Episode 253: ALOK: How to Be Authentically You in A World Full of Fakes

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

Okay, so I'll just say that we have a Loke, like tell me a joke, a Lok, on the podcast today, which by the way, I'm very excited.

I said, I told you before, to have you on, because this is not the normal type of podcast we normally have, because it's called Habits and Hustle.

So it's a lot of times it's about like productivity and like what is your habits for the day and like how do you get from this place to that place?

But what happened was I like legit I saw you speak on a stage.

I just now we found out what it was and you were so profound the way you like the way you speak is just it's the not just our not just because it's articulate and beautifully said it's the way you like string words together unbelievable and I don't even know I didn't know anything about you except I just wanted to have this person on my podcast.

And so we reached out.

And so thank you for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

You're welcome.

And I also want to

apologize beforehand because I don't want to say anything that would be offensive if I don't say something correctly.

So just call me out and let me know.

And then I will be, I'll be obviously more than happy to

resend whatever I said.

But how do you describe who you are and what you do?

Yeah.

My name is Alok and I'm a work of art, which means I'm trying to do the work of art in the world.

And what doing the work of art means, means living a creative life where the only rule is being glamorous and beautiful.

I try to live my life not with categories or genres, not with identities or labels.

but with freedom and curiosity as my companions.

I'm trying to figure it out how to live the most meaningful version of myself and how to do justice to the beauty that is.

This is exactly what I said is going to happen, right?

Like,

like I said, as a funny thing before we started, when I watched you do other people's,

you didn't do maybe not that many podcasts or other interviews.

When you spoke, the person who then was interviewing you had literally, they had nothing to say.

After that, they're all like, okay,

I don't know what to say afterwards.

And I'm literally, this is happening to me.

And I knew it would because of the word, how you speak is so beautiful.

I should say, you don't define yourself.

That's the whole, the whole thing.

But when other people, or even in your, in your, this is not the right bio, of course, because why would I have the correct bio?

It's just my podcast.

But

the way the bio says, it says that you're an acclaimed author, poet, comedian, public speaker, and you're a mixed media artist, right?

And you've won a lot of awards.

You wrote a book called Beyond the Gender Binary.

Do you ever refer to yourself?

If someone says to you something in that way, how do you refer to yourself?

You know, the worst feeling in the world is having your bio read in front of you.

Yeah, it's terrible.

I hate it.

When people do it to me too, I cringe.

And every time I'm asked for a bio,

I feel like so, so sad.

because

this conversation is my bio because it's what I am in this moment.

And that's all we are, what we are in the moment.

And what bios are so invested in is what we've done.

And that's so boring to me.

You're so, so true.

Like that's so true.

But how did you get to that place?

How did you get to the place where you see the world this way and have, honestly, like the courage.

to be this way?

Because I think in a world where people are so afraid of being judged for the littlest thing, here you are standing out in a way that's so above and beyond authenticity that I think that in itself can make people uncomfortable, right?

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, I think a lot of times when people see people like me, they think that we just chose our genders, but I think it's more ambitious.

We chose to be alive.

I was merely existing for the first 18, 19 years of my life.

Like my lungs, they were breathing and my heart, it was beating, but I wasn't there.

It wasn't me.

It was what other people wanted me to be.

I felt like a shell of myself.

I felt like I could look at photos of myself and it would be like some distant relative, not me.

And I made a promise to myself that I would never live like that again the minute that I could be safe.

I grew up in a state called Texas.

You might have heard of her.

Yeah.

So obviously it wasn't safe for me.

Yeah.

And so I had from a very young age to make a decision.

And I remember this decision very clearly.

Before I even had any vocabulary to describe what I was, I knew that I was profoundly different and I knew I could be killed.

And so when you're a young person, that's so terrifying.

And so I said, I have to hide myself from the world, but I'm going to only do it temporarily.

And then the minute that I can safely be myself, I'm going to make up for lost time.

I'm going to be the fullest version of myself.

And I wish it was a before and after.

These things rarely are.

But I had that conviction my entire life because I see what happens when you don't live an authentic life.

It's soulless.

I would see movies and have no emotional reaction.

Life was acting on me.

It's like I wasn't a participant in it.

I was passively receiving the world and it was miserable.

And I know what the opposite of dissociation is now.

It's beauty.

And I cultivate beauty like one would a houseplant.

I water it every single day because I know that the reason I'm alive is because I want to be here now.

I didn't in the past.

I chose this life.

And so I guess you know the stakes because a lot of times people are on autopilot doing the things that they're supposed to do, being in the relationships that they're supposed to be in, having the bios that they're supposed to have.

But we all know, all parties involved know, that in your deepest moments of confrontation, you know that's not enough.

You know that you feel hollow and empty.

You know that you have hesitations and ambivalences that you're not listening to.

You know it, the way that the panic grips at your chest before you go to sleep, the way that your midlife crisis is not just midlife, it's every year.

At the new year when you look at your life and it doesn't feel like your own.

There is no form of misery quite like inertia, like stagnancy, like being stuck.

I felt that for so long.

And now I feel vivacity and vitality.

Like every day is an adventure.

Like every day is an opportunity for me to find something out new about myself and the world.

I feel awake.

I feel so full of love.

So I suppose that I came to this through pain and struggle, which is unfortunately how many of us come to enlightenment through strife.

How old are you now?

I'm 31.

You're 31.

So when you were 18, did you, is that when you decided that this is no longer going to be what I'm going to do?

I'm not going to live under these confines.

So, how did you, even at 18, so let me ask you this.

So, between, before that, like until 18, were you living a life that was very typical, quote unquote?

Like, you went to school, like, were you even,

would people just think of you as being a heterosexual boy?

Like, what was the way that you were brought up?

Okay, so.

This is where the comedy has to enter.

I thought of myself as a heterosexual boy.

People around me obviously knew that I wasn't.

Seriously?

And so when I was coming out to people, I thought everyone would be so shocked.

Yeah.

And they were all like, okay, finally, it took me long enough, right?

Yeah.

But these are the stories we tell ourselves.

Yeah.

And I was telling myself that I was doing a really good job fitting in.

Really?

Yeah, because I would deepen my voice.

I would change the way that I walked.

I wouldn't allow any video or audio recordings of myself.

I'd try to become as discreet and invisible as possible.

And I thought that I was the best actor there was.

I was excellent at school.

I was president of all the clubs and societies.

I was really intelligent.

I was funny.

I was the picture-perfect success story.

But inside, I hated myself.

And I was incredibly depressed and extremely anxious and afraid of constantly being found out.

Because at that time, I felt like if people knew that I was queer, then they would hurt me.

Because right now, at least with the ambiguity or are they queer queer or not, I had some semblance of protection.

But the minute they got confirmation of it, that's when it would get worse.

And so, yeah, I was playing pretend.

And is your pet, how about your family?

Do you have brother or sister?

I have an older sister, and she was the first person in my life to really defend me.

She was a senior in high school when I was a first year in high school, and I was getting bullied a lot at the time.

And my response would be like, no, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not gay.

That was the only words that we had back then, right?

I'm not gay, I'm not gay, I'm straight, I'm normal.

And my sister would be the one always being leave my brother alone, you know?

So even though there was a lot of

pain and invalidation, there was also so many beautiful people in my life.

I'm so lucky that my parents created a space in my home for me to explore myself and for me to be whoever I wanted to be.

Wow, they did.

You are lucky.

Yeah, super lucky.

My sister, my family, my friend group, I had so many people who were so supportive.

I recently actually just, I'm a performer, so I do comedy and poetry.

And I had a show in my home state and my hometown last week called Station Texas.

And it was so beautiful because I had my high school English teachers there.

I had childhood friends I've known since I was four or five.

And I always get asked the question when I'm there, like, how did someone like you grow up here?

Yeah.

And I say, it's a testimony to the love in this room.

I had a lot of bullies, but I had a lot of friends, even more friends.

And who knows?

I might not be here today if I didn't have those friends, if I didn't have people who before the language of allyship, before the language of political correctness, just had that beautiful thing, friendship.

Don't mess with that person because I know them, because I love them, maybe even because I am them.

Wow, that is amazing.

And I feel like, you know, I don't, I'm curious, when you decided to like live authentically, was it like, did you do it in

slow little dribs and drabs?

Like, I can't imagine at 18, you became this person, right?

No.

So how does it happen?

Because like, what was the chronological evolution?

Because I think that a lot of, like, I, I'm taking it from a place of like, I know, forget about all what you, like, in like, in my life, in my world, people are so afraid of the smallest little thing, right?

And so because of that, they, they make baby steps, right?

And then eventually maybe they feel they can do something that's more, you know, robust.

How did you do it?

Like, what were your baby steps?

Yeah, it's about micro-dosing on freedom.

Yeah, micro-dosing on freedom.

You start with small things.

And I don't have judgment for people doing small things.

For me,

I began to self-style myself maybe from the age of like 13 or 14.

I was really insistent on saying, I want to wear what I want to wear.

And I would take my mom's old blazers from like the 80s with shoulder pads, amazing.

Yeah,

and

some of my dad's old shirts.

and i'd put together these zany outfits and people like what are you wearing and and i didn't know i i was just like this is this is me but what it was looking back is i didn't get to control my body but i get to control what i wear it was a practice of sovereignty like i belong to me it was a process of experimenting i don't know who i am yet let me figure it out So there is always a vocabulary of freedom, even before we speak it.

Maybe it's in the gestures, maybe it's in what we don't say.

Maybe it's in just standing there and being present.

And so I suppose I really reject this framing of before and after.

I think my life has been an unfurling invitation into freedom.

So even when I was what the world would call closeted, inside my head, I was learning how to love me.

So that when I decided to share myself with the world and people said, I don't like it, I was able to say, I do.

And that I do became stronger and stronger and stronger with practice and with rehearsal.

I think where people get it wrong is they think that the courage of authenticity can just be inaugurated in a moment when it actually it's a practice and a discipline.

You have to invest time, energy, and resources and you have to return to it.

And it's totally not linear.

There have been years in my life where I look back and I'm like, whoa, I went back.

I took a couple of steps back.

And I feel that now, actually, it's interesting we're having this conversation now.

In the midst of over 400 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation in this country.

We're dealing with one of the worst ever civil rights attacks for my community.

And I feel that childhood fear that made me feel like I had to hide when I was younger bloom up inside of me again.

But what's different now is that I have another voice that says, look where this will lead you.

When you live your life contoured by fear, you'll go back to that.

that soullessness, that inability to be present, and you don't want that.

So I have have to make that daily choice these days because there's so many incentives now to hide.

And I'm not even saying hide just in terms of gender or sexuality or fashion.

I'm saying hide in terms of who we really are because that's what this is about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I always get really frustrated when people dismiss my work as just being about gender or sexuality.

I think that's myopic.

What I'm actually saying is that all of us have to do that critical work of asking, who do I want to become?

That's very different than who do my parents want me to be?

What does my job need me to be?

And I think actually what we're in right now, culturally, is a state of arrested development where most people haven't done that work.

They're just living the transcript that they've been told, the script that they've been choreographed to do forever.

The uniform is not just an aesthetic, it's a personality.

Most people are just playing pretend.

And so when they see people like me, who it's never been about gender or sexuality, it's been about authenticity.

When they see people like me me who are saying, yeah, actually,

being alive is an everyday riot and it means people might not like you and you do it anyways.

That challenges them because they're like, wait, what do you mean?

I don't have to play pretend.

I think what happens is that I think people are jealous subconsciously because it's not about the gender so much like you were saying.

I think it's because they're like jealous that like, why do they get to live authentically and I don't?

And they're mad at themselves that they're not living authentically at whatever life they're living because they know it's more of a ruse like to your point I think most people have all these societal reasons why they're doing what they're doing they have kids because it was like told for them to have kids they marry the right person they do all the right things and they're like dead inside you know like I see it in my world like you know here we are we're living on the west side people have you know extra money their kids are going to private school And

I should be careful how I talk about this, but a lot of people are like, they're like on, they're on like tons of pain meds, they're drinking themselves, like they're like drinking too much just to numb

the fact that they're not really living their authentic lives.

They're just like living the life that they thought they were supposed to live and what they think on the outside, that's what the dream, you know, the American dream is like, let's have, let's drive a Range Rover, let's live in Brentwood, let's have money, and they're all like dying inside.

The Walking Dead's not just a TV show.

The Walking Dead is mostly not a TV show at all.

And I think the people who are the most upset is the people that they know themselves are like so dead.

And they're like, how did they get to do that?

Like, fuck them.

I want to be able to do that.

That's why I was excited to speak with you, actually.

Really?

Because I think people would look at you and me and think that we were extremely different.

Yeah.

They would just look at our aesthetics.

They'd make a series of assumptions about us, right?

But what I'm trying to get at, once again, deeper than gender, is soul work.

That actually, it's about what we're like on the inside.

And I think it's really a shame and a travesty that trans and gender non-conforming people like me are seen as fringe in this culture.

Because if you listen to what we're saying, we're actually giving people tools to become free and happy in their own lives.

But they dismiss it because they're like, oh, I'd have nothing in common like that.

But actually, what we all have in common is knowing that short-term reward of being embraced for disappearing yourself.

There's no kind of loneliness like knowing like you only belong when you're lying.

And even then you're not really belonging.

And you're still not belonging because it's like the criticism is still there.

So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, and yet you don't have the ability to kind of push through it.

And to me,

that's the travesty, right?

Like, how do you teach somebody or how do you get somebody, even if they have intellectually the, like, they know it.

They know that they're dying inside.

They know that they're not fulfilled.

They know that they're not being authentic.

But yet, again, I don't know if it's courage or like just that extra push to do something about it.

We love them.

But beyond love, how do you get them to act?

I don't think we can change other people.

I think people have to make that decision themselves.

But you can do that.

But what we can do.

Yeah, we can practice that for ourselves.

We can become the fullest version of ourselves.

And then we become lighthouses that show other people, hey, another way is possible.

I spent so much of my life in my initial advocacy trying to convince people, hey, you're shooting yourself in your own foot.

Because by the way, everyone, that's what prejudice is.

The people who hate are prematuring their own death.

We have all of the data now to show this, that it leads to chronic stress, which makes your sleep less effective, which leads to premature illness.

You're fixating so much on hatred makes your body achieve allostatic overload

and it's making you unhealthy.

Actually, it's not making you powerful.

Powerful people are people who feel calm and regulated and are not threatened by someone existing.

Exactly.

Right.

And so that's why I speak about mercy and compassion is because I've done that too.

I've sabotaged my own life too.

I've played pretend too.

I've hid too.

I did all of that.

Those first 18 18 years of my life, I was the most homophobic and the most racist person that I knew.

You were?

Yes.

To myself.

To yourself.

To myself.

But when you thought, like, in your, what was going through your brain, when you saw other people living more authentically and doing the life that you wanted to do?

Were you jealous of them?

Were you

upset with yourself?

All of the above.

I told my mom when I was younger, when I was first coming out to her, mom, I'm gay.

Once again, that's the only word that I had.

Mom, I'm gay, but I'm not like those people.

I'm not effeminate.

I'm just normal, and I happen to be attracted to guys, but I would never wear makeup.

I would never be so feminine.

That's disgusting.

And I was, my self-hatred was on full display there.

That had nothing to do with those other people.

That had to do with me.

Because what I thought is there's something fundamentally wrong about me, so I need to overcompensate.

I'm just like you guys.

And then what I began to realize is I got curious with myself as I was like, oh, my judgment was actually armor that was trying to keep an old version of me safe.

And so much of my life now is when I experience judgment, I get curious with that.

I'm like, what deeper emotion is there?

When I experience hatred, what deeper emotion is there?

And it's almost always pain.

And that's why I don't think pain is the problem.

I think the problem is that we don't have rituals to actually process pain.

Pain and suffering will inevitably be there in life because the people that we love die, which means that there's always going to be tragedy and heartbreak because every intimate embrace comes with it the possibility of irrevocable loss.

That's what it means to be alive.

And so I'm not trying to live a life that's pain-free.

That's foolish.

But what I'm trying to do is to create rituals and ceremony around my pain.

And what I can show the world is that the things that you thought that you couldn't overcome, the things, the grievances, that's not true because you can still find beauty.

When people look at a life like mine, they're always dwelling on, well, you know, you must experience so much discrimination, so much judgment, so much violence, so much persecution.

I'm like, yes.

And how about how much joy I'm experiencing?

How about how much conviction, how much purpose, how much creativity, how much zest?

I'm living my glory days and they last forever.

I'm living what you have relegated to retirement or to heaven, and I'm living it right now.

That's exactly what I saw.

When I saw the video, what I thought was like amazing was here is somebody who's like living full, in full purpose of what they want to be doing.

They're not answering to anybody.

They're speaking their truth.

Like,

I was jealous in a way that was like, in a good way, not

envious, not envious, jealous, because I was like, good, you know, that's amazing.

You don't see that often.

And I didn't think about all the other things that you were saying.

And that's the interesting thing because when I was listening to a lot of these things, the first thing they would describe you as is, and I don't even know how to gender non-binary is how that, you know, we have a low, a gender binary.

That's always the first thing because

it's always because it's the thing that like, that's how they describe you, right?

I was actually more like, what does this person do?

Like, how did they, are they comic?

Are they on, they do stand-up?

Are they making poetry books?

Like, there are so many things.

I was more.

like very curious about your actual like career because it wasn't traditional to anything else and how you went from Stanford to become this person to me is more miraculous, you know?

Although I really don't understand how, I don't understand gender binary because I don't understand the different definitions of it all.

Did we even have that back then?

Like when you came out as gay, I know you said gay.

I remember gay was like the only way.

Yeah.

But did we even know the word non-binary?

I don't think we did.

It wasn't.

It wasn't the word.

It wasn't really

standard.

Yeah.

So the cool thing about language is that it's all made up, by the way.

Yeah.

So people get so mad at my community because they're like, you guys are making up words.

And I'm like, Do you realize the words made up were what's in fact made up?

Yeah.

The issue is that it's LGBTQ people making up language.

It's about power, it's not about grammar.

It's about people are comfortable speaking about us, they're not comfortable with us speaking about ourselves.

That's the issue.

That's so interesting.

And notice all the people who think that we're new, I say, You've always known slurs for us.

You've had slurs across time and across language to dehumanize me.

But when I actually come up with language to humanize me, that's a problem.

So it's not that we're new.

What's new is that we're not letting you abuse us.

That's what the difference is here.

And so what my community has done is what every people have done is created language to become more honest.

at communicating who we are, which is the most beautiful potential of language.

We invent new words to describe things, to better communicate with one another.

How How awesome is that?

As a poet, that's my job.

So who is the person?

Is there a person that came up with these words or as a community?

Like, how did the words even happen?

Yeah, I think it's a combination.

Did you come up with the words?

You are very eloquent.

Yeah, I haven't yet, but maybe I should.

You should.

Yeah, it's a combination, you know?

So people started to really...

describe their experiences and say, hey, I feel the same way, and then work through it.

What I think people get wrong is they mistake the creation of new words with the creation of new identities.

And I've been studying these topics now for almost 15 years.

And what I'm here to let everyone know is that people have existed for thousands of years who are neither men nor women.

And we've used very different language across time to describe ourselves.

In the early 1900s, we'd use words like invert, androgen, girl boy.

There were so many different terms that we've had.

They just shift over time.

So the terminology shifts, but not not the reality that we've been here.

What is in fact new is not non-binary people or people who are neither exclusively men nor women.

What is new is society's obsession with us because we've actually just existed across cultures and across time and people didn't have an issue.

Why did it become an issue?

It became an issue because in order to police all of society into man or woman, you can't give them any other options.

So how do they pretend that there's only two options?

They disappear anyone who visibly violates that.

So it's never been about us as a minority.

It's been about controlling the entire population and to say, you have to be like this, you have to act like this.

It's been about power and control.

And I think that that's the hard piece for people.

When power and control work,

They offer themselves as reality.

This is what it's always been.

This is objective.

This is natural.

But they're not.

These are choices made by people in power.

And in fact, they're bad choices.

They were choices made to monopolize power and to dominate people.

The language that we're creating as a community of trans and non-binary people is actually about creative self-expression, not conformity.

And I think that what gets lost there, once again, is it's never been about gender.

It's been about possibility.

People are so afraid that there are horizons of being that are beyond what they've been told they should be because people think that freedom is being offered a series of choices and picking one.

That's not freedom.

Freedom is fill in the blank.

Well, that's a great point, but I think you have to be somewhat, you are a very smart person, right?

Like beyond all this other stuff that you've done, I mean, someone has to have enough of a wherewithal to even understand and comprehend, you know, to this level.

I mean, you're, you were born pretty smart.

You went to Stanford, graduated, topic, where'd you take at Stanford?

What were you a?

I was in gender studies.

Oh, were you?

Yeah.

Oh, that's funny.

And what were you wanting to do back then?

Like, what did you think you were going to do?

Yeah, I thought I I was going to be an academic.

Yeah.

Like a professor or a professor.

Yeah.

That's been my M.O.

my entire life.

I grew up in a very nerdy bookworm family.

What do your parents do?

Academics.

Oh,

yeah.

Shocker.

Like if you had any questions about the world, it was go and read and find out more.

And which is amazing on the one hand, because my ideas were taken seriously as a young person, which is very rare.

When I speak to my friends, they were often shut down.

Whereas for me, my parents were extremely curious, what is your point of view on this political issue?

What do you think we should do about this?

So that meant that when I got to school, I could advocate for myself.

I'd be in seminar and be like, I disagree with you.

And that's amazing because I felt like I could actually disagree with people.

But the hard part is that it was very emotionally stunting.

So we were super cerebral and intellectual, but we couldn't actually say, I'm sad.

Right.

You had to come up with an amazing explanation.

I couldn't just say, I want to hang out with my friends.

I'd have to justify it with an argument.

So, I mean, every blessing is its own curse and every strength is its own weakness.

There's always duality in it.

So, yes, I think that it does, but I worry that that line of argumentation would say you have to have access to a kind of intelligence to critique these systems.

No, our bodies are critiquing these systems and it looks like depression and it looks like anxiety and it looks like chronic pain and it looks like sickness and and it looks like illness.

Our bodies are speaking the most profound knowledge that says, when you lie, I hurt.

And that's the biggest indictment.

All of us know what it feels like in our bodies.

to be dissociated.

So you don't have to go to school.

You don't have to learn these fancy words in order to say something's not right here.

There's an intuitive knowledge that our body gives us first, and then we translate that into language, that disconnect and that grievance.

And so ironically, the work that I'm trying to do now as an artist is to return to my body's knowledge.

Because when I was trained as an academic, it was so lofty.

And what gets lost there is actually how it feels.

And that's why, if you notice in the way that I speak, I'm not speaking about gender as a theoretical concept.

That's incorrect to me.

This is not a hypothetical.

This is not an argument.

This is not an opinion.

This is not a point of view.

These are fleshy, alive human beings.

And when people say non-binary people are made up, I'm like, I'm here breathing.

I exist.

I am right in front of you.

What makes you deny what is in front of you?

It's because you're denying something in yourself.

That's the only reason.

It is not a political stance to accept that other people exist and have a different experience than you.

What is the political stance is that you feel like you can only know yourself based off of the language you are given by other people.

And I'm sorry, that speaks to your pain.

That has nothing to do with me.

And so where I'm trying to accelerate the conversation is it's not my job to explain myself to other people, to be understood by other people.

It's my job to have the best time possible.

That's our job.

It's my job to live the fullest version of myself.

And whether or not you get it is not my concern because that's more about you.

I can't change you.

What I can do is say, I love you.

And I'm rooting for you.

And I hope that you're able to heal.

I think that's a good point because it's not even about the academic part.

It was more about because you can articulate it in your head.

Like you, I think that a lot of times people get so stunted when they don't understand something.

And you're saying a very, very, I think, again, profound thing.

It's that it doesn't matter what words you have.

It's how you're bought, you know, gutturally if you're disassociated and if you feel off.

And people should really follow those gut instincts and then act upon those things.

Listen.

Why is there such an extreme and intense reaction against trans and gender non-conforming people right now?

If people did not know that we were speaking truth and justice, they would be non-plussed.

They would be like, oh, it's just those people over there saying these things so silly.

But they're so obsessed and so angry because it's speaking to something honest in them, a pain that they've never allowed themselves to speak aloud.

What I say is most people are walking around mistaking wounds as mouths.

They're actually speaking from pain, but they don't even know that they're in pain.

They don't even, that's what I'm saying.

How does someone get, I guess, self-aware enough to even know that it is pain when they're so disassociated?

They are dissociated.

I mean, it's different trajectories for different people.

In my life, it was struggle, like when you have people screaming at you on the street, when you have people spitting on you on the street, when you experience physical and sexual violence just for existing in public.

Does that happen to you?

All the time.

All the time.

Still does.

No matter what career gains I get, no matter what amount of social media followers I have, my life is in physical danger because of these ideas.

And that's why it's never been theoretical for me.

People talk about how we have some agenda to break down culture.

My agenda is to be able to walk down the street without having to be in fear, right?

So when I was confronted with struggle, I had to do that introspection to ask, is this worth it?

Is this really worth it?

And what I began to realize is, of course it is, because when I don't live the fullest version of myself, I want to die.

I want to die because I've been there.

It's depression.

It's loneliness.

It's isolation.

It's fake connection.

It's a lack of rootedness.

I don't ever want to go back to that.

I want to be able to show up and be full.

And when I'm able to dress and wear and be who I want to be, that's where I have my best ideas.

The words come to me naturally.

That's where I feel creative and connected and open and alive and hopeful.

I don't want to give up on that just because someone else is insecure and taking it out on me.

Absolutely not.

So for me, it was struggle.

I think for a lot of people, it looks like the death of a loved one.

It looks like grief.

It looks like pain, where they have to wake up for the first moment in their life and realize the reason this is hurting so bad is because there are wounds that preceded this.

And then some people, very few, do that work of actually starting to focus on their own healing, of getting curious.

Why am I in pain?

What's coming up for me?

But the majority of people do, as you've suggested, numb it, numb it.

And that's what this is ultimately about.

People are numbing themselves to their own pain, and that's called hatred.

Hatred is a mass-produced drug in this country.

What it offers is a short-term solution to your pain.

Okay, you're hurting because you're unhappy in your relationship.

You're unhappy in the life that you've chosen for yourself.

You're unhappy with what you look like.

And instead of sitting in that pain and trying to find a solution, hatred becomes a quick fix.

So look over there.

Yeah.

Common on other people's lives.

Distract.

Yes.

And the things that you're insulting in other people are actually your deepest insecurities.

That's you projecting your self-hatred.

The people who are most vitriolic in their hate are telling on themselves.

They're saying, I am unhappy.

They're saying, I don't think that my life is worth pleasure and levity and peace.

They're saying, I'm going to waste my time, my precious time on earth, habits and hustle.

You're going to waste your precious time on earth hating people you don't even know rather than actually building your best life and coming up, that's telling on you.

That's nothing to do with me.

I don't spend my day trying to do character assassinations of people I don't know.

I spend my day eating great food, thinking about sleep, writing, reading, feeling enriched by the world.

It's magnificent to not hate.

So that's why I have pity and mercy for people who hate because what they're showing is how unhealed they are and that the solution isn't to respond to hate with hate.

It's to love so ferociously that hate becomes obsolete.

It's to hate, it's to love more than they're ever capable of hating me.

And so it just clicked for me because I, when I, when I received the vitro or the violence, I'm like, ha, you think you could hurt me like I've hurt me?

Everything that you're saying, I've said 100 times worse to myself.

And I conquered that.

And how did I conquer that?

Not by judging myself, but loving myself.

Of course I believe these horrible things about me.

I grew up in Texas.

Of course I believe these horrible things about me.

I grew up in a family that had intergenerational trauma that said if you stand out, you're going to be punished.

And then I looked and I said, hmm, are my parents influencers for happiness?

Probably not.

So maybe their coping strategies with trauma isn't what I should be doing.

So this narrative of standing out will mean that you get, take it, like you'll experience violence.

Did that really work out for us?

No.

So then I began to choose my own life.

And that's what I'm saying about arrested development.

Most people mistake their trauma coping mechanisms as their personality.

They don't know who they are.

All they know is the strategies that they've developed to numb themselves from their pain.

And that's all that hatred, and that's all that transphobia is.

A mass drug numbing the population from its own pain.

And I think what is so visible and visceral about trans life is we're holding a mirror to the world and we're saying, look at your pain.

Because here's the truth.

It's extremely painful when you're a young person and you're so full of wonder and curiosity and wisdom.

And then the world says to you, hmm, you're a boy.

Stop having emotions.

Stop feeling.

It's time for you to grow up.

Make yourself into stone.

When you're a girl and people say,

your anger,

no, repress that because it makes other people uncomfortable.

Keep it inside of you.

Of course that's going to manifest as suffering and illness and depression and all of these physical symptoms because it's being dishonest to the human condition.

The human condition means that we are both an.

Some days we're incredibly angry.

Some days we're incredibly loving.

Some days we're incredibly sad.

Some days we're incredibly, we have the full spectrum of being, the full spectrum of interests.

But what gender comes in is says girls are only allowed to have certain emotions, certain behaviors.

Boys are only allowed to have certain emotions, certain behaviors.

That's profoundly painful.

And it's what psychiatrists call a form of disenfranchised grief.

It's a pain that's not recognized as pain by society.

So then you gaslight yourself.

Oh, it wasn't that bad.

It's just normal.

But it's it's actually extremely painful.

And so people are suffering.

And so then that wound gets activated when they see trans and gender non-conforming people like me being like, hey, you didn't have to pick one.

And all those people who told you that you wouldn't be a girl or you wouldn't be feminine enough or you wouldn't be masculine enough.

All those people were actually lying because you get to be you.

You get to decide what womanhood means to you.

You get to be powerful, assertive, and confident.

And that doesn't have to contradict your femininity.

It can enhance it.

Instead of being like, whoa, you're right.

That's awesome.

People are like, what do you mean?

It's the people who said that they loved me who did this to me.

And it's easier to demonize me than it is to say that the people who said that they loved you were trying their best to destroy you and call it love.

That's too painful.

So they don't go there, so they choose hatred.

It's across the board.

What we're seeing in this country right now is a mass reckoning with unprocessed grief.

And I refuse to indulge it as legitimate science.

I refuse to indulge it as legitimate policy concerns.

I refuse to indulge it as legitimate rational thoughts.

Absolutely not.

I could beat all these people.

They haven't read any of the scholarship.

They haven't read any of the science.

I don't even go there because that's not whatever this has been about.

You are seeking to reinforce your addiction to the drug of hatred.

That's what this is about.

It's not about any rational point of view.

So how did you become this person?

And what I mean by that is in the way that your words, like that you're like a beacon of like maybe hope for some people and

I guess like like a spokesperson so to speak in this way did you do one thing where that just took off and got traction like how I said to you like I saw that video of you on stage I'm shocked it was at a VC a venture capitalist like summit like that to me is unbelievable but that that that whole conversation you know Jamie Lee Curtis was so amazing like was that a begin was that an old conversation and then because that took some type of traction you got something else like how did this happen for you where you became this beacon of light for all these people or a or like a messenger of some kind you want to know what's truly unbelievable what i'm alive that's how it happened i'm a miracle i'm not supposed to exist so many forces in this world have conspired to kill me including myself And I've been trying to kill yourself?

I did.

I did.

Yeah, when I was younger, I did.

And that's experienced for many trans and gender non-conforming young people like me, because that's what society tells us.

You shouldn't exist, right?

And I survive.

And so it's never been about career achievements for me.

It's never been about I did this one gig that helped me get this.

It was that decision, I'm going to be alive in a world that doesn't want me to be here.

And that's where it always begins.

A lot of people are mistaking some career success is going to give them that sense of internal security.

It will never.

What gives you that sense of internal security is choosing to be here, actually saying, I'm going to make my life meaningful.

And that can't be replaced by any career achievements.

So I'm not phased by any of this other stuff, any of this career success stuff, because the most difficult work is continuing to do that, to show up in my fullness.

I did the courageous act of giving birth to myself.

That's the highlight of my life.

Nothing else I do will ever come close to that.

And notice how we exist in a culture that tells us, if you get this accolade, if you get this recognition, if you get this benchmark, then you're going to feel success.

Notice how that doesn't actually make people feel success.

I have the ultimate capital, authenticity.

The ultimate capital in the world is authenticity, is meaning, is conviction, is purpose.

I am wealthy and abundant in it.

So everything else could go wrong and that doesn't matter because I return to myself and I love me.

And I think there are very few people in the world who are doing that level of self-acceptance work.

Very few people, because to do that level of self-acceptance work is incredibly painful, extremely painful, because you realize you don't know who you are outside of how you've been told you should be.

You notice all the things that I like about myself, oops, that kind of come from escaping from trauma and numbing myself.

Is that something I want to keep?

It's been the most confronting work of my life, healing myself and it's a lifelong journey right but I wouldn't give it up in the world because now what I experience is a foundational security that it's going to be okay but somebody found you somewhere who's now placing you on these you know summits and conversations and podcast people like want to hear your voice and hear what you have to say but what what was that like did you say something

that got took off and fought like what how did this you being alive for sure what are you when did this happen though, when it kind of started, you became the person who was being called to talk to all these people and speak your truth and speak your voice?

I don't know if that's for me to say.

I don't know.

You don't know what day your phone started to ring.

I mean, because like I said,

I guess I just reject that framework because it parses my career as separate from my personal life.

Oh, and you kind of blend the two together.

Yeah.

Like it's

doing you.

Yeah.

Whatever happens and that happens.

100%.

I never sat down and was like, I'm going to be this career when I grow up.

I said, I'm going to tell the truth in this moment, which is what I said about a bio.

Yeah.

What I also hate about that narrative is it's future-oriented or past-oriented.

I'm here in the present.

And what I do, my job, is to, and every single conversation I have with someone is to actually show you who I am in this moment.

And what a rare blessing that is in a world where most people aren't.

Most people are shirking.

Most people are hiding.

Most people are concealing.

Most people are dodging.

Most people are evading.

Most people are numbing.

My job is to be present.

And that's all I do.

And maybe people don't want presence in the future, but I don't think that's it.

I mean, maybe the question can be posed back to you.

Why did you invite me on?

It's because

at least as you're articulating to me, you felt emotional presence and resonance.

And that's just what it takes, actually.

It's connection.

It's a desire for something real.

And that's

what it was.

A desire for something real.

That feels real in a world that feels often saturated and fake and rehearsed.

I'm just trying to be real because I know what that's like.

That's the thing.

I'm not judging people for doing it because I did it too.

Right.

And I thought it would help me and it almost killed me.

And what's funny is I thought that what would kill me, being myself, is what saved my life.

So I had to have the inversal.

and what I realized is actually all the criteria I was using to evaluate a good life for was making me depressed.

But the things that are often not seen as creating a good life in the world, those are the things that have created a good life.

Like stillness, like silence, like observation, like listening, like processing.

Those are all things that aren't.

often seen as like pinnacles of your career, but those have been the most foundational things in my life.

Being able to synthesize all my memories, being able to sit down and write.

The most time that I spend creatively is keeping a journal that I've never shared with anyone and have no plans to.

I just sit down every single day, habits and hustle.

I sit down every single day and I write down everything that I did, thought, and said every single day.

And that practice has totally changed my life because then what I'm able to do is look, what was I thinking seven years ago?

And to be able to locate the things that that I probably should have been most concerned about were tiny.

Yeah.

And then the things that I was concerned about were totally irrelevant.

And so then I'm able to realize, oh, actually,

the job is really just showing up day to day.

That's what journaling has helped me do is that every day actually feels like an adventure.

Do you look at things that you wrote like seven years ago and be like, oh my God, what was I writing?

Totally.

I can totally imagine that.

Like, what are you writing today?

Like, I know you don't want to tell me your journal.

You just said that.

But what are the things that you are writing today?

Like, what are your things that you're doing, thinking?

Well, I've been in L.A.

for the past week, and it's been raining a lot.

So that's a recurring routine.

It's like being in New York.

That's like unbelievable this weather.

Usually what I'm writing about is the conversations I'm having with people, which is for me, my ideal art form.

I wish that that was elevated in our culture as a form of genre, is speaking in conversation.

That's my favorite thing in the world because I feel like you're clued in to so many lessons that could fundamentally change my life.

And I'm clued into lessons that could change your life.

And the only way that we can be honest about that is just meeting up and chatting.

Hey, how have you survived?

And I can let you know how I survived.

And then we can glean lessons from that to apply to our own lives.

That's why I love podcasts.

I love interviews because I think that's so beautiful, that sense of connection.

So what I've been writing about a lot is like different things that I'm learning from the conversations I'm having with the people around me.

Today I had a conversation with my friend.

We spoke about this.

It made me think about this.

I want to explore this more.

And that is so fun to me because every day I can look back and remember these gems, these conversations I've had.

So whenever I'm feeling alone, I can be like, no, you're not.

On October 27th of 2017, you write about feeling such a profound connection to someone.

Let's return to that emotion.

And then I return to it.

I love that.

And so you, so let me say this.

So you write what, tell me that again.

That's a good one.

So you write, you journal what you say that again.

Yeah, I write about what I do think and feel.

Do think and feel.

Every day.

And does it have to be like, is it the first thing you do in the morning?

What is like your day?

I usually do it right before I go to sleep so I can synthesize.

But I mean, I too make mistakes.

So sometimes when I'm like in an intense travel schedule, I'll be like 10 days and I haven't written.

And so then I'll just spend about four or five hours going through my calendar and really remembering what are all the things that I did and putting them back.

But I feel, I feel best about it when I'm just doing it daily.

Do you have, do you ever have negative thoughts at all anymore?

Do you ever have negative thinking?

Do you have to like catch yourself?

Like, what is like, how do you, how do you think on,

you know, through the day?

Yeah, I have negative thoughts, but I'm able now to be able to be like, hey, that's fear.

That's not me.

And you can talk yourself through it.

Me,

I have the evidence now, especially through journaling.

I have the evidence to show when I choose a life that centers authenticity, I'm going to meet the people I was meant to meet.

And all of those childhood beliefs that I had, that if I became myself, I'd be rejected or abandoned, didn't prove to be true.

It was actually the opposite.

It cleared the space for the people who were interested in disingenuous connection and it opened up the space for people who wanted to be real with me.

And so whenever I have fear, author my narrative and say, okay, restrict yourself, become more small, I can look back and be like, no, that hasn't worked for me.

Doesn't work for you.

When you meet people like, do you look at people like me in this way?

Like, I'm very straight, narrow.

Like, does that, how do you, like, what's your, in your head, what are you thinking right now?

Yeah.

When you do podcasts like this, when it's very much, like, I'm looking at you and I'm thinking, oh my God, I look so dull.

Not look, but I feel dull and boring compared to how you are, right?

Well, if I can offer, I don't experience you as dull and boring.

And I'm not actually interested in people's external appearances at all.

No, I don't mean by, I don't mean physically.

I mean just because

you've been so like authentic in every way.

Like, I'm telling you, like, I love that about you.

I think that is so beautiful.

That's what I responded to.

Like, you know, it's like you don't give a shit.

Like, you're going to wear what you want, say what you want, and you speak the way you speak.

It's, to me, it's so, I wish you should go.

I want you to go to every school.

No, seriously, like, this is what I think you should do if you want to take my advice.

I love it.

It's your podcast.

Give me your advice.

I think you should go to every

school out there and colleges, and you should be talking to kids because I bet you you would save lives, like lots of lives of kids who are struggling with, you know, feeling unworthy and not understood and confused, really confused.

And they need to have people like you to kind of...

be like again like a like a person who said look at me i did this and i'm living my best life and you can too because that's where i really think there's a disconnect like who cares about that now i'm we're old i'm my people are whoever it is, but I really think that the real savior is in like the generation who's coming up, who really need, who don't have outlets, who are so afraid and scared.

And if that's, you know, someone like you has such beautiful words and so profound, and you speak in a way that is so captivating that, like, it's impossible for people not to feel that emotion.

That would be, I think, you would be saving just so many lives and just changing so many lives.

It's interesting because what you're describing as young people, I see that in adults too.

Adults, for sure.

I feel like adults also don't know who they are.

We know nothing.

They have so much fear, have so much anguish, and I don't want to give up on them too.

Don't give up on us.

Don't give up on us, but the opportunity is like so rife over there.

I mean, one of my favorite experiences in my life is, you know, growing up as an Indian American, I was around my grandparents and elders in my community a lot.

My grandparents would come and spend months at a time time with us.

And people would always be like, Why do you continue to talk to your grandmother about gender and sexuality?

She's not going to accept you.

She's not going to get this.

She's old school.

She's traditional.

I would be by her bed every single day, explaining what the gender binary was, explaining what non-binary meant, how to use they them pronouns.

They'd be like, Why she can't teach an old dog new tricks?

By the end of her life, and by the end of my both my grandparents' lives, they totally got it.

They gendered me appropriately, they understood it all.

I'd go on walks with my grandfather, who's 92, and I'd be harassed

in front of him.

People would stare at me, would gawk at me, would say things, and my grandfather would look at me with the most innocent and beautiful eyes and say, How could they do this to you?

Don't they understand?

And I'd be like, no, grandpa, they don't.

I believe anyone can change.

I believe that everyone is worth fighting for.

I believe everyone's worthy of love.

And I don't teach from a way that comes from judgment or ignorance.

Like, you know, you said, I'm sorry if I get anything wrong.

And I'm like,

I actually want you to get it wrong because then how else are we going to to get it right?

I'm glad you said that because I was like, I told you, I was like so scared because the last thing I'd want to do is offend anybody, offend you.

But like if you don't know what you don't know and you right and you don't know what you're not exposed to.

And so but that's what this is about.

And this is what it's about.

And that's what I was going to say.

Like, can you stay and explain this in like in like the most basic terms?

Because part of people's fear in life is when they don't understand something.

And so when they don't understand, that's when they put their backs up and they're like, I don't like that thing.

I don't like that person.

Like I would love if you can go through them because I don't understand myself and I get scared to even say something and put my thing in my mouth.

I think a recurring theme of this, sorry if this sounds like therapy, is that you're being a little harsh on yourself because I think you actually understand a lot more than you're giving yourself credit.

I appreciate that.

Because maybe you don't get the terminology, but you get the heart and that's what really matters.

Aw, thank you.

You understand that this is about authenticity.

You understand this is about mental health.

You understand this is about being honest.

That's the core blocks of this.

The rest is like, okay, you can pick that up really quickly.

Where people get caught up is when they're indulging this as like some political conspiracy, some hyper-political correctness.

That's not what this is about.

It's just about actually being authentic and real.

Like, I wouldn't call that chair a spoon.

It's just not a spoon.

And you wouldn't call me a man.

I'm just not a man.

That's just what it is.

It's just reality.

Right.

What would you call yourself then?

Yeah.

My name is Alok.

I'm a human being.

And you're a they.

So you're...

So if I were to introduce you, Will also gave me some lessons prior because I was so scared.

We can practice pronouns, that's what you're asking.

Yes, practice it.

Okay, so

he would say, this is my friend, Alok.

They have nice earrings.

I'm going to ask them where they are going after the interview.

Pretty simple, right?

Yeah, I can do that.

Yeah.

They.

And so I just tend to use gender-neutral pronouns like they and them until I know someone's pronouns.

So I'll just like, oh, I met this person of them all.

They seem really cool.

And then when I meet someone, I'll say, hey, what's your name?

And what are your pronouns?

So then some people will say, hey, my name's Marsha.

I use she pronouns.

Hey, Marsha.

And then when we mess up and I accidentally call Marcia he or they, what I can say is, oh, I'm so sorry.

I'll get better at that.

And then we move through it.

So why is it pronouns make make a difference versus like the gender, right?

So you're saying you're you like

guys, girls,

fluid.

What does that mean?

The whole fluid, not fluidity.

So fluidity means that your identity shifts over time.

So I call gender fluid is a word that I could use to describe myself because my gender presentation is not fixed.

It changes based off of what I'm feeling.

in the day.

What do you mean?

What do you mean?

Yeah.

So right now you're seeing me in this form.

You could see me five days.

I might look like a totally different person.

Really?

Yeah.

I change it up all the time.

I don't have any sense of like, this is who I'm going to be forever.

I change it up.

It's fluid.

When you say that, though, do you mean like you change up your outfit?

You change like how you feel the...

But your gen, like, isn't it about ge?

Like, your gender is non-gender.

Like, you're not a, you don't think of yourself as a boy or a girl.

Yeah.

Your pronoun is they because you're not, you don't see yourself as either one.

Right.

So pronouns doesn't equal gender.

So there are some people who are women who will use she and they pronouns.

And that doesn't mean that they're not women.

They just like their pronouns they.

There's some people who are non-binary, like me, which is neither exclusively man or woman, who will use all pronouns, he, she, or they.

So pronouns are actually up to individual preference and how it makes people feel.

For me, I like they, them.

That just feels the most honest to me.

I got it.

Okay.

Then, so there's a difference between pronouns and then our gender identity.

and then our gender expression.

So I'll explain all three.

So I explain pronouns.

Gender identity is who you are.

So my gender identity is non-binary.

Gender expression is what I look like, the visual component of it.

Okay.

So my gender expression is gender non-conforming, meaning I visibly defy what society thinks a man or a woman should look like.

Oh, okay.

And the reason I'm saying I'm gender fluid is because some days I might look like what society perceives to be more feminine.

Some days I might look what society perceives to be more masculine.

It's all fluid to me.

That's what's fluid then.

So how about your choice of relationships you're in?

Would you be with a man, a woman?

What do you prefer?

Yeah, gender is not relevant to me for

gender.

Yeah, I'm more interested in connection.

So, it doesn't matter.

Boy, girl, they doesn't matter.

And then, did your

92-year-old grandpa probably caught on faster than I did?

No.

Once again, negative self-talk.

I know you're right, it's true.

That's self-deprecating.

Yeah, you don't need to do that.

I know.

Well, I also, I'm embarrassed because I feel badly.

I don't want to put you on the spot, right?

And say these things.

I totally agreed to be on this interview specifically to do this work.

Really?

Yeah, totally.

I think, I mean, what I was going to say earlier is you thought it was unbelievable that I was in that forum.

And I guess let's get curious.

Why is that unbelievable?

People like me deserve to exist everywhere.

True.

That's not why.

Exactly.

I knew you were going to say that.

I was going to say, because in my head, when I think of VCs and venture capitalists, I think of very

conservative people, like we're very conservative or Republican people.

In my head, it's a visual.

It's not necessarily right or wrong.

It was just the first thing I thought of.

Yeah, totally.

But maybe this work is actually about challenging ourselves to ambition beyond the first thing we think of.

Right, exactly.

Right?

Because I think that what's being defended.

with so much vehemence right now is people say, I demand the right to make assumptions about you.

That's what our detractors are saying.

Well, you look like a man to me, so I'm going to to demand that right.

Okay, that's cool.

That's your assumption.

That's not reality.

Reality, we only know when we actually ask someone, who are you?

We don't know people's genders.

Only people know their own genders.

That's how we ask people, who are you?

That's right.

So what we're trying to do is not erase gender.

We're erasing your right to tell other people who they are.

That's what we're coming up against.

Does that make sense?

Kind of.

I know I was going to ask you, transgender.

Yeah.

Now, this is where it gets confused.

Then where does transgender fit into that?

Yeah, totally.

So, transgender is a word to describe people who are a different gender than what they were assigned at birth.

So, my doctor told my mother, you're having a boy.

I'm not a boy.

I'm non-binary.

So, that means that binary falls under trans.

There might be someone who the doctor says, you're a boy, but that person's actually a girl.

So, that person's also trans.

So, cisgender means you are the gender that you were assigned at birth.

So, the doctor said, you're a boy, and then someone says, I am a boy.

Then there's cisgender.

Cisgender.

So if you're a boy and you were assigned a boy, you feel, if you were assigned a boy and you feel like a boy, you're called a cisgender.

If I'm a girl and I was assigned a girl,

cisgender.

If I was assigned a girl, but feel like a boy, I'm transgender.

Okay, I can follow this.

There you go.

See, this is, you're making it very easy.

Okay, so then when you got the VC Summit, let's just say, you were surprised, I bet you too, because you're like, isn't that funny?

Because initially you're like, isn't that kind of funny that I was doing doing it?

You were surprised, too.

Mm-hmm.

And then I get curious.

Oh, then you got curious.

Yeah, so instead of having judgment, I get curious and I say, wow, seems like the world's changing.

Awesome.

And did it accept you really well?

And did they ask you?

Were you surprised at the feedback that you got?

So the reason that I was interested in doing that particular gathering is, you know, I mentioned this before.

I'm having this conversation with you in the midst of one of the worst legislative attacks against my community.

And what we found is that the reason that people are supporting this anti-LGBTQ legislation is because they're fed complete lies about our community through social media.

The majority of content shared about trans and gender non-conforming people online is factually incorrect, but there's no regulatory mechanism at all.

So this fake news spreads, creates fear-mongering, which leads to the targeting and scapegoating of my community.

So what I was interested in doing in that room, which I did, was to say, hey, you guys, this is irresponsible.

This, you need to actually take a crackdown on anti-LGBTQ disinformation because it's endangering my life and it's endangering the life of my community when people believe complete falsehoods about us.

Actually, the best parts of social media are about democratizing information, not spreading lies.

And in fact, you're profiting off of lies because it creates fear, which creates virality.

That's not a good profit-based model.

So I was there to say, let's make hate unprofitable.

Let's actually make love viral.

Let's make connection and intimacy the role of tech.

Those guys, they're so far removed from what the funding structures they're actually funding.

They never hear from people who are actually directly impacted.

So I had so many people come up to me and say, I never thought about that.

And you're so right.

And I'm sorry.

That was the good parts.

I had some people, I mean, they were writing joke content for me.

Have you thought about joining LinkedIn?

I think you'll get less hate mail there.

I was like, wow, okay, that doesn't sound like a sustainable solution to the rise of anti-LGBTQ hate violence online.

Right.

But the truth is, what we need more than ever right now is mass support.

It's been framed as like, oh, the small community getting targeted.

But what we can learn from history is that when minorities are scapegoated and targeted, eventually that ends up hurting everyone.

And actually what I'm trying to do right now is ask everyone, every podcast I'm on, every conversation I have with someone, hey, can you help me fight for my life?

Because it's unfair right now that I'm going to leave this podcast and inevitably experience slurs, harassment, violence.

I'll log online and be told to die.

After we release this podcast, there will be people in the comments who believe in disinformation about my community saying, Ew, why are you supporting this?

This is gross and disgusting.

If we had a genuine connection, which I think we did, doesn't it hurt your feelings to be able to

be upset?

That other people are getting targeted.

And I think what feels so hard is.

Especially when you have like when you meet somebody and like them.

Right.

Sure.

Yes.

Right.

And I think what's missing in this moment right now is just like, hey, everyone, where are y'all?

Yeah.

It's gotten so bad.

I mean, Tennessee is trying to criminalize drag.

Like, what?

Like, what's going on?

It's gone.

That's crazy.

You know, it's like in my home state of Texas, it's so painful.

I'm like, I'm from here.

How could y'all ban any books about LGBT people for public schools?

That would have saved my life.

That could have fundamentally changed my existence if I was growing up being like, hey, people like you exist.

Go on.

Yeah, yeah.

I didn't know that.

Like, do you know how painful it was to grow up not knowing that you were allowed to be alive?

Like, that's literally what I felt, that I was some freak anomaly and that there was no space in the world for me.

And all we're trying to do is show people you exist and you're valid.

And that's wonderful.

And that's seen as a threat?

You know what's interesting?

I had a, I have a friend who's very high up at TikTok.

And she was telling me the other day,

I thought was fascinating, that, you know, it's kind of weird because a little contrary to what we're talking about.

And I wanted to know if this was your experience.

That when we were, when I was younger, you know, like to you, what you were saying, like, if people either was gay or, you know, you're straight or you're gay.

That's all, we didn't know anything else.

Yeah.

And people were afraid to be, like, you would be shunned or like they thought they would be made fun of if you were gay, right?

So that's why everyone kind of kept in the closet.

Right.

She was saying to me that like.

in the new zeitgeist of what's happening in the world right now that it's she sees the opposite that if you are somebody who like what's happening happening is like people who are just so straight right are kind of like boring right looked at looked at as boring right and and now it's all about inclusion so if you were to make fun of somebody that was non-binary whatever you would be the one who would be like shunned and ostracized right but it's funny because that's not the experience that you really see in real life right that's not mapped on what the policy priority is not mapped on policy yeah but do you think that i guess my question is, do you think there's a difference between what's mapped in policy and like kind of on that level versus what's happening like the street level of what's going on?

But let's talk about the street level.

Why are we still getting spat on on the street?

That's what I want to that's why I bring it up.

Like,

do you think it's more though in schools that are much or maybe a little bit more?

I think in a very small minority of places, I could imagine that happening.

Like in LA, maybe.

Very small, but like LA is definitely not the United States.

That's what I said.

I said it was very much like, I think that's very segmented to where you are.

But as a whole, I didn't understand that.

No.

And I want to be very clear here.

What we're fighting for is for everyone to be treated with dignity and respect.

Right.

No.

I'm so not interested in being like,

I actually feel like a deep aversion to being like, straight people are this, cis people are this, because I'm like, they're complex just like me.

We're all so complex and we all belong and we all deserve and we're all valid.

And what I'm fighting for is each person to just choose who they want to be, and that's okay, you know?

For everybody, for everybody.

Yeah.

So

if people are like, hey, I'm just choosing to be a vanilla straight cis person.

I'm like, okay, that's your truth.

I'm so proud of you.

That's wonderful.

Where the issue becomes is when you try to legislate that for everyone, when you try to criminalize other people, ban other people for being different.

I really believe in the power of diversity.

I mean, one of the things that we learn when we're younger is that environments are stronger when we have ecological diversity.

Plant diversity, animal diversity actually makes an environment more resilient.

But then when it comes to human beings, we were taught that every person has to be the same.

That's boring too.

It actually makes us more adaptive, more resilient, and more powerful whenever we display diversity.

So I don't want every person to be a non-binary person who uses they, them.

Like that's what the media frames people like me is trying to do.

Yeah.

That is awful and antithetical to what I want.

What I want is each person to live their own version of the truth.

And what I want is each person to tell me, hey, what does being a woman mean to you?

What does being a man mean to you?

How's your experience of gender been like?

Tell me a story.

It's so much, I think so much gets lost when we just say, man, woman, masculine, feminine.

I'm like, what have been your lived experiences?

How do you experience the world?

Because your womanhood is going to be different than someone else's womanhood.

And that complexity is actually so beautiful and wonderful because it helps me get to know you.

And that's what this is ultimately about for me: I feel like these categories like bios

are obstacles to meaningful intimacy intimacy because we rely on assumptions and stereotypes rather than actually getting to know people.

That's right.

The obstacle, it's true, because then you read something.

Then who gave this?

By the way, then who was the person who gave this to me?

Oh my gosh, with my management,

people always are like, where's the bio?

And so then each time I'm like, existential crisis, like, I don't want to have to describe myself.

I'm like, complex, you know, right?

But then they send some, someone's sending some bio.

But maybe this is another habits and hustle moment.

Yeah.

You know, oftentimes professionally, we have to operate in systems and institutions that are opposed to our point of view.

Yeah, that's true.

And my belief has always been is that we go there and we just twist it a little bit.

We change it up.

So maybe we need a bio in order to get access to the stage.

But then we're on the stage, we speak in a way that makes a bio irrelevant.

So what I've learned in my career, I mean, I went to a private school.

I have the college degrees.

I'm not out here saying like I didn't participate in any of these systems and institutions I did, but I'm trying to use my degree differently.

I'm trying to use my access differently.

I'm trying not to believe in the way that the system wants me to think.

I'm going to go up on every stage that I'm given and I'm going to cry and I'm going to talk about vulnerability and I'm going to talk about love and I'm going to talk about beauty and I'm going to say that is rigorous scholarship and I'm going to say that is thought leadership.

I'm going to take the things that people dismiss as irrelevant and superfluous and say this is actually what you need, right?

And that's why when people are listening to this podcast, they might be trying to think, okay, how do I maximize and optimize my life?

And thinking that that's about like how to allocate your time.

But actually, what I want to say is the way to maximize and optimize your life is to heal yourself.

Because right now, all the time that you're spending judging other people, relying on assumptions, is preventing you from having the time it could take for you to invest in yourself and create the best version of your life.

I mean, I am on brand or what, right?

I appeal to the base.

You are good.

I don't

so good.

So good.

It's unbelievable.

You're so, I mean, very likable.

And you have a very nice smile, by the way.

Have you heard that many times?

Yes, I have.

It's very endearing.

Thank you.

Like when you smile, I have to smile.

So cute.

Yes.

Okay, Alok, where do people find more about you?

Because there's so much about you beyond a bio, as we know.

Yes, beyond the bio.

I think Instagram is probably the best point of contact.

So my IG handle is at A-L-O-K-V-M-E-N-O-N.

Not to be confused with the Brazilian DJ at A-L-O-K,

but let's all manifest together a future spoken word EDM DJ track featuring me made by the Brazilian DJ alone.

That would be awesome, actually.

Thank you.

You've been a wonderful guest, and I think this is a very interesting podcast.

And I hope that I know that people are going to glean a lot from it.

So I very much appreciate you making the time.

Really, thank you.

And I appreciate you.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you.