GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

FEBRUARY 6, 1998

Evenings Out

Fasten your seat belt: Your identity is in for a wild ride

by Dawn Leach

Lesbians and gay men shake up some of the basic rules of gender by insisting that some women love women and some men love men. Bisexuals rock the boat even more by loving across gender lines. What is gender and why are we so attached to it?

Two recent books are challenging assumptions about gender by questioning the very idea of dividing the human race into two halves and pointing out that many people don't fit neatly into either half.

My Gender Workbook takes a playful approach to the challenge. The cover looks pretty

"I realized that what had happened to gender in the culture is that we've been pumped answers, answers, answers. I decided to write a book full of questions."

harmless: It's just like a composition notebook in a cheerful pink. Inside, the workbook is filled ith multiple-choice quizzes, puzzles and diagrams, beautifully illustrated by cartoonist Diane DiMassa, creator of the Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist comics.

With exercises and thought-provoking narratives, Kate Bornstein gently prods readers to take a fresh look at their own gender with an open mind and a sense of humor. For readers who find themselves questioning their identity, she shows them they're in good company by including many quotes from other gender outlaws, including 101 of their answers to the question "Who am I?"

Bornstein is a well-qualified tour guide on the gender bending journey: Named Albert Bornstein at birth, she lived as a man through college, a stint as a sailor, and three marriages before having a sex change operation to become a woman. Later, Bornstein came to the conclusion that she is neither a man nor a woman, but something in between. Bornstein is the author of Gender Outlaw, a book about the gender movement.

Bornstein said that My Gender Workbook is a follow-up to Gender Outlaw, which has been adopted as a text in over 90 colleges and universities. She said she came up with the design for the new book with students in mind. She wrote it because she felt she needed to take the ideas in the earlier book farther.

"I realized that what had happened to gender in the culture is that we've been pumped answers, answers, answers," Bornstein said. "I decided to write a book full of questions."

Bornstein said her primary audience has always been within the "queer community," which she explained means more than just the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

"I think 'queer' is taking a turn to the left and is becoming anyone who's got a transgressive attitude about life, period."

Bornstein went on to explain that she doesn't necessarily consider gays and lesbians to be "queer."

"I've been becoming more and more aware of a lot of straight lesbians and gays, who are very, very almost rigid in their thinking after thirty years of heavy-duty identity politics," said Bornstein. "That'll do it to anybody, that'll smash anybody's transgressions out of them.

And so I'm writing this for people who are kind of omery, who kind of want to change, who kind of are not satisfied with being the Marlboro man or the ideal woman, or even for that matter the ideal lesbian or the ideal gay man. They want to be their own kind of person."

Bornstein set a book tour itinerary across the continent to get a chance to meet the folks she wrote the book for, including a stop in Columbus on February 5. Bornstein said that people in the Midwest experience a different kind of oppression from the coasts, where she has spent her whole life.

"Very, very different, and I'm curious," she said. "I want to find out what is it you're dealing with? Is it really that much different? I don't know. I want to find out."

Bornstein wrote My Gender Workbook from her home in Seattle. She left Seattle last August and took up residence in New York, where she is now pursuing her acting career. She said that now she wants to move away from the subject of gender and explore sexuality. Bornstein and her girlfriend are working together on a performance piece called Too Tall Blondes

Explaining her outlook

on life, Bornstein referred to Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, by Riki Anne Wilchins, which tackles identity politics.

"I have to agree with Riki Wilchins, Borstein said. “I can't allow

My Gender Workbook

by Kate Bornstein

Routledge, $17.95 trade paperback

Read My Lips

Sexual Subversion

and the End of Gender

by Riki Anne Wilchins

Firebrand, $16.95 trade paperback

myself to be narrowed down to a single identity-based group's oppression any more, I'm trying to look for the larger thing."

"Smart book, I think," said Bornstein. Bornstein said that she and Wilchins have traveled a similar path, reaching almost the same conclusion: "Gender oppression is damn near universal, and yeah, it may be more obvious for people who move from one socially acceptable gender to another, but it's everybody."

Wilchins asserts in Read My Lips that organizing around an identity only perpetuates the oppression that people are trying to overcome.

"Gender oppression isn't something owned by trans people," Wilchins said. "Like HIV, it crosses identity boundaries, lesbian, gay, bisexual and straight people, and the gender movement should include all of these."

While Read My Lips has plenty of humor, it has a sharp edge to it, and Wilchins doesn't pull any punches.

"I've kidded that Kate and Leslie [Feinberg] got to write the friendly trannie books, and I got left to write the angry trannie book," Wilchins said, laughing.

Read My Lips is both very political and very personal. It introduces enough philosophical concepts to give the brain a workout. Wilchins also includes some pretty intimate glimpses at her own life that make her points hit home.

After a few pages of explanation about why and how she wrote the book, Wilchins starts off with a list of "17 things you don't say to a transexual," which she later described as "bitchy."

From there, the book takes a winding and seduc-

Kate Bornstein

tive path through Wilchins' ideas and life experiences, ending with her thoughts on eroticism and a short story of a sexual encounter.

"It's a strange book," said Wilchins. “Although I understand that it's right now number six on Lambda's [Lambda Rising Books] national bestseller list, sometimes stores are unsure how to promote it. There are some autobiographical pieces, some humor pieces, lots of national politics, movement history, and theory. Including an interview with myself where I ask myself all the tough questions."

Wilchins said she wanted to make the book accessible.

"I very purposely put it in everyday English, rather than post-modern babble," she said. "When you read the theory chapters, it does not sound authoritative. It will be interesting to see if it is taken seriously."

Born in Cincinnati, Wilchins spent the first three decades of her life in Ohio. She has lived in various places in the Cleveland area, and graduated from Cleveland State University. Wilchins went to the Cleveland Clinic for her sex change operation.

In 1981, Wilchins "outgrew Cleveland" and moved to New York, where she now lives. She recently quit her job to write full time, and is busy turning out two more books. She is writing a sequel to Read My Lips, tentatively titled Insubordinate Bodies: Fear and Loathing in the Gender Badlands.

Wilchins is almost finished writing another book she describes as a "trannie murder mystery." She is calling it The Sound of Angels Falling, and it is about a fictional murder set in a context of several real-life murders of transexuals.

Wilchins still makes time for political activism. In the midst of writing her two books, she is also busy preparing for the Third National GLBT Lobby Day on Capitol Hill April 20 and 21. Wilchins said she hopes more Ohioans will participate this year, and urged anyone interested to contact her by e-mail at lobbyday@gpac.org for information about the

event.

gender workbook Kate Bornstein