people are respectful to the identities and attractions of other people.