Kate Bornstein Quotes About Gender

Quotes about: Gender

• …gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.

  Kate Bornstein

  Black And White, Rainbow, Gender

  Kate Bornstein (2013). “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us”, p.133, Routledge

• The first question we usually ask new parents is : “Is it a boy or a girl ?”. There is a great answer to that one going around : “We don’t know ; it hasn’t told us yet.” Personally, I think no question containing “either/or” deserves a serious answer, and that includes the question of gender.

  Kate Bornstein

  Girl, Boys, Thinking

  Kate Bornstein (2013). “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us”, p.56, Routledge

• The transgender movement even divides itself up by gender, as many folks stick with their same trans-genders (female-to-male or male-to-female). Additionally, the movement gets strangely subdivided among, for example, male cross-dressers, sissy boys, butch women, femme dykes, drag kings, drag queens, transvestites, intersexed, transsexuals (post-op, pre-op, and non-op).

  Kate Bornstein

  Queens, Kings, Boys

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• My own take on the word "transgender" is that it's an umbrella term for anyone who breaks any rules, laws, guidelines or protocol of gender. So, to really be an ally, it's important that you recognize and embrace your own transgender nature. Really, I haven't met a single person who doesn't break some rule of gender. In other words, we will assimilate you. Resistance is futile.

  Kate Bornstein

  Law, Important, Allies

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• Gender is used as a control mechanism that's just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you're free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that's the tricky part.

  Kate Bornstein

  Struggle, Play, Gender

• Drag queen is a gender like no other, and with practice I'd learned to rise to it.

  Kate Bornstein

  Queens, Practice, Gender

  Kate Bornstein (2012). “A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology, and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today”, p.199, Beacon Press

• Just across the ocean in, say Kenya or Tanzania, a two-gender system is vital for the survival of most of the folks who live there. Men do men's work, women do women's work, and so it all gets done and the jackals can't get into the hut and eat grandpa. So, the future of the transgender movement is like the future of all human rights movements: whatever the state of things in your area now, with some work it all gets a little bit better all the time, even if it is sometimes three steps ahead and two steps back.

  Kate Bornstein

  Ocean, Men, Two

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• There's a simple way to look at gender: Once upon a time, someone drew a line in the sans of culture and proclaimed with great self-importance, 'On this site, you are a man; on the other side, you are a woman.' It's time for the winds of change to blow that line away. Simple.

  Kate Bornstein

  Blow, Simple, Men

• 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

  Kate Bornstein

  Thinking, What Matters, Expression

  Kate Bornstein (2013). “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us”, p.61, Routledge

• You can support trans-positive legislation, tranny artists, and the inclusion of trannies in your neighborhood, schools, place of worship, whatever. For the long term? Join or initiate some good legal battles against the puritanical laws that exist around sex and gender.

  Kate Bornstein

  Sex, School, Artist

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I was a lonely, frightened little fat kid who felt there was something deeply wrong with me because I didn't feel like I was the gender I'd been assigned. I felt there was something wrong with me, something sick and twisted inside me, something very very bad about me. And everything I read backed that up.

  Kate Bornstein

  Lonely, Kids, Sick

  Kate Bornstein (2013). “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us”, p.22, Routledge

• Both bisexuality and transgender are fluid notions of identity, while lesbian and gay are fixed identities. Some people believe that means there should be two movements: LG and BT. But then what're ya gonna do about SM players? And intersexed folks who want their own I in the alphabet soup of sex and gender related politics?

  Kate Bornstein

  Sex, Believe, Mean

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• Sex is f-king, everything else is gender.

  Kate Bornstein

  Kings, Sex, Gender

• Growing up we were secular Jews, but what I got out of Judaism at that time in my life was questions. Everything was a question. "Dad, is there a heaven? Is there a hell?" You never could get an answer. That informed a lot of my reasons for getting into Scientology, because they had all the answers. They said I was not my body, not my mind. I don't have a soul; I am an immortal soul. I've lived many lives and I'll live endlessly into the future, and as an immortal soul I have no gender.

  Kate Bornstein

  Growing Up, Dad, Heaven

  "'A Queer and Pleasant Danger': Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor". Interview with Nicole Pasulka, www.motherjones.com. May 5, 2012.

• I honor anybody who wants to be a man and do the work of becoming a man. I honor anyone who mindfully becomes a woman. That's cool. But, I really don't get how there's only two choices. There's no two of anything else in the entire universe; why should there only be two genders? I don't get it.

  Kate Bornstein

  Men, Two, Choices

  "'A Queer and Pleasant Danger': Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor". Interview with Nicole Pasulka, www.motherjones.com. May 5, 2012.

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