Alok Vaid-Menon

Alok Vaid-Menon

Alok Vaid-Menon (born July 1, 1991) is an American writer, performance artist, and media personality who performs under the moniker ALOK.

Quotes

• I think I have a daily relationship with a sense of inadequacy. I've written about this in the past, but when you are a non-binary person in this country in this time, there's an imposter syndrome for being alive, because people don't think that we should exist. And so every day I have to remind myself they're wrong, because I'm breathing, they're wrong because I'm speaking. And so I have to remind myself not only am I enough, but the very system that has and weaponizes a criteria that would rather disappear me, that's not a system that will ever evaluate me again.
• We're always gonna mess up because we are indoctrinated into a world that teaches us ideology, not compassion. So it's not you speaking when you misgender me, it's everyone that has spoken to you before. And in my life what I always try to remind people is I was not born with gender literacy, I was born hating myself and hunting myself and I had to learn too, so other people are gonna have to learn. And in that way, I think trans people can actually teach the world transition is possible, not just between genders but between paradigms.
• Being alive is about messing up gloriously, and I will fight for that ability to gloriously mess up because I don't believe that humans are statues or sculptures.
• That is what love is for me, trying harder for each other.
• I'm non-binary, which means it's not just that I'm challenging the binary between male, female, man, woman, but between us and them. And in your statement, you said, "why don't I help them", as if this struggle is not your struggle too. The reason you don't fight for me is because you're not fighting for yourself fully. And any movement that's trying to emancipate men from the shackles of heteropatriarchy or emancipate women from traditional gender ideology has to have trans and non-binary people at the forefront, because we are actually the most honest. We're