07 ISSUE V
MAY 2025
MAY 2025
the new conversations: for better or worse
GPIA MA candidate Niyati Pendekanti interviews alumnus Mala Kumar on a decade of changes in her life.
By Niyati Pendekanti
A queer woman born and raised in the United States to a family that immigrated from India, 40-year-old Mala Kumar has had to navigate complex identities and tackle questions surrounding her privilege, or lack thereof. She traversed blurred lines between distinctions like “colonizer and colonized, or Global North and Global South.” This is rooted in intersectionality – the concept that “social categorisations such as race, class, and gender are interconnected, creating overlapping systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”
The former Director of Tech for Social Good at GitHub, Mala Kumar works primarily in tech, with expertise in user experience (UX) research and design and open source software. She is also the author of two sapphic novels, weaving together stories that poignantly capture her lived experience across marginalized identities.
On Oct. 1, 2024, exactly 10 years after she published her first novel, THE PATHS OF MARRIAGE, Kumar released her second, WHAT IT MEANT TO SURVIVE. Featuring queer female protagonists, they portray experiences of coming out, specifically to an immigrant family, of love across boundaries, and Kumar’s real life experience of the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007.
Kumar joined me on Zoom to reflect on the evolving importance of intersectionality over the past decade, the changing landscape of the United Nations (UN) system, U.S. federal policy, and the state of queer communities today.
On the politics of representation, Kumar emphasized that a lot of places claim to be non-discriminatory based on race, class, and gender, “but when you bring all of those identities together, it’s a different lived experience than if you have only one of them.”
She compared how gay rights movements in the U.S. “have been tied to white males – rich white males,” while South Asian movements “have tended to couple queer and trans rights with women’s rights.” Even in shared struggles, people can experience varied levels of discrimination based on other identities they hold. As an article on “Intersectionality 101” puts it, “A [brown] woman may experience misogyny and racism, but she will experience misogyny differently from a white woman and racism differently from a [brown] man.”
Starting in 2009, Kumar spent over a decade working with the United Nations. There, she navigated what it meant to be a gay woman of color in a system that, until a few years ago, did not recognize LGBTQI+ staff as a protected class. “The UN is weird because it doesn’t abide by American labor laws. It can get away with things that a company in the U.S. would not be able to.” She explained that a gap in human resources resulted in a lack of localized support for staff relocating internationally. “There was no way to figure out, ‘Am I going to be okay in the office?’”
This posed a challenge for queer people in the UN who had to work in countries that criminalised or enacted violence against displays of homosexuality. Kumar’s wife is from Nigeria, where same-sex relationships can carry a 14-year prison sentence. Given the power associated with the UN, “this is unlikely to happen to UN staff, but you could still face a hostile environment, discrimination, or sexual harassment as a result of your identity.”
In 2016, Kumar conducted qualitative research to design a tool for LGBTQI+ UN staff deciding whether to accept international postings. She discovered that people’s concerns revolved around “the general vibe of the office, how they perceived their safety, and practicalities like, ‘If I’m married to a person of the same sex, can I bring them with me under a spousal visa?’” If they could not, people had to register their spouses on a domestic servant visa, which was, to say the least, demeaning.
Although the software was never funded, it contributed to advocacy efforts at the UN. Kumar left the organisation in 2019, and upon returning four years later as a senior advisor for WHO, she found that sexual orientation had been added to the UN’s non-discrimination policy, along with seminars and screenings to combat homophobia.
Throughout the interview, Kumar reiterated that being queer has become more socially acceptable in the U.S.
In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned all state bans on same-sex marriage, enabling Kumar to sponsor her wife on a K-1 visa. “The majority of Americans were not in agreement with the ruling,” she recalled, “but people realised the world was not going to end with two men getting married. I think legal norms actually helped change society.” Meanwhile, a poll by Gallup reported that American public support for same-sex marriages was above 50% in 2015 and hit 61% in 2016.
However, legal norms under the current Donald J. Trump administration might set society back. Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump began targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and transgender and nonbinary people. He signed executive orders directing the federal government to terminate DEI positions and recognise only two sexes, male and female.
Two of the many harmful repercussions these orders could entail are calls for trans women to be moved into men’s prisons and defunding gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. Kumar expressed concern that even if people do not agree with Trump’s rhetoric initially, “it can change society in five, 10, 15 years or in the next generation.”
When WHAT IT MEANT TO SURVIVE was released in October 2024, Kumar noticed a contrast from her first novel’s release. Most of the LGBTQ community groups that supported THE PATHS OF MARRIAGE in 2014 have shut down since or hold a fraction of their previous support, adding to her worry about fostering space for the community.
Though social media is a promising avenue for maintaining access to support groups, the number of in-person spaces for LBGTQI+ and other marginalised communities in the U.S. has decreased. Simultaneously, Kumar noted, “algorithms are more powerful than ever in connecting you to like-minded groups. Any time I post something, it’s instant validation…but the downside is that people are so polarised.” She received death and rape threats after publishing THE PATHS OF MARRIAGE in 2014, which is why she does not actively post on social media anymore – “I think now, if [my book] crossed over into conservative territory, the reaction would be a million times worse.”
One of Trump’s executive orders seeks to halt “radical indoctrination” in public schools, removing certain teachings on gender fluidity, race and anti-discrimination. Kumar’s second novel is banned in many states across the U.S., including her home state of Virginia.
The book’s protagonists Ramya and Juliet reflect aspects of Kumar and her wife. Ramya is an American of Indian origin, “grappling with survivor’s guilt from a mass shooting that occurred during her last year of university,” while in Nigeria, Juliet “has survived family tragedies, economic downturns, and an oppressive patriarchy.”
To come together and begin a new life in New York City, “where their love will be acknowledged and respected,” Juliet must overcome the hurdle of the American immigration process. It is a story of queer love trying to persevere among systems of oppression and discrimination. “Teachers are not allowed to bring the book into school,” Kumar shook her head. “It’s crazy.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court has always been additive – trying to expand the rights of people, but with the fall of Roe v. Wade, 50 years of precedent just changed.” Kumar referred to the 1973 Supreme Court case that established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. In June 2022, it was overturned, allowing states to regulate or completely ban abortion.
“It is one of the scary arguments for a domino effect,” Kumar said. If they could take away abortion rights, they could take away same-sex marriage rights too,” she sighed. It is a period of uncertainty and anxiety for the queer community, but Kumar continues to work in the tech industry as well as attend book talks and events to promote WHAT IT MEANT TO SURVIVE.
As the Zoom call ended, one question remained. Will New York City stay a place where queerness, diversity and intersectionality are acknowledged and respected, as Ramya and Juliet envision it to be? Will the United States?
Niyati Pendekanti is completing an MA in International Affairs at The New School.