Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian (Laura Flanders Show: Dark Matter: Trans Lives Matter via TeleSUR English/Vimeo)
Editor’s note: Alok Vaid-Menon identifies as gender non-conforming and uses the pronouns they/them.
For Alok Vaid-Menon, the LGBTQ rights activist, poet and performance�artist, their work is not just art, “[it] is survival.�
Vaid-Menon�addressed race, gender and feminism during a poetry and comedy performance�Friday night hosted by the Cultural Events Board and F-Word.�Using satire throughout their performance, Vaid-Menon talked about how prevalent white culture is in society, especially within the context of issues such as race and gender identity.
�Gender is a recent historical phenomenon that was produced by white people as a way to maintain southern colonial power,� Vaid-Menon said.
Vaid-Menon described the present day as �the most dangerous time ever to exist as a trans and gender non-conforming person in this country.�
Hate crimes against transgender people are on the rise. On April 1, a transgender woman was fatally shot in South Carolina, making her the eighth known transgender person killed this year. The true number may be higher�because cadavers are identified base�off of genitalia. Transgender people that are at a greater risk of violence are typically visibly gender non-conforming, according to Vaid-Menon.
�What I�m fighting for is the ability to look like whatever I want and not be afraid of violence,� Vaid-Menon said.
Vaid-Menon asked the audience to consider how feminism would change if desirability�and being different didn’t matter. They wondered what it would look like if people realized that��femininity is not for other people, it�s for ourselves.�
�[Vaid-Menon] is an inspiration to me as a brown, gender non-conforming person,” said CU student Briannah Hill, who introduced Vaid-Menon at the beginning of the night. “I really appreciate what they do, and what they do for my community.�
Hill hoped that people would leave the performance, take action as allies and �start putting [their] bodies on the line because we�ve been doing it since day one.�
Vaid-Menon emphasized that more than being a performer, they want to make change for their community.
Contact CU Independent News Staff Writer Shaylynne Voth at [email protected].
