I'm non-binary, which means it's not just that I'm challenging the binary between male, female, man, woman, but between us and them. And in your stat… - Alok Vaid-Menon

We're always gonna mess up because we are indoctrinated into a world that teaches us ideology, not compassion. So it's not you speaking when you misgender me, it's everyone that has spoken to you before. And in my life what I always try to remind people is I was not born with gender literacy, I was born hating myself and hunting myself and I had to learn too, so other people are gonna have to learn. And in that way, I think trans people can actually teach the world transition is possible, not just between genders but between paradigms.

That is what love is for me, trying harder for each other.

I think I have a daily relationship with a sense of inadequacy. I've written about this in the past, but when you are a non-binary person in this country in this time, there's an imposter syndrome for being alive, because people don't think that we should exist. And so every day I have to remind myself they're wrong, because I'm breathing, they're wrong because I'm speaking. And so I have to remind myself not only am I enough, but the very system that has and weaponizes a criteria that would rather disappear me, that's not a system that will ever evaluate me again.