#QueerHeroes Day 10 – Alok Vaid-Menon
Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender nonconforming performance artist, activist, and poet who regularly calls attention to the stratospheric amount of violence and prejudice against trans/GNC people of color.
In 2015, they partnered with Janani Balasubramanian to create the trans South Asian performance art group Dark Matter, which—in addition to poetry performance—mobilizes activists on the ground to work for various social justice causes.
“Trans people and gender nonconformity is biological, natural, anatomical and all of the words they gatekeep from us,” they told Out Magazine. “What is unnatural is their prejudice and transmisogyny. We should be able to look like whatever we want and not have our identities be up for debate.”
In keeping with that, Vaid-Menon has released a third fashion line for gender-nonconforming individuals.
Evan Brechtel 