In Conversation with Alok Vaid-Menon: Turning Queer Pain Into Grace, One Stage at a Time

The artist is fighting anti-trans hate with humor, healing and unapologetic visibility

Alok2 — Alok Vaid-Menon. Photo: Laura Shepherd

Published: June 13, 2025 | Last Updated: June 18, 2025

In a world obsessed with categories, Alok Vaid-Menon is the question mark at the end of every assumption. They defy easy categorization, which is exactly the point. Writer, comedian, public speaker, fashion icon, activist — the gender-nonconforming, transfeminine artist juggles many hats, creating an utterly unique cultural space that’s both deeply intimate and unapologetically political.

Through global tours, viral videos, powerful storytelling and widely regarded books, such as 2020’s “Beyond the Gender Binary,” Alok has become a resonant voice in the LGBTQ+ community and beyond — especially for those still finding language for who they are. Alok’s name often comes up in conversations with other cultural trailblazers — like Margaret Cho, who recently praised their compassion, wit and “undeniable beauty.” Alok even played a pivotal role in Demi Lovato’s journey of discovering and announcing her nonbinary identity.

When I caught Alok in late April, they were stealing a breath between tour dates for “A Hairy Situation,” a show that began in 2024. Two back-to-back performances await at The Magic Bag in Ferndale on June 27, starting at 7 p.m. Though Alok tells me that the material changed after Trump was elected, it continues to refuse the boundaries between stand-up, storytelling and extracted wisdom mined from lived reality.

How are you holding up considering all the challenges facing our community lately?

I feel like I'm trying my best to stave off cynicism. It can feel really futile. That's exactly what the powers that be want us to feel: hopeless and like there's no point. So I'm really trying to recalibrate. I think that's what's been really nice about touring. I feel like I get to tangibly create a different ecosystem, a space where people can just be themselves and be celebrated for that.

By the nature of people gathering in these spaces — especially now — does being on stage feel different to you? Is there a deeper level of connection or community at your shows right now?

I feel a lot of suffering. People are coming in with a lot of pain. And especially on this tour. I'm going to a lot of places in the South and the Midwest. I was in Kentucky a few days ago and Ohio before then. And the reason it's important to do these places is that queer people exist everywhere and should be able to exist everywhere.

A lot of times comedy is just pure escapism, and I'm not interested in that kind of comedy. We have to be honest about how brutal, cruel and relentless the world is. So each night is like a puzzle of how you react to what's happening and try to fashion something unique.

I spend a lot of time at my merch table afterwards, just talking to people and hearing their stories, what they're going through and what's on their mind. That keeps me fresh and acutely aware of the lives that people are living. I feel very lucky that the nature of my job requires so much exchange with other people because I can often feel isolated because I'm in a bunch of places where I don't know anyone. I'm in a bunch of countries where I'm like, is it safe for me to do this? What is so cool is this kind of reciprocal relationship between the people who come to my shows. I get to give them something, and then they give me so much back.

Alok4 — Alok Vaid-Menon. Photo: Laura Shepherd

How did the material for “A Hairy Situation” shift or evolve after the election, given how the tone of the country also changed?

I would say it got a little bit darker. Inevitably it did. I really have been trying to understand the power of dark comedy. Dark comedy is a very risky business. You have to really thread a very fine line between, “Is this actually helpful” and “Is this just kind of self-indulgent sadness?”

What I think is so beautiful about being queer is that in so many ways, we are the originators of dark comedy: A lot of us learn how to be funny under conditions of extreme duress and pain. It's armor. My queer audiences are really tapping into dark comedy as not just a comedic genre, but a way of living. What I am trying to do with this tour is take hairy situations, which are situations that feel vexed and impossible, and say, OK, the only way forward is to be in the thick of it, in the armpit hair of it all. And to braid it. Style it. Take chest hair and make it into waves, and take the world that people often see as like, ew, why would you want to live there? Actually be like, no, there's still life here.

This show is like my thesis on how we can get through these times, which is to maintain a sense of silliness as things get more serious. Silliness makes your body quiver and shakes it in a way that makes it impossible for you to be held captive.

You've often spoken about joy as a powerful form of resistance. On this tour, what moments of joy have helped sustain you?

There have been so many. Because I'm kind of having the time of my life. Things are really awful, and I think one of the joys of being nonbinary is, I don't judge myself for holding those two simultaneous truths. Right now, there's a prescribed emotional moment we're supposed to be having of like, OK, you're supposed to feel miserable. But I'm actually a believer that it is possible to feel joy and still acknowledge how horrific the things are around us. That's what dark comedy is — a practice of holding joy and sorrow simultaneously, and realizing that one doesn't cancel out the other.

So I've had some moments that just have felt so exhilarating. I did my first show in Honolulu. Before my show, I got invited to a potluck that happens on a given Monday night at this trans person's apartment. It could be three people or 40 people, and it's been there for over 10 years. This person never knows who's going to show up at their house, but they just keep their door open for anyone to come. So I got invited. We ended up having, like, 50 people there.

And it was this motley crew, all ages, all genders, all races of people who I had never met who cooked these incredible foods. Filipino food, native Hawaiian food. All these foods I'd never eaten before. We just stayed up late chatting, gallivanting. I was like, this is the coolest thing about being queer in the world: I don't know any of these people, and there's such immediate hospitality there and such immediate recognition. It's our suffering that allows us to be friends with one another, because we all know sorrow is a companion, and that's kind of our secret password into this world. And so we just bonded incredibly.

Then I met trans women who created a collective, a rotating party that celebrates queer native expression. I invited them all to come to the show. Put them on my guest list. There was just this incredible moment where their table was the one laughing the loudest at the darkest jokes. I felt so happy. And then afterwards we all went out late into the night, dancing in Honolulu and hearing their stories. I think that's the greatest joy, because when you're young and you're queer, you feel lonely and [it feels] impossible, and you feel like you're the only person in the world who feels the way that you do. What is so awesome about this tour is that I get to remember that there are millions of people across the world who experience the same flavor of pain as I do, and because of that, therefore, I can never truly be lonely or isolated because we're connected out of something.

Just the fact that you're putting this out into the world gives hope — reminding people that connection and community can show up in unexpected places, even briefly, and still mean a lot.

I feel like so much of the lie we're told is that things only matter if they're permanent and forever. But so much of what my silly, sacred, queer life has taught me is that it'll be just one dance floor, one night, 10 years ago that when I'm feeling despair, I can return to to be like, I got my best life.

It's that experience which the world would dismiss as ephemeral that actually has this enduring impression on me that makes me feel like things are going to be OK. And I want to be careful not to romanticize suffering, because I do believe that joy is our birthright, and we shouldn't have to go through pain in order to know. But I also believe that what queer people have done and are doing is some of the most incredible healing work on this planet. So I'm trying to find a balancing act of saying we shouldn't have to go through suffering. Because right now we do. We've developed some really powerful methods that can change the world. And I think that's where I sometimes get frustrated: When people think that my work is just for queer people, or I'm just making jokes for trans people. I’m like, no, this is about a human practice of finding a way to still find joy amidst shame, finding a way to carve a good life for yourself to live and not just exist. Those are lessons that the entire world can learn. It's just that you're not willing to hear it from queer people, because you dismiss us immediately as not having any universal resonance.

You have a way of bringing people into the conversation who might not otherwise engage. What strategies have worked best for building understanding across divides? And what advice would you give to people who aren’t on a stage — how can they get others to listen, especially when it comes to something like trans legislation?

I think it's a byproduct of growing up where I did. Because I grew up in a small town in Texas, I didn't have the luxury of only being around people who believed in the same things as me. I had to be friends with and live next to and go to school with and carpool with people who are fundamentally different ideologically than me, so different religious practices, you know. One of my best friends from high school and elementary school ended up double majoring in Bible and business. I come from an extremely evangelical, very white town. I am so grateful for it because what it gave me was a deep understanding of what it means to build belonging across differences and how to hold and have competing ideas of the world, how to still find a shared and common approach. As a young kid, I really learned how to build real relationships with people and friendships, and those friendships are still friends I carry now with me, 25 years later. So I guess my advice is learning how to take off the mask and being really honest and real.

It's our suffering that allows us to be friends with one another, because we all know sorrow is a companion, and that's kind of our secret password into this world.
Alok Vaid-Menon

One of the things I really worry about is that algorithms have trained us to believe that people are just one dimensional and can be understood just by one belief or one action, when I actually know that the way that we live is so complex and contradictory, and when people feel seen in their complexity, then there's actually so much more opportunity to build rather than when you come in with a predetermined idea of, oh, you're opposed against me.

And what I found especially about trans issues is that it's the framing that alienates people more than the actual issue. So if I come in and I say.

“Hey, we had a great afternoon together. Didn't we have a lot of fun? We spoke about our family. We spoke about our life. We spoke about this great TV show. When I leave this conversation, I'm gonna have to go on a train, and on this train I might die. Someone might kill me because of what I look like. Does that make you upset?” Inevitably, people will be like, “That's horrible. I don't want anyone to have to live in fear like that.” Then I say, you know, that's the experience of a lot of trans people. Every single day we have to be worried about our physical safety. The reason we have to be worried about our physical safety is because people look at us, and they have all these assumptions about who we are and those assumptions come from a lot of no-good actors, a lot of politicians and media people who are making money off of making me seem like a threat whenever I'm just trying to live my life and exercise my right to live and express myself. And then you start connecting the dots in a way that is linked to your biography, not to a hypothetical.

I think that's why trans storytelling is so important right now — because most people don't know us. We're still in this phase where people don't even know us. And when they do know us, something shifts. Also, we can't come in and say, “Care about trans rights, care about LGBTQ+ rights,” if we don't care about the quality of the water in someone's tap and how expensive their groceries are. And that's where it starts becoming, I think, easier to make inroads: when we connect it to everyone's common struggle.

Alok3 — Alok Vaid-Menon. Photo: Laura Shepherd

I want to shift to your influence. Your name comes up often — in conversations with people like queer icon Margaret Cho. You've also had a meaningful impact on people like Demi Lovato. How does it feel to be recognized by those who see you as a pioneering voice for queer representation in the arts, comedy and beyond?

It's pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie. And it's that Texan in me that also is like, all these big people also have small feelings. I think we forget that, too, that these are just human beings. I'm a big believer that our heroes should be our peers. Our heroes don't just need to be mythological figures from the past or people we look up to from a distance. It should be our friends in our community.
It's been my peers in the industry who have been the ones who have told me like, “Girl, you're doing amazing work. But are you sleeping?”

Do you plan on doing this until you're 50?

I'm gonna do this until I die. I mean, hopefully, and I'll hopefully live beyond 50. But I genuinely feel like I have found my purpose on Earth, and I feel like when I'm on stage. I'm the freest version of me I've ever been, and I love being on stage so much. Now I've been a stage performer for about 15 years, and in each year it gets sweeter and sweeter and better and better and better, and I want to be able to do this forever.

These anti-drag laws hit me at a deeper place than anything else because I had always understood the stage as a sanctuary where I could be me. Then I started to realize they're coming for stages, too, and for art. That's felt really confronting and has been a hard pill to swallow.

With this being Pride Month, what does Pride mean to you in this current political era?

It’s really recommitting to what the purpose of Pride was. Pride began in 1969 with Stonewall. It began because queer people came together and said, “I've had enough. Let's go back to the basics.” The basics are: We need each other. We gotta heal the rifts within us. Because the truth is, over the past decade or so we've seen a widening rift. A lot of cis gay and lesbian folks have aggressively distanced themselves from trans and gender-nonconforming people, which is so ironic because it was the trans and gender nonconforming people who, in many ways, catalyzed their own movements. So how are we supposed to win if we can't even accept each other? I’m hoping this Pride we can really take some internal inventory to actually become an LGBTQ+ community again and heal those rifts. Because when we don't heal those rifts, I think it's really easy to create a culture of fear-mongering and polarization, because we don't have unity.