Gender Outlaw - Kate Bornstein

This a Library copy. Why am I reading – or actually re-reading - this seminal book in a Library copy? It seems that I lend my own copies out too often for my own good – and they don’t come back, I wonder why? It needs reading regularly, if only to remind ourselves that back in 1994 a book like this represented a major advance in the understanding of trans. And there was no book quite like this. Kate Bornstein unloaded a wealth of frets and reflections and creative wonderings onto the reader’s plate, a feast of personal experience which took some radical positions vis a vis gender. It did several radical things. The most prominent of these novel perspectives was that Gender itself was the problem and not just for us as trans. Simply transitioning surgically, medically, and then maybe disappearing back into the gender thicket, resolved very little about society’s relationship with itself and gender-variant people. And Kate’s dismembering of conventional language and gender terminology opened up the possibility that everybody was variant. She also raised to prominence the importance of art, writing, theatre and culture as somewhere to examine and adopt the brilliantly awkward truths which are embodied by trans people, and non-binarists, and individualists everywhere. She even included a play as part of the text. Suddenly it was usefully difficult to talk superficially about ourselves, to speak as though everything was about what we might now call a “hack”, a “Beam Me Up Scotty” which transferred us to a less problematic realm and pity the others who can’t take the ride. Now we had to be Queer to get the measure of ourselves. So thank you, Kate. Since then there have been her “Workbooks” and her Memoir, “A Queer and Present Danger.” And more plays and public appearances. And most importantly, more life. “Gender Outlaw” was born of life-complications which needed resolving and Kate has had more of them to resolve so her brilliant adventure still moves forward for everybody’s enlightenment.