Alok’s book “Beyond the Gender Binary” discusses understanding what gender is. It allows us to get closer to facts about how gender forms and their fluidity. His writing shows how people think, why they don’t understand who others are, and how people perceive the world in everyday situations where they are being misunderstood and judged. Alok explains that society’s rules are built on stereotypes and straightforward structures based on very little we know or assume. I can compare this to the medieval discovery of Copernicus that placed the Sun in the center, and people could not believe it at first. The Earth is not flat, and the Sun does not circle us. We are not born one man and woman only, and we do not need to stick to the birth certificate label for the rest of our lives.

Alok’s writing made me sad. I am not a revolutionary leader type, but I like to wonder how people feel! My empathy goes far, and understanding his words makes me see how much people suffer. It is unfortunate when Alok explains how transgender people do not exist in society in others’ perceptions. How, then, can people analyze, and build laws and health coverage, for someone they “don’t believe in ”, they don’t acknowledge, something that they do not accept- they reject—nonbinary people? It is discrimination. It takes human rights away and blocks access to methal care, social life, and even safety. Again, it is sad that we need to explain basic human rights to ignorants. Let’s go deeper and imagine that the world is all men and women are not women but “men-less’ creatures. And we need to prove, demonstrate and fight to show men that they are not the only gender. It sounds like science fiction. So for non-binary people, the reality they see is a false reality. Moreover, the wrong perspective builds unfair rights that punish non-binary people! Religion wants to eliminate them, and politics creates a colossal problem of citizens’ right to be. The culture is not flexible. We should pray in universities for education, not in churches for blessings. We would know that living beyond the gender binary isn’t a new thing. We should know that word is not a symbol of 2 -there is not only masculine and feminine. Not only one or the other. It is not an illness or a disorder.