Beyond the Gender Binary

by Alok Vaid-Menon, Ashley Lukashevsky (Illustrator)

Overview

Winner of the 2021 In The Margins Award
 
"When reading this book, all I feel is kindness."-- Sam Smith, Grammy and Oscar award-winning singer and songwriter
 
"Thank God we have Alok. And I'm learning a thing or two myself."--Billy Porter, Emmy award-winning actor, singer, and Broadway theater performer

"Beyond the Gender Binary will give readers everywhere the feeling that anything is possible within themselves"--Princess Nokia, musician and co-founder of the Smart Girl Club

"A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change."-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"An affirming, thoughtful read for all ages." -- School Library Journal, starred review

In Beyond the Gender Binary, poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593094662
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	06/02/2020
Series:	Pocket Change Collective
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
Lexile:	990L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender non-conforming writer, performance artist, and public speaker who has been featured by HBO, MTV, NBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, and more. Their creative challenge to the gender binary has been celebrated around the world.

Ashley Lukashevsky is an illustrator and visual artist born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, currently based in Los Angeles. Ashley uses illustration and art as tools to strengthen social movements against systemic racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant policy. She aims to tear down these systems of oppression through first envisioning and drawing a world without them. Her clients include Refinery29, Broadly, The Washington Post, Planned Parenthood, Girls Who Code, GOOD magazine, Brooklyn magazine, ACLU, Red Bull, Snapchat, Air Jordan, and Logo TV. Ashley is also the illustrator of the best-selling Antiracist Baby, by Ibram X. Kendi.

Read an Excerpt

Prologue

 
This is a book about the gender binary. Specifically, why we need to move beyond it. The gender binary is a cultural belief that there are only two distinct and opposite genders: man and woman. This belief is upheld by a system of power that exists to create conflict and division, not to celebrate creativity and diversity.
 
We deserve more options. This false choice of boy or girl, man or woman, male or female is not natural—­it is political. The real crisis is not that gender non-­conforming people exist, it’s that we have been taught to believe in only two genders in the first place.
 
Gender diversity is an integral part of our existence. It always has been, and it always will be.
 
There is a shocking disconnect between the way the government and the media speak about gender non-­conforming people and the reality of our lives. This gap between representation and reality continues to get worse. As we face heightened prejudice and harassment on the ground, more policies and public statements deriding us continue to be made. This disconnect is not a coincidence; it is a calculation. This is how it has always worked: The best way to eliminate a group is to demonize them, such that their disappearance is seen as an act of justice, not discrimination.
 
But this is about discrimination, and it’s time that we address it. The reality that many gender non-conforming people cannot go outside without fear of being attacked is unacceptable. The issue is not that we are failing to be men or women. It’s that the criteria used to evaluate us to begin with is the problem.

 
Beyond the Gender Binary

 
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.”
 
Be yourself until you make them uncomfortable.
 
There is always a limit. A breaking point. Once you cross the line, then you are “too much” and are put back in your place.
 
In this way, acceptance of self-­expression becomes conditional. Express yourself using this template under these constraints with this time limit. Go! 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?
 
The other day, I left the house wearing a teal dress, purple lipstick, and a full beard. I have always—­and I mean always—­loved color. If you flip through our old family photo albums, it’ll feel like sifting through the pages of a fashion magazine. There I am at five years old, wearing a vibrant floral print T-­shirt with fuchsia shorts, a pink lunch box, and a huge smile to top it all off.
 
What I like about colors is that when you mix them together, they become greater than the sum of their parts, something different altogether. No one goes around asking, “But are you really more blue or more green?” Teal is not blue-­green, it is teal.
 
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to the other day. I have to admit it was foolish of me to leave the house in that dress. New York winters are unforgivingly cold, but there I was, with no coat, trekking through the streets on my way to the grocery store.
 
As I walked down Sixth Avenue, two people started pointing and shouting, “That’s a man in a dress! Hey, everyone! Look! It’s a man in a dress!”
 
I looked all around me, but I couldn’t find whom they were talking about—­there were no men in dresses to be found. Besides, even if there had been, how is that remarkable, let alone an insult? It is an article of clothing! It’s like saying, “Hey, everyone, look! It’s . . . a lamppost!”
 
Nothing out of the ordinary here, just keep on moving.
 
I realized that they were, in fact, addressing me when they took out their camera phones to take some shots of me. My heart started to beat faster. My chest tightened. I turned up the music in my headphones. I walked faster.
 
I did not look back.
 
This is a disconnect I have come to know well: between what people see and who I actually am. I have learned that the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.
 
When I finally reached the grocery store, I still couldn’t relax.
 
The thing about being visibly gender non-­conforming is that we are rarely, if ever, defended by other people in public. Everyone thinks that since we “made a choice” to “look like that,” we are bringing it upon ourselves. The only reason people can fathom why we would look this way is because we want to draw attention to ourselves. They can’t even consider that maybe we look like this for ourselves, and not for other people. We are reduced to a spectacle. And when you are a spectacle, the harassment you experience becomes part of the show.
 
As I checked out my groceries, the person next to me in line approached.
 
Oh dear, here we go again.
 
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
 
I started to walk away.
 
“Why do you dress like that?”
 
I stopped in my tracks. This felt like it could be genuine curiosity and not something more hostile.
 
As I prepared to exit the store, they came a little bit closer. My heart beat a little bit faster. They lowered their voice.
 
“It’s just that . . . I used to wear skirts and dresses when I was younger.”
 
“What happened?” I asked.
 
They laughed, but their eyes told another story. 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.

Editorial Reviews

"There's no better time for a new conversation about the damaging effects of mainstream society's oppressive, dismissive, and silencing stance on who folks are supposed to be based on . . . what . . .? Thank God we have Alok. And I'm learning a thing or two myself." —Billy Porter, Emmy award–winning actor, singer, and Broadway theater performer

"This beautiful book is a beacon, just like Alok. Having Alok in my life has saved me in so many ways, and now you can have a little bit of them with you, too. When reading this book, all I feel is kindness. This is a step-by-step education on what it means to respect non-binary people. Alok is a human being who has a deep love and commitment to other human beings. They have come to us from the future to show us what life could be like if we all loved a little harder and dug a little deeper." —Sam Smith, Grammy and Oscar award–winning singer and songwriter

"Beyond the Gender Binary is a literary vessel of light for those who are looking for hopefulness, honesty, and a stimulating education in the exploration of themselves. This book is a twenty-first-century survival guide for queer-identifying people of all walks of life—Alok provides a safe space of shared experiences, commitment, and love to expand the gender binary to create a brighter and more inclusive present and future. This book shares wisdom, knowledge, and the universal spirit of celebrating one's self by shattering the transphobic lens that hinders most gender non-conforming people. Beyond the Gender Binary will give readers everywhere the feeling that anything is possible within themselves, and that self-love through whatever choice of gender expression is truly attainable."—Princess Nokia, musician and co-founder of the Smart Girl Club

"A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change."— Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"An affirming, thoughtful read for all ages." — School Library Journal, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 2020-03-15
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.

The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)

Kirkus Reviews