Alok Vaid-Menon Is ‘Fighting for Trans Ordinariness’ (Published 2023) (2025)

Talk

By David Marchese Photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya

So much of the mainstream political discussion about transgender and gender-nonconforming identity is rooted in conflict. Rights denied; rights demanded. The activist, writer and comedian Alok Vaid-Menon acknowledges those fundamental, often violent clashes but comes at them from a place of peace and compassion. It’s an approach that, in this inflamed moment, can feel radically hopeful. It has also made Menon, who is 32, uses they/them pronouns and is themselves gender-nonconforming, a crucial voice to their million or so followers on social media, where their posts are widely circulated. “I’m fighting for trans ordinariness,” Vaid-Menon says. “I want to be able to walk down the street wearing what I want without it having to be an event.” Though surely it’s not exactly accurate to say they’re always looking to be invisible, given the charismatic effervescence of their personal style. “OK, fine,” Vaid-Menon says with a laugh. “That was my way of fishing for a compliment.”

In reading about marginalized groups, I find the framing is often about anxiety or the weight of agitating for change. I thought it might be interesting to start from another perspective: Can you tell me about the joy of your experience? There’s so much delight. When I was thinking about coming here this morning, I was like, I’m going to take the train because it’s delightful. In the past, it would be, People are going to stare at me; they’re going to gawk at me; I might get harassed. Now I love random encounters with strangers who feel like potential friends. That’s what fuels me now: not a diagnosis of all the things that are wrong; a diagnosis of all the things that are right. Often there’s no space for that, to your point, because when people look at a life like mine, they think that it’s a life marked fundamentally by violence and aggression. I want to remind people that the everyday lives that people like me are carving on this earth are not abject. They’re actually pretty awesome.

In your book, “Beyond the Gender Binary,” you write, “There is a shocking disconnect between the way the government and the media speak about gender-nonconforming people and the reality of our lives.” Tell me more about that disconnect. There are no such thing as trans issues. There are issues that nontrans people have with themselves that they’re taking out on trans people. A great example is when they talk about our “agenda.” “The transgender agenda: It’s recruiting people.” My agenda is the ability to exist in public without the fear of being physically assaulted. If my existence is such a profound threat to the social fabric, then what needs to be interrogated is how we created a world that doesn’t allow people to exist. What’s interesting about so much anti-trans rhetoric is that they say, “You’re playing pretend,” and we’re saying, “We were playing pretend when we pretended to be men and women and straight.” People only understand us through polarities. That doesn’t map into the ordinary fleshy experience of being trans, where I don’t even think about my gender most of the time. I am thinking about basic things like what am I going to eat for lunch — one of humanity’s greatest existential questions!

Alok Vaid-Menon Is ‘Fighting for Trans Ordinariness’ (Published 2023) (2)

Alok Vaid-Menon at the GLAAD Media Awards in New York City in May.

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

We do often have to go outside. [Laughs.] Yeah, and I started to realize compassion was that which allowed me to go outside again. My fear would tell me, Someone’s going to assault me; someone’s staring at me because they hate me. I had to develop another internal voice that said, Someone is going to compliment me today. I began to witness that there were kind, generous people, and that’s where my compassion helped me in a way that none of my fear ever did. Last year, I returned to Australia, and I gave a speech called “A Love Letter to the Man Who Bashed Me.” It was my public forgiveness of this guy. That was one of the most healing experiences of my life, because I released myself from bitterness. People’s innate predisposition is toward generosity and kindness. They become diverted away from that because of trauma.

You said that people’s innate predisposition is toward generosity and kindness. How do you hold on to that belief in the wake of all the anti-trans legislation happening now? I don’t see bad people or evil people. I see people who are byproducts of the circumstances that they’ve been through, the emotional information that they’ve been given. Whenever I’m finding myself having judgment of someone who is anti-trans, I try to remind myself there are people whom they love and people who love them. I remember that they once, too, were a baby and felt wonder in the world, and something sad must have happened to separate them from that. I’m trying to get people to extend the love that they already have for their own orbits to the entire world. We’re all in this together.

Alok Vaid-Menon Is ‘Fighting for Trans Ordinariness’ (Published 2023) (3)

Vaid-Menon with Jonathan Van Ness in Austin, Texas, at South by Southwest in 2022.

Samantha Burkardt/Getty Images

But you don’t think people’s resentment is about their struggling to adapt to difference and change more than feeling a comparative lack of freedom? Yes, of course. Things that are new are often jarring at first, but I want to tell you about the internet. I want to tell you about iPhones. I want to tell you the story of the invention of a train. I’m going to tell you about planes! [Laughs.] These were inventions that fundamentally restructured how we related to one another, our own self conceptions, and yet there were not millions of people saying: “Abolish this! We are committed to our routine.” The entire narrative thrust of this country has been one of progress, innovation and redefinition, and yet when it comes to gender and sexuality, these are not ever observed as part of that continuum of self-invention. Trans and gender-nonconforming people are challenging a kind of pageantry that gender and sex are fixed truisms that have no ability to shift. If I’m saying there are more genders than man or woman, if I’m saying you get to craft your own version of manhood and womanhood — then what else was made up? So many trans and gender-nonconforming people feel such a profound sense of clarity, presence and lucidity, and to see people say that we’re misaligned, that we’re broken, is so confusing and jarring because, actually, I know what it is to feel broken and misaligned. It was the first 18 years of my life. What they’re describing is my attempt to pretend to be a dude.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain about leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley about a dumber America and Cal Newport about a new way to work.

Alok Vaid-Menon Is ‘Fighting for Trans Ordinariness’ (Published 2023) (2025)

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