Kate Bornstein: Gender Outlaw

introduction

"I'm what's called a transsexual person. That means I was assigned one gender at birth, and I now live my life as something else. I was born male and raised as a boy. I went through both boyhood and adult manhood, went through a gender change, and 'became a woman,'" writes Kate (formerly Al) Bornstein. "On the personal side of things, my lesbian lover of over three years decided to become a man. We lived together for a few more years as a heterosexual couple, then we stopped being lovers. He found his gay male side, and I found my slave grrrl side. What a wacky world, huh? I can't think of a day in my life when I haven't thought about gender. . . ."

Kate Bornstein is a woman (she underwent a male-to-female sex change operation in 1986) with a mission: to dismantle the "gender system" on the planet as we know it. As a lesbian feminist writer, actress, performance artist and frequent guest on daytime television talk shows, she is dedicated to educating others about what she feels is the inherent oppression of a binary gender system that forces everyone to conform to one of only two gender options. In her books Gender Outlaw, Nearly Roadkill (coauthored with Caitlin Sullivan) and My Gender Workbook, as well as in numerous theater productions and the experiential workshops she presents across the United States, Bornstein questions, challenges and deconstructs all ideas about gender—including ideas that many of us aren't even aware we have.

The moment we heard about Kate Bornstein and her work, we knew we wanted to speak with her for this issue of WIE. Here was someone who has spent several decades deeply investigating what gender is and isn't, how gender identity is constructed and maintained, and how we can free ourselves from what she sees as the rigid and narrowly defined roles called "man" and "woman." She has a unique perspective on the nuances of the "performance of gender" informed by both her training as a character actor and her familiarity with postmodern gender theory. But Bornstein's exploration of the subject has by no means been academic. She has explored these questions with her own life and her own body and gone farther with her inquiry than most would even dare to imagine. We were very interested in talking with her about what she has learned about "gender freedom," and how her experience sheds light on what an ultimately spiritually liberated relationship to gender identity might be.

When I finally got a chance to interview her, in the small, cluttered apartment/office in New York City that she shares with her girlfriend, two dogs, a cat, several turtles and a conspicuous collection of sexually suggestive art, books, knickknacks and videos, she was not, somehow, the person I had expected to meet. Through her thoughtful and provocative writing, I had encountered, on the printed page, a committed feminist and social activist, someone serious about her work and ideas. In person, however, I met someone more closely resembling, well, a seventeen-year-old Valley Girl who punctuated her remarks with, "Cool!" and "Like, duh!" Bornstein was intentionally, even rebelliously, chameleonlike, with a palette of personas she would shift into and out of unexpectedly, sometimes in mid-sentence. On occasion, the fifty-one-year-old, well-educated, upper-middle-class suburban white man she would have been had she not taken her destiny into her own hands appeared before me; at other times, a flamboyantly gay stage performer prone to breaking into song; and once, a gruff "Uncle Max" from New Jersey. While speaking with her, it became unsettlingly apparent that when she writes about embracing "personal anarchy," she means it literally.

Bornstein, who has described herself as a "gender terrorist," has invented what she calls a bodhisattva approach to unhinging ourselves from gender identity. "Make yourself foolish!" she told me. "Make yourself sillier.Make yourself more outside the rules that have been set up for you. . . . All I've been doing all my life is going lower and lower and lower on the social scale." For Bornstein, using "gender transgression" to aid in downward mobility on the ladder of social acceptance, prestige and privilege is not just a sign of the "gender dysphoria" her psychiatrist diagnosed her with, nor simply a personal agenda, but a spiritual path that can dismantle patriarchy and the adversarial gender relationships she feels are the primary glue that holds it in place. "This is the Age of Pisces," she explained, "and what the Age of Pisces is going to teach humanity is fluidity. Gender fluidity is a lesson we're going to have to embrace if we want the peace that's going to come through the Age of Aquarius."

Meeting Kate Bornstein was, without a doubt, a mind-opening experience. This "gender outlaw," who insists on "saying no to gender, and to keep saying no to systems that would rein me in, classify me, pin me down or keep me in my place," does seem to have achieved success in her goal of blurring the margins of her identity, particularly her gender identity. And in spite of her defiant attachment to "fluidity and whimsy" and her aversion to taking anything, even her own life's work, very seriously, she is a patient teacher about the subject of gender with a generous willingness to lay bare her own experience. Because she asserts that gender itself is a powerful path to enlightenment that emerges from the point where "postmodernism, technology and desire meet Zen," we were eager to explore her discoveries about the liberation that lies in transcending identification with this most central of our ideas of self. Yet as she revealed that the ability to wear a mustache one day, lipstick the next, and both together the day after is the sort of thing that she feels demonstrates progress on the path, it became increasingly clear that the "gender freedom" she advocates is not exactly what we had in mind.

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.

WIE: In Gender Outlaw you describe gender freedom as having the ability to move fluidly between a variety of different gender roles and identities—

KB: Among a variety.

WIE: Yet there is another view of freedom in relationship to gender that I wanted to ask you about. The teachings of some of the most spiritually liberated beings have called us to transcend all notions of self, including gender. From a spiritual perspective, wouldn't attachment to or preoccupation with gender in any form ultimately prove to be an impediment to spiritual liberation? Attachment to ideas of fixed gender, fluid gender, no gender—any way of relating to gender as a fundamental reference point?

KB: Yeah. Attachment to it would certainly be an impediment.

WIE: Do you think it is possible for the individual to come to a point where they no longer are preoccupied with or fixated on gender differences, roles and identities, and at the same time feel no need to avoid or deny whatever gender differences there may actually be?

KB: I think that pretty well describes what I'm approaching.

WIE: It's a subtle question, though. What I'm asking about is the possibility of letting go of any kind of grasping at or holding on to a self-image that's related to gender. Is it possible to really let all that drop and then find out, again and again in every moment, what qualities or characteristics there would naturally and spontaneously be? To allow "gendered" qualities or characteristics to just be there without denying or avoiding them, or orchestrating them, and without having to know beforehand what they are?

KB: You're talking about a very enlightened state. I can do that a lot around gender, okay, because it's been my whole life. I've spent over forty years consciously exploring it. And I'm trying to use what I've learned in my gender explorations to be as fluid in other areas of my life.

WIE: From what you described in Gender Outlaw, it seems that much of the experience of transgendered people is practicing or acting various gender and sexual behaviors. It seems that the goal is having a greater spectrum of characteristics and behaviors to choose from, and not just being slotted into a certain range of characteristics. I wanted to ask you about this idea of acting a gender role.

KB: Well, everybody does that. It's just a question of the degree of consciousness we have while we're doing it. I mean, you do it.

WIE: Yes, it's true; I realize that this is definitely not just true for transgendered people. But what I'm getting at in this question is that when people are acting these roles, it can seem self-conscious or somewhat unnatural. It can seem affected, this putting on of a feminine or a masculine persona. But obviously, conventionally heterosexual men and women do it also.

KB: I was going to mention John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Bruce Willis, Geena Davis. I mean, hello!

WIE: Right, exactly. Yet one way of describing spiritual liberation is the discovery of a condition of naturalness, spontaneity and lack of self-consciousness that comes from all self-concern falling away. There's no self-image being clutched on to. What do you think about the distinction between this way of being and the kind of self-consciousness that comes from acting a gender role?

KB: I don't think that they're different. I think one is a step toward another. I think that one way to be able to totally cast off the either/or gender idea would be to fully embrace the being and doing and experience of each of these main genders and see if they really, really work for you—either one. And by defining ourselves as genderless, i.e., unable to be nailed down to any gender, we open ourselves up to being able to perform the function of any gender, create the effect of any gender, experience the experience of any gender. But if you're going to perform, create or experience depending on the performance, creation and experience that are allowed your gender, well, it's going to be on a limited basis. Men are allowed to perform certain things, create certain things, experience certain things that women aren't.

WIE: But isn't this "performance" still self-conscious?

KB: Yes, and it's a path.

WIE: What do you mean?

KB: If you really wanted to get to a point of transcending gender, you would have to consciously embrace and act out both primary genders.

WIE: Do you think that is a path to the kind of transcendence of gender identification that I've been asking about?

KB: Well, it's a clumsy path, but it's the only path that the culture allows right now—it's to carve out our own. But if you're really going to transcend, if you're really going to get to a point of being enlightened, unattached to self, unattached to how you're presenting, unattached to how you're treated in the culture, you better know how you are being treated. For most people, there's not much difference between being oblivious to gender and being unattached to it.

WIE: I don't think I'm with you on that.

KB: I'm saying that I'm approaching a point in my life where I'm becoming more and more unattached to gender. But I would venture a guess that you've been pretty oblivious to any gender beyond man or woman prior to recently.

WIE: Right.

KB: But you would probably consider yourself fairly unattached to gender—or at least, it isn't necessarily a component of your life that you've really had to focus on. But you'll go to bed tonight thinking you're a woman. I've never done that. And I've never gone to bed thinking I'm a man or a boy. Ever.

WIE: That's true; my experience has been different. But there's another way to approach the question of how to go beyond gender identification. Many traditional spiritual teachings point to becoming completely immersed in that which transcends the particulars of material life—something that's beyond time, beyond space, beyond thought, beyond mind—and becoming identified with that. And then we still happen to be whatever gender we are, but it's not a fundamental reference point or preoccupation. We'll be in whatever kind of bodies we're in, and we may express whatever qualities in those bodies we express spontaneously, naturally, but without being self-conscious about it, without there being any kind of pretense or affectation—whether it's the Marilyn Monroe kind or the campy homosexual kind—which is still a kind of posturing, isn't it?

KB: But posturing can be a lot of fun, darling, don't you think?! Posturing makes us laugh! Most of the Zen masters were great comedians. And a lot of the Taoist masters were too; Chuang Tsu was a riot! He was better than a lot of the stand-ups we've got today. I think that kind of posturing, when done tongue in cheek, can create an effect. It interrupts what's going on to a point where we can go, "Oh, yeah, we were all attached to that. Now we can breathe."

You keep asking me either/or questions. And I don't know what's good and bad! I don't know what's right and wrong! So I'll contradict myself again. Do you need to embrace each gender wholly before you can achieve gender enlightenment? No. But you need to examine what values you're holding on to that are gendered and let go of the gendered nature of those values and embrace them for what they are rather than the fact that they're tied to a gender. You need to take a look at how important your identity is to you. How important is it for others to see you as a certain identity? How important is it that people see you as a man? How important is it that people see you as a woman? What are you holding on to, what am I holding on to, that ensures or increases the chances that people will see me as a certain gender? That's attachment to gender!

WIE: What do you think is the best way to see this?

KB: I think it's taking risks. I think it's saying, "Okay, what about this gender?"—you know? [takes off her wig] If I have an attachment to your seeing me as a pretty girl with long blonde hair, then I've got a problem. If I don't, if I can joke about it, great. It's less of a problem to me. Also, it's bodhisattva: Make yourself sillier. Make yourself more outside the rules that have been set up for you.

WIE: That leads to my next question: It's been observed that people who break taboos are in a powerful position in relation to others precisely because they've dared to transgress social, cultural or religious mandates. In transgressing these mandates, they experience a kind of freedom and power and are sometimes viewed with awe or fear by those interested in protecting the status quo. You have quite intentionally broken a number of taboos, and not only do you not hide this, but you use it as a way to educate others. Has it been your experience that there is power in breaking taboos?

KB: Yeah, I've broken some taboos. Breaking a taboo lowers a person on the social scale, and paradoxically, it gives them power. It's like the position of the fool in the royal court. When you break a taboo and come to terms with it, then you're free of the cultural whip called humiliation. You know, I can't be humiliated. What are you going to do, call me a transsexual? I'll go, "Cool! Duh!" Are you going to say "lesbian" with a sneer? I'll go, "Yah!" What can you say—"You're a man!"? I'll say, "Okay." Or, "You cut off your penis!" I'll say, "No, I turned it inside out!" I mean, there's very little that I can be humiliated about now. That's the freedom.

Gender has its own set of social responses that you either obey or don't obey; and when you choose not to, you get humiliated—until you get to a point of having fun about it. I think that a sign of approaching enlightenment is having fun with it: "Yes, I'm performing because I like it!" Can I be a man, woman, boy, girl, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, teacher, student all at the same time? Wouldn't that be enlightened? Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. I think I finally got that there is not going to be any socially sanctioned identity or role that will fulfill me. I just take on roles as a lark now.

WIE: If we were to wake up tomorrow and there had been a radical evolution in consciousness and everyone had transcended this primary identification with gender, what do you think it would look like?

KB: People would look awfully awkward at first. They wouldn't be making moves automatically based on their gender identity. People would have to relearn how to work in the world, would have to relearn how to get along with each other. They couldn't use the automatic structures that exist for men and women in this world.

Do you know how much is based on whether you're a man or a woman? Try going as neither. Put on a mustache. Make people wonder what the f— you are. Do that for one day. Or make it easier—ask three questions, honestly, of yourself. What is a man? What is a woman? Why do we have to be one or the other? And I think if a majority of the world asked themselves those three questions over a period of three minutes, we'd have a hell of a change on this planet. If they honestly, without fear of retribution or loss of respect, could ask themselves these questions, that would change the face of the globe.

WIE: Do you recommend that others question gender identity in the way that you have as a spiritual path?

KB: One way to achieve enlightenment is through gender. One way. It's to unattach yourself from the perks of both genders. That's what I've done. Now I still walk down the street and get the perk of "pretty girl." I do! And I get all the shortcomings of "pretty girl" or "dumb blonde," too. It's really cool. It's a fun identity for me. I enjoy "bimbo." I enjoy "silly blonde." I have a lot of fun with it. All I'm saying is that some people might find it easier to explore the path of gender than to explore the path of meditation. What's meditation but focus? How much focus do you think it takes to change a gender? A hell of a lot. It's a very meditative practice if you choose to use it like that. You have to pay attention to an infinite number of details, and you can never get all of them. The best you can do is spread your mind out over as many as you can and let the rest go by, and that's meditation. It's a form of meditative behavior, if you will—"Zen and the Art of Gender Maintenance." All I'm saying is that conscious gender is a path to enlightenment. It's gotten me farther toward understanding stuff, toward accepting how much I don't understand and toward developing a sense of humor than anything else I've ever gone through. But that's just me.