The Pain & Empowerment of Choosing Your Own Gender: Alok Vaid-Menon

0:00 - 0:04

[Interviewer] So can you talk about
how you feel about doing this?
0:04 - 0:06

[Alok] I think so many narratives
around trans people
0:06 - 0:09

is that we hated ourselves
when we were younger,
0:09 - 0:12

and that now we love ourselves
when we're older.
0:12 - 0:14

And that's just totally not true
for so many of us,
0:14 - 0:18

because no matter how much
we are comfortable in our bodies,
0:18 - 0:21

the minute we go outside we're under attack.
0:21 - 0:24

[Interviewer] Can you talk about
what your style says about you?
0:24 - 0:27

[Alok] I think my fashion is its own form of armour.
0:27 - 0:32

Our daily acts of resistance are just seen
as frivolous or excessive,
0:32 - 0:36

but I think style is actually extremely political.
0:36 - 0:39

[Interviewer] Can you talk about assumptions
0:39 - 0:41

that people have about you
based on your style?
0:41 - 0:44

[Alok] I grew up in a small town in Texas.
0:44 - 0:50

It was like a predominantly white, evangelical,
republican, straight, cisgender
0:50 - 0:51

type of town.
0:51 - 0:56

And I grew up in a sort of post 9/11 queer body.
0:56 - 1:00

Even despite being told that I was a terrorist
every single day,
1:00 - 1:02

being called a faggot
every single day,
1:02 - 1:03

being called a tranny.
1:03 - 1:06

And I think that there's this hierarchy
that gets drawn between
1:06 - 1:11

sort of flamboyant faggotry,
or like queer femininities,
1:11 - 1:13

or like trans femininities
1:13 - 1:15

as being somehow inferior
1:15 - 1:17

or less legitimate than "womanhood"
1:17 - 1:20

because we're always seen as sort of
[em?]posturing to be women.
1:20 - 1:22

I feel like the way I understand my gender
1:22 - 1:28

is that I am both a man and a woman,
and neither a man or a woman.
1:28 - 1:31

I'm outside of these entire categories.
1:31 - 1:34

I think they see me, and they see me as a failure.
1:34 - 1:37

I think so many of us who grow up
in the south [of the U.S.],
1:37 - 1:38

or in small towns,
1:38 - 1:43

think that moving to New York means
we'll finally be acknowledged.
1:43 - 1:45

Like, we'll finally be safe!
1:45 - 1:46

That's a total and utter lie.
1:46 - 1:50

And I've had to learn the really hard way.
1:50 - 1:52

But in New York, I think,
because it's such a large city,
1:52 - 1:54

there's so much anonymity,
1:54 - 1:57

I think people don't feel
empowered enough
1:57 - 2:00

to defend people getting harassed on the streets.
2:00 - 2:02

People will just stand and stare and watch.
2:02 - 2:04

I've had people spit on me,
2:04 - 2:06

I've had people call me an "it".
2:06 - 2:09

This one day, I hadn't shaved
in like 2 weeks or something,
2:09 - 2:11

and I was getting off the train
2:11 - 2:13

and this white man was
about to enter the train,
2:13 - 2:15

and the doors open and he screamed
2:15 - 2:17

"OSAMA!!!!"
2:17 - 2:19

Like, really really loudly!
2:19 - 2:20

And then I was like, petrified
2:20 - 2:22

because my entire life i've known
2:22 - 2:25

that when people call me a terrorist,
2:25 - 2:28

or Osama, or Bin Laden, or whatever,
2:28 - 2:29

you run.
2:29 - 2:32

You run because no one's going to defend you.
2:32 - 2:35

And then he looked down and saw
that I was wearing stiletto heels.
2:35 - 2:37

So I had a beard, but then I had heels,
2:37 - 2:40

and then he cut himself short,
he says "OSAAAA..."
2:42 - 2:43

And there's this really weird moment
2:43 - 2:46

where I didn't, I no longer fit his stereotype
2:46 - 2:48

of a "man of colour sort of a terrorist".
2:48 - 2:50

So when people see me as a brown person,
2:50 - 2:53

they automatically masculinize me too,
2:53 - 2:56

because of this idea of the like terrorist idea.
2:56 - 2:58

Like the other day I was using the bathroom,
2:58 - 3:00

and I walked into the women's restroom
3:00 - 3:04

and this older white lady
came up to me and said
3:04 - 3:07

"What do you think you're doing, sir?"
3:07 - 3:10

And I said "using the bathroom."
3:10 - 3:13

And then she pointed to the door,
like, very vehemently,
3:13 - 3:16

and was like "This is the women's restroom!"
3:16 - 3:21

And then, in this moment, I was so frustrated
because I knew that I had to say I was a woman.
3:21 - 3:23

Like, if I walked into the men's restroom
in this dress right now,
3:23 - 3:26

there's a serious chance that I could be attacked,
3:26 - 3:28

like, "what are you doing?!"
3:28 - 3:31

And so I just said "I AM a woman",
3:31 - 3:33

and then she looked at me and said
3:33 - 3:38

"Oh. You must understand why I was confused."
3:38 - 3:40

And I think that's because when women see me,
3:40 - 3:44

they're trying to protect this category
that they belong to.
3:44 - 3:46

And I think so much of the ways
we talk about patriarchy,
3:46 - 3:48

is that it's just men doing it.
3:48 - 3:51

And I think actually women do patriarchy every day.
3:51 - 3:55

I was really nervous about going back
to my family home in India,
3:55 - 3:56

like a couple of years ago,
3:56 - 3:58

because I knew that my family had all found out,
3:58 - 4:01

that I was no longer, like, a straight man.
4:01 - 4:02

Even though I was so scared,
4:02 - 4:04

one of my aunts, like, took me aside
4:04 - 4:06

and gave me one of her necklaces.
4:06 - 4:08

And she didn't explain why,
4:08 - 4:09

and she didn't say, like,
4:09 - 4:11

"Look, I'm validating your femininity."
4:11 - 4:13

She just said "here you go."
4:13 - 4:15

And all these subtle moments in my life
4:15 - 4:17

matter a lot to me.
4:17 - 4:18

People would come up to me and say
4:18 - 4:20

"why do all Indian people smell bad?"
4:20 - 4:22

"Why are you all, like, dirty?"
4:22 - 4:25

Um, I would go home and tell my mom,
4:25 - 4:26

like, I kept on washing my hands
4:26 - 4:28

but this brown wouldn't come off of me.
4:28 - 4:32

I grew up feeling ugly because I was brown.
4:32 - 4:34

I thought brown people could never be desirable,
4:34 - 4:35

could never have sex,
4:35 - 4:40

I thought we were all ugly, and
we all needed to be white to be beautiful.
4:40 - 4:44

And then when I started to be more...
present more feminine,
4:44 - 4:45

people started to call me a faggot.
4:45 - 4:47

When we go to the club,
4:47 - 4:49

everyone's gonna be like
"Oh my god I love your outfit!"
4:49 - 4:51

But no one's gonna ask us
"how are you getting home?"
4:51 - 4:53

They don't care because I think
trans feminine people only matter
4:53 - 4:56

when we're fabulous.
4:56 - 4:59

The very core of misogyny against trans people,
4:59 - 5:00

or transmisogyny,
5:00 - 5:02

is that we're always masquerading
as something we're not.
5:02 - 5:05

That we're always just
put on this dress to trick someone.
5:05 - 5:08

And so therefore we are always seen
as worthy of our violence.
5:08 - 5:09

That's why people don't stand up for us,
it's kind of like
5:09 - 5:12

"you chose to be that way,
you have to take the brunt of it."
5:16 - 5:17

I have an older sister
5:17 - 5:19

and I loved my sister so much
5:19 - 5:21

that I just wanted to be her.
5:21 - 5:23

So when people would ask me "what are
you going to be when you grow up?"
5:23 - 5:25

I would say "my sister!"
5:25 - 5:27

I would say I want flowers
on every single birthday cake.
5:27 - 5:29

And my parents were totally down,
5:29 - 5:31

but then things changed
when I hit puberty.
5:31 - 5:34

I began to develop facial hair,
people started to say
5:34 - 5:38

"you need to be, you're a boy, you need to
be a man now, you need to butch up."
5:38 - 5:40

I became really really really depressed.
5:40 - 5:42

I attempted suicide when I was 13 years old.
5:42 - 5:44

I took a belt to my neck.
5:44 - 5:47

I was alone in my room,
5:47 - 5:49

and I felt destroyed.
5:49 - 5:51

I felt attacked on every level.
5:51 - 5:53

I decided that I needed to get out of my town,
5:53 - 5:54

so I made a plan.
5:54 - 5:58

I said "work really freaking hard,
5:58 - 6:00

and then get a full scholarship or something
6:00 - 6:02

to get you out of this place."
6:02 - 6:04

And so I moved to California because literally
I was looking at schools,
6:04 - 6:06

like, where can I do my activism?
6:06 - 6:09

And I just, like, joined the movement
the minute I could.
6:09 - 6:10

And that's why for me,
6:10 - 6:14

my "coming out" is much less
about my gender and sexual identity,
6:14 - 6:16

and much more about my politics.
6:16 - 6:17

The world I'm fighting for
6:17 - 6:19

is where we stop making assumptions
6:19 - 6:21

around everything.
6:21 - 6:24

Where we allow people to
self-narrate their bodies.
6:24 - 6:27

I think that's a profoundly radical act.
6:27 - 6:30

Cause we exist in a western colonial system,
6:30 - 6:33

that's invested in categorizing
every single thing about you.
6:33 - 6:36

And creating norms about every single thing.
6:36 - 6:38

Rather than actually recognizing
6:38 - 6:40

NONE of us fit into norms.
6:40 - 6:44

My politics is "I am me. I am Alok.
6:44 - 6:49

And Alok exists outside of your colonial white
supremacist heteronormative gender binary!"
6:49 - 6:52

I don't have to be a woman or a man
to be coherent.
6:52 - 6:56

And I think that threatens so much
of the fabric of this society.
6:56 - 6:58

I wasn't born in the wrong body,
I was born in the wrong world.
6:58 - 7:01

I see my hair as part of my femininity.
7:01 - 7:04

If I have a beard and lipstick,
that's part of who I am.
7:04 - 7:07

Why do we always put the onus on people
to change their bodies,
7:07 - 7:11

and the onus on people to prove
or authenticate themselves to other people,
7:11 - 7:13

versus have society shift their norms?
7:13 - 7:15

This is why trans women get murdered.
7:15 - 7:17

Because what ends up happening is that
7:17 - 7:18

when they're hooking up with someone,
7:18 - 7:21

someone sees a penis and then kills them.
7:21 - 7:23

Like, literally, it's the most misogynist idea
7:23 - 7:26

where women are defined by vagina.
7:26 - 7:28

That's why, like, transmisogyny
also effects cisgender women,
7:28 - 7:30

because cisgender women, "womanhood",
7:30 - 7:32

should be more than your vagina.
7:32 - 7:33

A lot of the trans people I know
7:33 - 7:36

will, like, have surgery, have hormones, whatever,
7:36 - 7:38

because of safety.
7:38 - 7:40

Not because they wanted to.
7:40 - 7:41

What I'm fighting for our world,
7:41 - 7:43

is that we can just say
7:43 - 7:45

"Y'know what? My body is on my own terms."
7:45 - 7:48

I think what's also frustrating is that we
ask trans people to have all the answers.
7:48 - 7:50

How the hell am I supposed to have all the answers
7:50 - 7:52

when I grew up in a world that erased my existence?
7:52 - 7:54

I'm still figuring it out!
7:54 - 7:55

But I have people in my life,
7:55 - 7:57

I have lovers in my life,
I have friends in my life,
7:57 - 7:59

who are willing to work through that with me.
7:59 - 8:01

And that's been the most liberating part
8:01 - 8:03

about becoming politically active.
8:03 - 8:06

I would much rather know that y'all
8:06 - 8:08

would, if someone was yelling at me on a train,
8:08 - 8:10

say "hey stop that!",
8:10 - 8:13

versus, like, knowing my pronouns.
8:13 - 8:15

I know that people hurt me because they're hurt.
8:15 - 8:16

I know that people,
8:16 - 8:17

especially people of colour,
8:17 - 8:20

are discriminating against me
because of their own trauma.
8:20 - 8:21

And so for me, like,
8:21 - 8:25

unless we liberate both
perpetrators and victims of violence,
8:25 - 8:26

then we're still caught in the same system.
8:26 - 8:29

My fervor comes from being...
from wanting to be a nicer person.
8:29 - 8:31

I'm really invested in niceness!
8:31 - 8:33

I think it's really radical.
8:33 - 8:36

I think the state is SO BAD,
8:36 - 8:38

I think we grow up with so much toxicity,
8:38 - 8:41

and we're so mean and disposable for each other,
8:41 - 8:42

[Interviewer] When do you feel the most vulnerable?
8:42 - 8:45

[Alok] Hm. When I'm writing poetry.
8:45 - 8:51

So, um, I started writing poetry
after my suicide attempt.
8:51 - 8:54

Art is the space we go
when language fails us.
8:54 - 8:56

Yes, go get therapy
if you need to have therapy,
8:56 - 8:59

but how can our friendships
BE that therapy?
8:59 - 9:02

How can we really love each other hard enough
9:02 - 9:04

where we don't have to outsource our trauma?
9:04 - 9:06

Where we don't have to leave
where we're at to deal with shit?
9:06 - 9:09

So much of my identity
has been framed by violence.
9:09 - 9:13

I didn't understand my gender,
other than being called a faggot.
9:13 - 9:16

I didn't understand my race,
other than being called a terrorist.
9:16 - 9:17

I think when I moved here
9:17 - 9:21

I was like "oh my god, you're never gonna feel
lonely 'cause there's a million things to do!"
9:21 - 9:24

And those million things to do
actually make you more lonely.
9:24 - 9:26

We keep on making this mistake in the west
9:26 - 9:29

where if we have more things, we're happier;
9:29 - 9:30

or if we're around more things, we're happier.
9:30 - 9:33

Versus recognizing that
we already had everything we needed.
9:33 - 9:36

So moving away from scarcity towards abundance,
9:36 - 9:38

recognizing that we are enough.
9:38 - 9:40

So it's a poem called "Funeral".
9:41 - 9:44

Our train is delayed and I am
late for lunch with a boy I like
9:44 - 9:48

because his smile makes me feel
a little bit less lonely.
9:48 - 9:53

And this feels like a working definition
for love these days in the city
9:53 - 9:57

where it's possible to be surrounded by
the warmth of over a million apartment lights
9:57 - 9:59

and still feel cold.
9:59 - 10:02

The lights turn off and the train starts moving.
10:02 - 10:03

...stops moving.
10:03 - 10:04

And it's one of those rare moment when
10:04 - 10:06

we're forced to look up from our screens
10:06 - 10:09

and remember that we exist outside of them.
10:09 - 10:12

They tell us that a man jumped in front of the train.
10:12 - 10:13

That he died upon impact.
10:13 - 10:15

So we just sit there in silence
10:15 - 10:18

as they remove his remains from the tracks.
10:18 - 10:19

And some part of us is happy
10:19 - 10:22

because this, this is the first time in a long time
10:22 - 10:25

we have been forced to feel
like something greater than ourselves
10:25 - 10:28

in the city, where sometimes it takes an accident
10:28 - 10:33

to remember what the purpose
of a body is to begin with anyways.
10:33 - 10:36

The lights turn on, the train starts moving,
10:36 - 10:38

and the woman next to me starts complaining.
10:38 - 10:42

Asks why this man couldn't have taken
a bottle of pills before leaving the house.
10:42 - 10:47

How selfish it is to delay others with your own death.
10:47 - 10:48

And I want to hug her, say
10:48 - 10:51

"remind me the purpose of arm."
10:51 - 10:52

I want to love her, say
10:52 - 10:55

"remind me the purpose of heart."
10:55 - 10:57

But then I remember that this is America,
10:57 - 11:00

where bodies fall on streets like discarded leaves,
11:00 - 11:04

only touching accidentally as we all
tumble onto these cities we grew up with,
11:04 - 11:07

circling a map saying "remind me happiness",
11:07 - 11:10

and somehow convinced ourselves that they did.
11:10 - 11:13

The same way we learned about
the borders between countries so well.
11:13 - 11:15

That we built walls around them,
11:15 - 11:17

call them "mine".
11:17 - 11:19

This is America,
11:19 - 11:22

where pain is ritual we are
required to conduct in private.
11:22 - 11:24

An elaborate symphony on mute.
11:24 - 11:27

Call it "he lived to be 86 years old",
11:27 - 11:30

not "he hated himself for 30 of them."
11:30 - 11:33

Call it "he died in his sleep peacefully",
11:33 - 11:36

not "the stroke tore him to pieces."
11:36 - 11:38

Call it "accident",
11:38 - 11:40

not "no healthcare".
11:40 - 11:42

Call it "casualty",
11:42 - 11:44

not "calculation".
11:44 - 11:46

To live in America,
11:46 - 11:49

is to live in a constant state of illusion [allusion?]
11:49 - 11:51

is to be 30 people underground on a train,
11:51 - 11:53

unable to hold one another and weep,
11:53 - 11:55

is to sit there in silence
11:55 - 11:57

until we can just keep on moving
11:57 - 12:00

and forget how much death is required in the soil
12:00 - 12:04

to birth such beautiful denial.
12:04 - 12:07

And I want to text the boy above ground, ask
12:07 - 12:10

"have you ever been to a funeral
with complete strangers?"
12:10 - 12:13

But instead, I look at the woman next to me
12:13 - 12:16

the one who told a dead man
to die more considerately,
12:16 - 12:18

and then I remember that to live in America
12:18 - 12:21

is already to attend a funeral
with complete strangers.
12:21 - 12:26

How many ghosts does it take before
a cemetery can call itself a country?
12:26 - 12:27

To live in America
12:27 - 12:29

is to blame the dead for their own death.
12:29 - 12:32

Not the country for creating the conditions
12:32 - 12:33

that already killed them before they
12:33 - 12:36

caught up and made things more clear
for the rest of us.
12:36 - 12:40

Which is why, when the liberal who
wears words like "democrat" and "diplomacy"
12:40 - 12:43

calls me a terrorist after I tell him
12:43 - 12:45

that I'm not interested in paying his taxes
12:45 - 12:48

because I do not want my coins
to cause more carnage,
12:48 - 12:50

I understand.
12:50 - 12:51

Which is why, when I tell him that
12:51 - 12:55

I do believe in monsters who come out at night
12:55 - 12:57

call them "men" for short,
12:57 - 12:59

and he tells me that I only dress femme
12:59 - 13:01

because I want to be bashed,
13:01 - 13:03

I understand.
13:03 - 13:04

Which is why, when I tell him
13:04 - 13:07

that the same women who started his movement
13:07 - 13:08

are still being murdered,
13:08 - 13:10

and the same cities he's getting married
13:10 - 13:11

and calling it momentous
13:11 - 13:13

and he gasps and says
13:13 - 13:15

"that happens HERE? In America?!",
13:15 - 13:17

I understand.
13:17 - 13:19

The way we've been taught
to apologize for the pain,
13:19 - 13:21

to erase the hurt,
13:21 - 13:23

to numb the violence,
13:23 - 13:26

to deny that we may not be able
to wake up in the morning,
13:26 - 13:29

that we may see a pill
coming in the place of the train,
13:29 - 13:30

that we may wonder
13:30 - 13:34

what it would feel like to finally have
others empathize with our struggle,
13:34 - 13:36

for once, in OUR GODDAMNED LIFE,
13:36 - 13:37

what it would feel like
13:37 - 13:38

to hold captive attention
13:38 - 13:41

of a funeral of strangers, so
13:41 - 13:42

I would run back on that train,
13:42 - 13:43

hug that woman, say
13:43 - 13:45

"I'm afraid too." say
13:45 - 13:46

"remind me trust" say
13:46 - 13:49

"sometimes silence feels like
the highest pitch of screaming" say
13:49 - 13:51

"this is the first time in a long time
13:51 - 13:54

I have been forced to publicly mourn death
13:54 - 13:57

and there is something
beautiful about that", say
13:57 - 14:01

"what if we allowed the pain to fill us
a little bit less empty?"
14:01 - 14:04

But instead, I will sit there
in silence on the train.
14:04 - 14:08

I will say nothing to the woman next to me.
14:08 - 14:10

I will disembark at the next stop.
14:10 - 14:12

I will have lunch with a boy I like,
14:12 - 14:14

because his smile makes me feel
14:14 - 14:15

a little bit less lonely.
14:15 - 14:17

I will apologize for being late.
14:17 - 14:19

I will not have the word
14:19 - 14:22

for a type of loss that is so distant it is intimate.
14:22 - 14:25

After lunch, I will get back on the train,
14:25 - 14:27

I will remember,
14:27 - 14:30

I will soon forget.

Title:: The Pain & Empowerment of Choosing Your Own Gender: Alok Vaid-Menon
Description:: Alok Vaid-Menon is a trans-feminine Indian-American poet and one half of the performance art duo Dark Matter.
.
[Though i gotta say, to me anyways captioning this, this video is so much more than choosing gender or not-gender, goes so far beyond. It's about that and it's about colonialism and deep deep deep denial and classism and transmisogyny and racism and numbness and connection (wanted and missing) and so much more]

================
Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project, on the Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
To learn more, see: http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
================

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Video Language:: English, British
Duration:: 14:49

	Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for The Pain & Empowerment of Choosing Your Own Gender: Alok Vaid-Menon
	Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for The Pain & Empowerment of Choosing Your Own Gender: Alok Vaid-Menon
	Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for The Pain & Empowerment of Choosing Your Own Gender: Alok Vaid-Menon

English subtitles

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Revision 3 Edited (legacy editor)

Radical Access Mapping Project

The Pain & Empowerment of Choosing Your Own Gender: Alok Vaid-Menon

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