Despite constant invalidation, so many transgender people transition because we know there is a quiet and fierce dignity to being able to look at yourself and say "this is who I am.". But I am seeing the ways that my fingers are phoenixes, becoming touch again. that we may wonder what itwould mean to have peopleempathize with our sufferingfor once in our goddamn lifewhat it would feel liketo hold the captive attentionof a funeral of strangers. I see peace and serenity and surrender and acceptance of what is. Awaken is sponsored by Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, a print and digital magazine dedicated to making Buddhist teachings broadly available. The gender binary - the maintenance of two separate and opposite genders - is a system of power that exists to create conflict and division. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. And that feels like a spiritual practice. On their website, they have almost 200 poems and blog posts with titles ranging from cis feminisms double standards to The Grief of Having No Language to Express Your Grief. Are you willing to go back? And what I gained was my life back. We speak with internationally acclaimed, gender non-conforming writer, performer, and public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon, whose work speaks to themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. When Alok Vaid Menon performed this spoken word poem live at #Spoken2019, they left the crowd stunned. Addeddate 2016-11-04 00:33:48 Closed captioning no Duration 199 Identifier Reincarnation_-_Alok_Vaid-Menon And what does it mean to move from there? As a full-service talent booking agency, we have access to virtually any speaker or celebrity in the world. We use these artworks as a jumping off point to better understand the paths our guests have been on and where they are going. The work of soul searching came to me through being an artist. Alok Vaid-Menon is one member of the transgender South Asian performance duo known as DarkMatter. as if this struggle is not your struggle. The Mandala Lab is reserved for family programming from 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM every Sunday. That idea of the only witness necessary being the earth I think is really powerful to me, because I think that so much of what the dilemma of humanity is that were constantly trying to prove what already is. Robot". And thats what were seeing, unfortunately, in 2021. So color is part of that. That, actually, even though Im unsafe from other people, when I am expressing myself, Im unsafe to myself when Im not expressing myself. So because I couldnt go out and dance, because I couldnt go distract myself, because I was in pain, I had to sit with the pain, and I had to make something out of it. And that dissonance, I think, is the crisis of our times. so i want to embrace to this woman on the trainand say: i am afraid too say: remind me trustsay: sometimes this silence feels like the highest pitch of screaming. In her eyes my journey was about hurting her, not about healing myself. In 2017 they released their critically-acclaimed poetry collection Femme In Public, a meditation on anti-trans discrimination. It gives legitimacy to the way that we police and restrict one another's appearance. . Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. I am awake.. Webwe have been taught to fear the very things that have the potential to set us free Alok Vaid-Menon 63 likes Like Its not just that you internalize the shame; rather, it becomes Mara is often described as representing the inner forces of illusion and ignorance. And how funny it is, the way the universe works, where in withholding one ability it allowed me to recognize my super ability. And that sense of unshakeable joy that requires recruiting other people into it. And so then I put this brown body in a pink shirt, and what did that do? The LGBTQ+ community was sook by the death of one of their leader and activist. ", Billy Porter, who stars in "Pose," wrote that he "felt this on SO many levels. Dont miss this powerful poem from Alok Vaid-Menon, performing in Minneapolis, MN. All American Entertainment has successfully secured celebrity talent like Alok Vaid-Menon for clients worldwide for more than 20 years. It didn't work. Color became language. That while we might mechanically be alive, while we might be speaking, we never really do the due diligence to ask, Are these the words of my own that Im speaking? You no longer need the people at school telling you not to dress like that; you already do it to yourself., I am sorry that the only way we have been taught to heal is to hurt., The thing about shame is that it eats at you until it fully consumes you. Alok Vaid-Menon in Oxfordshire, England, on Nov. 22, 2019. Stuart C. Wilson / Getty Images for The Business of Fashion Nonbinary activist Alok Vaid-Menon broke down the history of and problems with the gender binary and how people can fight against it in video that has gone viral on social media. It always has been, and it always will be. One of my favorite things was going to weddings and seeing intergenerational dancing. Why wouldnt you live in the pulse of the universe? Next Thing: This month, Mx. but instead i will sit here and wait until the train starts up again.i will exit the car without saying goodbye to her.i will walk up the stairs to the boy outside with the smile that makes me feel less lonely. Because thats the substance of life itself. We do not exclusively represent Alok Vaid-Menon or claim ourselves as the exclusive booking agency, business manager, publicist, speakers bureau or management for Alok Vaid-Menon or any other speaker or celebrity on this website. To use his own words, he once declared, I am not a man. Big Break: This summer, Mx. And people are saying thats a threat.". We punish them until they conform. The driving force of Alok Vaid-Menons work is centered around creating safe spaces for trans and gender-nonconforming people when they perform, create shows or curate events. That color brings too much attention to yourself, that you should try to tone it down to fit into the visual cues of the dominant world. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Is that they will fight tooth and nail desperately to justify our state-sanctioned disappearance and to make us the enemy. And so actually I had a relationship with my body that I am still trying to remember, which was, I just moved to communicate. It was one and the same. And Im your host, Laurie Anderson. 0 coins. I would tell everyone, Im going to grow up and Im going to be a dancer. Alok Vaid-Menon on how the transphobic narrative constructs predators and victims And I can feel it there in the way that I move. Gender diversity is an integral part of our existence. Vaid-Menon is a gender nonconforming artist, writer and comedian who uses their work to redefine beauty standards, examine colonialism and explore fluid identity. they told Heath. She eventually passed on without ever seeing me as myself. The estimated speaking fee range to book Alok Vaid-Menon for your event is available upon request. I didnt have shame. speaker. Because before I could speak, I could gesture. We prove that we are real by telling them that they are not. Thats not to say that its not still painful and awful and bad, and its not to romanticize, but it is to say that nothing is fixed. But whose standards of beauty are we required to adhere to? Or is this someone else? Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Did anyone teach you about the question words? It felt like the body was a mere suggestion. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Alok Vaid-Menon for an upcoming live or virtual event. I was paying so much attention to the ways in which I was discriminated against that I forgot to pay attention to the ways in which I was already free. I was dematerialized and less concerned with form than I was with flow. ALOK is a dynamic and seasoned presenter who excels in tailoring their message to their audience from college students to corporate boardrooms. by their tongues. For more information on how we work and what makes us unique, please read the AAE Advantage. Trans activist and actress Laverne Cox and actor Billy Porter both shared clips from the episode. In a conversation filled with wisdom, historical insight, and radical mercy, ALOK challenges us to value compassion over comprehension, to try harder for each other in the name of love, and reminds us that learning is a sign of being alive.We want your feedback on season 1. We do not handle requests for donation of time or media requests for interviews, and cannot provide celebrity contact information. "Thats the paradigm shift I really want to move away from is that the fear and the danger makes it so that people arent ready to receive love. Like, Ive experienced this goodness, this rightness, this alignment, this beauty, why would I not want other people to be part of it? Normative beauty is insecure. That sense of safety, of trust, of legibility and coherence. How do I express it? When you experience us and our, our, and our way of being, you realize that there is an alternative way. AAE Named to Inc. Best Workplaces in 2022. All American Speakers is a "buyers agent" and exclusively represents talent buyers, meeting planners and event professionals, who are looking to secure celebrities and speakers for personal appearances, speaking engagements, corporate entertainment, public relations campaigns, commercials, or endorsements. . You know, I think that theres a lot of misapprehension, miscomprehension about people like me. We deserve more options. We hope you enjoyed it. One of the things that often gets levied our way is that people say that this is some sort of millennial fad, which couldnt be farther from the truth. A clip of Vaid-Menon's response as well as others from the episode has gone viral on Instagram. I feel beauty right now in being a disembodied voice. Look around: there are no princesses. And so you default back into your self-sabotaging coping strategies, and then two months later, something falls apart and youre like, oh, Ive been meaning to address this and I never did. Femme In Public (2017) is a collection of poetry by nonbinary artist Alok Vaid-Menon. I just was. Beauty has a way of justifying violation in the name of benevolence. Because the thing is, you have revelations about yourself, but youre not ready yet to live those revelations. And then people began to tell me that the way that I moved my body was wrong, because it was feminine. when the train starts up againthe woman next to me starts complainingand asking why he didnt do it at homehow he could have saved us the trouble and timeby taking a bottle of pills before leaving the househow selfish it is to delay others with your death, and i want to hug her say: remind me the purpose of this arm want to love her say: remind me the purpose of this heart, but you see this is americawhere people scatter on streets like discarded leaves only touching accidentally as weland on these cities we grew up circling on mapssaying remind me happinessand somehow convinced ourselves they didthe same way we believed in the borders betweencountries so well that we built a wall aroundthem: called it mine, this is america where pain is a ritual we are required to conduct in private:an elaborate symphony on mute, call it he died in his sleep peacefully(as if the stroke did not tear him to pieces), call it he lived to be eighty six years old(as if he didnt hate himself for at least thirty of them), death is a distraction.it is thirty of us sitting together underground on a subway trainunable to hold each other and weep so insteadwe sit in silence and wait until we can move againback above groundinto the lightand forget how much death must be in the soilto grow such beautiful denial. 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