Top 50 Alok Vaid-Menon Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Gender is a story, not just a word. 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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

2. “We want a world where boys can feel, girls can lead, and the rest of us can not only exist but thrive. This is not about erasing men and women but rather acknowledging that man and woman are two of many – stars in a constellation that do not compete but amplify one another’s shine.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

3. “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

4. “Embrace that ongoing transformation is a necessary part of what it means to be alive.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

5. “What part of you did you have to destroy in order to survive in this world?”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

6. “Gender diversity is a natural attribute of human expression, not an illness that needs to be fixed.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

7. “Be yourself until you make them uncomfortable.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

8. “Who knows what the future holds? We should not hold ourselves back for the sake of convention. Instead, we should embrace ongoing transformation as a necessary part of what it means to be alive.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

9. “Gender-neutral language isn’t about replacing an old norm with a new one. People have the right to self-determine their gender whether it be a man, woman, or a nonbinary gender. The goal of gender-neutral language is to get rid of gender normativity, not everyone’s gender.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

10. “Conformity requires us to minimize our differences for the greater good. We fear that if we don’t conform, we will be abandoned, but there is no loneliness like having people only see you after you’ve erased yourself.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

11. “The best way to eliminate a group is to demonize them, such that their disappearance is seen as an act of justice, not discrimination.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

12. “This is how power works: It makes the actual people experiencing violence seem like a threat. Moving from a place of fear leads us to make harmful assumptions about one another. In our fear, we treat other people’s identities as if they are something that they are doing to us and not something that just exists.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

13. “The scrutiny on our bodies distracts us from what’s really going on here: control. The emphasis on our appearance distracts us from the real focus: power.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

14. “Conforming to the gender binary was about wanting to hold on to power.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

15. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

16. “The days that I feel most beautiful are the days that I am most afraid.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

17. “I suppose some people wanted to protect me from bullying and didn’t realize that they were bullying me in the process.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

18. “We silenced our own differences, subdued our creativity, and toned down our own gender non-conformity in order to fit in.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

19. “I am sorry that the only way we have been taught to heal is to hurt.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

20. “This repression is something we first did to ourselves. We know how to do it so well to other people because we were the first testing grounds. We silenced our own differences, subdued our creativity, and toned down our own gender non-conformity in order to fit in. We thought fitting in would give us security – but is it security when someone else living their life differently unsettles us to our very core?”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

21. “There’s magic in being seen by people who understand – it gives you permission to keep going.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

22. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

23. “There are some questions that have no answers. How do you express pain when you can’t even locate the wound? It’s like when you let a balloon loose into the sky. You don’t know where it goes, but you know it went somewhere far away.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

24. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

25. “The thing about shame is that it eats at you until it fully consumes you. Then you cannot tell the difference between their shame and your own – between a body and an apology.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

26. “Using gender-neutral language isn’t about being politically correct, it’s just about being correct.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

27. “I learned about gender through shame. In so many ways, they became inseparable for me.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

28. “I do not have the luxury of being. I am only seen as doing.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

29. “How are you supposed to be believed about the harm that you experience when people don’t even believe that you exist?”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

30. “Gender non-conformity is seen as something immature, something we have to grow out of to become adults.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

31. “Power can be defined as the ability to make a particular perspective seem universal.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

32. “How do you express pain when you can’t even locate the wound?”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

33. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

34. “A lot more airtime is given to other people’s use 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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

35. “The thing about shame is that it eats at you until it fully consumes you. You no longer need people telling you to not dress like that; you already do it to yourself. You no longer need your family telling you to be quiet; you already do it to yourself. You edit yourself and at some point, it becomes so normal that you can’t even tell that you’re doing it.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

36. “It’s not just that you internalize the shame; rather, it becomes you. You no longer need the people at school telling you not to dress like that; you already do it to yourself.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

37. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

38. “This is what happens when fear becomes stronger than need: The body becomes its own closet.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

39. “Control is how power maintains itself; anyone who expresses another perspective is punished.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

40. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

41. “It’s like being handed over a scantron sheet and demanded to paint a self-portrait on it. It’s possible, of course, but why even bother when a canvas is within our reach? Is it really a choice, when you don’t get to select the options you are given to begin with?”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

42. “Acceptance, on the other hand, is about integrating difference into your own life:.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

43. “What’s never questioned here is, whose standards of authenticity are we being held up to in the first place?”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

44. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

45. “Gender non-conforming people are not opportunisitic; we are oppressed.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

46. “At a fundamental level, we are still having to argue for the very ability to exist. The truth is, I still cannot go outside without being afraid for my safety. There are few spaces where I do not experience harassment for the way I look.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

47. “It’s a surreal experience to have your personhood be reduced to a prop.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

48. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

49. “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.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon

50. “And we tell the kids who don’t fit into our categories that they are wrong. We tell them that they are not real. We punish them until they conform. We prove that we are real by telling them that they are not. We define ourselves by what we are not.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon