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[title]After a couple of years in the wilderness, Sydney’s celebration of system-shaking bright minds, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI), returns for the first IRL edition since 2018, taking over Carriageworks, Eveleigh’s vast arts precinct.
There perhaps couldn’t be a better fit for the city’s spiciest, most inclusive thought-starter festival than Alok Vaid-Menon (they/them). The internationally acclaimed author, poet, comedian and public speaker (and also fashion icon, if we’re being honest) uses their work to explore themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They also live very publicly as a gender non-conforming trans-feminine person. They discuss this in their book, Beyond the Gender Binary, which is also the title of their main talk at FODI.
“I think that a world beyond the gender binary actually is beneficial for everyone,” says Vaid-Menon. Our interview is held over Zoom. It’s early in the morning for me in Sydney, and evening time in their New York apartment, where I catch glimpses of their dog jumping on the couch in the background.
They continue: “I think so often, this conversation gets limited to a minority, like it's a special interest for just trans and non-binary people, which feels deeply unfortunate, because actually, I think what trans and non-binary people are doing is imagining a more free world for all people.”
They are wearing a fluorescent yellow dress with a pussy-bow neckline, and a ring that places an arty squiggle of gold across their fingers, which glints at me as they emphasise each point with their manicured hands. Before answering each question, Vaid-Menon pauses contemplatively before launching into a stream of observations informed by years of academic research yet softened by a yen for the poetic. But they are also often unreservedly humourous.
“One of the things that is often levied against us as trans non-binary people is that we're ‘too complicated’. It's ‘too much to remember our pronouns’, there's ‘too many genders’. And it's coming from the same people who analyse complex sports brackets, the same people who have well-informed positions on the different merits of different car brands, let alone, like, electronic appliances. The thing is that they can learn complexity, when they actually care about something.”
The real dangerous idea is dividing billions of complex souls into one or two genders
This visit for FODI also coincides with bringing their latest comedy tour to Australia and New Zealand, will be Vaid-Menon’s first visit Down Under in six years – and that last time they were here, something happened that brought them very close to hanging up their stilettos. After presenting a keynote speech at a major event, they walked outside in the middle of the day and got on a tram, and a stranger physically attacked them.
“For a long time, I considered quitting. I was like, ‘What's the purpose when people are just comfortable with people who look like me when we’re on a stage, but not when we're actually existing in public?’ And then what actually helped me get the stamina to continue, was finding compassion for this person who attacked me.”
Photograph: Supplied/FODI
Vaid-Menon’s compassion-centric approach went viral in their appearance on The Man Enough Podcast, and can also be seen on their appearance on the Netflix series Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness. However, there is something they wish to clarify:
“I don't believe that compassion is the only way forward. I believe that it's my only way forward. I believe that anger, bitterness, resentment [all] served me so well, until it didn't. And then I reached a point in my life where I was like, ‘How do I survive?’ When I know that as a gender non-conforming, racialised, trans-feminine, hairy person, that no matter how famous I get, no matter what accolades I get, I could go outside and be killed... The only way that I could justify continuing to be alive knowing that in my lifetime, I wouldn't have justice, was compassion. It saved my life.”
Their mission is to teach people that living under a strict gender binary not only does harm to people like them, but also people like the man that attacked them on the tram that day:
“Breaking out of this dynamic – that says there are just victims, and there are just perpetrators – towards showing how systems actually are harming us all. And how, as trans and non-binary people, we've developed the vocabulary to describe a wound that many people don't even know that they have, but we see it.”
“We're like, ‘Why are you so obsessed with what I look like? Why does it matter to you what I do with my own body? Why does it matter to you what I'm wearing?’ It's because some part of you feels uncomfortable in yourself... But what if you had nothing to prove? What if I told you that all the rules that you brought up thinking are reality are all made up? What if you were told that you were worthy of love simply for being and you have nothing to prove? That is actually what would end the violence that I experienced that day.”
Why does it matter to you what I do with my own body?
As an internationally renowned advocate, Vaid-Menon’s visit offers Sydney a moment to question: what we are doing as a society to make sure gender non-conforming people are safe off-stage and outside of particular environments (and sometimes, within quote “safe spaces” too)? With Sydney World Pride set to take over the city in 2023, consultations are already underway to assist all the venues and businesses that want to hop on the rainbow ride and make some pink money to create a truly accessible and safe space. You can already see this being done successfully on a micro-scale at places like Sock Drawer Heroes, a retail space and gallery in St Peters run by the trans-owned and operated brand for gender-affirming gear; or at the occasional comedy night Two Queers Walk Into A Bar.
Speaking on their decision to return to Australia, Vaid-Menon said: “The reason I accepted the invitation to come to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas was to actually pose the question to Australia: ‘How is it that you continue to see trans and non-binary people as dangerous simply for being when we're in danger by you?’ And actually, the real dangerous idea is not what I'm saying – which is compassion, which is love, which is true. The real dangerous idea is telling people that they have to spend their entire lives emulating these arbitrary gender norms in order to have worth in society. The real dangerous idea is dividing billions of complex souls into one or two genders.”
The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is coming to Sydney from September 17-18. Alok Vaid-Menon is presenting the talk Beyond The Gender Binary, as well as featuring on the panel Join the Rebellion. Check out the program and book here.
The Australia and New Zealand leg of the Alok Comedy and Poetry tour presented by TEG Dainty comes to Sydney’s Factory Theatre on September 19, supported by special guest Travis Alabanza (the playwright behind Overflow). Snap up remaining tickets here.