Love is a powerful response to hate, according to ALOK, an internationally acclaimed poet, comedian, public speaker, and actor who gave the keynote address April 1 at Illinois State University’s Indian and LGBTQIA+ Cultural Dinner.

“It’s a lesson I learned from existing in the world as a trans(gender)-Indian person, of being able to receive shame and then refuse its spread and send it back to its origin,” ALOK said. “I started to do this very strange thing with people who harassed me. I would say back to them out loud, ‘I love you.’”

ALOK shared their journey to self-discovery and living authentically with a sellout crowd of around 400 people in the Bone Student Center’s Brown Ballroom.

Raised among a tight-knit Indian immigrant community in Texas, ALOK dreamed as a child of becoming a fashion designer, a dancer, and a gymnast.

“One of the first memories I had was one of my sister’s friends who looked at me and said, ‘Boys don’t do that,’” ALOK said. “And I was so confused by that.”

ALOK self-styled their clothes from a young age and considered the school hallway a fashion runway.

“A lot of people used to say to me, ALOK, ‘Why do you dress up?’ And I didn’t know why I was doing it at the time. But now, as an adult, I know it’s because I was saying, ‘This is who I am on my own terms.’”

As a teenager, ALOK felt pressure to sculpt themselves into what others wanted them to become. They focused much of their energy on academics and were accepted into a top college.

“I came out as queer the year I got into Stanford, and that was Indian math, because I knew everybody would be like, ‘OK, we can’t critique that because you (were admitted into Stanford),’” ALOK said. “I felt like I had to academically achieve in order to be worthy of love.”

As a college student grappling with their intersecting identities, ALOK immersed themself in learning about their heritage.

“When I was younger, I felt like I was the only person in the world who felt the way that I did. … And then I found this term ‘nonbinary,’ and it was a portal to another world,” ALOK said. “And I learned that there had been people like me who had existed in Indian culture for thousands of years.”

According to ALOK’s research, British colonizers divided Indian people into one of two gender categories while instilling homophobia and transphobia through colonial law.

“As I began to learn my own history … I began to feel pride in who I was, because I understood that I came from an unbroken chain,” ALOK said. “I understood that I had a legacy and that I had, therefore, responsibility.”

ALOK said they became the person they wanted to see in the world while at Stanford. They became “obnoxiously” visible by starting an online fashion blog where they posted photos of themselves in outfits with elements that didn’t traditionally belong together—like a bowtie and a skirt.

“Style became a way of actually showing the world there’s something different going on here,” ALOK said. “All the assumptions that you have about me, that I have to be a certain way because I’m Indian, and I have to be a certain way because I was assigned a male at birth—those are just not me. I’m going to show you who I am, and who I am is something that changes.”

After college, ALOK moved to New York City, where they unexpectedly faced brutality for wearing the same outfits they had unabashedly worn on Stanford’s campus.

“People would follow me home and tell me that if I didn’t take off that dress, they would kill me. People would spit on me on the street. People would physically assault me,” ALOK said.

Faced with self-preservation, ALOK camouflaged themself and, once again, tried to fit in.

“I felt so upset, and so I started to write poems,” ALOK said. “I wrote poems about the pain and the sadness and confusion and the fear. My first book of poetry was actually poems that I wrote to the people who were harassing me on the street—all the things I wanted to say to them that I was afraid to because they could hurt me in public.”

But instead of feeling anger, ALOK felt compelled to write love poems to the harassers.

“What my poetry taught me was that all those things that people were saying to me were because those are the lessons that they had been told, which is that you can stay safe by being invisible, which is that you have to hide yourself, which is that you have to betray yourself to belong to this society and to this community,” ALOK said. “And I found mercy.”

Empowered by their poetry, ALOK put on “a functional pair of 7-inch heels” and went back outside. When people on the New York City streets harassed them, ALOK replied, “I love you.”

“I would say back to them out loud, ‘I’m so sorry. Who hurt you?’ I would refuse an equation that made me the problem,” ALOK said. “I learned how to love the people who hated me more than they could ever hate me. I learned that love was a way of interrupting that circuitry.”

ALOK acknowledged to the Brown Ballroom crowd that it can feel impossible to love yourself in a world filled with hate. But resistance to hate, they said, can be achieved through finding friendship and joy.

“In this world, there are going be a lot of people who don’t understand you. There are going to be a lot of people who dismiss you. There are going to be a lot of people who project their own self-hatred onto you,” ALOK said.

“And none of that matters, because joy is your birthright, and you get to have a good time in this life, and if it’s not fun, it’s not really useful or interesting. So, pursue fun.”

The Indian and LGBTQIA+ Cultural Dinner was co-sponsored by Event Management, Dining, and Hospitality; the Office of International Engagement; the Association of Residence Halls; the Office of the Provost; the Hewett-Manchester Leadership Association; the Watterson Leadership Association; the Tri-Towers Leadership Association; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; the Indian Student Association; the Office of Sustainability; Queer Coalition, and Pride.