Jun 27, 2026 · 48 min · 17 segments
*We celebrate Pride Month with a special Vegan Pod guest, as one of the most influential of influencers in the vegan and LGBTQ+ communities, Sean O'Callaghan, aka. Fat Gay Vegan, discusses growing up…
I would say without wanting to sound too dramatic, but it was quite traumatic and at times horrifying.
So it was a criminal offence to be gay in the state that I grew up, Queensland, until 1990.
gay bars and dance clubs in the late 80s and having police asking us if we were gay, if we were going anywhere gay, if we were planning on doing anything gay.
I mean, the police were brutal to everybody, especially if you're a young Indigenous Australian or a person of colour in Australia, you got it much worse.
And Australia, and especially Queensland, has a tragedy around black deaths in custody, in police custody.
So being targeted by the corrupt police force for being gay was terrifying because we also saw how they mistreated other minorities as well.
But there are crossovers between different communities that in some way experience prejudice against them because of their ethical beliefs or because of their sexuality or the color of their skin, whatever it might be.
Well, to me, I'm not an expert or a spokesperson for intersectionality, because as far as I'm aware, there's a term or a concept coined by a black African-American woman called Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw.
And she coined the term to really describe the multiple intersections of oppression faced by black women and that could be everything from socioeconomic class to sexuality to gender identity and many many other things that unspoken about in this conversation but for the sake of brevity that to me is where the term as I understand, was coined, but it has, I suppose, in academic circles and then, of course, filtered down to mainstream conversations like we're having now, come to be a shorthand for intersecting oppressions that an individual might face.
It might be because I was from a poor background, like lower socioeconomic background.
And so for each of those realities that I live with, I am either oppressed or othered or isolated or I suffer in some way because of them.
And so the way of looking at it through an intersectional lens would be to understand that a lot of that oppression comes from the same place.
I would say without wanting to sound too dramatic, but it was quite traumatic and at times horrifying.
So it was a criminal offence to be gay in the state that I grew up, Queensland, until 1990.
gay bars and dance clubs in the late 80s and having police asking us if we were gay, if we were going anywhere gay, if we were planning on doing anything gay.
I mean, the police were brutal to everybody, especially if you're a young Indigenous Australian or a person of colour in Australia, you got it much worse.
And Australia, and especially Queensland, has a tragedy around black deaths in custody, in police custody.
So being targeted by the corrupt police force for being gay was terrifying because we also saw how they mistreated other minorities as well.
But there are crossovers between different communities that in some way experience prejudice against them because of their ethical beliefs or because of their sexuality or the color of their skin, whatever it might be.
Well, to me, I'm not an expert or a spokesperson for intersectionality, because as far as I'm aware, there's a term or a concept coined by a black African-American woman called Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw.
And she coined the term to really describe the multiple intersections of oppression faced by black women and that could be everything from socioeconomic class to sexuality to gender identity and many many other things that unspoken about in this conversation but for the sake of brevity that to me is where the term as I understand, was coined, but it has, I suppose, in academic circles and then, of course, filtered down to mainstream conversations like we're having now, come to be a shorthand for intersecting oppressions that an individual might face.
It might be because I was from a poor background, like lower socioeconomic background.
And so for each of those realities that I live with, I am either oppressed or othered or isolated or I suffer in some way because of them.
And so the way of looking at it through an intersectional lens would be to understand that a lot of that oppression comes from the same place.
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