I love a book I can listen to from start to finish on an hour’s walk. That’s what Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon is — a short and powerful book about breaking out of the gender binary and the lived experiences of gender-nonconforming people.
Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender non-conforming writer, performance artist, and public speaker — I was introduced to their work when they recently appeared on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. I picked their book Beyond the Gender Binary from the Pocket Change Collective series for a mini-book club at work sponsored by our LGBTQ Employee Resource Group, PRIDE (which I lead). It’s only ~60 pages and about an hour-long audiobook and well worth the time.
A few impactful and/or educational quotes that stood out to me (then you can go read/listen for yourself):
“Some gender non-conforming people are nonbinary, and some are men and women. It depends on each person’s experience. Two people can look similar and be completely different genders. 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.”
“Man and woman are two of many—stars in a constellation that do not compete but amplify one another’s shine.”
“The days that I feel most beautiful are the days that I am most afraid. They tell us to ‘be ourselves,’ but if you listen closely, there’s more to that sentence: ‘. . . until you make them uncomfortable.'”
“Imagine everyone you encounter all day long telling you that you are not real and that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Being constantly invalidated takes a toll: 40 percent of trans and gender non-conforming people have attempted suicide.”
“People’s fixation on “proper” grammar or “new terms” often hides a more sinister motive, even if it’s not conscious. They are okay with language shifting as long as it’s the people in power doing it, not us.”
With Love,
Natalie