Alok! Being Ourselves

I saw Alok Vaid Menon live this week in their show Hairy Situation. They were amazing! Funny, sweet, authentic and honest. It was great to be in a sold out audience of people enjoying Alok.

A few years ago I discovered and loved the depth and clarity of their short book Beyond the Gender Binary. A lot of the material in the show focused on their work. These are some highlights.

Conformity costs us.

“There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being seen only after you have erased yourself.” Alok’s book frames non-conformity as a way to thrive rather than as a problem to fix. I find it true that finding “our people” reduces isolation, shaming and may open doors to more authentic self-expression.

The strength of the attacks on transgender folks indicates how profoundly the freedom to be who we are is threatening to the status quo. People who track social trends say support for transgender people is down even though support for same sex marriage is solid. There is also a growing gap between young women and young men (who are becoming more right wing) on a range of issues, including this.

For me personally, I’ve always struggled with why people can’t let others be free. Why does someone care that I’m queer? In the patriarchy, the pressure to conform is a weapon. Queer people are a threat because we’ve rejected conforming to narrow ranges of acceptable behavior. We dare to figure out who we are and express ourselves. Once we see through cultural conditioning and pressure, we become more dangerous because we might question the whole system. This system needs to be questioned!

Alok spoke directly to being transgender in the last ten minutes of the show. They spoke of the strength of the hate from many cisgender men is because they are broken hearted. They have denied themselves the freedom to be truly who they are. (Cisgender refers to people who align with the gender they were assigned at birth.)

“Transphobia is everyone’s attempt (including trans people) to not have to truly witness ourselves: our jagged edges, the ways that we do not and cannot fit into pre-ordained social categories, our complicatedness, our overwhelming grief, our profound humanness.

For many of us, belonging required us to compartmentalize ourselves, minimize our differences in order to fit in.

But a different standard of belonging – one that encourages us to become the fullest version of ourselves is also materializing. I try to keep my finger on that pulse. It’s what gives me hope.” from an interview in Platform magazine.

Being with Alok for an hour gives me hope too.