ALOK: How do we interrupt trauma? How do we heal?
March 3, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I am so excited to jump right in with my new friend, who has been my secret friend for a very long time, but we have never met in person before this joyful, joyful conversation that we’ve been able to have. The poet, the beautiful, Alok. Please go back and listen to Tuesday’s episode, if you have not yet. You’re not going to want to miss that one. Sister, let’s just jump right in. I think you had some things you wanted to talk to Alok about this morning.
Amanda Doyle:
Alok on Tuesday’s episode talked so much about the pain of the feminist movement not understanding how our liberation is tied to the trans movement, how it’s all the same. I was thinking, look, I know you’re from Texas, and especially with the attacks on reproductive justice in Texas and what’s at the Supreme Court, I would love for us to talk a little bit about how my fight for bodily autonomy as a CIS, straight woman is inextricably linked to your fight for a bodily autonomy.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s the obvious link in that abortion is also a trans issue, of course, and the power to make our personal, medical decisions, but there’s also this pervasive paradigm defining womanhood according to reproductive function. The justification that a trans woman can’t function as a woman, because she lacks the essential reproductive capacity, is the same justification that looks at me and says, because my essential function as a woman is my reproductive capacity, the state has an interest in regulating it. I think that, can we just talk a little bit about how the intersection of gender, freedom, and reproductive justice, and how this is all the same bag of tricks?
Alok:
Yes, and before answering, I just want to say, I see the gender studies major in you, and it makes me so excited, just the way that you speak.
Glennon Doyle:
They’re having a namaste moment. “The gender studies major in me sees and honors the gender studies major in you.”
Alok:
Like, truly you are my people. That’s exactly how I speak on the daily. People will be like, “How do you talk like that?”
Alok:
I’m like, “How do you not? This is how thoughts come into my head.”
Alok:
I want to stage something that is so funny. You see a bunch of CIS women talking about how CIS men should not be able to legislate their bodies and make decisions. Those same CIS women are legislating around trans and intersex bodies, right? Ultimately, what we’re fighting for here is your own your body, and you get to decide what you do with your body. No one gets to tell you what gender you are. Gender is something that you get to choose. That’s an elaboration of a feminist ethic of self-determination. It’s natural conclusion. You can be a woman if you choose to be a woman.
Alok:
People think that trans and non-binary people are erasing people’s right to be a woman, so when it comes to the productive justice conversation, there’s friction, because we’ll say things like, “Pregnant people,” and people will say, “That’s erasing womanhood,” but we’re not. We know that there are trans men who give birth. We know that there are non-binary people who give birth. We know that those trans men and non-binary people are actually being denied access to reproductive care. We all have a vested interest in reproductive care, so when we’re talking about a group, we’re just being factual. This is not something political. You’re allowed to describe your individual experiences as related to womanhood, but when we abstract that to an entire group, we’re actually erasing people who need these services.
Alok:
We have to ask, “Why is there an uptick in anti-abortion legislation and anti-trans legislation at the same time?” The common denominator there is that men have determined that women’s only function in society is to be a reproducing machine. When you say, “I’ve got other priorities, other investments, and you don’t get to dictate that for me. I get to choose when I want to give birth, if I want to give birth. I get to choose how I assemble my family, my love, my appearance,” that challenges this patriarchal idea of what women have to be in society. Actually, feminist women throughout history were called hermaphrodites. If you look in the early 20th century, one of the slurs that people would say to feminist women is, “You no longer are women, because you are not complying with male’s definition of what women should be.”
Alok:
For the listeners now, the term hermaphrodite is a slur used against intersex people. I’m using this as a historical context, but what that history can reveal to us, they would literally call feminist third sexers. Like, what? What that reveals to us is that both struggles are critiquing this patriarchal idea of what a woman ought to be. What we’re actually saying is women get to determine for themselves what womanhood means, so there’s so much in common there. The reason that there becomes friction or antagonism is a misplaced sense of fear, because so many cis-gendered women feel like the issues, the legitimate, real, material issues that they’re experiencing are going to be erased, but they’re not. There’s still ways to talk about the specific concerns around reproductive access, pregnancy, while still being gender inclusive.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, so when you, listener, feminist listener, when you hear that your local community, school, whatever is having a trans bathroom issue, “We want to have separate bathrooms,” please know that is on the spectrum of a threat to your right to choose what happens inside of your body. All of it, same, same. If you’re not fighting for that, you’re not fighting for any of it.
Glennon Doyle:
Liberation is tied to each other. How does the average feminist get this wrong? What do you see most often? What do feminists say, that are not in the TERF category, right? They’re not extremists. What do they do or say that feels, that you know, is completely out of tune?
Alok:
Where to begin? The first is whenever I speak about my experiences with sexism and discrimination, they say, “Welcome,” as if they have a monopoly on this experience, and as if I haven’t experienced this my entire life. I understand where the sentiment comes from in saying, “Oh. You’re wearing a dress in society. You’re experiencing sexism? Welcome to that,” but it’s not correct, because patriarchy is not just men dominating women. Patriarchy is the policing of all people into gender norms. Even though our experiences of patriarchy might have been different, there’s still patriarchy. What patriarchy looked like for me, as someone who was assigned male at birth, is some of my earliest memories were being called a girl as a pejorative, as if being a girl is something bad and irredeemable.
Alok:
And being put into sex segregated spaces with the very people harassing me, such that my first development as a child was through fear, such that I was disassociated for the first 18 years of my life, so as to not experience the pain of the constant, routinized bullying that was glorified as actually a good thing, because this is what we do to boys, is we say, “Toughen up. You’re getting bullied? That’s making you stronger.” My experiences with patriarchy might not have been the exact same as yours, but that doesn’t mean that yours is somehow more legitimate or certifiable. We should have a space where we can all be honest about the unique ways in which patriarchy has impacted us without creating a hierarchy of who is more real or who is more serious.
Alok:
Then, the second thing is an emphasis on the term “woman” without actually thinking about feminism as a project that liberates all genders. Oftentimes, even when we’re talking about trans inclusion, people will say, “I stand with my trans brothers and sisters.” You’re not talking about trans inclusion, because a lot of us are neither men nor women, so you can say trans siblings. Or when you’re talking about what you imagine the future to be, it’s not just, “The future is female,” right? It’s, “The future is the whatever you want it to be,” actually seeing the location to not just be about women’s emancipation, the emancipation of all genders. Then, the third thing I think I would really put out there is really trying to understand that the goal of feminism is not just women’s equality with men.
Alok:
That’s a goal, but actually the liberatory project here is gender self-determination, which means each person gets to choose their own gender, and any system or institution that tells you, “This is what you should be,” that’s anti what we’re trying to do. What I try to tell feminists is it’s about ending the gender binary. Then, people get very nervous, because they’re like, “Ending the gender binary. What does that mean?” It does not mean requiring everyone to be non-binary, like plot twist. I don’t care how you identify. That’s not interesting to me. What ending gender binary is, is stopping policing other people’s gender. It’s not about how you identify. It’s how you police other people. Ending the gender binary is a world without gender policing, where people are able to look like they want, love like they want, because it’s their life and their body.
Glennon Doyle:
What does gender policing look like on a day daily basis? How do we all do it?
Alok:
It looks like thousands of strangers telling me that I should remove my body hair if I want to be “Believed for my femininity,” as if women don’t have body hair. It just so absurd to me.
Amanda Doyle:
I got some.
Glennon Doyle:
I got lots. More in the chin area these days, but go ahead.
Alok:
It looks like telling me that I’m not really trans unless I get a medical diagnosis and pursue medical transition. It looks like telling me that people with my body shouldn’t be wearing dresses and skirts. It looks like people telling me that I can’t do certain things in my career, because people like me don’t belong there. But that’s not just what it looks like. It looks like the narratives we tell ourselves, because that’s where I really want to land this conversation.
Alok:
It looks like me looking at my career, saying, “I had a limited view of what my career could be, because I knew people were comfortable with someone who looked like me on a stage, because of the history of drag in this country, and so I thought, ‘Oh yeah. I’m a stage performer. That’s it.'” I policed my own ambition and imagination because of other people’s projections of what safety was. Ending gender policing, for me, looks like I deserve to be as visibly flamboyant, looking like a clown as I want. I don’t identify as a woman. I identify as a Muppet, and that was a joke. I deserve to be able to be everywhere, right? It’s not just during Pride. It’s not just like outside in the gayborhood. I deserve to go back home to Texas in a practical six-inch chill, a mini skirt, and a full beard, because why not? Ending gender policing is also about expanding possibility and expanding belonging.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
I love that.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s like the call is coming from inside the house all the time. It’s like the police are in us. Yeah. You said something that gets to me all the time. I think about it all the time. You said, “What feminine part of yourself did you need to destroy to survive in this world?” Can you tell me what does that question mean to you?
Alok:
Yes. I think a lot of people mistake feminism as policing femininity, not ending gender policing. We look at women who are traditionally feminine, and we say, “You’ve bought into the myth of patriarchy. You are a joke. You don’t belong here,” and that’s that negative self talk in my head when I look at myself so often, as I’m like, “Femininity is a joke. It’s not rigorous. It’s not worthwhile. It’s not worth fighting for. Masculinity is legitimacy, is intelligence, is leadership.” When I was younger, I was an extremely feminine child, and I was made to feel like I should have shame for the way that I spoke, because I was too feminine, shame for the way that I walked, because it was too feminine. I didn’t allow any audio or video recordings of me. There are very few photos of me from my childhood, because I was so embarrassed by my femininity.
Alok:
But then what I realized is, underneath that shame, was my joy. I was feminine, because it made me happy, because it freed my body from the choreography of patriarchy, which made me be like this. Femininity said, “You get to move. Femininity said, “You get to be free.” Femininity was me in first grade, dancing at my talent show in front of everyone with no shame. It was my power, my strength, my beauty, my dignity, and that was pulverized out of me. I was made to feel like feminine things that are associated with femininity, like intuition, emotion, art, and poetry… I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was younger, and then I was told, “Boys don’t do that.” I literally censored myself so much to become some hologram of what masculine culture told me to be.
Alok:
The work that I’m trying to do now in healing my inner child is also developing my own relationship with my femininity to say, “I choose them. It’s not something that men have made me be. It’s something that I choose. When I’m wearing heels, when I’m putting on makeup, when I have a wig, I’m choosing these because I feel powerful in this form.” In our last conversation, we were talking about TERFS. One of the things you see in a lot of TERF discourse is anti femininity. There’s a deep femme phobia of, “Oh. These nasty, hyper-stylized… They think they’re women, because they have makeup on, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m here to say, “Actually, there’s nothing wrong with makeup. There’s nothing wrong with the things that we consider feminine. What’s wrong is a culture that judges women and trans people for being feminine. What’s wrong is a culture that upholds masculinity as what it means to be a human.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Alok:
Okay?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s right. Alok, we want to get to some of our questions from our pod squad. Let’s just hear the first question.
Speaker 5:
My question is I just finished listening to your podcast on gender, both of them. Even before your podcast, I’ve been wondering and curious about how are we raising babies and children to move away from the gender norms? I understand gender-neutral clothing and all of those things, and I’m grateful for all of those things, but how do you have conversations with your kids? What do those conversations sound like when you’re talking about, when you want them to know that they can just be who they want to be in the world, and that this boy-girl thing isn’t actually a thing unless they want it to be? I don’t really know how to approach this with a child and how to approach parenting in a way that says, “All of this stuff on the outside world is conditioning, and you get to choose what you want and who you want.”
Alok:
When I was seven years old, my mom was tucking me into bed, and I said, “Mom. I’m queer.” I had learned the word, because my dad grew up reading British children’s literature, and so I did too. Queer was just a word for strange or different. I didn’t know its connotation around gender or sexuality yet. Instead of getting curious with me, my mom said, “Oh. That’s interesting,” and just let me sleep. Kids are constantly, not just leaving breadcrumbs, but entire like baguettes. It’s the parents who have so much trepidation and anxiety and fear, so it’s actually about just creating the path ways for conversation always.
Alok:
“Hey, what do you want to wear today? How do you feel about this? What do you think?”, and actually engaging with a young person and co-parenting together. That’s a new model of parenting for a lot of people, which isn’t, “You get to determine what your child is,” but you collectively get to determine, “Hey, what’s your intake and input on this?” Then, that’s how we can attack at these gender norms. It’s not by requiring everyone to be gender neutral. That’s extremely difficult in this society right now. It’s about creating the pathways for people to say, “Here’s what being a girl. Here’s what being a boy. Here’s what being non-binary means to me,” and always allowing for that self authorship.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like we worry less about what we’re saying to them and worry more about what they’re saying to us. Let’s hear from Holly.
Holly:
My name’s Holly. I basically have no idea what I’m doing with my life. I am 22, and I graduated college, and I just have so many questions, questions about the world and questions about myself. I feel like everybody else has such a strong sense of who they are, what they like, what they want out of life, and what career they want to go into, and I don’t know why that didn’t happen to me. It feels very isolating. Glennon, you talk so much about this sense of knowing that you have. When you’re at a crossroads, and you can just sit there, and figure it out. I need help doing that in my own life. If you have any tips for tapping into your knowing, I would love that, and I appreciate it greatly.
Alok:
Yeah, totally. The first thing I would say is that most people are lying, and it’s a scam when they say like, “Oh yeah. This is who I am.” It’s performance art. Actually, they go home, and the halo of their phone scrolling, just like you, being like, “Is this really what I want? Is this really who I am?” You’re not alone. You’re just honest. The second thing I would say is one of the joys of being a stage performer is it’s one of the few places in the world where experimentation is encouraged. When you’re doing improv or when you’re doing drag, you start to just try things. I didn’t know my gender was possible, and then I started to dress up for the stage.
Alok:
Then, I was like, “Wait. This was really fun,” and I found out, “Oh. This is kind of who I am,” so what I’ve learned as an artist is that everyone needs experimentation. Maybe create mini places with you and your friends where you can just be on a microphone and you can just speak, and then who knows what will come out, and who knows what other people looking at you speaking will bring up in you? Experiment, and then the third point is try it out, and it’s okay to get it wrong, because it’s all going to take you closer to where you need it to end up. Authenticity is not a destination. It’s an orientation, and what matters more is that you’re showing up, not where you’re going.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s hear from Brittany.
Brittany:
My name is Brittany. I’m a flower farmer, mom of three boys. I’ve been listening to the podcast since it began, and I have been thinking a ton lately about gender and color. I have three young boys, seven, six, and three, and the gender norms around color. My kids love bright colors. They love pink. They love purple. My son almost got a pink cap too, and I just kind of wanted your thoughts about gender color norms. Where on earth did that start? I don’t know.
Alok:
Yeah. It’s absurd truly, because the color pink used to actually be a marker of masculinity in this country. Then, after World War II, the pink and blue division was actually a marketing scheme to get parents to buy two of same thing for their different kids. The hyper-gendering of the youth space is a recent construction. Actually, kids used to just wear the same gown. It wasn’t an issue.
Alok:
But there’s a really amazing book called Chromophobia by this art historian, who basically says that we have a fear of color in society, because we associate color with women, with people of color, and with Indigenous people, and that actually, when we’re taught that professional equals black and white and the removing of color, it’s that same kind of patriarchal idea of being like, “You have to be reasonable, not emotional. Color is too emotional.” For me, gendering color actually holds people back from emotion in this society. The reason that we need to move beyond just pink and blue, and actually allowing everyone to have rainbows and hues, is because, like an emotion, the way that we have color, color gives us permission to have spectrums.
Alok:
It gives us permission to recognize, we would never say there are only two colors. Why do we do that with genders? It allows us to expand our horizons of what is beauty. The final thing I say is, as a deep connoisseur of pink, as a young person who was a boy and got in a lot of trouble for my love of pink, it’s also really important to create pathways for communication with a young person, for them to be able to say to you, “Hey, people are making fun of me because of my love of this color,” and then for you to say, “That’s not okay.” I didn’t have anyone in my life tell me that was not okay, and so I started to just wear all black, because I was like, “I’m opting out of the color game. This is too traumatic for me,” so it’s really about creating those abilities to teach people.” You don’t need to say things like, “Colors have no gender,” but you can say things like, “Colors are beautiful. I’m glad that you like them. Me too.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Let’s take our last question from Ms. [Demik 00:25:35].
Ms. Demik:
I am Ms. Demik. I use she/her pronouns, and I am calling from a middle school. I am in a meeting with our middle school Pride club right now. We are six to eighth graders who all identify as LGBTQ+, as well as some allies, and we have some questions for you. Here we go.
Speaker 9:
How can school kids confess their out to their parents?
Speaker 10:
What if they don’t support?
Speaker 11:
How did you come out?
Speaker 12:
How did it feel?
Speaker 13:
Did you get judged? How did you overcome it?
Speaker 14:
Who are your queer role models?
Ms. Demik:
Thank you so much. We also have a message.
Ms. Demik:
We love you
In Unison:
We can do hard things!
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God. Ms. Demik for president.
Alok:
That was amazing. I’ll try to remember some of those questions. I believe there was, “How do you come out to your parents?” I guess I want to say you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You get to determine what safety looks like for you, and you’re not any less than or less valid as an LGBTQ person if other people don’t know. What matters is that you know, and a lot of times people can come out before they’re ready, and that puts them in situations where it can be uncomfortable. You get to determine what makes you feel most safe, and no one gets to pressure. You have your own timeline.
Amanda Doyle:
Alok, I heard you say one thing about that, that I thought was so beautiful. You said that you don’t like the term closeted, that you weren’t closeted. You were strategic. I think that’s so beautiful, because it’s not a shame thing. It’s a power. You are knowing what will work in your life for you, and you’re deploying that correctly. It’s beautiful.
Alok:
Yeah, and that goes to my story of coming out, is I knew from the time I was four or five that I was different, but I knew that my difference would get me in a lot of trouble, and that I had to protect my, my inner light. I started to plan. I was like, “Okay. What do I need in order to express this? I can’t be in my hometown, because it’s too small, and I’ll be in danger. I have to do this. I have to do this,” and so I strategized, I schemed, and I planned until I could be in a place where I was independent and that I could actually be around people who I could be in community with, because I knew that if I came out, I’d be alone. I wanted to have someone else there who could say, “I felt the same way.”
Alok:
When I started to go to college visit in high school, when I was thinking about applying to college, I would come out on those trips. I would meet other people who were LGBTQ and started to develop friendships with them, and they helped me and coached me, because I knew that I needed community. I started to come out online before I could in person, under pseudonyms, and I met other LGBTQ people. I was telling them, “Hey. I’m afraid of coming out in high school right now.”
Alok:
They were like, “Okay. You’ve got me until then,” and so I reached out and I built community with people until I felt safe enough. Then, I think there was something there about how I deal with guilt or shame, or was that in my head?
Glennon Doyle:
How did it feel? Did you get judged? How did you overcome it, and who are your queer role models?
Alok:
Oh, got it. Got it. Yes, so one of my favorite stories is I do things like this. I planned my coming out in terms of dates, names, people, escalations, and how hard it would be. I had like 50 different conversations with people when I was 17 years old, and I waited until one of my best friends… I grew up, so a lot of people don’t understand that I’m from a small town in Texas. They just can’t picture it, but I came out to one of my best friends who was blonde, blue eyed, double majored in Bible and Business at a Christian college in Texas.
Alok:
We’re walking outside together, and we’ve been best friends for so long, and we had kind of a bromance. We were really close friends, and I knew that this would decimate him. He tells me that homosexuality is like porn, something we’d just don’t do, and that if I had told him a few years before, he would’ve stopped being friends with me, but now that he’s friends with me for so long, he’ll just tolerate. I was like, “Okay. This is fine. I can deal with this.” But what I started to do then is, and it’s so funny reliving this, because it’s an ancient me, what I started to do then is I started to just joke. I would make jokes.
Alok:
I would be beeping and be like, “My gaydar is beeping,” and then he started to beep too, and he was in on the joke. Then, it just became more relaxed. What I really realized is it’s because I had built such endurance, and that’s one thing I have to say about Texas. My friends from then are still some of my friends now, because even if we didn’t get each other, there was a deep sense of, “We’re neighbors. We went to the same schools. We know each other’s last names. We know each other’s yearbook photos.” So it’s really about building relationships with people so that they can see you as a three-dimensional person, and not just what they think a gay or a trans person should be.
Alok:
But the final thing I’ll let you all know is that when people don’t accept you, it’s an indication of where they’re at, not where you are at. It has 100% to do with them and nothing to do with you. There’s nothing wrong with you. There is other people who have been told that they can’t be free or happy. When they see you being free and happy, they get really nervous, because they have to hold a mirror to themselves, and be like, “Maybe I’m not as free and happy as I thought.” What I always try to remind myself is, “This is not my fear.” I say that to myself, “This is not my fear,” and then I go find other people who are investing in love over fear.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you for that. Just to Ms. Demik, thanks Ms. Demik. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Ms. Demik. Let’s end this-
Abby Wambach:
And also all those little kids.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Who were brave enough to participate in a group in middle school.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s just awesome.
Abby Wambach:
We’ve come a far away.
Alok:
I could never have done that.
Glennon Doyle:
Damn. Let’s close this ridiculously beautiful conversation. Alok, I’ve loved every minute. Let’s end with Megan, our pod squader of the week.
Megan:
Hi everybody. This is Megan. I just wanted to call and give you guys a shout out. I have a little five year old, and we have been trying to figure out how to raise her to live her absolute most beautiful life. Recently, she told us she wanted to cut her hair. I just kind of think about Abby, and the episode where she was talking about her hair, and it made a huge difference for her, and really kind of let her come into her own. My little five year old has this long, beautiful blonde hair, and she came home one day and said she wanted to cut it all off.
Megan:
We let her do it. My husband and I were anxious and a little nervous about what people would say. She cut it really short and shaved the whole side of it and shaved this really awesome rockstar design into the side. Anyway, I just wanted to call and say thank you, because I think that without listening to that episode and hearing Abby talk about how much just one haircut changed kind of her whole life, I don’t think that I would’ve had the bravery to let my five year old do that. I just wanted to call and say thank you for teaching me that I can do hard things and helping me to raise my sweet, amazing five year old to be exactly who she is. You guys are wonderful. Keep up the great work.
Abby Wambach:
Megan. Ugh. Listen, get your little one, turn up the volume, and let me talk to her for just a second. Hey, little one. It’s Abby. I got my head shaved too. I got my head shaved on both sides, and you want to know something? Sometimes people mistake me for being a boy. I identify as she/her. Here’s the thing. When somebody mistakes you based on your haircut, know that it happens to me too, and know that if this is what you feel you want to look like, you are beautiful, and you are perfect. We love you.
Glennon Doyle:
I love you, and I love you, Alok.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And I love you, sister.
Amanda Doyle:
I was like, “I’m hanging out here with no love?”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s okay.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s okay, because the one who loves me is me. Thank you, Alok.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. We love you so much, Alok. Thank you for doing this. You are a fucking revolution.
Glennon Doyle:
And I want to come see you perform your poetry one day.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. That’s actually-
Alok:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s my new bucket list.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Alok:
It’s like a tsunami. Get ready.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh. I’m ready. I can’t wait.
Amanda Doyle:
Thank you, Alok.
Glennon Doyle:
To all of you, we love you. We will see you next week on We Can Do Hard Things. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.