Urvashi Vaid, A Long Legacy Long in the Making

Rest in Power, Urv. 

Urvashi Vaid passed Saturday, May 14, 2022. I am lucky she took me under her wings as a fellow Co-PI of the National LGBTQ+ Women's Community Survey. Overseeing the analytical responsibility for the survey, I was also lucky to have the remainder of my comrades-in-arms with me in Atlanta for a long-awaited in-person research meeting when we learned Thursday morning that she had been moved to palliative care. 

We were all supposed to meet in-person at the Creative Change conference in New Orleans this past Spring, where she was to be awarded the Susan J.Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement. However, covid got the best of all of us -- and, it was clearly safer for us all to meet online. 

Nonetheless, below is a small tribute to Urvashi Vaid -- the world starves for her energy. 

Just like the community organizer she was, Urvashi Vaid invited two of her Co-PIs for the National LGBQT+ Women's Community Survey -- J'aime Grant and myself -- to join the stage with her as the Gay and Lesbian Medical Associated honored with a lifetime achievement award in September 2021. It was the first time I would see Urvashi's fire on display -- I was in awe at how strategically she measured her anger and discontent. I wouldn't put her a day past 50, an inch shy of 6 feet, or less than a year from her death. 

It's been hard for me to put a succinct finger on what Urvashi has done for me as perhaps one of her youngest cubs. She invited me to be her fellow Co-PI of the National LGBTQ+ Women's Community Survey (www.lgbtqwomensurvey.org) in October 2020 -- a project deer to her heart and which defines so much of her critical radicalism. She wanted to put LGBTQ+ women's needs and desires first in the policy agendas of queer, feminist, and equity movements that benefited from our presence and our labor but rarely uplifted our own struggles as a priority. I, however, was scared of this particular stage.

My identity as a queer dyke has always been shrouded in a tug between the public and the private. On one hand, it's kind of hard to miss. On the other hand, I actively downplay it. Urv's influence on me in this short window has been to activate the Audre Lorde litany, "it is better to speak/remembering/we were never meant to survive." Urv would say, I might guess, "Speak to Survive!"

Urvashi's open, immediate, and unapologetic critique of the whiteness of queer activism and queer scholarship took me by surprise. She was clear from our first conversation that one of her primary desires for this study was to situate the lives of Black and Latinx women in policy agendas that center the needs and values of LGBTQ+ women in queer, feminist, and equity movements. Without knowledge, not even we can wield our power effectively. I remember her saying clean as the Chattahoochee's air, "Ali, I don't want this to be one of those studies where 80 to 90% of the respondents are white!" I was like, "...ohhhkkk...sooo, what do you want me to do about that???" 

And, that's what I have been trying my best to do ever since then -- that was September 2020. Urv imprinted into my bones an urgency to take the initiative to imprint a critical view of racism, race, and ethnicity into what is the first national survey of LGBTQ+ women. She entrusted me to protect the data, wherever I went, and to give the "numbers" back to the public. She painted a dream of "quantifying us" -- LGBTQ+ women -- as one that could actually be achieved. I never thought such a survey was possible as a budding dyke, or even as a tenured professor. 

It was her parting words in that conversation that have held me up these past two years, "Ali! Are you ready?!? Are you ready?? Yeah, yeah...you're ready. Yeah! That's what I'm talking about!" We could both sense the grins on each others faces. She was at once encouraging and provocative, chiding and serious -- always with both a critique and a hope. She was ever the horizon, living on the edge. 

I only saw Urvashi virtually, but I was lucky to be able to do so regularly over the last 18 months. I will never stop running after her footsteps. I will never stop trying to fulfill, at the least, this aspect of her legacy. 

With that said, I'll leave this tribute in the vein of her true scholar-activism: Join us in making herstory! 

Take the National LGBTQ+ Women's Community Survey (click hyperlink to start survey) -- help us build the knowledge base that will empower her legacy to transform policy for decades to come.

The survey is a longtime desired project of her, and it is also a testament to her life, and her love for our community and for justice. So, if you cannot take it, tell someone about it! 

See how we are evolving at the survey's project site: www.lgbtqwomensurvey.org