.

A performance artist, writer, and educator. Constantly questions binaries of gender and sexuality,and seeks to create awareness around important LGBTQ issues.
TARSHI · TARSHI TEAM · 4H SEP 2018 · 5 MIN READ
Alok Menon,
a gender non conforming Indian-American
You’ve grown up in a conservative part of Texas. How has that impacted your journey towards embracing your gender identity and your notions of sexuality? Have your Indian roots also played a part in this journey?
Growing up amidst extreme conservatism and religiosity taught me the power of my queerness. Something so small and irrelevant like how I walk and gesture and the tinge in my voice had such a catastrophic impact on the feeble imaginary of my peers. It was a constant lesson: both that people have been taught to fear the very things that have the potential to set them free, and that there are no such things as LGBTI issues, there are just issues that people have with us. What is the queer struggle but the unfettered imagination of other people?
"I also learned the reality of physical and sexual violence – experiences and lessons that continue to inform the urgency in my work today. These topics are not just theoretical, they hurt in all senses of the word.
"I feel that pressure every day. I experience harassment every day I go outside or every time I post online, precisely because I don’t look like a “man” or a “woman.”

I don’t think we can point out exactly where and how our race informs our gender and vice versa – there are already always a confluence of factors that are so complex it feels impossible to parse out where one thing begins and where one thing ends. What I can say is that I grew up in a tight-knit Indian/Hindu/upper-caste community that was deeply concerned with scrutinising and regulating sexual and gender norms. It took me a long time to reconcile my queerness with my Indianness when they were framed to me initially in such an antagonistic way. But I’ve since come to appreciate the delight of failing to uphold the norms – another way of being free, I think.


As someone who’s trans-feminine and nonbinary, have you ever experienced the pressure to ‘pass’ as a certain gender? Has that affected the way you perceive your own identity or body?
Every time I experience violence in public it’s a form of pressure to police me into looking like a “man.” When I speak about the constant vitriol I endure, many feminists do not believe me because I am not a woman (another form of pressure). When I speak about my struggles with trans people they often tell me that if I “looked more convincing” (in other words: sought to look like what society dictates a woman should look like), I would experience less violence. There are actually very few people in the world who I have found accepted me for me on my own terms without projecting what I should look like in order to make other people more comfortable.


Does this pressure to ‘pass’ also affect how you negotiate your sexuality? Are there a set of assumptions or bounds set on the ways you explore your sexuality?
Yes. The majority of violence against trans and gender non-conforming people is from our intimate partners. Because people cannot reconcile their desire for us with their conceptions of who they are and their own identities, they turn that desire into violence. There is a deep and intimate connection between desire and disgust that trans-feminine people know very well. I have to constantly negotiate an onslaught of projections, fantasies, nightmares interchangeably imposed on me. It’s difficult to feel like I own my own body and my own sexuality when they are so contested by other people’s fixations about them.

About
Publications
Zed - 2020
TARSHI · TARSHI TEAM · 4H SEP 2018 · 5 MIN READ
Alok Menon, a gender non conforming Indian-American
A performance artist, writer, and educator. Constantly questions binaries of gender and sexuality, and seeks to create awareness around important LGBTQ issues.


You’ve grown up in a conservative part of Texas. How has that impacted your journey towards embracing your gender identity and your notions of sexuality? Have your Indian roots also played a part in this journey?
Growing up amidst extreme conservatism and religiosity taught me the power of my queerness. Something so small and irrelevant like how I walk and gesture and the tinge in my voice had such a catastrophic impact on the feeble imaginary of my peers. It was a constant lesson: both that people have been taught to fear the very things that have the potential to set them free, and that there are no such things as LGBTI issues, there are just issues that people have with us. What is the queer struggle but the unfettered imagination of other people?


"I also learned the reality of physical and sexual violence – experiences and lessons that continue to inform the urgency in my work today. These topics are not just theoretical, they hurt in all senses of the word.


I don’t think we can point out exactly where and how our race informs our gender and vice versa – there are already always a confluence of factors that are so complex it feels impossible to parse out where one thing begins and where one thing ends. What I can say is that I grew up in a tight-knit Indian/Hindu/upper-caste community that was deeply concerned with scrutinising and regulating sexual and gender norms. It took me a long time to reconcile my queerness with my Indianness when they were framed to me initially in such an antagonistic way. But I’ve since come to appreciate the delight of failing to uphold the norms – another way of being free, I think.


As someone who’s trans-feminine and nonbinary, have you ever experienced the pressure to ‘pass’ as a certain gender? Has that affected the way you perceive your own identity or body?


"I feel that pressure every day. I experience harassment every day I go outside or every time I post online, precisely because I don’t look like a “man” or a “woman.”


Every time I experience violence in public it’s a form of pressure to police me into looking like a “man.” When I speak about the constant vitriol I endure, many feminists do not believe me because I am not a woman (another form of pressure). When I speak about my struggles with trans people they often tell me that if I “looked more convincing” (in other words: sought to look like what society dictates a woman should look like), I would experience less violence. There are actually very few people in the world who I have found accepted me for me on my own terms without projecting what I should look like in order to make other people more comfortable.


Does this pressure to ‘pass’ also affect how you negotiate your sexuality? Are there a set of assumptions or bounds set on the ways you explore your sexuality?
Yes. The majority of violence against trans and gender non-conforming people is from our intimate partners. Because people cannot reconcile their desire for us with their conceptions of who they are and their own identities, they turn that desire into violence. There is a deep and intimate connection between desire and disgust that trans-feminine people know very well. I have to constantly negotiate an onslaught of projections, fantasies, nightmares interchangeably imposed on me. It’s difficult to feel like I own my own body and my own sexuality when they are so contested by other people’s fixations about them.

Zed - 2020