interview

WIE: What is a "gender outlaw"?

Kate Bornstein: It's anybody who f—s with gender. A gender outlaw is anybody who f—s with gender, in any way, shape or form, and has the courage to admit they're doing it. Period.

And how can you f—with gender? You can do stuff that is proscribed for your birth gender: "Men can't do this; women can't do that." There have been various cultures where there have been in fact more than two genders. But usually anyone who is not a member of what the culture considers its primary genders is relegated to outlaw status. You violate the laws of nature. That makes you an outlaw.

WIE: You seem to suggest in your book Gender Outlaw that it's only through breaking out of society's rigid gender roles and identities that we can discover and express our full potential. Why do you say that being attached to fixed gender roles creates a form of bondage?

KB: Well, what's the definition of bondage? Being held in one place. What's the definition of a role, except operating within a place, within certain prescribed manners? The degree to which anything keeps us motionless limits us. Anything that limits our reach, our grasp, the way we do things limits our potential. The women's movement has certainly looked at how the cultural role of "woman" has limited women. And the men's movement has looked at how the cultural role of "man" has limited men. But very few people have looked at how the system of having only men and only women has limited all of us.

WIE: What is your concept of liberation?

KB: For me, the most important freedom is the freedom to express my harmless values, and values are tied to identities. You're not allowed the freedom to express your values other than in an identity that the culture agrees you have. You're allowed to say, "I want to be Davy Crockett!" and "I want to be Princess Diana!" as long as you're a kid. Once you're an adult, you're not allowed to say that. That's not considered adult behavior. Well, duh!—of course! I hope I'm a child until the day I die! So freedom, for me, would be the freedom to freely express myself and my harmless values.

WIE: Some people feel that a liberated relationship to gender is the realization of some kind of androgyny in which everyone has equal access to a full spectrum of human characteristics, skills, roles and opportunities. Others feel that true gender liberation lies in men and women becoming more authentically and powerfully grounded in their experience and expression of their manhood or womanhood. What do you think of these two rather opposing views of liberation in relationship to gender?

KB: I wouldn't call them opposing at all. I would call them steps on a journey to gender liberation. I think the first step is to fully embrace what you might be being and see if you could fully be that. I mean, golly, if you were born a man or born a woman, go ahead and be one! That's the easiest thing. Boy, wouldn't it be great if, simply by being a woman, you could be everything your heart desired. Great! Go for it! Fantastic! I think that's the first step, and that's the second of the two alternatives you offered me. If that doesn't work, then I would suggest moving into the second step, which is this whole concept of a full range of expression, and androgyny. And that's a good next step because you can ask: What is it between man and woman—which is what "androgyny" means—that I can embrace? Will that enable me to freely express myself? Can I find an identity in this range of androgyny? Try that. If that doesn't work, then you're going to need to go to a third option, which is to move outside of androgyny, beyond the bipolar concept—which androgyny still keeps in place by admission of andro and gyna—and explore the space that contains these two poles. Explore that to see if you can find a way to freely express yourself using gender.

So I think it's not that the two options you described are opposed. I would say that it's just a sequence of steps, and what's easiest? If the goal is to freely express yourself, is gender in your way? If it's not, fantastic! Explore race, explore class, explore age, explore one of the other identities. For me, gender was in the way. I first tried to be fully a man. It didn't work for me. Then I tried the androgynous thing and explored what parts of woman I could embrace and still be a man. That didn't work for me either. So I went, "Okay! I'm a woman!" and I went back to the first step. "Now I can fully express myself as a woman." But naahhh, not really—it didn't work. So then I went back to, "Well, maybe I'll incorporate some of this man stuff again." It still didn't work. I'm not a man. I'm not a woman. I'm at the next stage, which is in a third space that includes man, woman and lots of other genders.

WIE: From a spiritual perspective, do you think that there are any limitations in focusing so much on gender and sexuality?

KB: Big time! Golly! I think I've gotten to a point where the gender system on this planet doesn't work for me. I understand that and I have accepted it. And I have embraced my own freakdom around that. I've gotta get on with my life now. I'm not going to beat my head against a brick wall trying to be a woman or trying to be a man. Been there, done that. And since those are the only two identities that the gender system of most cultures on this planet allow, why should I beat my head against that? Lao Tsu said that whenever you have a binary system, you've got to get to a point of being outside it before you can be free of it. I do not buy your system that offers me a choice of one or the other. I just can't subscribe to it anymore. That's what I needed to learn from gender. But gender, even though it's a very common shared experience, is just one aspect of who we are. The danger is that it's rarely, if ever, explored. It goes on automatic.

WIE: What do you think transcendence means in relationship to gender?

KB: I think it means getting to the point of relegating the genders "man" and "woman" to two of many, rather than the only two to choose from. I think that's transcending the gender system as it currently exists in most cultures on the planet.

WIE: What do you think it would mean to transcend gender differences and still inhabit a male or female body?

KB: Impossible! Is your body male or female? By whose definitions? Is my body male? Is my body female? What's a male body? What's a female body? You're using terms that are too loaded to answer that question. Unless you define what a male body or a female body is, that question is impossible to answer. I don't understand what those are. I know too many people who have too many different definitions for them, and I don't know yours. I don't mean to be snide. So, tell me: what's a male body?

WIE: Well, I guess, to begin with, XY versus XX chromosomes.

KB: Have you ever had your chromosomes tested?

WIE: Not that I'm aware of.

KB: Then how do you know whether you have a male body or a female body? There are actually fourteen possible combinations at that particular chromosome level. There's XX, XY, XXY, YYX, XO, XXX, XOX. . . . Does that mean there are fourteen genders? So gender isn't at the level of chromosomes.

WIE: Well, there are the typical secondary sex characteristics that generally identify our bodies as male or female—breasts, facial hair, etc. And we also present ourselves as a particular gender, such as in the way we dress or wear our hair. But the idea I'm getting at is the possibility of transcending gender identification while living in a world where we still inhabit bodies that are identified as male or female.

KB: A lot of people think I have a female body. But I would be the first to argue that. Do I have a penis? Yes. It's been turned inside out, but it's still a penis. Do I have a vagina? No. On the sexual characteristics level, I've got an "inny," not an "outy"! And you've never seen men with breasts? I've seen men with breasts bigger than mine. With what you're wearing, I can't tell if you have breasts. And with your hat, I don't know what your hair is like. So, by your definition, I have no idea what you are! So it's not the breasts and it's not the hair. Is it hormones? You know, testosterone and estrogen? If that were the case, we could buy our gender at any drugstore. So any question relating to the "male" or "female" body, unless it's defined, I can't answer it.

WIE: Which aspects of gender do you think are biological and which do you think are conditioned? And has your experience as someone who's undergone sex change surgery and hormone treatment changed your view of this?

KB: It's pretty easy. I think aspects of gender that are biological are those aspects that can be measured in the physical universe. Everything else is conditioned. Physical manifestations of gender are sex characteristics, hormones, chromosomes or anything you can see, hear, feel, touch, smell, measure—that's all biological. But things like "wants to wear a prom dress" are not biological.

WIE: Do you think any psychological, emotional or behavioral gender characteristics follow biology, or do you think it's all cultural?

KB: Let's pull this conversation back a minute because otherwise we're going to get inextricably trapped here. Am I correct in assuming that, unspoken in your question, when you say "gender," you mean "man" or "woman"?

WIE: Well, yes.

KB: Right. And any conversation that's based on that is going to be difficult for me to respond to because I don't believe those are the only two genders. If you want to talk about gendered characteristics, let's narrow it down to a field of, say, six genders: men, women, boys, girls, she-males and drag kings.

Okay, that being said, now let me contradict myself. Does testosterone make a person more randy and more given to anger? Yes, absolutely. Does estrogen change the nature of a person's sexual drive? Yes. Changed mine. Absolutely. But who says estrogen and testosterone are female and male, respectively? If you want to say the effect of an XY chromosome on the body produces certain characteristics in a person—

WIE: So you would say that certain characteristics may follow biological factors as long as you don't separate them into what people call "male" and "female" categories.

KB: Absolutely. Yes, because I mean otherwise it doesn't totally make sense.

But if we were to shoot you up with testosterone, would you grow hair on your face? Yes! But would that make you a man? Did you know that if you took testosterone, your clitoris would grow to maybe three or four inches long? What would that be like? Would that be a woman's body? I think a sign of approaching enlightenment is that you can laugh about some of this stuff and your default conception of gender is no longer an either/or construct. You know, I really am having trouble hearing some of your questions because they're based in this either/or world.