Alok Vaid-Menon - Beyond The Gender Binary

This is a small book – get hold of a copy and keep it with you. If you’re concerned about being wrongly-gendered it won’t be as useful as if you are concerned about being gender-categorized at all, because this is a book about “beyond”, and one way in which Alok Vaid-Menon is beyond, is as a champion of individualism, their own and others’. Not fitting in is the order of the day and presenting as different is as important as identifying as different – in Alok’s case, more so. Which is, I think, why the first half of the book is a bit angsty and even at times hysterical. It’s going to be a long time before we deconstruct people’s expectations of appearance and a male in a dress will for the foreseeable produce disruption of one kind or another, positive or negative. Meanwhile many of us make our advances in acceptance in a quiet, negotiated way. Alok’s personal history of oppression is most useful in declaring experiences which many trans and non-binary folks will identify with, not as explaining the current situation or proposing ways forward. The second half of the book, though, provides an array of responses to the many provocations we get, and the issues misrepresented in the media currently. It’s all well-put and useful. Here’s a couple of quotes to get you seeking out the rest of the text,- “Some transgender people experience incredible distress from the disconnect between their external bodies and their internal senses of self, and some do not. Some transgender people are men or women, and some are non-binary. It is possible to hold both these truths without disqualifying or discrediting one or the other.” ”Gender is a story, not just a word ….We do not need to be universal to be valid.” Fine thought-provoking formulations. We need more such, and here they are.