What does it mean to move beyond the gender binary for Alok?

Alok explains how gender feels from a perspective of a non-conforming gender person. That gives us access to be closer to someone’s experience and be more sensitive about details of non-conforming people’s problems. We live in a world where everything is set in stone; we didn’t learn to think otherwise. The gender norms are based on the old way of thinking- very old where masculine is for men, and being feminine is only for women. We are not only men or women, calm or hyper, strong or weak. Alok shows a life of a regular person whose rights are taken away because he feet to old school, wrong standards and laws and typical education is not updated.

He explains how not understanding gender takes human rights away. Alok writes examples in people’s behavior and stereotypes of thinking that create problems with work discrimination, school bullying, mental health problems, and even lack of housing and homelessness. 

Tolerance seems not enough because it only gives some of the rights to a person. Acceptance will put the person into life fully. 

Alok points out that since 2015 there have been 1.4 billion transgender people. That’s a huge number. How many people might not be comfortable showing their identity? That’s a fact and not a trend but a situation that should make us reflect and allow being better, smarter, and more compassionate people. They show how important it is for people to state their gender and gives an example of how gender is visible all the time and we don’t pay attention: to a birth certificate, driver’s licenses, stores, etc.

Alok represents transgender men and women in his writing; I find this interesting and inspiring.  

In what ways does your gender identity go against the binary norm, and in what ways does it fit the binary norm?

I am a binary woman who identifies as she/her. I was raised in an extremely catholic country, Poland but by not ordinary parents. My father was an extreme introvert, a painter and poet, the most tolerant person you can imagine. My mom was a very masculine lawyer focused on her career. Strong and very beautiful, never interested in cooking and raising her children. I was raised by a mysterious grandmother at home, and both of my partners would bring day stores at 8pm or 9pm pm at night to eat a quick dinner with their children. We were not religious at all. We valued morality based on actions and internal existential dialog. My dinner table conversations were about children’s rights and domestic abuse because my mom spoke the most. 

The gender rules in my family were not typical. Now that I am older, I see what family is and what could possibly be bad or good in building a family structure, and it is not what Polish education told me!

I would wear men’s clothes and have short hair my entire childhood because I had brothers, and in a communist occupied by Russians Poland no one cared about colors and dresses. I felt solid and feminine riding my bike and being a police officer, and I would have a crash in elementary school with a most popular and probably not exciting boy. I kissed girls in high school, read Rilke, and shaved my head boldly, always thinking I was very feminine this way. I was skinny, wearing only black clothes at 20, and did not have visible breasts till I was 30, also thinking that I was feminine that way. Some of that stuff wasn’t feminine in typical stereotypical thinking. I always wanted a child, loved my soft, delicate boyfriend, and always went to gay parties In Riss beach and Henrietta club, also with a feminine attitude.

I am sure if I fell in love with a woman, nothing would stop me from being with her, and I would call myself, or maybe I am, a bisexual woman. It just did not happen; It has not happened yet. I wonder if I am not binary identifying as a woman. I am a single mother by choice. I was the only one supporting my family (my mother and brother ). Is that masculine? Is that feminine to pay all the bills ? 

I worked in a butcher store. I constantly interrupt men and women in conversations. Is that masculine?