Gender Outlaw Quotes

“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, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Never fuck anyone you wouldn't want to be.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“I see fashion as a proclamation or manifestation of identity, so, as long as identities are important, fashion will continue to be important. The link between fashion and identity begins to get real interesting, however, in the case of people who don't fall clearly into a culturally-recognized identity.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Given any binary, it's fun to look for some hidden third, and the reason why the third was hidden says a lot about culture. The choice between two of something is not a choice at all, but rather the opportunity to subscribe to the value system which holds the two presented choices as mutually exclusive alternatives. Once we choose one or the other, we've bought into the system that perpetuates the binary.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“I think gender can take a lesson from sadomasochism (S/M): gender needs to be safe, sane, and consensual.

Gender is not safe.
If i change my gender, I'm at risk of homocide, suicide or a life devoid of half my responsibilities.
If I'm born with a body that gives mixed gender signals, I'm at risk of being butchered - fixed, mutilated.
Gender is not safe.

And gender is not sane.
It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.
It's not sane to demand we fit into one or the other only.
It's not sane that we classify people in order to oppress them as women or glorify them as men.
Gender is not sane.

And gender is not consensual.
We're born: a doctor assigns us a gender. It's documented by the state, enforced by the legal profession, sanctified by the church, and it's bought and sold in the media.
We have no say in our gender - we're not allowed to question it, play with it, work it out with our friends, lovers or family.
Gender is not consensual.

Safe gender is being who and what we want to be when we want to be that, with no threat censure or violence.
Safe gender is going as far in an direction as we wish with not threats to our health, or to anyone else's.
Safe gender is not being pressured into passing, not having to lie, not having to hide.

Sane gender is asking questions about gender - talking to people who do gender and opening up about our gender histories and our gender desires.
Sane gender is probably very, very funny.

Consensual gender is respecting each others definitions of gender , and respecting the intentions of others to be inclusive in their own time.
Consensual gender is non violent in that it doesn't force its way in on anyone.
Consensual gender opens its arms and welcomes all people as gender outcasts - whoever is willing to admit to it.

Gender has a lot to learn from S/M.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Definitions have their uses in much the same way that road signs make it easy to travel: they point out the directions. But you don't get where you're going when you just stand underneath some sign, waiting for it to tell you what to do.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“The differences in the way men and women are treated are real. And the fact is this difference in treatment has no basis in the differences between men and women. I was the same person, and I was treated entirely differently. I got real interested in feminist theory ---real fast.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“The Gender Defender is someone who actively, or by knowing inaction, defends the status quo of the existing gender system, and thus perpetuates the violence of male privilege and all its social extensions. The gender defender, or gender terrorist, is someone for whom gender forms a cornerstone of their view of the world. Shake gender up for one of these folks, and you're in trouble.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“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.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Gender is just one of many systems of oppression. The ultimate goal is to see how all systems are tied in a knot with the others and untie, unravel the knots of oppression. It's a spiritual journey more than a governmental one. It's about asking ourselves, 'Is this culture stopping me or anyone else from the free expression of sex and gender?' and if so, we have to act.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Let me tell you what happened, the way it looked from inside my head. The world slowed down, like it does in the movies when someone is getting shot and the filmmaker wants you to feel every bullet enter your body. 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 that 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.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“There's a real simple way to look at gender: Once upon a time, someone drew a line in the sands of a culture and proclaimed with great self-importance, "On this side, you are a man; on this side, you are a woman." It's time for the winds of change to blow that line away. Simple.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“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 now knowing there are options.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“We are entitled to our anger in response to this oppression: our anger is a message to ourselves that we need to get active and change something in order to survive.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Our spirits are full of possibilities, yet we tie ourselves down to socially-prescribed names and categories so we're acceptable to more people. We take on identities that no one has to think about, and that's probably how we become and why we remain men and women.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“One answer to the question "Who is a transsexual?" might well be "Anyone who admits it." A more political answer might, "Anyone whose performance of gender calls into question the construct of gender itself.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Male privilege is, in a word, violence.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Male privilege" is assuming one has the right to occupy any space or person by whatever means, with or without permission. It's a sense of entitlement that's unique to those who have been raised male in most cultures - it's notably absent in most girls and women.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Isn’t it amazing the lengths we’ll go to in order to maintain the illusion that there are only two genders, and that these genders must remain separate?”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“trivial. But consider a list of items that differentiate females from males. There are none that always and without exception are true of only one gender. —Kessler and McKenna, Gender: An”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“We don't have to know someone's age. Their race may be somewhat indistinct, and we might be mildly curious. We may look at someone and think they are gay or straight, but we don't have to know. We can wonder. Yet we insist, and in this is the curiosity, we insist that a person be one gender or the other and we remain unsettled until we assign one gender or the other. It's part of our consciousness isn't it? And as to consciousness - we really should thank religion, whose chief task, it seems to be is, to see that we all have more or less the exact same consciousness.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“Male privilege is assuming one has the right to occupy any space or person by whatever means, with or without permission. It's a sense of entitlement that's unique to those who have been raised male is most cultures - it's notably absent in most girls and women...Combine male privilege with capitalism (which rewards greed and acquisition) and mass media (which, owned by capitalists, highlights only the rewards of acquisition and makes invisible it's penalties) and you have a juggernaut that needs stopping by any means...Male privilege is, in a word, violence.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“To attempt to divide us into rigid categories (You're a transvestite, and you're a drag queen, and you're a she-male, and on and on and on) is like trying to apply the laws of solids on the state of fluids; it's our our fluidity that keeps us in touch with each other. It's our fluidity and the principles that attend that constant state of flux that could create an innovative and inclusive transgender community.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“And then I found out that gender can have fluidity , which is quite different from ambiguity. If ambiguity is a refusal to fall within a prescribed gender code, then fluidity is the refusal to remain one gender or another. Gender fluidity is the ability to freely and knowingly become one or many of a limitless number of genders, for any length of time, at any rate of change. Gender fluidity recognizes no borders or rules of gender.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“All roads in life lead nowhere. So you might as well take the road that has the most heart and is the most fun. —Anonymous Zen saying”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“If we begin, in virtual reality, to render partitions as needless, or at best as boundaries for some consensual game, then we have the opportunity to carry that skill over into our day-to-day worlds.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

“The differences in the way men and women are treated are real. And the fact is this difference in treatment has no basis in the differences between men and women. I was the same person, and I was treated entirely differently. I got real interested in feminist theory--real fast.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us