Reading: Gender Outlaw (Kate Bornstein) To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State / Chapters 1-4 (finishing at Section: The Basic Mixup) related tags: #HNvPtS
This is more likely going to be me pulling things I find interesting while also grabbing pieces that don't necessarily work within the context of HNPtS, though we'll see. It's early yet.
In my case, however, it’s not so clear. I identify as neither male nor female, and now that my lover went through his gender change, it turns out I’m neither hetero nor homo. What I’ve found as a result of this borderline life is that the more fluid my identity has become—and the less demanding my own need to belong to the camps of male, female, gay, or straight—the more playful and less regimented my fashion has become—as well as my overall style of self-expression.
Having now read bell hooks' The Will to Change, I'm perplexed to see these two books side-by-side. While hooks claims to want to see a different kind of masculinity (she... didn't seem to really want that, and I don't get that impression at all from that book)... Because Kate Bornstein is talking more about a... maybe not a genderless society but finding that they existed in a place where the delineations are less clear and more blurry.
It's very strange as a comparison.
When I was growing up, people who lived cross-gender lives were pressured into hiding deep within the darkest closets they could find. Those who came out of their closets were either studied under a microscope, ridiculed in the tabloids, or made exotic in pornography, so it paid to hide. It paid to lie. That was probably the most painful part of it: the lying to friends and family and lovers, the pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Going through a gender change is not the easiest thing in the world to do, but I went through it because I was so tired of all the lies and secrets.
This bit also makes it strange that they're being used within the same space. Here, you can see what the “lies” (I don't necessarily agree that they're actually lies; they're masks and omitted or obscured truths) can do to a person and how it stifles their growth, expression, and exploration. But it's also in recognising that they're not lying because they want to.
Meanwhile, in conversation, this doesn't make sense with bell hooks' beliefs: “Anyone who has a false self must be dishonest. People who learn to lie to themselves and others cannot love because they are crippled in their capacity to tell the truth and therefore unable to trust.”
These aren't even the same concepts. It's not about being dishonest; it's about only letting as much of yourself out as you can while keeping your whole truth hidden because of... abuse, harassment, ostracization... Hiding who you are out of safety is not the same as hiding who you are because you're manipulating people, and that's what hooks is implying there.
You can see that in the next bit of Bornstein's passage:
It was a strange kind of lie. It was a lie by action—I was always acting out something that everyone assumed I was. I wonder what it would have been like if someone had come along and in a quite friendly manner had asked, “Well, young one, what do you think you are: a boy or a girl—or something else entirely?” What would it have been like not to have been afraid of getting hit because of some wrong answer? See, what we used to call “sex changes” never were an appropriate topic of conversation—not at the dining table, not in the locker room, not over a casual lunch in a crowded restaurant.
And then you can see how their own experiences prompted them to become what they didn't have:
Nowadays, I try to make it easier for people to ask questions. I tell people that I’ve never been hurt by an honest question, and that’s true—it’s a cruel opinion that hurts, never a question.
Unrelated to any quotes, I hate that Kate Bornstein basically “revised” (rewrote) a good chunk of the text from the 1995 edition. I wish she would've been pushed to write an intro and additional essays that elaborated on where she was in 2016 (the publication of the revised version) versus where she was in the past. It would've been more valuable than adding new references to something else.
Like, the second chapter has whole rewritten sections. In 1995, it looked like this:
For the most part, people cautiously observe and don’t ask questions, and there are plenty of opportunities in today’s world to look at people like me. The talk show ratings go way up during sweeps month when they trot out the transsexuals and the cross-dressers. Then there are the drag shows and the female impersonator spectacles—even though we began them for our own entertainment and enjoyment, their widespread popularity seems to grow and grow; you’ve probably got one of those shows in your city, or in a nearby town. Comedy skits, like “It’s Pat” (a skit based on a person whose gender is not clear) on Saturday Night Live are real popular. I’ll have more to say about that later.
If I look past the ghettos of the drag bars and standup joints, both popular music and cinema reflect my transsexual face back to me. Glance discreetly, if you will, at some of the brightest deities in our cultural heavens. At this writing, some friends of mine are truly interested in seeing if Michael Jackson (all his other issues aside) will actually become Diana Ross. I’ve heard bets being placed on the gender of some of Madonna’s lovers in some of her videos. And what really made The Crying Game the smash hit that it was? It’s interesting that we can ask questions about transgender issues when there’s some distance between us and the person we’re asking about—we just don’t ask directly.
... That whole passage has been removed and replaced with:
For the most part, people cautiously observe and don’t ask questions, and there are plenty of opportunities in today’s world to look at people like me. The talk show ratings go way up during sweeps month when they trot out the transgender folks, the cross-dressers, and those who claim nonbinary or genderqueer identities. There are the drag shows and the female-impersonator spectacles—even though we began them for our own entertainment and enjoyment, their widespread popularity seems to grow and grow; you’ve probably got one of those shows in your city, or in a nearby town. Or please, watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. Right now. What’s more, trans identities are a comedy staple—we’re always good for a cheap laugh. I’ll have more to say about that later.
Both popular music and cinema reflect my not-man, not-woman face back to me. Glance discreetly, if you will, at some of the brightest deities in our cultural heavens. At this writing, Miley Cyrus has been out as nonbinary for several years, drawing cheers and jeers from around the world. Both Orange Is the New Black and Transparent have opened up story lines that include trans people who identify as neither men nor women. Nouveau cabaret artists are emerging onstage, with genders far too fabulous to be pinned down to man-or-woman.
While there's updated information in the revision, I would've preferred the older one with footnotes. Why not add those? Why not make addendums to things you previously wrote? You can even point out your own mistakes and misunderstandings, and I think that is far more valuable than simply... replacing it and making a revised version more easily accessible.
I think, especially for something that works as memoir, it's... more honest and open. Showing how you grew is always better than presenting yourself as of-the-now. (The writing in the new one isn't bad, but it would've been better in addition to what's already there.)
The possibility missed by most of the texts prior to the last few years, and by virtually all the various popular media, is this: the culture may not simply be creating roles for naturally-gendered people, the culture may in fact be creating the gendered people. In other words, the culture may be creating gender.
This book has some great lines.
My voice on this subject is not representative of all transgendered people. But when a minority group has been silent for as long as we have, as disjointed as we have been, the tendency is for those in the majority to listen to the loud ones when they first speak up; and to believe that we speak for the entire group. More important than my point of view, than any single point of view however, is that people begin to question gender.
And this.
I want this book to be the conversation I always wanted as I was growing up, and never had the chance to have.
This line appears in both versions, but it feels so disingenuous in the revision because of how much more writing and discussion had been happening around trans people, including nonbinary people, in 2016.
... Then there's this bit that was updated for no good reason. The 1995 version:
Our stories all tie together, our stories overlap; and you can hear lots about me in the stories of other transgendered people. My story weaves through Caroline Cossey’s story. My story lies within the story of late historian Louis Sullivan. Christine Jorgensen and Renee Richards wrote chapters of my story in their autobiographies.
To the 2016:
Our stories all tie together, our stories overlap; and you can hear lots about me in the stories of other trans people. My story weaves through Caitlyn Jenner’s story. My story lies within the story of the late historian Louis Sullivan. Christine Jorgensen and Renée Richards wrote chapters of my story in their autobiographies.
... Why would you swap Caroline Cossey for an openly bigoted trans woman who supported anti-trans policies? Even if Caroline Cossey had similar views (I don't know, I can't tell), her story is far more compelling than Jenner. I don't care about Jenner. Why should trans and gender non-conforming people support a trans woman who'll fuck us over for her own benefit? I don't care if my story intertwines with hers (it really doesn't); she can be thrown in a bin for the rest of time for her bullshit.
This whole section has been largely rewritten to swap some names in and delete others.
Deletions: Christine Beatty (musician, poet), Melanie Phillips, Loren Cameron, Kristienne Clark, JoAnn Roberts, James Green, Susan Stryker, Dallas Denny, Davina Anne Gabriel, Rikki Ann Wilchins, Max Valerio, Marissa Sheryl Lynn, Omenwenne Grimstone, Celie Edwards, Holly Devor, Pat Califia.
Additions: Laura Jane Grace, Gwen Smith, Del LaGrace Volcano, Wachowski Sisters, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Taylor Mac, Silvia Calderoni, Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, RuPaul (why).
... It feels weird to just... erase some of these people for others. Adding more people in via a footnote would've been better. Why update this book like this?
Is the determination of one another’s gender a “social responsibility?” Do we have the legal or moral right to decide and assign our own genders? Or does that right belong to the state, the church, and the medical profession? If gender is classification, can we afford to throw away the very basic right to classify ourselves?
Questions asked in 1995, and questions still ignored in most arenas to this very day.
I’ve no idea what “a woman” feels like. I never did feel like a girl or a woman; rather, it was my unshakable conviction that I was not a boy or a man. It was the absence of a feeling, rather than its presence, that convinced me to change my gender.
What does a man feel like? What does a woman feel like? Do you feel “like a man?” Do you feel “like a woman?” I’d really like to know that from people.
I will say that it's nice to see someone else say that they don't know what this shit means and how we're supposed to really know. I am treated like a woman, but I don't feel like one. What am I supposed to feel in order to feel like one? I don't know.
The following is one of the few okay changes because of its expansion. In 1995:
But none of this explains why there is such a widespread insistence upon the conflation of sex and gender. I think a larger question is why Eurocentric culture needs to see so much in terms of sex.
To 2016:
But none of this explains why there is such a widespread insistence upon the conflation of sex and gender. I think a larger question is why Eurocentric culture needs to see so much in terms of both sex (classification by biology) and sexuality (classification by whoopee).
I think it would've been fine to not say 'whoopee', since I think that's an even more dated term than any other supposedly dated term.
But it's a good question: Why do Eurocentric cultures (along with many cultures impacted by colonialism/imperialism) have such a hyper-focus on both biological sex and the act of sex?