You won’t believe what Alok Vaid-Menon is doing to redefine trans normality!

Much of the mainstream political discussion around transgender and gender nonconforming identity is rooted in conflict. Rights denied; required rights. Activist, writer, and comedian Alok Vaid-Menon acknowledges these pivotal, often violent confrontations, but approaches them from a place of peace and compassion. It’s an approach that, in this inflamed moment, can feel radically hopeful. He has also made Menon, who is 32, uses they/them pronouns and is gender non-conforming, a crucial voice for his million followers on social media, where posts of him circulate widely. “I am fighting for trans normalcy,” says Vaid-Menon. “I want to be able to walk down the street wearing whatever I want without it having to be an event.” Although it is surely not entirely accurate to say that they always seek to be invisible, given the charismatic effervescence of their personal style. “Okay, okay,” Vaid-Menon says with a smile. “That was my way of fishing for a compliment.”

When reading about marginalized groups, I find the framing is often about anxiety or the weight of agitation for change. I thought it would be interesting to start from another perspective: Can you tell me about the joy of your experience? There is so much pleasure. When I was thinking of coming here this morning, I thought, I’m going to take the train because it’s delicious. In the past, it would be People are going to look at me; they will stare at me open-mouthed; I could be harassed. Now I love random encounters with strangers who feel like potential friends. That’s what feeds me now: not a diagnosis of all the things that are wrong; a diagnosis of all things that are right. Many times there is no room for that, to your point, because when people look at a life like mine, they think that it is a life fundamentally marked by violence and aggression. I want to remind people that the everyday life that people like me are carving out of this land is not abject. They are actually quite impressive.

In her book, “Beyond the Gender Binary,” she writes: “There is a shocking disconnect between the way the government and the media talk about gender non-conforming people and the reality of our lives.” Tell me more about that disconnect. There are no trans issues. There are issues that non-trans people have with themselves that they are taking out on trans people. A great example is when they talk about our “agenda”. “The transgender agenda: it is recruiting people”. My agenda is the ability to exist in public without fear of being physically assaulted. If my existence is such a profound threat to the fabric of society, then what must be questioned is how we create a world that does not allow people to exist. What’s interesting about so much anti-trans rhetoric is that they say, “You’re playing pretend,” and we say, “We were playing pretend when we were pretending to be male, female, and straight.” People only understand us through polarities. That doesn’t jibe with the ordinary meaty experience of being trans, where I don’t even think about my gender most of the time. I’m thinking about basic things like what am I going to eat for lunch, one of humanity’s biggest existential questions!

We make often Let’s go out to the street [Laughs.] Yes, and I began to realize that compassion was what allowed me to get out again. My fear told me, Someone is going to rob me; someone looks at me because he hates me. I had to develop another internal voice that said: Someone is going to congratulate me today. I began to realize that there were kind and generous people out there, and that’s where my compassion helped me in a way my fear never did. Last year I came back to Australia and gave a speech called “A love letter to the man who hit me.” It was my public forgiveness of this guy. That was one of the most healing experiences of my life, because I was freed from bitterness. The innate predisposition of people is towards generosity and kindness. They deviate from that because of the trauma.

You said that the innate predisposition of people is towards generosity and kindness. How do you hold on to that belief in the wake of all the anti-trans legislation that’s going on now? I don’t see bad people or evil people. I see people who are byproducts of the circumstances they’ve been through, the emotional information they’ve been given. Every time I find myself judging someone who is anti-trans, I try to remind myself that there are people who love them and people who love them. I remember that they, too, were once a baby and wondered at the world, and something sad must have happened to separate them from that. I’m trying to get people to extend the love they already have for their own orbits to the whole world. We are all in this together.

But don’t you think that people’s resentment stems more from their struggle to adjust to differences and change than from feeling a relative lack of freedom? Yes of course. Things that are new are often jarring at first, but I want to talk to you about the Internet. I want to talk to you about the iPhone. I want to tell you the story of the invention of a train. I’m going to talk about airplanes! [Laughs.] These were inventions that fundamentally restructured the way we relate to each other, our own conceptions of ourselves, and yet there weren’t millions of people saying, “Abolish this! We are committed to our routine.” The entire narrative thrust of this country has been one of progress, innovation, and redefinition, and yet when it comes to gender and sexuality, these are never seen as part of that continuum of self-invention. Trans and gender non-conforming people are challenging a kind of pageantry that gender and sex are fixed truisms that they do not have the ability to change. If I say there are more genders than male or female, if I say you can create your own version of masculinity and femininity, then what else was invented? So many trans and gender non-conforming people feel such a deep sense of clarity and presence and lucidity, and to see people say that we’re misaligned, that we’re broken, it’s so confusing and jarring because I actually know what it is. is to feel broken and misaligned. They were the first 18 years of my life. What you are describing is my attempt to pretend to be a guy.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain on leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley on a dumber America and Cal Newport on a new way of working.