After reading Alok’s ” Beyond the Gender Binary”, I seem to understand more of Gender Binary than before. The reading brought up situation’s that are unjust for a person to experience. Such as when Alok stated “Like if you remove our clothing, our makeup and our pronouns, underneath the surface we are just men and women playing dress up”. There has always been that stereotype in the world where men are the breadwinners, are emotionless, must be brave and sharp, while women on the other hand are gentle, softer, and dependent. However, as we all know this isn’t the truth. the truth is we are all human beings and are able to choose what we want to be, how we want to be. This has only become a problem now because it is no longer fitting into the old stereotypical narrative. Alok states, in the reading, how they are continuously afraid for their safety when stepping outside. Why should an individual like that? In fear they will be attacked for going out and living their lives. In fear that they will be targeted that day. In the reading Alok states “Take, for instance, when the department of justice announced trans and gender non-conforming workers are not protected by civil right laws”. The reading demonstrates how the non-conforming have a target on their backs by the states and the legislation. And how they really only have themselves to rely on because they continuously be discriminated by even the system. If the own state won’t hold their backs this would only encourage the target they have on their backs. Furthermore, according to Alok “the gender binary is set up for us to fail…the gender binary is more concerned with gender norms than it is with us”. Alok explains how, as we know, for many years there was the belief that there are only two genders. These were “man” and “woman”, and that these two genders are the only acceptable genders and by fulfilling the stereotypical role assigned to the genders would be the only form acceptable to live. However, it is not true. People are free to express themselves as however they please and they feel is right with who they are. Yet those expressions are shut down and would often not be accepted. People would have a problem with the way people would use creativity to express themselves. They are, if I may say so, afraid of how people are no longer being neatly categorized in this box or the other. Alok brings up an interesting statement which is “if we allow people to self-determine their genders, then pretty soon people are going to start identifying as frying pans or anything, you name it.”, to which Alok’s response is that this sort of mentality was a strategic move that was used against movements by derailing the conversation. This sort of statement kind of seems like they are trying to corner these individuals in order to try to silence them.