The Anchorage Press is a reader-driven publication. If you’re already a subscriber, we’re grateful for your support; if you’re not, $130 will buy you our undying gratitude AND a hard copy of the Press in the mail each month!
Have you ever been confused about the difference between she/they and they/she? How do you start conversations about gender with people who don’t get it? What do you say if someone uses the wrong pronouns?
Comedian, performing artist and activist Alok Vaid-Menon (they/them) has the answers.
Internationally renowned for their humor, writing and leadership, Vaid-Menon has become a leading global voice discussing complex issues around gender and self-expression, with millions of followers on social media.
Their work spans research on gender neutrality, self-determination, violence against trans and gender-nonconforming people, and more — and includes a book, Beyond the Gender Binary.
“Gender is not what people look like to other people; it is what we know ourselves to be,” Vaid-Menon writes. “No one else should be able to tell you who you are; that’s for you to decide.”
These are subjects that come up regularly in Alaska’s politics and Alaskans’ personal relationships, but they’re not always discussed openly or directly.
For a few nights in the coming weeks, though, Alok will address them onstage, with performances in Anchorage on Oct. 3, in Fairbanks on Oct. 4 and in Juneau on Oct. 5.
In advance of those shows, Vaid-Menon agreed to answer some of the Anchorage Press’s most burning questions on gender, pronouns and the politics around them. The interview, conducted by email, has been lightly edited and condensed.
Vaid-Menon: Better luck next pronoun.
AP: What’s your favorite way to casually drop your pronouns when you meet someone?
Vaid-Menon: It’s nothing fancy. I literally just say, “Hi, I’m Alok. I use they/them pronouns.”
AP: Have you seen someone change their mind to become supportive of gender-expansive and trans people? If so, what do you think influenced them?
Vaid-Menon: Yes. Me.
I used to be one of the most virulently transphobic people I knew. So much so that I sought my own eradication. I had absorbed the idea that people like me were unacceptable. What changed me was not winning an argument. It was meeting people who were funny, brilliant, complicated, ordinary, beautiful human beings — not abstract concepts — who loved me more than I hated myself.
And it was through loving them that I found the possibility of loving myself.
AP: What are some of your suggestions for how Alaska media can challenge readers’ assumptions about queer and nonbinary culture in a way that creates more understanding than division?
Vaid-Menon: So much of the public conversation about trans people is shaped by projections and disinformation rather than the facts of our lives. I see the role of journalism not to reproduce or profit from manufactured controversy, but to affirm what is true. Good journalism requires stating the truth, even when the truth has been made controversial. Media outlets should refuse the idea that fairness means putting fact and misinformation on an equal playing field.
AP: Visibility of trans and other queer people can lead to more understanding and normalization, but it can also lead to tokenization and harm. How do you navigate that tension?
Vaid-Menon: There is no one-size-fits-all answer to visibility. It’s something that I am constantly renegotiating.
I have a close-knit group of friends who buoy me, which means I don’t outsource all of my need for recognition or validation to an audience. Sometimes, I can start performing for other people’s expectations or confuse being seen with being understood. But my friends help anchor me back in my purpose and who I am outside of public perception.
AP: I’m a straight cisgender male who wants to show solidarity with my nonbinary community. Sometimes, when corresponding with conservative people, I delete the pronouns in my email signature to ensure I keep access to the space necessary for my work. Is that the right approach?
Vaid-Menon: It’s important to have a north star, and sometimes staying oriented requires strategy and compromise. What matters is that the compromise does not become automatic or invisible. Stay in dialogue with the trans and nonbinary people in your life. Keep reassessing your approach, why you’re compromising, and whether the compromise is still necessary. And remember to ask: If I make this compromise to gain access, what can I do with that access once I have it?
AP: I’m nonbinary, assigned female at birth, and I’ve heard my butch elders talk about how the fight for liberation argued for elimination of “masculine” and “feminine” roles. Now, they’re worried that the embrace of gender fluidity solidifies the entrenchment of those roles. How can I help them understand that it’s not a setback for women and queer rights?
Vaid-Menon: I can empathize with that concern. Feminist and lesbian liberation movements fought enormously important battles against the idea that women had to look, behave, desire, work, or live in prescribed ways. But I do not think being nonbinary contradicts this project. I think it continues it. Gender expression should not determine gender identity from the outside. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the semantics of identity that we lose sight of the political principle underneath: self-determination.
In resisting one hierarchy, we should be careful not to build another. There is no single correct or most subversive way to do gender. What we are fighting for is a world in which gender does not prescribe the life you are allowed to have.
AP: If I’m a straight person in a relationship, is it allyship to call my significant other my “partner”?
Vaid-Menon: Yes. It can be a small way to interrupt the assumption that everyone is straight.
Using “partner” can make relationship language a little less gendered and a little less revealing by default, which can create more room for everyone.
I would just be careful not to treat the word itself as allyship. Allyship is what you do with the room that language helps create.
AP: When meeting someone new, should I always use they/them until corrected?
Vaid-Menon: That’s what I do!
AP: If my friend says they use she/they pronouns, should I mix it up and use each one from time to time? Or should I commit to mostly using they?
Vaid-Menon: Mix it up!
AP: Without the performance of gender, would gender exist?
Vaid-Menon: I think there’s an inward-facing dimension of gender that is not reducible to visibility, expression, or other people’s projections. Sometimes I find that the language of the soul, or of the spiritual, actually gets us closer to describing it — this interior sense of being. We often conflate gender with its external performance and reception, and absolutely, that can be a part of it. But that’s not exhaustive. Gender can also be an intimate sense of self, something we experience even when no one else is watching.