Katrina Fox Interviews Kate Bornstein

by Katrina Fox

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Gender outlaw Kate Bornstein offers some alternatives to suicide in her new book. She spoke with Katrina Fox.

In 1994 Kate Bornstein released her debut non-fiction book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us, marking her as one of America's most thought provoking authors in the area of gender identity. She followed it up four years later with My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely. In addition, she's known for her work as a playwright and performance artist, touring shows that include Hidden: A Gender and Strangers in Paradox.

Originally from North Dakota, Bornstein, who's approaching sixty, today lives in New York with her partner of ten years, writer and performance artist Barbara Carrellas. To say she's lived a colourful and adventurous life is perhaps an understatement. Born and raised as a boy, Bornstein underwent sex reassignment surgery to live as a woman, then realised she was neither a man or woman. She's appeared on The Geraldo Show and The Donahue Show in the United States and embraced her outsider and freak status with a vengeance, sharing intimate details of her life in her writings such as her penchant for self-cutting and sado-masochism, all with her trademark sense of humour to help other outsiders claim whatever identity suits them and to resist being forced into a box by the mainstream.

Her latest book, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws, goes further by aiming to help people, especially the young, to employ strategies to stay alive. Hailed by lesbian TV personality Rosie O'Donnell as &inspiring and life affirming&, the book's first run has just sold out, something Bornstein admits surprised her. "I was very afraid of how the book was going to do," she says. "I kept getting publishers who normally publish my work saying there were no outlets - radio and big magazines didn't want to touch it. Then I found out recently that the first run sold out in six months and I had to figure out how it did that. First it was the internet, specifically My Space and the blogosphere, zine networks where we are publishing our own stuff, G.L.B.T. youth networks, college G.L.B.T. networks, dyke and SM networks. I've also seen it on sale at tattoo parlours dyke networks; it's all underground, and that is really heartening."

The underground is where Bornstein feels most comfortable, although she's just as happy to burst into mainstream scenes to get people to think about things - such as gender - that they normally take for granted. So, how far off are we from the majority of people becoming ready to embrace neither a male nor female identity? "The movement to cultural deconstructionism of the gender binary is not a big movement, it's not very cohesive - it's a small part of the trans movement," Bornstein opines. "The main objection to the binary system is you lose the predictability of the response of the person you are talking to or having a relationship with: the notion that a man will behave like this, a woman will behave like this - I don't have to think about it, I can predict all their behaviours and that's why I think all the monsters on sci-fi shows are shape shifters. That's a cultural monster; you never know if you're standing next to one, and that's what people outside the binary are."

Despite not considering herself to be male or female, Bornstein is aware of the need for identities to shift over a person's lifetime. She (or Ze which is the pronoun used on her website) moved from "transsexual lesbian" shortly after her surgery to ";tranny dyke", where she's at today. "Dykes are my favourite people," Bornstein enthuses. "Man, they're like Pippy Long Stocking - like Willow from Buffy, with a good sense of humour. Dykes are not necessarily lesbians; they have all kinds of sexualities. A dyke is a queer lesbian with wider parameters of sexuality and gender identity. A dyke might fuck a fag, a lesbian I don't think would." So, how is the sexuality of the partner of someone who opts out of the gender binary system defined? "My partner Barbara identifies as bisexual or omnisexual, " Bornstein explains. "But I'm pretty sure if you were to say "Where is your sexual orientation i.e. towards what being?" she'd say "self". To Barbara, sex is sacred and very spiritual; it's a bridge to enlightenment and Barbara can make herself come better than anyone else can. I can make myself come better than any one else can but I still prefer partner sex. I'm monogamous, Barbara is too - we're both serial monogamists who have been together for ten years puzzling the hell out of each other everyday of the week. My thing with sex is SM and Barbara and I meet there. We also both like group sex - we really get off on sex with each other in public - that's the best partner sex. There - you have an exclusive!" Bornstein laughs.

Hello Cruel World is published by Seven Stories Press. Visit www.katebornstein.com for more info.

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