Episode 6: “Welcome to the Awkward Choreography of Being a Human”
What I Have Learned from Alok Vaid-Menon
Friends,
Happy belated Trans Week of Visibility and Action! Today’s title is from Alok Vaid-Menon’s interview which I talk about below.
I know I’m one week late on celebrating the week of action and posting, but I got sick and was traveling. I wanted to thank you for your time and attention in reading, liking, and sharing AMR. It is a labor of love and I hope to continue engaging with y’all in the comments and on Notes.
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I first saw Alok Vaid-Menon in their full expression on Instagram, and I remember it like it was yesterday. They walked down a city street, their beard full and luscious, their dress curling against the wind.
I hadn’t seen many gender non-binary desis in the public eye, so I started following them. And I have learned so much since then.
I count gender queer, trans, women, and some cis-het men, many of which are also creative and nerdy like myself, as chosen family. I feel more safe among them than in traditional cis-het spaces, so I hold them close. Like me, they want to change the world partly because they have been victim to someone else’s expectations about who they should be.
I didn’t get a chance to really learn from Alok until I listened to the above podcast from Man Enough some time ago. Its a great listen (though the cis-het men hosts had their awkward moments, the questions by them, and
, were revelatory). Alok talks about how problematic the gender binary is, how what’s happening with trans folks now is a repeat of what has happened before with women and black folks and other people of color all over the world, and the urgent need to focus on compassion over anything else - including compassion to yourself.The reason there’s so much violence that men are siphoning onto [trans and gender non-conforming people] is because they don’t love themselves….I tell men this is is not about accepting trans and gender non-conforming people, its about accepting yourself.
-Alok
Like Alok, I grew up in Texas (they grew up in College Station). I lived in Augusta, Georgia and Houston, Texas and the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My parents are immigrants to the United States and didn’t know what messages I was getting from where. So I relied on friends and bullies at school, TV and movies and books and comics. What people were supposed to be, how boys were supposed to act, what we were meant to look like.
What we are supposed to be is precisely something Alok talks about in the interview. That the gender binaries that we are caught in are the ones that lead to so much pain, when fully accepting yourself could be the thing that gets you out of an oppressive structure and into joy.
For me, I have suffered from depression and anxiety, partly due to engaging in the (often fruitless) pursuit of accolades and the concomitant expectations that come with it. It’s been a journey to accept who I am, and it’s still challenging. I’m old enough, and attend therapy enough, to know myself pretty well at this point, but I am still a cis-het brown man living in this society, so there will be times when I do what society has told me I should do, and what I have internalized I should do. And the suffering that comes from it affects me, and everyone around me. But there are also moments of pure joy.
Why do you need to understand me in order to say I shouldn’t be experiencing violence?
-Alok
When Jamey Heath asks about if there’s a way for Alok not to live in fear, regardless if other people support them or not, Alok states that compassion should come before categorization. Why should someone try to understand what or who trans and gender non-binary folks are before offering them their compassion?
I think this is so important. Alok talks about how this comes from zero sum thinking, that those that inflicting violence on trans folks is because they do not want to cede power. But the thing is that people who do that (and there are a lot of people doing that now with all the anti-trans state and local legislation) are living in a “fish bowl” when in fact “we live in a universe” where when someone steps into their full self, that encourages everyone else to step into their full selves. That expansive view of how we should live our lives is one of the many things I appreciate about Alok’s work.
I’ve already spoken about the impact of meeting certain expectations in a prior post. But I distinctly remember times when others pigeonholed me. Puberty for me was before everyone else at school. In the middle school pool my peach fuzz would manifest as a full blown mustache and everyone said I looked 16, which was the driving age then and therefore the launch pad towards cool adulthood. But that was the only compliment I could remember from an otherwise unremarkable middle school career. In the same school where at lunch time, two factions of kids fought over where I would sit, and though I enjoyed being fought over for a short time, when I finally sat down, I didn’t recall a feeling of camaraderie. I felt used, cheapened. Like I was something to be gotten, rather than understood and appreciated.
Another time was after I had moved back to Texas to build a janitors’ union in Houston and requested a number of Wong Kar-Wai DVDs from Netflix, including Happy Together, which follows a gay romance. My father washed the dishes while I watched the movie in our living room. Mid-sponging, he asked, Are you gay? Why do you keep watching gay movies? And I said No, don’t worry Dad.
As in don’t worry, I’m not gay and I will be married to a cis-het woman just like you expect, and I also secretly expect, and believe is the right way for me. I don’t know if that is indeed what they wanted, but it is something that I felt that from them and from our desi community, which was fractured and disparate but always consistent in its messaging about marriage and family. And I fell into those expectations, even if at the time, I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted.
Trans Rights accelerate freedom for all people.
-Alok
One of the most critical things I learned from that episode is how much Alok makes the connection between the movement for justice for trans and gender non-binary folks and broader movements. How the zero sum game paradigm extends to even those of us on the left, trying to make change.
As a community organizer in Oakland, California right after 9/11, I saw this inaction on both ends of the spectrum. We were fighting for the rights of Muslim, Arabs, and South Asian communities who were under siege on multiple levels after 9/11, and we were building coalitions with black, brown, and trans and queer folks and organizations on the ground. But I also experienced the limits that people put up when it came to expanding our struggle to supporting Palestine.
I often think about whether we would be in the same universe now if more people had marched for and expressed solidarity for Palestine back then. I often think the same about the movement for trans rights.
Because I think all social movements can succumb to limiting frameworks, I’ve learned how important compassion is in moving through this world. I was raised to center compassion, but that teaching can get obscured as one gets older and gets caught up in living. But combined with learning how to build community, how to raise kids and be a good partner, and learning from Alok and others, I move forward with whatever “awkward choreography” I can dream up.
Did you listen to the podcast episode? What does it mean to you? Lets talk about it in the comments or on Notes.
Support Trans Rights by donating to the Transgender Law Center!
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Did you know I also write fiction?Check out one of my shorter pieces over at Stupefying Stories.
Thank you for this. I have long followed and admired Alok. I love it when people find their true path outside of societies expectations. And Alok is so such a trailblazer and so brave.
Wonderfully written, and so relatable. Thank you for writing and sharing!