Greater transgender visibility hasn’t helped nonbinary people – like me (by Alok Vaid-Menon)

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I often walk around the city wearing a beard and a skirt. This is when I’m most myself, but it’s also when I’m most afraid of people’s reactions. As a South Asian nonbinary person – someone who does not identify as a man or a woman – I have grown accustomed to people being disgusted by me, to strangers calling out on the street, “What the hell is that?”

Media outlets – like Time magazine on its 2014 cover featuring Laverne Cox –proclaim that we’re at a “transgender tipping point”, a time of unprecedented visibility for trans people. Yet at moments when I’m facing aggression or contempt from strangers, I recognize that putting trans celebrities on pedestals doesn’t translate into safety for those of us who are visibly gender nonconforming.

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