Alok Vaid-Menon

"Poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary"--

Beyond the Gender Binary

Aurore

Depending on whether we call them a boy or a girl, we assign each a narrative—we tell some children that they are strong, and we tell others that they are weak. We tell some children that they can express themselves, and we tell others that they should not have feelings. We tell some children that their worth comes from doing harm, and we tell others that their worth comes from accepting it.

Society’s inability to place us in boxes makes them uncomfortable; the unfamiliar becomes a threat and not an opportunity. The unknown calls into question everything that we thought we knew about ourselves and the world.

Mara D Alo Fonseca

Pain does not have to be visible to be real, and violence does not have to be physical to be serious.

The thing about disgust is that it makes prejudice physical. And just because something is physical doesn't mean that it's natural.

So often we mistake likability with acceptance. Just because something is more relatable doesn't mean it’s better.

Yennifer Villa

Alok is very varied in their approach to dissecting the gender binary. While the book doesn’t venture too deeply into each aspect, this is a great preliminary read for anyone looking to understand more about gender. It’s also simply an enjoyable read regardless for Alok’s eloquent assassination of gender propaganda.  

Kierce

kait

this was a short, informative read! i feel like i know a lot more about gender and i loved the creator, so i am glad i got to learn from them and teach myself more! it takes like an hour to read so i think it's a perfect read if you want to know more.

A great introduction to start the conversation and learn about gender identities, a short novel but still packs a punch. 

Listening to this via audiobook was a great experience especially hearing the passion in Alok V-Menon’s voice! 

A small but mighty pocketbook, everyone should educate themselves on topics of gender identities and acceptance, and this is a great starting point. I recommend.  

jaz ☁️

 - AUDIOBOOK - 

A great introduction to start the conversation and learn about gender identities, a short novel but still packs a punch. 

Listening to this via audiobook was a great experience especially hearing the passion in Alok V-Menon’s voice! 

A small but mighty pocketbook, everyone should educate themselves on topics of gender identities and acceptance, and this is a great starting point. I recommend.  

Joycelyn Ghansah

" true acceptance doesn't mean changing who you are" the words in this book were powerful. I'll forever root for you Alok❤

Pocket Change Collective was born out of a need for space. Space to think. Space to connect. Space to be yourself. And this is your invitation to join us. "Thank God we have Alok. And I'm learning a thing or two myself."--Billy Porter, Emmy award-winning actor, singer, and Broadway theater performer "When reading this book, all I feel is kindness."--Sam Smith, Grammy and Oscar award-winning singer and songwriter "Beyond the Gender Binary will give readers everywhere the feeling that anything is possible within themselves"--Princess Nokia, musician and co-founder of the Smart Girl Club "A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change."-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review "An affirming, thoughtful read for all ages." -- School Library Journal, starred review In Beyond the Gender Binary, poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary. Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.

Rachel Evans

(4.5/5) A short but insightful book about the gender binary and the reasons it shouldn't dictate our society. Enjoyed it!

** spoiler alert **
            Our existence is made into a matter of opinion, as if our genders are debatable and not just who we are. 
bumping it upto a 5! 

i really enjoyed this book, i picked it up on a whim eager to support more queer authors writing nonfiction, in a bid to educate myself further and a general curiosity on existence beyond the gender binary and i couldn't have picked up a better book.

the book is incredibly accessible in its contents and written in such layman terms, making it ideal for anyone at any age with varying levels of information regarding the topic at hand. despite having substantial information about nonbinary identities, i left the book feeling like i had learned a lot and with an overall new perspective on not only those that identify as nonbinary but also on myself and the way i function as part of the world. alok vaid menon writes about their experiences existing outside the binary as someone who was "male passing" and bought into question a lot of biases, that we all tend to do almost subconsciously - microaggresions towards those that may not necessarily perform in accordance to the social norms dictating how they should act and essentially bringing in the conclusion that gender is a performance, the norms we've associated with each gender are more so a reflection of the societal culture at the time, as opposed to something just "intrinsic" to someone conforming to a specific gender.


i'll be linking a few of my favorite quotes here ☆

1. What I like about colors is that when you mix them together, they become greater than the sum of their parts, something different altogether. No one goes around asking, “But are you really more blue or more green?

2. Everyone thinks that since we “made a choice” to “look like that,” we are bringing it upon ourselves. The only reason people can fathom why we would look this way is because we want to draw attention to ourselves. They can’t even consider that maybe we look like this for ourselves, and not for other people. We are reduced to a spectacle. And when you are a spectacle, the harassment you experience becomes part of the show.

3. At a fundamental level, we are still having to argue for the very ability to exist.
The truth is, I still cannot go outside without being afraid for my safety. There are few spaces where I do not experience harassment for the way I look. Something as simple as running errands leads to strangers interrogating me about my body, trying to find some way to explain why I look like this. “Are you dressed up for a theater production?” “Oh, it must be Fashion Week again!”

4. It’s a surreal experience to have your personhood be reduced to a prop.
How are you supposed to be believed about the harm that you experience when people don’t even believe that you exist?

5.Gender non-conformity is seen as something immature, something we have to grow out of to become adults. Overnight, so many of the things that I loved not only became associated with femininity but with shame. Because I was a “boy,” I was no longer allowed to want to be a dancer or a fashion designer. Because I was a “boy,” I had to stop. Stop dancing. Stop being myself.

6.The thing about shame is that it eats at you until it fully consumes you. Then you cannot tell the difference between their shame and your own— between a body and an apology. It’s not just that you internalize the shame; rather, it becomes you. You no longer need the people at school telling you not to dress like that; you already do it to yourself. You no longer need your family telling you to be quiet; you already do it to yourself. You edit yourself, and at some point, it becomes so normal that you can’t even tell that you’re doing it. And the worst part is that you no longer have anyone else to blame.

7. Every aspect of myself was analyzed as either “masculine” or “feminine.” There was no in-between and nothing outside of these two options. “Why do you have so many friends who are girls?” “Why do you sit like that?” The idea here was that if you were a boy who displayed even a hint of femininity, then you were gay. And if you were gay, then you were wrong. And if you were wrong, that meant they had license to beat you up in the name of morality.

8. Truth be told, I don’t remember much of my childhood because I spent so much of it separated from my body. My body was where the shame lived, so I retreated into my mind. I was bullied everywhere, and it never stopped. It seemed so all consuming, like there was no escape. I became so terrified that my body would betray me—the hint of lavender in my voice, the sparkle in my gesture—so I sought comfort in my head, studying as hard as possible so I could one day get out of my town. I figured that if I was going to be effeminate, then I should at least be smart, to have something redeemable about me.

9. There’s magic in being seen by people who understand—it gives you permission to keep going. Self-expression sometimes requires other people. Becoming ourselves is a collective journey.

10. Society’s inability to place us in boxes makes them uncomfortable; the unfamiliar becomes a threat and not an opportunity. The unknown calls into question everything that we thought we knew about ourselves and the world.

11. The gender binary is set up for us to fail. For us all to fail.
The gender binary is more concerned with gender norms than it is with us. We are led to believe that there are only two genders, “man” and “woman,” and these genders are narrow, separate, and opposite. We are taught from a very young age that this is how things have always been and this is the only way to live. We are taught that masculinity belongs to men, femininity belongs to women, and that these are the only two options for self-expression.

12. At its heart, discrimination against gender non-conforming people happens because of a system that rewards conformity and not creativity. Rather than celebrating people who express themselves on their own terms, we repress them. This repression is something we first did to ourselves. We know how to do it so well to other people because we were the first testing grounds. We silenced our own differences, subdued our creativity, and toned down our own gender non-conformity in order to fit in. We thought fitting in would give us security—but is it security when someone else living their life differently unsettles us to our very core?

13. Depending on whether we call them a boy or a girl, we assign each a narrative—we tell some children that they are strong, and we tell others that they are weak. We tell some children that they can express themselves, and we tell others that they should not have feelings. We tell some children that their worth comes from doing harm, and we tell others that their worth comes from accepting it.

14.They say that gender non-conforming people, in particular, are caught up on some new fad: that we are inventing language, identities, pronouns, and genders. But language and grammar have always been developed to meet the needs of society. Consider words like selfie and welp, which have recently been added to the dictionary. This is actually the purpose of language— to give meaning to concepts as they evolve.

15. Being normative is about what gets elevated by society to a position of power. Normativity looks like a specific sneaker brand being upheld as the best. Normativity, then, is about value judgment and shouldn’t be used interchangeably with normal.It’s not that gender non-conforming people aren’t normal, it’s that we aren’t considered normative. Gender diversity is a natural attribute of human expression, not an illness that needs to be fixed. Gender non-conforming people face considerable distress not because we have a disorder, but because of stigma and discrimination. There is nothing wrong with us, what is wrong is a world that punishes us for not being

16. Pain does not have to be visible to be real, and violence does not have to be physical to be serious. Imagine everyone you encounter all day long telling you that you are not real and that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Being constantly invalidated takes a toll: 40 percent of trans and gender non-conforming people have attempted suicide. Emotional and physical violence are not in competition with each other. It is possible to acknowledge one without invalidating the other.

17. Gender is not what people look like to other people; it is what we know ourselves to be. No one else should be able to tell you who you are; that’s for you to decide. Rather than considering the existence of multiple genders as a bad thing or even a good thing, why do we need moral judgment of it altogether? There are many ways that people can exist and describe themselves. Why is that a problem? We don’t consider remembering everyone’s individual name a burden; we just accept that as the way things work. Gender should be the same way

Kristen Jones

Very informative & blunt but full of love and compassion! A small & mighty read, where I can hear Alok’s desire for change! Good read!

priya

"Being real is not a scarce resource, and it is possible to hold a diversity of experiences without creating hierarchies."

"They used to call me a girl when I was growing up, and when I finally came to accept myself, they called me a boy. I was too feminine to be a boy and then too masculine to be a girl. It’s almost as if they move their definitions precisely to exclude us. We are both too much and never enough. We are always made out to be the problem. But maybe we aren’t the problem; maybe the whole gender system is. Whose definitions are we prioritizing, anyway?"

"Using gender-neutral language isn’t about being politically correct, it’s just about being correct."

Sophia De La Garza

I read this for my Gender studies class and I recommend giving it a read if you want a quick first-hand look about how society treats the non-binary and trans community as well as the feelings that someone goes through as they come to terms with who they are. 

4 stars, and like I said its a super quick and informative read.

Fiona Coffey

Sabrina D. 

A good primer on the gender binary and the ways in which society shapes and understands gender. Very accessible. My only qualm was the handful of cliches, but they didn’t take away from the importance of the text and the value of the ideas! Thank you Alok.

Laura Springall

A very quick but informative read. As a non-binary person myself, a lot of the information in here was not new to me, but books like these are so important for people who want to learn. I often find with books or articles discussing gender politics, the language used can be really inaccessible to people who are just starting on their journey of learning about gender. But Alok’s writing is easy to understand for those who are still learning, while still being engaging for those of us who are well versed in this topic. This was easy to read and would absolutely be a great starting point for people who have questions, want to know more, as well as want to learn how to talk about gender with others

Caitlin Berger

A perfect and necessary book! My only complaint is I wish it was ten times longer! ♥️

Beyond the Gender Binary

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