A look into the impact of Urvashi Vaid
“Urvashi made me feel like I could grow up and become the adult I am now. She showed me queer life was possible…and beautiful”, wrote Alok Vaid-Menon, prominent LGBTQ activist and poet, in his tribute to his late aunt. It goes to show that the legacies people leave behind aren’t just confined to mere words on a sheet of paper that neatly list accomplishments. The trace of their true impact cannot be quantified- because large-scale activism is an immeasurable pursuit that not only constitutes tangible change but the impalpable transformation of the hearts and minds of millions. The impact of Urvashi Vaid’s activism was not comparable to the flap of a delicate wing in the butterfly effect, but to striking lightning that brings thundering intensity afterward. That is how one can describe the place of a pioneer in this world- and that’s who she was.
Even as a young Indian immigrant to the US who migrated to New York with her family at the age of 8 in 1966, her rebelliousness could not be caged. The spirit of change was bubbling in the air in the late 1900s, scattering seeds of reform that would plant themselves firmly to the ground and brave the storms that were set against them from the very start. Vaid was one of those seeds, and she attributes her nature to the various movements going on around her at that time- Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, Student Activism, and so on- she protested the Vietnam War as young as the age of 11.
During a time when basic human empathy was considered contrarian, it was pioneers like her who represented defiant compassion.
In her own opinion, Urvashi Vaid was a combination of hopeful idealism and grounded pragmatism and that shone in her decades-long journey and work as a lawyer, LGBTQ activist, writer, and social justice advocate. She worked at the oldest LGBT Civil Rights organization, the National LGBTQ Task Force, for 10 years- as a media director and then as the executive director. She founded LPAC, the first lesbian Super PAC, and the Vaid Group, a consultancy that would offer assistance to individuals as well as organizations to ensure equity and justice. She also authored two books-‘Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation’ and ‘Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics’. The enumeration of her many contributions could not be done justice in one paragraph.
The focus of her activism strayed far beyond mainstream LGBTQ rights- she was a firm believer in the importance of intersectionality as well as economic advancement in the LGBTQ movement. In an interview that she gave alongside her wife Kate Clinton in 2014 at The Laura Flanders Show, she spoke against the prevalent overcriminalization in the justice system of the United States as well as her dream of ‘socially responsible capitalism’- an economic system that prioritized social justice alongside motives of profit-making. Her ambitions and hopes for the future were insatiable, and rightly so. In her acceptance speech for the 2014 GLAD Spirit of Justice Award, she appealed to the LBGTQ movement to not push the breaks at marriage equality and address the issues of poverty, sexism, transphobia, racism and so on that affected many people of the community:
“The question facing the LGBT movement today is not ‘Should we fight for LBGT rights or LGBT liberation?’. We have clearly done both. The question that confronts the LGBT movement today is whether we are willing to retool our movement to push for the redistribution of economic resources and political power that is needed to change the lived experience of LBGT people in all parts of our very diverse communities. Race, gender, and money; age, ability and, HIV status are among the factors that constitute barriers to the realization of full lived equality for many parts of our communities.”
The current atmosphere lucidly demonstrates that there’s still a long, strenuous path to tread to reach the destination of the complete liberation of the LGBT community. Even though cancer stole away the gem of a person Urvashi Vaid, her legacy lives on. Her passing leaves a hollow dread inside everybody who knew both her and her ideas- but the hollowness is a reminder of how her work cannot be all in vain. In her 2012 book, ‘Irresistible Revolution’, she described the ambivalence engulfing the movement:
‘Despite the rather personal pride I feel as a movement veteran in the achievements being won, I find myself more cautious than euphoric. This is a mixed moment for LGBT liberation. We are making progress, and experiencing frustrating setbacks (such as having to defend many legislative gains against ballot initiatives aimed at their rescission). We are more visible than ever, and yet even today, large numbers of our people remain closeted, silent, and uninvolved.’
Urvashi Vaid gave an impetus for many transformative and substantially needed changes, but the work does not stop with her. Her story is an eternal reminder for us to be courageous at all times, defiant when needed, and to keep working in the pursuit of fairness and justice with unwavering compassion. The abrasive wilderness she cleared up to create the path for progress and change cannot be left untended.
