books
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us
Kate Bornstein
my mind was BLOWNLots and lots of food for thought (aka just read it):"But the need for a recognizable identity, and the need to belong to a group of people with a similar identity--these are driving forces in our culture, and nowhere is this more evident than in the areas of gender and sexuality"(3-4)."I know I'm not a man--about that much I'm clear, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either, at least not according to a lot of people's rules on this sort of thing. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other--a world that doesn't bother to tell us exactly what one or the other is"(8)."Two days after my lover and I appeared on The Donahue Show, the five-year-old child of our next door neighbor came up to me and asked me, 'So, are you a boy or a girl?' We'd been living next door to these folks for over two years. 'I'm a girl who used to be a boy', I replied. She was delighted with that answer and told me I'd looked very pretty on television. I thanked her and we smiled at each other and went about our days. I love it that kids will just ask"(9)."They [guys] want to know, 'what do lesbians do with one another.' It's a sad question really: it shows how little thought they give to exactly what pleases a woman"(10)."I've no idea what 'a woman' feels like. I never did feel like a girl or a woman; rather, it was my unshakable conviction that I was not a boy or a man. It was the absence of feeling, rather than its presence, that convinced me to change my gender"(24)."Variants to...gender-based relationship dynamics would include heterosexual female with gay male, gay male with lesbian woman, lesbian woman with heterosexual woman, gay male with bisexual male, and so forth. People involved in these variants know that each dynamic is different from the other. A lesbian involved with another lesbian, for example, is a very different relationship than that of a lesbian involved with a bisexual woman, and that's distinct from being a lesbian woman involved with a heterosexual woman. What these variants have in common is that each of these combinations forms its own clearly-recognizable dynamic, and none of these are acknowledged by the dominant cultural binary of sexual orientation: heterosexuality/homosexuality"(33)."...in other words, the sexual encounter is queer because both partners are queer and the genders of the participants are less relevent. Just because Batman is male and Catwoman is female does not make their interactions heterosexual--think about it, there is nothing straight about two people getting it on in rubber and latex costumes, wearing eyemasks and carrying whips and other accoutrements"(36)."In any case, if we buy into catergories of sexual orientation based solely on gender--heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, we're cheating ourselves of a searching examination of our real sexual preferences. In the same fashion, by subscribing to the categories of gender based solely on the male/female binary, we cheat ourselves of a searching examination of our real gender identity"(38)."As an exercise, can you recall the last time you saw someone whose gender was ambiguous? Was this person attractive to you? And if you knew they called themselves neither a man nor a woman, what would it make you if you're attracted to that person? And if you were to kiss? Make love? What would you be"(40)?"I try to engage these folks by asking, 'What's a woman? What's a man?' I wish someone would answer me that--it would make my life a lot easier. I could get on playing some other kind of game. But no one has been able to answer that"(43)."I never hated my penis; I hated that it made me a man--in my own eyes, and in the eyes of others"(47)."I remember one time walking into Woolworth's in Philadelphia. I'd been living as a woman for about a month. I came through the revolving doors, and stood face to face with a security guard--a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty years old. He did a double take when he saw me and began to laugh--very loud. He just laughed and laughed. I continued round through the revolving doors and left the store. I agreed with him that I was a joke; that I was the sick one. I went back in there almost a year later. He came on to me"(48)."It doesn't really matter what a person decides to do, or how radically a person plays with gender. What matters, I think, is how aware a person is of the options. How sad for a person to be missing out on some expression of identity, just for not knowing there are options"(51)."Are you a woman because your birth certificate says female? A man because your birth certificate says male? If so, how did that happen? A doctor looked down at your crotch at birth. A doctor decided, based on what was showing of your external genitals, that you would be one gender or another. You never had a say in that most irreversible of all pronouncements--and according to this culture as it stands today, you never will have a say"(57). "We are trapped in the wrong body. I understand that many people may explain ther preoperative transgendered lives in that way, but I'll bet that it's more likely an unfortunate metaphor that conveniently conforms to cultural expectations, rather than an honest reflection of our transgendered feelings...It's time for transgendered people to look for new metaphors--new ways of communicating our lives to people who are traditionally gendered"(66)."I really would like to be a member of a community, but until there's one that's based on the principle of constant change, the membership would involve more rules, and the rules that exist around the subject of gender are not rules I want to obey"(69)."'Ladies' are the kind of people who won't let my girlfriend use that public ladies' room, thinking she's not a woman. Oh, but they're not going to let her use the men's room either-they're not going to let her be a man either. If she's not a man, and she's not a woman, then what is she? Once I asked my mother what fire was: a solid, liquid or gas? And she said it wasn't any of those things-It was something that happened to things: a force of nature, she called it. Maybe that's what she is: a force of nature. For sure she is something that happened to me.-Holly Hughes, Clit Notes, 1999 (102).""The preferred gender in our patriarchal society is male, and so males mostly take gender for granted, most men do not try and analyze what it means to be male. Even the men's movement seems more predicated on a desire to not be drawn into some web of femininity, rather than a desire to question the construct of male identity. Women, on the other hand, have been taught that they're the 'second sex,' the distaff gender, so their lives are an almost daily struggle with the concept of gender. The trap for women is the system itself: it's not men who are the foe as much as it is the bi-polar gender system that keeps men in place as more privileged"(106)."Please--don't call it 'biological sex,' or 'social gender.' Don't call it 'sex' at all--sex is fucking, gender is everything else"(116)."Let me tell you what happened, the way it looked from inside my head. The world slowed down...The words echoed in my ears over and over and over. Attached to that simple pronoun was the word failure, quickly followed by the word freak. All the joy sucked out of my life in an instant, and every moment I'd ever fucked up crashed down on my head. Here was someone who'd never known me as a man, referring to me as a man"(126)."Straights and gays alike demand the need for an orderly gender system: they're two sides of the same coin, each holding the other in place, neither willing to dismantle the gender system that serves as a matrix for their (sexual) identity. Because of the bi-polar nature of both sexual orientation and gender, one system strengthens the other. Bisexuality and androgyny also hold two sides in place by defining themselves as somewhere in the middle of two given polar opposites"(133)."So let's reclaim the word 'transgendered' so as to be more inclusive. Let's let it mean 'transgressively gendered,' Then, we have a group of people who break the rules, codes, and shackles of gender...It's the transgendered who need to embrace the lesbians and gays, because it's the transgendered who are in fact the more inclusive category"(135)."I've come to see gender as a divisive social construct, and the gendered body as a somewhat dubious accomplishment. I write about this because I am a gender outlaw and my issues are gender issues. The way I see it now, the lesbian and gay community is as much oppressed for gender transgressions as for sexual distinction. We have more in common, you and I, than most people are willing to admit. See, I'm told I must be a man or a woman. One or the other. Oh, it's OK to be a transsexual say some--just don't talk about it. Don't question your gender any more, just be a woman now--you went to so much trouble--just be satisfied. I am so, not satisfied"(144-145)."I grew this body.It's a girl body.All of it.Over the past seven years every one of these cells became girl,so it's mine now.It doesn't make me female.It doesn't make me a woman.And I'm sure not a man.What does that make me"(234)?"'My grandmother,' he said, 'told me something I've never forgotten. 'Never fuck anyone you wouldn't want to be.' The room went silent for a long time"(245)."And I'm looking forward to the day when people look at this book and say to themselves, 'How curious to have put all that energy into talking about gender. I wonder what the world must have been like in those days for folks with only two choices"(246).
