Quote of the Day

"You are not normal.  You have a disorder that needs to be fixed."

It's important to understand the difference between being "normal" and being "normative."  Being normal means that a numerically significant amount of something is found in a group.  For example, if you select a random group of students, chances are a large percentage will be wearing sneakers.  This is normal.  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 normatively masculine or feminine.  Increasing acknowledgement of this reality is why groups like the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association have formally depathologized gender-diverse identities.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 40-41

Quote of the Day

There are as many ways to be a woman as there are women.  There are as many ways to be a man as there are men.  There are as many ways to be nonbinary as there are nonbinary people.  This complexity is not chaos, it just is.  We do not need to be universal to be valid.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 60

Quote of the Day

When we say that women give birth, we neglect that some women are not capable of giving birth while some trans men and nonbinary people are.  The gender-neutral alternative "people who give birth" holds all of these realities just like the gender-neutral "siblings" includes brothers, sisters, and nonbinary siblings.  Using gender-neutral language isn't about being politically correct, it's just about being correct.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 47

Quote of the Day

"You are making everything about gender.  Stop bringing it up if you want it to go away."

This is ironic because we are actually trying to make gender less relevant.  It's curious where society locates the blame.  What about the gender-reveal parties, the birth certificates, the gendered sections at clothing stores, the driver's licenses, all the ways that society imposes gender on us all?  When things like this are normalized, they become invisible and we don't even question them.  Critiquing gender is not the same thing as creating gender.  Not talking about it won't make gender inequality go away; in fact, that's precisely how this injustice persists.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 44

Quote of the Day

"This gender nonbinary and gender-fluid thing is just a new youth Internet fad.  There are only two genders."

While the actual words might be new, living beyond the gender binary is not.  Indigenous people and people outside the Western world have long existed outside of the gender binary: two-spirit among American Indians, hijra in South Asia, waria in Indonesia, muxe in Mexico, just to name a few.  In many of these societies, people living outside of the binary were and continue to be recognized as leaders.  It's not that these people do not exist, it's that they have been erased to make the Western gender binary seem like the only option, and not a particular and specific cultural worldview.  What is regarded as masculine and feminine is not set in stone but actually shifts across time, culture, and space.  Even in the Western world, pink was once considered a masculine color and heels were actually first worn by men!

 -- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 39-40

Quote of the Day

The selective outcry over new words to describe gender and sexuality -- amidst the thousands of words that are added to the dictionary every year -- is about prejudice, not principle.  If these people are so averse to change, why aren't they outlawing the use of bingeable or taking more public stances on the use of the Oxford comma?

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 39

Quote of the Day

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 the 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.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 38

Quote of the Day

Common sense is what happens when a particular point of view is regarded as the status quo because it's held by the people in power, not necessarily because it is right.  These perspectives are told so often that we begin to see them as universal truths.  We accept the fact that this is the way things are and have always been.  For large periods of history, it was "common sense" that Black people and people of color were inferior and that this supposed inferiority justified discrimination, genocide, and slavery.  Just because an opinion is widely held does not make it right.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 37

Quote of the Day

In order to even get a seat at the table, people have to believe that you exist.  When it comes to gender non-conforming people, we are still at square one -- still having to argue that we are real.  What's never questioned here is, whose standards of authenticity are we being held up to in the first place?

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 37

Quote of the Day

Power can be defined as the ability to make a particular perspective seem universal.  Control is how power maintains itself; anyone who expresses another perspective is punished.  Arguments against gender non-conforming people are about maintaining power and control.  Most can be grouped into four categories: dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope.  These are strategies that people use to make the gender binary seem like a given, not a decision.  It's important to understand how they work in order to imagine otherwise.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 36

Quote of the Day

We do remarkable things with jealousy and fear.  Rather than naming them and acknowledging when we are operating from them, we repress them and pretend they aren't there.  Jealousy, even when disguised with big language, is still jealousy -- an emotion that makes both you and me small.  Others will project their insecurity on you because it is easier than dealing with their internal pain.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 35-36

Quote of the Day

People have been so conditioned into believing the status quo that any slight attempt to break free from it brings panic and rage.  They think that we are selfish when actually we are imagining a more kind and just world for everyone.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 32

Quote of the Day

Repression breeds insecurity breeds violence.  When I was in high school, I was tormented for being effeminate.  Years after graduating, one of my most vicious bullies sent me a message apologizing for his behavior, revealing that he had since come out as bisexual.  Back in high school he was jealous and resentful of my freedom of expression and bullied me so that he could prove to other people that he was "normal."  It had taken him years to come to terms with his sexuality, and he wanted to apologize for not supporting me with my gender expression back then.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 28

Quote of the Day

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.  And this...is a good thing!  Being self-reflective and open to transformation is something we should celebrate, not fear.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 26

Quote of the Day

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.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 25

Quote of the Day

Eventually I sat down with a couple of my friends and told them that I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not a man nor a woman and that I was physically uncomfortable with the way that I was presenting in the world.  I needed to express my femininity more to feel more secure and happy in my body.  I said that I was scared that I would have to compromise my safety for my authenticity, but I needed to do this to survive.  I couldn't bear being called a man anymore.  It hurt too much.  Not just in the physical sense but also the spiritual.  Life didn't feel worth living.  I felt like I had to choose between the impossible options of self-hatred and harassment.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 24

Quote of the Day

Over the past few years, we've seen a public dialogue about gender fluidity take place.  Most of this conversation has little to do with the everyday experiences of nonbinary people (people who are neither exclusively men nor women) and gender nonconforming people (people who visibly defy society's understanding of what a man or a woman should look like).  A lot more airtime is given to other peoples' views of us rather than our own experiences.  Our existence is made into a matter of opinion, as if our genders are debatable and not just who we are.  In other words, there's been a lot of talk about us but very little engagement with us.  This has led to misinformation and outright lies, which have distracted from the realities faced by gender nonconforming people.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 13-14

Quote of the Day

The thing about being visibly gender nonconforming is that we are rarely, if ever, defended by other people in public.  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.

-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 12

Quote of the Day

When all else fails, art is the ultimate weapon.

-- Gilbert Baker, Rainbow Warrior, p. 177

Quote of the Day

Compromise is the art of public art.  Everything I do takes so much human effort that in the end it's not really mine.  I guess that's success.  The hard part is trading away all the control while holding on to your integrity.

-- Gilbert Baker, Rainbow Warrior, p. 113

Quote of the Day

Some of (the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence) had actually been in seminary, and many were ex-Catholics.  Satire and humor were the best weapons they had against the guns and hatred of those who called themselves Christian.  The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were on a mission to expiate stigmatic guilt and spread universal joy -- while pushing the buttons of the pious.  They were true clowns and media marauders, straight out of the French Revolution.  There was something magnificent and terrible about them, visually and symbolically.

-- Gilbert Baker, Rainbow Warrior, p. 71

Quote of the Day

I think poets are just people who take notes on the universe.

-- Donovan Beck

Quote of the Day

We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,

And the norms and notions of what "just is"

                                    Isn't always justice.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 206

Quote of the Day

But to be disturbed is to be moved,

Pushed toward progress.

Our disgust is a measurement

Of distance, a distaste for what was.

It is to grasp that we must never go back.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 150

Quote of the Day

Fundamentally, supremacism means doing anything to keep one's sole conceit, Even if it means losing one's soul.  It means not wearing the mask that would save you, for that would mean taking off one's privilege.  It means, always, choosing poisonous Pride over Preservation, Pride over Nation, Pride over Anyone or anything.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 146

Quote of the Day

To be kept to the edges of existence is the inheritance of the marginalized.  Non-being, i.e., distance from society -- social distance -- is the very heritage of the oppressed.  Which means to the oppressor, social distance is humiliation.  It is to be something less than free, or worse, someone less-than-white.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 145

Quote of the Day

Why it's so perturbing for privileged groups to follow restrictions of place & personhood.  Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power has shackled on the rest of us.  It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 144

Quote of the Day

Grief, like glass, can be both a mirror & a window, enabling us to look both in & out, then & now & how.  In other words, we become a window pain.  Only somewhere in loss do we find the grace to gaze up & out of ourselves.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 140

Quote of the Day

Storytelling is the way that unarticulated memory becomes art, becomes artifact, becomes fact, becomes felt again, becomes free.  Empires have been raised & razed on much less.  There is nothing so agonizing, or so dangerous, as memory unexpressed, unexplored, unexplained & unexploded.  Grief is the grenade that always goes off.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 78

Quote of the Day

Trauma is like a season, deep & dependable, a force we board our windows against.  Even when it passes, it will wail its wild way back to our porch.

-- Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, p. 75