We have many copies of the book beyond the gender binary at my job and we freely allow our youth to take a copy. I service youth that are LGBTQ and  GNC (Gender non conforming) .They are wonderful and very much like every other youth I have worked with except they to not adhere to society’s view of gender  When they arrive at our organization I always note the look of surprise on their faces when we ask them their pronouns and preferred name and then use them. Like they are not used to being addressed in a way that they want and it is saddening. The reading assigned affirmed a lot of GNC experiences and explains how damaging it is to have to fight to exist everyday for someone’s  mental health. To have to defend your right to exist. Every year we hear of a client who was killed. Every year and yet the media and in society they speak about them as its topic to be debated and not like we are speaking of people with a right to live and experience the best quality of life they can dream of.  I am grateful for safe spaces that allow people to experience each other as they identify as. “Power can be defined as the ability to make a particular perspective seem universal.” Alok has given us their experience walking through the world  as themselves , not fitting into our two gendered binaries and being the representation for other GNC folk.