WEBVTT

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[Interviewer] So can you talk about 
how you feel about doing this?

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[Alok] I think so many narratives 
around trans people

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is that we hated ourselves 
when we were younger,

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and that now we love ourselves 
when we're older.

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And that's just totally not true 
for so many of us,

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because no matter how much 
we are comfortable in our bodies,

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the minute we go outside we're under attack.

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[Interviewer] Can you talk about 
what your style says about you?

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[Alok] I think my fashion is its own form of armour.

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Our daily acts of resistance are just seen 
as frivolous or excessive,

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but I think style is actually extremely political.

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[Interviewer] Can you talk about assumptions

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that people have about you 
based on your style?

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[Alok] I grew up in a small town in Texas.

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It was like a predominantly white, evangelical, 
republican, straight, cisgender

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type of town.

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And I grew up in a sort of post 9/11 queer body.

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Even despite being told that I was a terrorist
every single day,

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being called a faggot
every single day,

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being called a tranny.

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And I think that there's this hierarchy
that gets drawn between

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sort of flamboyant faggotry,
or like queer femininities,

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or like trans femininities

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as being somehow inferior

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or less legitimate than "womanhood"

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because we're always seen as sort of 
[em?]posturing to be women.

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I feel like the way I understand my gender

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is that I am both a man and a woman,
and neither a man or a woman.

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I'm outside of these entire categories.

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I think they see me, and they see me as a failure.

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I think so many of us who grow up 
in the south [of the U.S.],

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or in small towns,

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think that moving to New York means 
we'll finally be acknowledged.

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Like, we'll finally be safe!

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That's a total and utter lie.

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And I've had to learn the really hard way.

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But in New York, I think, 
because it's such a large city,

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there's so much anonymity,

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I think people don't feel 
empowered enough

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to defend people getting harassed on the streets.

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People will just stand and stare and watch.

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I've had people spit on me,

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I've had people call me an "it".

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This one day, I hadn't shaved 
in like 2 weeks or something,

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and I was getting off the train

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and this white man was 
about to enter the train,

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and the doors open and he screamed

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"OSAMA!!!!"

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Like, really really loudly!

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And then I was like, petrified

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because my entire life i've known

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that when people call me a terrorist,

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or Osama, or Bin Laden, or whatever,

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you run.

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You run because no one's going to defend you.

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And then he looked down and saw 
that I was wearing stiletto heels.

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So I had a beard, but then I had heels,

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and then he cut himself short, 
he says "OSAAAA..."

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And there's this really weird moment

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where I didn't, I no longer fit his stereotype

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of a "man of colour sort of a terrorist".

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So when people see me as a brown person,

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they automatically masculinize me too,

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because of this idea of the like terrorist idea.

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Like the other day I was using the bathroom,

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and I walked into the women's restroom

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and this older white lady
came up to me and said

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"What do you think you're doing, sir?"

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And I said "using the bathroom."

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And then she pointed to the door,
like, very vehemently,

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and was like "This is the women's restroom!"

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And then, in this moment, I was so frustrated 
because I knew that I had to say I was a woman.

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Like, if I walked into the men's restroom 
in this dress right now,

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there's a serious chance that I could be attacked,

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like, "what are you doing?!"

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And so I just said "I AM a woman",

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and then she looked at me and said

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"Oh. You must understand why I was confused."

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And I think that's because when women see me,

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they're trying to protect this category 
that they belong to.

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And I think so much of the ways 
we talk about patriarchy,

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is that it's just men doing it.

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And I think actually women do patriarchy every day.

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I was really nervous about going back 
to my family home in India,

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like a couple of years ago,

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because I knew that my family had all found out,

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that I was no longer, like, a straight man.

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Even though I was so scared,

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one of my aunts, like, took me aside

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and gave me one of her necklaces.

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And she didn't explain why,

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and she didn't say, like,

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"Look, I'm validating your femininity."

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She just said "here you go."

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And all these subtle moments in my life

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matter a lot to me.

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People would come up to me and say

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"why do all Indian people smell bad?"

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"Why are you all, like, dirty?"

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Um, I would go home and tell my mom,

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like, I kept on washing my hands

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but this brown wouldn't come off of me.

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I grew up feeling ugly because I was brown.

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I thought brown people could never be desirable,

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could never have sex,

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I thought we were all ugly, and 
we all needed to be white to be beautiful.

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And then when I started to be more... 
present more feminine,

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people started to call me a faggot.

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When we go to the club,

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everyone's gonna be like
"Oh my god I love your outfit!"

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But no one's gonna ask us 
"how are you getting home?"

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They don't care because I think 
trans feminine people only matter

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when we're fabulous.

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The very core of misogyny against trans people,

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or transmisogyny,

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is that we're always masquerading 
as something we're not.

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That we're always just
put on this dress to trick someone.

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And so therefore we are always seen 
as worthy of our violence.

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That's why people don't stand up for us,
it's kind of like

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"you chose to be that way,
you have to take the brunt of it."

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I have an older sister

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and I loved my sister so much

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that I just wanted to be her.

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So when people would ask me "what are 
you going to be when you grow up?"

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I would say "my sister!"

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I would say I want flowers 
on every single birthday cake.

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And my parents were totally down,

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but then things changed
when I hit puberty.

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I began to develop facial hair,
people started to say

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"you need to be, you're a boy, you need to 
be a man now, you need to butch up."

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I became really really really depressed.

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I attempted suicide when I was 13 years old.

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I took a belt to my neck.

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I was alone in my room,

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and I felt destroyed.

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I felt attacked on every level.

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I decided that I needed to get out of my town,

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so I made a plan.

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I said "work really freaking hard,

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and then get a full scholarship or something

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to get you out of this place."

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And so I moved to California because literally 
I was looking at schools,

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like, where can I do my activism?

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And I just, like, joined the movement
the minute I could.

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And that's why for me,

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my "coming out" is much less 
about my gender and sexual identity,

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and much more about my politics.

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The world I'm fighting for

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is where we stop making assumptions

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around everything.

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Where we allow people to 
self-narrate their bodies.

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I think that's a profoundly radical act.

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Cause we exist in a western colonial system,

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that's invested in categorizing 
every single thing about you.

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And creating norms about every single thing.

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Rather than actually recognizing

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NONE of us fit into norms.

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My politics is "I am me. I am Alok.

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And Alok exists outside of your colonial white 
supremacist heteronormative gender binary!"

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I don't have to be a woman or a man
to be coherent.

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And I think that threatens so much 
of the fabric of this society.

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I wasn't born in the wrong body,
I was born in the wrong world.

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I see my hair as part of my femininity.

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If I have a beard and lipstick,
that's part of who I am.

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Why do we always put the onus on people 
to change their bodies,

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and the onus on people to prove 
or authenticate themselves to other people,

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versus have society shift their norms?

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This is why trans women get murdered.

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Because what ends up happening is that

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when they're hooking up with someone,

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someone sees a penis and then kills them.

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Like, literally, it's the most misogynist idea

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where women are defined by vagina.

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That's why, like, transmisogyny 
also effects cisgender women,

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because cisgender women, "womanhood",

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should be more than your vagina.

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A lot of the trans people I know

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will, like, have surgery, have hormones, whatever,

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because of safety.

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Not because they wanted to.

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What I'm fighting for our world,

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is that we can just say

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"Y'know what? My body is on my own terms."

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I think what's also frustrating is that we 
ask trans people to have all the answers.

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How the hell am I supposed to have all the answers

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when I grew up in a world that erased my existence?

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I'm still figuring it out!

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But I have people in my life,

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I have lovers in my life,
I have friends in my life,

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who are willing to work through that with me.

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And that's been the most liberating part

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about becoming politically active.

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I would much rather know that y'all

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would, if someone was yelling at me on a train,

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say "hey stop that!",

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versus, like, knowing my pronouns.

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I know that people hurt me because they're hurt.

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I know that people,

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especially people of colour,

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are discriminating against me 
because of their own trauma.

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And so for me, like,

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unless we liberate both 
perpetrators and victims of violence,

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then we're still caught in the same system.

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My fervor comes from being... 
from wanting to be a nicer person.

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I'm really invested in niceness!

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I think it's really radical.

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I think the state is SO BAD,

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I think we grow up with so much toxicity,

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and we're so mean and disposable for each other,

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[Interviewer] When do you feel the most vulnerable?

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[Alok] Hm. When I'm writing poetry.

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So, um, I started writing poetry
after my suicide attempt.

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Art is the space we go
when language fails us.

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Yes, go get therapy
if you need to have therapy,

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but how can our friendships 
BE that therapy?

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How can we really love each other hard enough

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where we don't have to outsource our trauma?

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Where we don't have to leave 
where we're at to deal with shit?

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So much of my identity
has been framed by violence.

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I didn't understand my gender,
other than being called a faggot.

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I didn't understand my race,
other than being called a terrorist.

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I think when I moved here

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I was like "oh my god, you're never gonna feel 
lonely 'cause there's a million things to do!"

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And those million things to do 
actually make you more lonely.

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We keep on making this mistake in the west

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where if we have more things, we're happier;

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or if we're around more things, we're happier.

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Versus recognizing that 
we already had everything we needed.

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So moving away from scarcity towards abundance,

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recognizing that we are enough.

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So it's a poem called "Funeral".

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Our train is delayed and I am 
late for lunch with a boy I like

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because his smile makes me feel 
a little bit less lonely.

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And this feels like a working definition 
for love these days in the city

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where it's possible to be surrounded by 
the warmth of over a million apartment lights

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and still feel cold.

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The lights turn off and the train starts moving.

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...stops moving.

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And it's one of those rare moment when

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we're forced to look up from our screens

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and remember that we exist outside of them.

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They tell us that a man jumped in front of the train.

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That he died upon impact.

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So we just sit there in silence

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as they remove his remains from the tracks.

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And some part of us is happy

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because this, this is the first time in a long time

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we have been forced to feel 
like something greater than ourselves

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in the city, where sometimes it takes an accident

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to remember what the purpose 
of a body is to begin with anyways.

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The lights turn on, the train starts moving,

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and the woman next to me starts complaining.

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Asks why this man couldn't have taken 
a bottle of pills before leaving the house.

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How selfish it is to delay others with your own death.

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And I want to hug her, say

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"remind me the purpose of arm."

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I want to love her, say

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"remind me the purpose of heart."

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But then I remember that this is America,

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where bodies fall on streets like discarded leaves,

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only touching accidentally as we all 
tumble onto these cities we grew up with,

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circling a map saying "remind me happiness",

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and somehow convinced ourselves that they did.

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The same way we learned about 
the borders between countries so well.

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That we built walls around them,

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call them "mine".

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This is America,

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where pain is ritual we are 
required to conduct in private.

00:11:22.198 --> 00:11:24.368
An elaborate symphony on mute.

00:11:24.368 --> 00:11:27.092
Call it "he lived to be 86 years old",

00:11:27.092 --> 00:11:30.349
not "he hated himself for 30 of them."

00:11:30.349 --> 00:11:32.642
Call it "he died in his sleep peacefully",

00:11:32.642 --> 00:11:36.011
not "the stroke tore him to pieces."

00:11:36.011 --> 00:11:37.840
Call it "accident",

00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:40.140
not "no healthcare".

00:11:40.140 --> 00:11:42.256
Call it "casualty",

00:11:42.256 --> 00:11:44.355
not "calculation".

00:11:44.355 --> 00:11:45.817
To live in America,

00:11:45.817 --> 00:11:48.617
is to live in a constant state of illusion [allusion?]

00:11:48.617 --> 00:11:50.833
is to be 30 people underground on a train,

00:11:50.833 --> 00:11:53.439
unable to hold one another and weep,

00:11:53.439 --> 00:11:55.283
is to sit there in silence

00:11:55.283 --> 00:11:56.953
until we can just keep on moving

00:11:56.953 --> 00:12:00.264
and forget how much death is required in the soil

00:12:00.264 --> 00:12:03.885
to birth such beautiful denial.

00:12:03.885 --> 00:12:06.593
And I want to text the boy above ground, ask

00:12:06.593 --> 00:12:10.006
"have you ever been to a funeral 
with complete strangers?"

00:12:10.006 --> 00:12:12.882
But instead, I look at the woman next to me

00:12:12.882 --> 00:12:15.970
the one who told a dead man 
to die more considerately,

00:12:15.970 --> 00:12:18.251
and then I remember that to live in America

00:12:18.251 --> 00:12:21.476
is already to attend a funeral 
with complete strangers.

00:12:21.476 --> 00:12:25.914
How many ghosts does it take before 
a cemetery can call itself a country?

00:12:25.914 --> 00:12:27.190
To live in America

00:12:27.190 --> 00:12:29.393
is to blame the dead for their own death.

00:12:29.393 --> 00:12:31.551
Not the country for creating the conditions

00:12:31.551 --> 00:12:33.398
that already killed them before they

00:12:33.398 --> 00:12:36.247
caught up and made things more clear 
for the rest of us.

00:12:36.247 --> 00:12:40.202
Which is why, when the liberal who 
wears words like "democrat" and "diplomacy"

00:12:40.202 --> 00:12:42.546
calls me a terrorist after I tell him

00:12:42.546 --> 00:12:44.959
that I'm not interested in paying his taxes

00:12:44.959 --> 00:12:48.046
because I do not want my coins 
to cause more carnage,

00:12:48.046 --> 00:12:49.594
I understand.

00:12:49.594 --> 00:12:51.372
Which is why, when I tell him that

00:12:51.372 --> 00:12:55.095
I do believe in monsters who come out at night

00:12:55.095 --> 00:12:57.223
call them "men" for short,

00:12:57.223 --> 00:12:59.387
and he tells me that I only dress femme

00:12:59.387 --> 00:13:00.948
because I want to be bashed,

00:13:00.948 --> 00:13:02.595
I understand.

00:13:02.595 --> 00:13:04.326
Which is why, when I tell him

00:13:04.326 --> 00:13:06.792
that the same women who started his movement

00:13:06.792 --> 00:13:08.079
are still being murdered,

00:13:08.079 --> 00:13:09.902
and the same cities he's getting married

00:13:09.902 --> 00:13:11.487
and calling it momentous

00:13:11.487 --> 00:13:12.847
and he gasps and says

00:13:12.847 --> 00:13:15.309
"that happens HERE? In America?!",

00:13:15.309 --> 00:13:17.171
I understand.

00:13:17.171 --> 00:13:19.119
The way we've been taught 
to apologize for the pain,

00:13:19.119 --> 00:13:21.066
to erase the hurt,

00:13:21.066 --> 00:13:22.720
to numb the violence,

00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:25.971
to deny that we may not be able 
to wake up in the morning,

00:13:25.971 --> 00:13:28.891
that we may see a pill 
coming in the place of the train,

00:13:28.891 --> 00:13:30.305
that we may wonder

00:13:30.305 --> 00:13:33.593
what it would feel like to finally have 
others empathize with our struggle,

00:13:33.593 --> 00:13:35.845
for once, in OUR GODDAMNED LIFE,

00:13:35.845 --> 00:13:36.990
what it would feel like

00:13:36.990 --> 00:13:38.477
to hold captive attention

00:13:38.477 --> 00:13:40.614
of a funeral of strangers, so

00:13:40.614 --> 00:13:42.241
I would run back on that train,

00:13:42.241 --> 00:13:43.351
hug that woman, say

00:13:43.351 --> 00:13:44.738
"I'm afraid too." say

00:13:44.738 --> 00:13:46.058
"remind me trust" say

00:13:46.058 --> 00:13:49.479
"sometimes silence feels like 
the highest pitch of screaming" say

00:13:49.479 --> 00:13:51.413
"this is the first time in a long time

00:13:51.413 --> 00:13:53.560
I have been forced to publicly mourn death

00:13:53.560 --> 00:13:56.755
and there is something 
beautiful about that", say

00:13:56.755 --> 00:14:00.784
"what if we allowed the pain to fill us 
a little bit less empty?"

00:14:00.784 --> 00:14:04.081
But instead, I will sit there 
in silence on the train.

00:14:04.081 --> 00:14:07.504
I will say nothing to the woman next to me.

00:14:07.504 --> 00:14:09.801
I will disembark at the next stop.

00:14:09.801 --> 00:14:11.500
I will have lunch with a boy I like,

00:14:11.500 --> 00:14:13.500
because his smile makes me feel

00:14:13.500 --> 00:14:15.218
a little bit less lonely.

00:14:15.218 --> 00:14:17.303
I will apologize for being late.

00:14:17.303 --> 00:14:19.102
I will not have the word

00:14:19.102 --> 00:14:22.472
for a type of loss that is so distant it is intimate.

00:14:22.472 --> 00:14:25.106
After lunch, I will get back on the train,

00:14:25.106 --> 00:14:27.021
I will remember,

00:14:27.021 --> 00:14:29.681
I will soon forget.