Beyond the Gender Binary

by Alok Vaid-Menon

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?” Teal is not blue-green, it is teal.

The assumption is that being a masculine man or a feminine woman is normal and that being us is an accessory. Like if you remove our clothing, our makeup, and our pronouns, underneath the surface we are just men and women playing dress up.

I learned about gender through shame. In so many ways, they became inseparable for me. As I grew older, people told me to stop being so feminine and grow up. Gender non-conformity is seen as something immature, something we have to grow out of to become adults.

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.

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.

Reclaiming my body, my identity, and my worth back from other people’s shame has showed me that transformation is possible, no matter how impossible it may seem.

Power can be defined as the ability to make a particular perspective seem universal.

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.

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

“What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in this world?”