All posts by Kate Bornstein

Notes for Keynote Address to Pennsylvania Women’s Coalition in Higher Ed

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I lived in Philly from 1982 through 1988. I moved here newly sober, with my third wife. I moved here less than a year after having left 12 years of 24/7 service to the Church of Scientology. I was diagnosed with PTSD and Anorexia. I was starving myself so I could pass as a girl, and there was no one to tell any of this to. There was no language, no theory, no way to analyze the intersecting madnesses of my life.

In 1986 and 1987, I marched in Washington side by side with women holding up signs that read Biology Is Not Destiny and Keep Your Laws Of My Body. I was a brand new baby dyke, and I was into goddess culture, crystal healing, and feminist theater. 

Before pledging my allegiance L. Ron Hubbard, the only skill I’d learned was acting: I knew how to make people laugh, gasp, and cry. But I never knew what value that had in the world. I was a soldier of the arts, at the beck and call of no political movement that had included a freak like me. I’d left graduate school after my first year, and I went out looking to see where I might be of value. Within three months, I’d found Scientology. Twelve years later I left Scientology. Five years after that, I was co-founding a lesbian theater here in town. We called it Order Before Midnight—because that sounded somewhat goddess-y and militant, even though it was just the catchphrase from a late night television Billy Mays commercial for Ginsu Blades: But wait! If you order before midnight, we’ll send you another 78 piece set absolutely free! Order before midnight. Well, our theater company produced plays by lesbian playwright Jane Chambers. We made people laugh, gasp, and cry. Nonetheless, I was only the second out transsexual woman in the Philly lesbian community for over seven years, and the first one had made a real mess of things when she tried to take over the leadership role in the local lesbian community. 

Mine was not a trustworthy identity in the lesbian community, in the women’s community. I was accepted on a trial basis. I had no language, no theory, no way to analyze the brand-new intersecting desires and identities. I couldn’t describe myself to anyone. 

Lesbians were telling me I wasn’t a woman, not a real one. I had male energy, they said. I had male privilege. I agreed with them. I didn’t feel successful at being girl back then, I didn’t have a way to say what kind of girl or woman I wanted to be. I was one year old and I behaved like a one year old. I left this campsite dirtier than when I found it, and I didn’t know how to say that back then. Over the last twenty years, I’ve discussed with my therapists the possibility of me being a borderline personality. We were all pretty sure I was mildly bipolar—if such a thing is possible. All this to say I was a scared, lonely thing at the end of my stay in town. I had no language, no theory, no way to analyze my obsessive mindful reconstruction of my identity, my desire, and my power. 

I was living in Philadelphia when I attended my first ever academic conference: The Women In Theatre caucus of American Theatre in Higher Education. I’d just gone through with my gender change surgery. I’d been living as a woman for a full year. I’d been unwelcome in the Women’s movement, and the lesbian movement. I didn’t match up, and I didn’t have language to describe my identity to anyone else. I couldn’t find any other people like me because I couldn’t describe myself well enough to find a community, a tribe of gender transgressors. There were no words for that in the late 1980s. The words were hegemony, patriarchy, deconstruction, signifier, and the male gaze. I was viewed as the patriarchy in sheep’s clothing. I fell back on theater, on what I could do best: I could make people laugh and I could make people cry. I knew I was acting, living as though I was a woman. To communicate that, I performed three monologues from three different roles I’d played: as a man, as a drag queen, and as a woman. This was the language I had available. 

Since then, I’ve forged productive alliances with the world of women’s academic theater. We help each other with language, theory, and analysis.

OK, I’ve said a mouthful. But I can say all of this to you, because you know how to peel apart these very dense facts of my life. This is after all a Consortium of Women’s and Gender Studies. You weren’t here twenty-one years ago when I was spinning out of control with obsessive self-analysis. So returning here to keynote your shindig this afternoon leaves my jaw hanging slack with wonder at how much you have accomplished over the last two decades or so. Bless you for the great good work you do in giving your students and your colleagues the gifts of language, theory, and feminist analysis. I’ve been in town four days now, and I’ve been to now seven of your campuses, and everywhere I went, I saw hope for the future of gender and sexuality as it plays itself out on the leading edge of radical lefty politics. You made this space possible. 

What began as a purely academic theory is now the heartbeat of a vibrant counter-culture beyond the wall of the academy. The students who’ve been studying feminism and postmodern gender theory for the past twenty years are now coming into their power, and they will continue to rely on your support for language, theory and analysis. I’m asking you for help in building bridges through a carefully deconstructing, unpacking and ultimately dismantling the binaries of theory versus practical, and secular versus spiritual.

There are hundreds of activist groups out in the world whose focus is the sex and gender matrix. For example, there are queer activists out there who are inventing language to communicate their rage. They’re using the words cisgender, cissexual, and cis-people to name who they’re calling oppressors: most of you who were born and assigned a gender and it worked for you. There’s a radical fringe trans activist movement who names you as our oppressor. Did you know that? 

And there’s a rebirth of feminist analysis of misogyny directed at transwomen. There are internecine wars over power. On one side, there’s the established, well-funded self-proclaimed LsGsBs and Ts who want nothing more than gay marriage, joint stock certificates, and Gay Day at Disneyland. On the other side is the counter-culture that you’ve been teaching for the past twenty years. We are out there now, and we need your help just like we’ve always needed it. 

Please, analyze us, find a language for what it is we’re doing. Please find the cultural matrix that not only includes transgender people, but also all sex positivists and gender anarchists. And here’s a partial list of ‘em:

L for Lesbian

G for Gay

B for Bisexual

T for Transgender

Q for Queer

F for Feminists

F for Furries

F for Femme

Q for Questioning

A for Asexual

A for Adult Entertainers

S for Sadomasochists

S for Sex Workers

S for Swingers

D for Drag Queens

D for Drag Kings

D for DragFuck Royalty

I for Intersex

B for ButchM for MSM

W for WSW

G for Genderqueer

T for Two Spirit

K for Kinky

P for Pornographers

P for Pansexual

P for Polyamory

H for Queer Heterosexual

ETC for et cetera

AI for ad infinitum

AI for queer Artificial Intelligence

And lastly, a W for women. 

I’ve run all those letters through half a dozen anagram machines, and nothing of any use showed up. All I know is that these are identities that are somehow primarily based in gender anarchy and sex positivity, so we could call this new emergent sub-culture G-A-S-P, gasp! Here’s a challenge for you, if it intrigues you: as a movement, we must locate and articulate the common thread of all these emerging outlaw identities.

I wrote Gender Outlaw almost a quarter of a century ago. During my visit here to Philly, someone reminded me that I had triaged gender activism and found the group most routinely and massively wounded by the bipolar gender system is women. I’m so very sad to say that hasn’t changed. In addition to addressing their own immediate needs, any sex/gender movement needs dedicate a large percentage of their time and resources to ending the violence against women.

The leaders of all the new groups which form an activism capable of dismantling and reconstructing the sex/gender matrix need your help. Please, reach out beyond your classrooms. Continue to encourage those kids you’ve been teaching. Please keep in touch with the students who bowled you over they did so well. They’re out on the front lines now. You discover and perform the academic equivalent to baking them cookies and knitting scarves for them. They need you.

In closing, I want to locate us politically: The false binary of the left and right wings of American government are in the process of imploding, deconstructing themselves. The right-wing looks like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of Wizard of Oz. They’re melting, they’re melting! The left wing hasn’t managed to stop itself from chasing it’s own politically correct tail. A viable third party is forming with the name Conservatives. They are not conservative. They are radical right win. We need a vocal radical left wing to counter that movement and let the current system shift itself into something more healthy than what we’ve had for the past forty years. The last person I know of who was uniting the left wing was Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. He had God on his side. So here’s another challenge for ya:

Today’s students need to hear from you about God, goddess, human spirit, higher power of whatever kind. I’m not asking you to preach any particular religion or spiritual path, but I beg of you: please at least build an on-ramp to spirituality from the academic super highway you’ve now got. 

The radical right wing is daily battering the culture with its message of anything-but-Christian hatred, greed, and arrogance. As Women & Gender Studies scholars, I’m asking you to work even more closely together with feminist religious scholars to articulate for  a cosmology and ethic of feminist spirituality that includes sex positivists and gender anarchists.

I have one more favor to ask you: please can we talk more about sex? Can we teach more about sex? May I beg the most radical of you to hook up with Planned Parenthood, COYOTE, and the legion of sex bloggers and sex educators that have mushroomed over the last two decades? They’re feminists and scholars too. Annie Sprinkle and Carol Queen have PhDs in sexuality. Did you know that? They’re your colleagues. 

In these scary days of political upheaval and rightwing backlash against sex/gender freedom, we need to be reminded that sex for any reason other than procreation is a political act. Please take this to heart, and pass it along to your students.

In closing, I’m going to tell you what I’m telling all my tribe and loved ones: please do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living. Anything, anything at all. Just don’t be mean.

Thank you for your great good work to date, and for your kind attention this afternoon. 

In my pants

A Theory of Othering Sex and Gender Outlaws

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I'm going to keep this short and sweet, to keep myself from wandering off into Mobius strips of postmodern theory. I've been paying attention to some trans activists who are using the word cisgender. According to its very own Wikipedia page:

"The word has its origin in the Latin-derived prefix cis, meaning "on the same side" as in the cis-trans distinction in chemistry. In this case, "cis" refers to the alignment of gender identity with assigned gender."

In my pants Who knew? Not me. I'd only begun to hear the word about a year ago but according to its own Wikipedia page, cisgender has been in use on the internet since 1994. So this is me trying to play catch up.

Here's what I've got worked out so far.

1) Cisgender/Transgender is a valid gender binary. I don't like the prefix cis, but that's my problem. A global binary exists that is worthy of examination for its impact on the quality of our lives.

2) Identifying people with fixed gender identities as sex partners is key to both the identities and desires of cisgender lesbians and gay men, as well as to heterosexual men and women. Bisex, Polyamory, Asexuality, et al break cisgender rules of fixed desire. Trans, Genderqueer, Drag et al break cisgender rules of fixed identity.

3) To hold on to any power gained thru classimilation, middle class cisgender lesbians, gay men, and heterosexual men and women must defend their desires/identities as both correct & natural.

4) Cisgender people who are sex positive & gender embracing are more than allies, they're family. That's where the idea of any othering of trans by some monolithic cisgender identity ultimately falls apart.

5) Sex positivists and gender anarchists are simply too sexy for inclusion in any middle class arena, including the current "LGBT" movement whose agendas are set by mostly middle class cisgender lesbian women and gay men.

OK. That's as far as I've gotten. It has not been my intention to offend anyone. This is a theory in progress. I believe that no valid theory of identity, desire, or power can other a single sentient being. If you feel offended I was wrong. I'll do my best to right the wrong. I'm talking about this on Twitter so if you've got a comment please tweet me. I've got faster and more frequent access to Twitter than I have to this blog.  

Thanks & Kisses

K

Ny times by yes men

The Yes Men: Not Your Grandpa’s Activism

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I'm an old fart—a curmudgeon and a crone—so I get to say things like "Back in my day…" 

Like: back in my day (which was the '60s), we knew how to protest. Back in my day, we did street theater to fight the war in Viet Nam. And back in my day, we marched the streets in the very first Gay Pride parades, and we said things like "We're just like you…" which went over well with people who wanted to think they were worth us wishing we were just like them. 

All these actions sort of worked back then… before the right wing conservative think tanks figured out how to counter us. Bad news: the right wing has succeeded in countering old-fashioned activisms. Good news: there are new forms of activism they don't know how to fight yet.

Ny times by yes men This evening, I saw the film The Yes Men Fix The World. Please go see this movie if you can. It's the face of a new activism. It's an activism that the right wing think tanks haven't got a hold on yet, and I find that exciting. 

What do The Yes Men do that works? They lie. They lie BIG. They lie in a way that makes us wish they were telling the truth, and the right wing think tanks don't know what to do with that. Like this phony issue of The New York Times. Click on it to see it big, or download the full PDF.

Am I saying that activism in the form of big protest marches and street theater and shouting "We're just like you" are bad actions? No. I'm saying that these are your grandpa's activisms and they're not as effective as you might like them to be. 

The right wing has learned how to carve up the radical left wing into virtually separatist groups working hard to achieve equity in ten seemingly disparate arenas: race, age, class, gender, sexuality, looks, ability, religion, citizenship, family status, and age. Any truly radical 21st century activism must effect a coalition of all ten vectors of activism.

The Yes Men are pointing the way to a new activism. Like Michael Moore, The Yes Men are pranksters. Like Stephen Colbert, The Yes Men tell great big lies. Like Jon Stewart, they're smart. The Yes Men throw wrenches into corporate America's well-oiled machine. They're not alone. My friend Andrew Boyd, founder of Billionaires for Bush makes us laugh, makes us cry and makes us get off our butts and actually do something. If you're looking for a new activism—one that has a chance of succeeding beyond your wildest dreams and the planet's deepest needs—check out the links on this page.

As an old fart activist, I'm asking you: please, create or contribute to a new activism that fights for equity across the boards—including whatever might be your own oppression, as well as the systems oppressing others. That would make your activist grandma and grandpa proud. I promise. 

And I promise to do whatever I can to help you make that happen. Really. Tweet me, and let's see how we can build a shiny new coalition of activists.

With curmudgeonly and cronely love, respect, gratitude, and best wishes for success, I remain…

Your Auntie Kate

Yettakurland

Vote for Young Lions

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Yettakurland Last week, New York City's Gay City News published their endorsement for the New York City Council, representing New York's 3rd Council District—traditionally an edgy, outsider, outlaw kind of place to live. Their endorsement of the incumbent council member—a moderate Democrat—just didn't sit right with me. We don't have that many plain-speaking left wing lions left, and I think we need to elect them whenever and wherever we can. So, I wrote this letter to Paul Schindler, Editor of the Gay City News. I'm endorsing Yetta Kurland for New York City Council in the upcoming election.

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Dear Editor,

The nothing-less-than-amazing Democratic victories in the last two national elections is nothing less than a mandate for more progressive legislation and more progressive legislators. Wherever possible, we the people need to cast our vote for truly progressive leaders. We need elected officials who will turn the tide of the crushing oppression of the last eight years. For that reason, I’m endorsing Yetta Kurland in her bid for the City Council seat representing New York’s 3rd District. She’s got heart, she’s got attitude, and she’s got a mouth. New York City hasn’t seen a feisty politician like that for a long time.

I am sick and tired of Democrats’ subdued murmurs in the face of Republican bully tactics of fear, intimidation, and lies. We need us a lion on the City Council. To me, that’s the self-described, “plucky little dyke,” Yetta Kurland.

Come on… isn’t it obvious that the Bloomberg Administration has slowly and surely been shifting the face of New York City politics to a moderate right-wing point of view? Yes, yes, that’s much better than the conservative politics of say, Rudy Giuliani—the man who Disneyfied Times Square. In the absence of a more progressive voice, however, moderate is not good enough. As LGBTQIAetc people, we need us a lion on the City Council who will help forge a coalition of people fighting on behalf of equity in race, age, class, sexuality, gender, looks, ability, religion, family status, and citizenship. I’m convinced that lion is Yetta Kurland.

Kurland’s opponent in the upcoming election is sitting Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Recently, Quinn was referred to by The Gay City News as“The biggest political prize in the LGBT community.”

Ouch… on a great many levels. 

No doubt, Quinn has been a good and honorable civil servant, but over the last eight years it’s become increasingly clear that Ms. Quinn’s progressive edge has been worn down by the soul-numbing back-room politics of this city. In fact, the only reason Ms. Quinn is running against Kurland at all is because Quinn joined forces with hizzoner, Mayor Bloomberg to extend term limits for the two of themselves. That’s called classism—keeping the power to yourself.

No, Yetta doesn’t wear pearls. She’d probably look out of place at a State Dinner. So would most of the constituents of the historically marginalized 3rd District of New York. The 3rd doesn’t need a smooth-talker with powerful connections. The city needs a fighter with stamina, someone who’s lived as far out on the margins as most of the people in this city. That’s Kurland. Besides, what’s the value of powerful connections if you don’t use those connections on behalf of the people who are most in need of them?

As for who’s going to get more done for the “LGBT Community,”the clear answer is Kurland. She understands that there’s a lot more letters to be added to our community’s name before it becomes truly representative of all of us. 

Honestly, now: are you a gold star lesbian—never once thought about a guy? 

Are you a 100% gay man? Really, 100%? 

Are you bisexual all the time? You never spend some time leaning to one side or another? 

Do you see yourself as a real transgender person in a world where other people who claim to be transgender aren’t as real as you? 

Do you pretty much have everything you need for a decent life, but you’d like a little bit more?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then by all means: vote for Christine Quinn. But if you’re more complicated than that, if you’re oppressed by more than simply your sexuality and/or your gender, then cast your vote for Yetta Kurland.

The time for single-issue politics is over. There’s no way the LGBT community is going to get civil rights for itself to the exclusion of any other marginalized group. Single-focus politics may have worked in the ‘80s, but over the last two decades the right wing has learned how to manipulate single-focus politics, and play us off one against the other. The right wing has not yet learned how to manipulate an unpredictable, outspoken force like Yetta Kurland. 

Over the last two decades, the right wing has carved up the left like a Thanksgiving turkey. We’ve been bullied into submission, reduced to asking for scraps at Master Bloomberg’s table. The way I see it, Yetta Kurland is our best shot at reunification.

Reader, when you cast your vote, please keep in mind: we just lost Teddy Kennedy. The grand old leftie, Paul Wellstone is no longer around to champion the disempowered of this country. There are only a handful of left wing lions running for office. New York City is lucky to have one of them, in the person of Yetta Kurland. She's been working tirelessly behind the scenes. It's now her time to step forward and make this city worthy of that lovely lady who stands so tall in our harbor, holding up a torch for all of us who don't quite fit it.

Respectfully,
Kate Bornstein, 
New York City author, performer and advocate for teens, freaks, and other outlaws.
Ted kennedy full

When Heroes and Heroines Die

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Ted kennedy full My mother, Mildred Vandam Bornstein, died just over twelve years ago. I wrote a sadly funny piece about her funeral service. By the time she died, she and I had reconciled nearly all our big issues, and we had a deeply loving mother/tranny daughter relationship with each other. When she died, it took me a week of maddening grief to conclude there was only one way to go on living without her in my life: I had to embody the parts of her I'd relied on, and the parts of her I wanted to be. 

Never mind that my mother was an active alcoholic. Never mind that she was as depressed a mess as I am. She was a gracious lady, and a fiercely protective, loving mother. That's what I needed to embody so that her death wouldn't go on making me want to die. To heal the loss of my mother, I've endeavored to be a gracious, delightful lady whenever I possibly can. And to honor her memory, I do my best to be a fiercely protective, loving mother with my queer and freaky children all over the world. 

Now Ted Kennedy is gone, goddamn it. When I woke up this morning and heard him being eulogized on the radio, I wept like a child. I howled. I haven't cried this hard about a public figure's passing since Princess Diana died in 1997. She was another gracious, delightful lady. Through my eyes, Princes Diana was also the fierce, protective mother. I have no idea what Ted Kennedy has been to me, but I've begun looking. Never mind that he had shadows in his past. I'm looking for what it was about him that I've relied upon, what was it about him I wanted to be.

I'm not a savvy politico. I only know the most superficial accomplishments and foibles of Ted Kennedy's life. But, somehow Ted Kennedy has crept into my heart as the good guy fighting alongside the people who don't have the power to fight for on their own. That's a start. I can start working on that one.

I told all this to my girlfriend, Barbara Carrellas, over tea today. I was saying that the older you get, the more people around you die, and so the more responsible you become for whatever good they were doing in the world. She nodded. We drank some more tea. Then Barbara said she hopes that Kennedy's colleagues in Congress get the same idea about taking responsibility for taking over his good work.

Many senators, she went on to say, have surely kept their mouths shut on sensitive issues, thinking, "Oh, Ted Kennedy will handle that one." And now that he's gone? Which senators are going to take on the mantle of political good guy, powerhouse, and warhorse? 

Okay, I'm gonna go cry some more, until I figure out how I can best fight alongside some folks who don't have the power to fight on their own.

G'bye, Senator Kennedy. I'll do my best. I promise.

Kate
GermaineGreer_cJonathanRing

Has Germaine Greer Become A Ghastly Parody?

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GermaineGreer_cJonathanRing  I’m feeling pretty damned good about ground gained in western culture by transgender people. I was there at the beginning of this loosely-knit yet somehow united movement, and things are a whole lot better for trans people today in Western culture than they ever have been.

There are many people who are claiming and living lives far beyond man or woman. There are many people who live fluidly gendered lives.  There are many people who know the dangers of gender when it plays itself out as an unconscious social binary. 

It’s not Mission Accomplished, not by a long shot. But talented trans people are scaling the walls of political power and artistic genius. There are deeply compassionate trans people who are religious scholars and clergy. Transdora's box is wide open and we're never going back. I am tranny, hear me frakking ROAR! 

And then along comes Germaine Greer—genuine warhorse and goddess of feminism—on 20 August, 2009 with an Op-Ed piece in The Guardian she calls Caster Semenya sex row: What makes a woman? In this new piece, Ms. Greer refers to transwomen—me and my brave sisters and mothers and daughters—as “ghastly parodies” of women. 

I’m not going to talk about Caster Semenya’s dilemma beyond saying that she’s being treated with intolerable rudeness and disrespect by the media. It’s the same savagely uncaring journalistic strategy used against Dr. Renée Richards when she was so rudely outed to the world in the 1970s and 1980s.

Yes, yes. Ouch. It hurts to be called a ghastly parody. And that kind of talk feeds transphobia across the world. So, shame on The Guardian for printing these hateful words. But who is Ms. Greer to be hurling these invectives, and why? Greer is no one to dismiss as an idiot or complete jerk. Through her relentless work, Ms. Greer has raised the volume of women’s voices in the world. She got people around the world to start taking women more seriously. 

And here's the problem: all the time she was doing that great social activism, Greer believes to the core of her being that woman is an essential identity. The gender battleground on which Germaine Greer fought and learned her political strategies was gender-as-man-and-woman-only. On that battlefield, it's easy to attack transgender people as freaks.

The good news is that Germaine Greer's transphobia is more the exception among todays scholars, artists and activists. They work as tirelessly as Greer herself on issues of gender rights, freedoms, parameters, and dignity. Postmodern gender theory has been taught in colleges and universities around the world for over fifteen years. It's over-spilling the walls of academia. The battlefield/playground has shifted. Nothing is essential any more. 

Germaine Greer's tragedy is that she has not considered as even possible the theory of gender fluidity. For her kind of activism to work, MAN and WOMAN can and must be essential as well as easy to tell apart from each other. Greer is a fierce warrior, but to nail down the gender binary, she concludes her op-ed piece by saying,

“People who don't ovulate or menstruate will probably always physically outperform people who do.” 

Ms. Greer is claiming that biology is, in fact destiny.

The price of being a writer of vitriol is that it reveals your most private fears, which you've penned in the form of an attack on someone else. And sadly, that makes Ms. Greer a ghastly parody of herself. What she wrote was painful and destructive. But the loss of her fierce presence on the front lines of feminism is more to be mourned than scorned.

And the point of all this is to assure you: it really has gotten a lot better for transgender people. There's a long, long way to go. But it's much, much better. I promise.

Kiss kiss,

Your Ever-Loving Kate

Doris fish love forever

Who You Calling A Tranny?

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Doris fish love forever This is Doris Fish, San Francisco's pre-eminent drag queen in the 1980's. She died in 1991 from AIDS-related diseases. She was generous, flamboyant, kind, and ultra talented. Her charisma rating was off the top of the chart. She'd moved to San Francisco from Sydney, Australia—then (and some say now) the undisputed home of the world's most fabulous drag queens. Doris took me under her delightfully feathered wings. 

I was afraid of her raw sexuality, but bowled over by her courage. Doris was amused by my quest to become a real woman.

I learned from Doris that in Australia, from the 1960's through the 1970's, most all of the male-to-female spectrum of gender outlaw began their transition in the fabulous world of sexy, over-the top drag performance. Like me in the late 80’s in San Francisco, the majority of MTF transsexuals just wanted to live their lives as closely as possible to whatever their notion was of "a real woman." They considered drag queens beneath them. The drag queens were amused by the MTFs pursuing the dream of real woman. 

No matter what ideas you might have about transsexuals or drag queens, if you were M headed toward F in any fashion at all, you moved into, through, up and out of the drag queen community. So there was always a bond between the drag queens and the MTF transsexuals in Sydney. The bond was so strong, they invented a name for the identity they shared: tranny. It was a name that said family. Doris Fish taught me that she and I were family.

Years earlier, when I went through my gender change from male to female, I glided through life under the commonly accepted assumption: I was finally a real woman! That worked for me until I ran into a group of politically smart lesbians who told me that I wasn't allowed to co-opt the word "woman." Woman was not a family word that included me. My answer to this exclusion was to call myself a gender outlaw: I wasn't a man, I wasn't a woman. By calling myself a gender outlaw, I had unknowingly reclaimed the right to name myself outside the language generated by the bi-polar gender system. Under that system, each of us needed to fit neatly into a pre-fab sex/gender identity.  

Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and The Rest of Us was first published in hardcover by Routledge in 1994, just over 15 years ago. The book hit the world of academics, feminists, and sex and gender activists at a critical time—feminists were getting tired of being alone as gender's only activists. Gender Outlaw made it okay for more and more people to name themselves outside of a system that would rather see them dead for disobeying its rigid binary rules. The people who stepped outside their lines early on added a new energy to feminism by giving feminists allies and resources to tear down the sex and gender system that was—and still is—oppressing all of us.

Over the past decade and a half, people have been using Gender Outlaw as a stepping-off point on their personal gender odysseys. People of all sorts of birth-assigned genders have been naming themselves, and they've been getting together with groups of people who've done the same sort of self-naming. And now we’ve arrived at a time when the next generation of gender outlaws get to call the shots. To that aim, Seal Press has commissioned what we hope will be a ground-breaking new book: Gender Outlaws, the Next Generation, edited by S. Bear Bergman and yours truly, the older generation. 

Four weeks ago, Bear posted a call for submissions on his blog. In the interests of keeping the call as open as possible, we agreed to include as many trans-identities as we knew, so we used the word "tranny." And that's where the activist shit hit the postmodern fan base. People have been pissed. Here's their argument: FTMs are co-opting a word that belongs to MTFs. The word "tranny" belongs to MTFs, reason those who were hurt by our use of the word, because it was a denigrating term reclaimed by MTFs—ergo, only MTFs could be known as trannies. I spoke with Bear, and we agree that’s wrong on several counts:

 

  1. Tranny began as a uniting term amongst ourselves. Of course it’s going to be picked up and used as a denigrating term by mean people in the world. But even if we manage to get them to stop saying tranny like a thrown rock, mean people will come up with another word to wound us with. So, let’s get back to using tranny as a uniting term amongst ourselves. That would make Doris Fish very happy.
  2. It's our first own language word for ourselves that has no medical-legacy. 
  3. Even if (like gay) hate-filled people try to make tranny into a bad word, our most positive response is to own the word (a word invented by the queerest of the queer of their day). We have the opportunity to re-create tranny as a positive in the world.
  4. Saying that FTMs can’t call themselves trannies eerily echoes the 1980s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word woman to identify myself, and the 1990s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word dyke. 

At one phase in the evolution of transpeople-as-tribe, it was the male-to-females who were visible and representative of trans to the rest of the world. They were the trannies. Today? Ironically true to the binary we’re in the process of shattering, the pendulum has swung so that it's now female-to-males who are the archetypal trannies of the day. The generation coming up beyond the next generation, i.e. my tribal grandchildren are the young boys who transition to young girls at the age of five or six. They’re the next trannies. None of us can own the word. We can only be grateful that our tribe is so much larger than we had thought it would be. How to come together—now that’s the job of the next generation of gender outlaws.

Labels aren't all that bad when they're used consciously, but a major downside of using labels to describe an identity—even the labels we wear proudly as badges of courage—is that lables set up us-versus-them scenarios. The next generation of gender outlaws is seeking to dismantle us-versus-them. As a people, none of us deserves to hear the words “You’re not welcome here,” or “You’re not good enough,” or “You’re not real.” My Goddess, we just have to stop saying that to each other, all of us whose identity somehow hinges on gender or sexuality. We have to stop beating up on each other. The Sydney drag queens and transsexuals knew that when they came up with the word tranny to encourage mutual respect.

What’s more, the time has come for those who are coping with sex and gender oppression to raise ourselves up to a level of respectability of other marginalized groups—those working for equity along the lines of class, race, age, looks, religion, ability, family status, and citizenship. We’re not taken seriously precisely because our focus is on sex and gender. In the eyes of this culture that makes us morally suspect. What the fuck does our sex or our gender have to do with our morality?! We need to de-Puritanize this fucking culture, that’s what we’ve got to do. It's time to reclaim more than names. It's time to reclaim the moral high ground.

Those are the sort of topics I’d like to see in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. The first generation of gender outlaws made themselves known in the world. The job of the next generation of gender outlaws is to weave all of us gender and sex positivists together as a globally recognized tribe. I'd like to be around to see substantial progress made along those lines.

 

TO BE CLEAR: Nothing I've said here or anywhere else should be taken as permission to call another person tranny until you know that's a word they use for their own identity—some people find the word extremely hurtful. So, please err on the side of caution and compassion.

 

 

kiss kiss

 

Kate

 

"Tranny," revisited by me five years later (2014), here: 

http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2014/05/tranny-revisited-by-auntie-kate.html

 

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation Submission Details

Submission Deadline: Sept 1 (early submissions are encouraged). Submissions should be unpublished; query if you have a reprint that you think we’ll swoon for. While we hesitate to list a maximum, please query first for pieces over 4,000 words. If you have an idea and need help writing it out, contact us to discuss an interview-style piece or other accommodations. 

Submit as a Word document or black/white JPEG (no files over 2MB). Please include a cover letter with a brief bio and full contact information (mailing address, phone number, pseudonym if appropriate) when you submit. Submissions without complete contact information will be deleted unread. Payment will be $50 and 2 copies of the book upon publication in Fall 2010. Contributors retain the rights to their pieces. Send your submission as an attachment to genderoutlawsnextgeneration@gmail.com.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Kb_brown_panel

My Tranny Hippie Girl College 40th Reunion at Brown

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Kb_brown_panel I graduated Brown University in 1969. I’m only the 2nd woman in the world to hold a diploma from Brown University prior to 1970. Before that, women were enrolled in Pembroke College AT Brown University. Even though there was NO difference in our classes or curriculum, women graduating Brown prior to 1970 were awarded diplomas from Pembroke College AT Brown University. Except me. And Wendy Carlos before me.

I was a hippy-dippy actor/director and stoner during my days at Brown, and this year I got an email from our class president. I’d been identified, he said, as among the most accomplished, illustrious, and interesting members of our class. Hah! And, he continued, there would be a panel discussion about how attending Brown in the 60s effected my life, and would I participate? Would I?!

So, this past Memorial Day weekend, I travelled up to Providence, Rhode Island to attend my first ever college reunion in forty years. My partner, Barbara Carrellas, did all the driving and courage-building. Other panel participants included: Ira Magaziner, chairman of the William J. Clinton Foundation’s international development initiatives; Cornelia Dean, writer and editor for The New York Times; John Rizzo, past and current Acting General Consul for the CIA; five other classmates: a banker, a scientist, a philanthropist, a judge, and me. I didn’t find out until the day of the panel that John Rizzo was referred to as the “Architect of Torture.” Yikes.

So, this is me talking to over 200 classmates and their families. They asked me to speak for 5-7 minutes. I came in at 6 minutes, 56 seconds. Barbara Carrellas flipped the video. Enjoy.

Jehovah scares me

That Was Zen, This Is Tao

·

Jehovah scares meI totally didn't make up the title of this post. I don't know who did, but yay to whoever that was. I've been home for almost a week now… with the freakin' flu! It's not swine flu as far as I can tell. Friends on Twitter know that I suspect I've fallen victim to pug flu. But it's nasty. Life is a whole lot of ouch. And my brain is mush, so I can't write very well. Hence, the stolen title for this blog. Again… thank you, whoever you are who came up with that line.

I've just come off my last round of this year's touring season. Over the last two months, I've spoken at several religious gatherings, and leadership conferences. I'm not all that good at being a leader, and I mostly resent being led. As to religion, I haven't yet found one that welcomes me completely… well, other than Bokononism, and the cosmology of the Seven Endless (who make up the tattoo sleeve on my left arm). But I wasn't speaking with Bokononists, and I wasn't at a comics con with a group of people who can get into Neil Gaiman's notion of beings upwards of the gods and goddesses. I was keynoting the 13th Annual Conference of NUJLS, The National Union of Jewish LGBT Students, and the 3rd Annual Transgender Religious Summit. What was I supposed to say?

To my great relief, I found some truly interesting angles on both religion and leadership. I can't sum it up for you. Like I said, my brain is mush right now. BUT, I can give you the notes for my talks. And if you click right here, that's what you'll have.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, if I only had a brain. 'til then…

kiss, kiss

Kate

Notes for “The Tao of Mitzvah, Sabbath, and Boddhisatva,” by Kate Bornstein

·

versions of this talk were delivered to the 13th Annual NUJLS Conference, 2009 

and to the 3rd Annual Trans Religious Conference, 2009

My older brother died unexpectedly this January. It was a terrible shock. He’d been the family Patriarch. Not that he cared much, but he was the oldest male. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but most Orthodox and Conservative refuse to acknowledge my change of gender from male to female. 

So, hello to you… I’m speaking to you as the new Patriarch of the Bornstein family. 

And for this afternoon I’m speaking to you as your Kate-riarch, and you are my cherished children. Thank you all for inviting me, and for welcoming me with such warmth. Now it’s my mitvah to share with you what I’ve learned about making life more worth living as both a Jew and as a queer.

***************

When I arrived at college in 1965, my room-mate was  a guy named Jim. These weren’t co-ed dorms. I was still a guy.  Jim was a nice enough young man, as was I. He was a gentle Christian man from the mid-west. I was not. I was a stressed out Jewish closet case from the New Jersey shore. And, the first day in our dorm room together, Jim looks at me kind of strange. 

“Bornstein,” he says, “is that a Jewish name?”

And for reasons aplenty, I bristled but joked off my edginess by saying, “No, it’s Roman Catholic.”

I thought he knew I was joking. But he didn’t find out I really was a Jew until six months later. In fact, when it finally came out that I was a Jew, he was positively convinced I couldn’t be a Jew. Why? Because all Jews have horns. 

Decent guy from a loving family, and he came to college believing that Jews have horns and it took him six months in college for him to find out we didn’t! I didn’t have horns, so I couldn’t be Jewish.

Am I a Jew? I’ve been having to look at this one very closely over the last few years. 

Am I a Jew?

***************

I’m a transsexual dyke. 

I’m sadomasochist, which means I play with pain erotically. Mostly, I like to be on the receiving end, so that makes me a piggie masochist. 

I’ve got piercings in body parts I wasn’t born with.

Am I a Jew?

I’m a tattooed lady. 

I’m a radical left wing elder, artist and theorist. 

I’m a pornographer—a good one. 

I believe in gods and goddesses and angels and demons.

I’m an atheist. 

Am I a Jew?

I read Tarot cards and I throw the I Ching. 

I believe in reincarnation.

Am I a Jew?

Is anyone telling you that you’re less of a Jew by reason of your Desire?

Where are your horns?

***************

We come to college with a great many misconceptions…

Most of us leave our homes and come to college believing that race, age and class have nothing to do with your gender or your sexuality.

Some people believe that it’s actually freedom and democracy that America is spreading across the globe at an alarming rate.

And many people come to college with a very common pair of misconceptions: There are only two genders: man and woman; and there are only two ways of expressing your sexual desire: homo or hetero.

Desire is one of three areas in life that can make our lives worth living: 

Who attended my workshop yesterday? You’ll recall I spoke some about the three areas of life that can make our lives more worth living: 

Identity… who are you? who do you wanna be? who are you role models? who are people just like you? who do you look up to? how do you wanna be treated in the world?

Desire… that’s wanting. As soon as you get your desire, you don’t desire any more. unless you desire more… which can become a problem if you don’t keep on top of it. Desire can be for anything, but for purposes of today’s talk—given who we are and how we identify—I’m gonna talk about sexual desire: who do you wanna fuck? who do you wanna be fucked by? where do you wanna fuck? do you wanna fuck at all? 

Power… and by that, I’m simply talking about fair access to the resources you need to make your life better for you and your loved ones, your family, your tribe. 

For thousands of years, humanity has governed itself by a politic of power that depends on authoritarian hierarchies. Our identities, our desires, and our power are all monitored by hierarchal systems of oppression, sanctioned and encouraged by the politics of power..

Power politics depends on obedience to those in power, or you die. 

“My way or the highway,” says the politics of power. 

“You’re either with us or you’re against us,” says the politics of power.

You never have to answer anyone who demands any either/or of you. 

Either/Or is the language of bullies. 

The politics of power has degenerated into global bully-ism.

Democracy is a sort of tranny politic: half way between a power politic, and an identity politic. Democracy is a great politic with two major drawbacks: 

1) If you’ve got enough money, you can thoroughly corrupt democracy and

2) In order to have a voice in a democratic government, you must be part of an acceptable demographic. None of us in this room has an acceptable recognizable identity.

In the history of humanity, we have governed ourselves using the politics of power and politics of identity. But there has never been a politic of desire. How about that? Never.

***************

What do we Jews know about desire?

What do we queers know about desire?

As Jews, we are taught this: it was the desire for a binary system that led to the downfall of humanity. 

Maybe the Book of Genesis makes sense when read through the lens of postmodern queer theory: It was humanity’s desire for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil got us in trouble. God tried to warn us about the binary, but we weren’t listening. We wanted a world that was a simple either/or, good or evil.

As students of queer theory, as Jews who question everything: what does that mean, “The knowledge of good and evil?” 

And what motive did we have for that desire? 

Why does our culture desire the knowledge of good and evil? The serpent seduced us into wanting that.

Do you still desire the knowledge of good and evil?

***************

I’m not saying that all binaries are bad. 

I’m saying that binaries are bad for us when we’re not conscious of binaries as simplistic statements of complex systems. 

Binaries become unconscious when they’re embedded within moral values. For what is morality but the knowledge of Good and Evil? 

So what is the Book of Genesis really telling us when it gives us a parable of world creation in which the downfall of humanity was humanity’s desire for morality? 

I don’t think it was ever God’s plan for sex to be part of any good-and-evil binary. He warned us away from that kind of thinking.

I don’t think it was ever God’s plan for gender to be part of any good-and-evil binary. He warned us away from that kind of thinking.

***************

I’m not speaking against morality. Morality has great value to people who don’t trust themselves to decide for themselves what’s right and what’s wrong. Morality can teach us how to do good deeds.

All religions teach us to do good deeds according to each of their standards of good and evil. It’s frightening how many religions consider queers to be some kind of evil, isn’t it? 

And that is the basis of our conundrum, isn’t it? We want to belong to a religion who won’t accept us as members all because our harmless desires are somehow seen as morally corrupt. 

Please keep in mind that our harmless desires are only corrupt within in a system of morals that was after all the downfall of humanity.

As we learned more about Judaism—deeper than its flawed moral exterior—we learned that doing good deeds—performing mitzvah—is what makes us feel like we are indeed the chosen people. 

You and I are indeed the chosen people. And in the eyes of too many Jews, you and are still considered abnormal, apostate, and abomination.

Outlaws with hearts of gold, that’s us.

Demons with a conscience, that’s us.

Freaks on the cutting edge of a new politic of Desire.

That’s us.

Here’s good news: We can be told that we’re not real Jews, but no one can stop us from reaching our fulfillment through the performance of Mitzvah. No one can tell us how to enjoy our Sabbath.

And here’s the hard news: It’s living a life of doing good deeds: that’s what’s important, whether or not we are acknowledged as the Chosen People of Israel.

***************

There’s plenty of room for good-hearted outlaws in Judaism. I’m sure there are scholars who’ve found a great many loopholes for good-hearted freak Jews like all of us.

Here’s two options I’ve found, and I haven’t looked all that hard:

We can agree with those who would cast us out of Judaism. We can say, OK, I’m not a Jew. And if we keep on performing mitzvah? 

That makes us Chassidey Umot HaOlam.

That makes us the righteous among nations,

If we’re thrown out of the synagogue, we can say good-bye for now, and we can become righteous gentiles. Who cares what we’re called so long as we perform mitzvah? That’s one way to leave Judaism and still maintain our ruach as outlaw Jews with hearts of gold.

There’s another option to abandoning the identity of Jew. Some Jews may refuse to recognize us, but there’s another doorway through which we can find a path to practice our Judaism: There’s the tradition of the hidden Tzaddikim: the hidden Jews whose ruach dictates that they anonymously take on the suffering of others 

Some Jews insist there are 36 Tzaddikim walking through the world. Some say they can prove there’s thirteen. In either case, you can bet that right this minute at least one of them is dying and that means that God is going to need a replacement Tzaddik. Well, that’s where we come in. 

We sign up for the job, and we live our lives performing mitzvah—abnormal as we are, apostate as we are, abomination as we are. We dedicate our lives to mitzvah.

The Jewish Tzaddikim and the Buddhist Boddhisatva alike wear the mantle of the despised for the purpose of anonymity.  

The Jewish Tzaddikim and the Buddhist Boddhisatva  alike sign up for the thankless and most rewarding job of taking on the suffering of the world.

And excuse me, but, who says there can only be 36 Tzaddikim at any given moment? Why not 360 of us? Why not 3,600 of us? Why not 3.6 million Tzaddikim taking on the suffering of the planet?

That oughta scare us up a messiah or two… and then? 

Then we’re on the road to fun, fun, fun, 

…and that’s called queer activism!

You do excellent work. I hope you observe and enjoy excellent Sabbath.

***************

Sabbath is honoring the goodness of yourself. That’s difficult. As a rule, most of us don’t give ourselves nearly enough credit. We’ve listened to people call us freak and bad and evil for so long, we default into thinking that way about ourselves. That’s got to stop.

No matter how many mitzvahs we try to accomplish, it takes a great deal of practice to truly honor our goodness. In Sabbath we honor our goodness through the exploration of our outlaw desires: as wet or as hard, as sloppy, as chaste, or as bloody as our outlaw desires may happen to be at any given moment. 

We move through life in Mitzvah. 

We rest and renew in Sabbath. 

That’s how we learn to trust ourselves to determine our own identities. 

We move in mitzvah, we rest in sabbath. 

That’s how we learn and enjoy the nature of our desire.

We move in mitzvah, we rest in sabbath. That’s how your generation will discover the blueprint for a politic of Desire, a politic to replace the oppressive politics of power and identity. 

***************

Ls, Gs, Bs, and Ts are taking on more and more power in today’s world, I hafta tell you: I am not at all proud to be entering mainstream American culture… not as a queer, and not as a Jew. It is far too sex negative and gender rigid for me to have any fun in. And when I do live out the fun of my harmless desires, mainstream American culture is downright mean to me. Mainstream American culture is nothing I want to be on the front lines of. So, what front lines of queer action do you want to be part of?

Over the past couple of decades, a great many kind, generous, and inclusive lesbian women and gay men stood fast on the front lines of queer action when they added the B and the T to their movement. At that moment, the lesbian and gay movement blew wide open—beyond an either/or sexuality to a more fluid expression of sex and gender. 

Over the last ten years or so, Queer Studies has brought about a redefinition of straight and queer, lesbian and dyke, gay man and faggot. Queer and straight became less about who you were fucking, and more about supporting or opposing sex positivity and gender anarchy. So we have in parts of the world more and more straight lesbians and gay men who want nothing more than gay marriage, joint stock certificates, and Gay Days at Disneyland. Thank goodness, there are also more and more queer heterosexuals who enjoy and support alternate sexualities and wacky gender expressions.

And those are the front lines of the queer revolution, because the front lines are always way out there on the dangerous edges of a culture. That’s where we live when we come to terms with our individual desires and dare to express them in a world that would rather see us dead. Any queer revolution must embrace of a Politic of Desire. So, what would that look like? 

A politic of desire would look like great sex: consensual, unpredictable, respectful and truly yummy. A politic of desire would embrace sex positivity and gender anarchy. 

Who is having sex with whom would matter less than the love and joy of sex itself. Gender would be more of a game and less of a power struggle. A politic of desire would follow the example of the brave lesbians and gay men who decided to be inclusive, back when they first added the B and the T to their movement.

LGBT is an uneasy, unstable coalition. LGBT can and does fall apart at any bend in the road. We divide ourselves by saying things like: “let’s leave trannies out of the non-discrimination act,” or “let’s make marriage equality our number one issue”—all at the expense of everyone who doesn’t have the great good fortune to pass and afford to live and pass with an identity acceptable to the George W. Fucking Bushes of the world. I dunno about you, but I don’t wanna be acceptable to the likes of George Fucking W.

So let’s talk about the mitzvah of inclusion. As inclusive as it’s become, LGBT is only the beginning. There are a fuck of a lot more letters with whom LGBT Culture can ally itself. In the burgeoning world of sex positivists and gender anarchists, in addition to LGB and T, there would also be:

Q for Queer

Another Q for Questioning

A for Asexuals

Another A for Adult Entertainers

S for Sadomasochists

S for Sex Workers

S for Swingers

And another S for Sex Educators

There would be I for Intersex

There would be an M for men who have sex with men.

And a W for women who have sex with women.

There would be a G for Genderqueer

And a T for Two-Spirit

There’d be an F for Feminists, and an F for Furries.

To include all of our sex positive, gender active family, there would be a K for Kinky

P for Pornographers

P for Pansexual

And another P for Polyamorists.

And while we’re at it, give me an H for sex positive, gender fluid heterosexuals.

Give me an E, a T, and a C for et cetera, 

And give me an A and an I which can stand for either ad infinitum or kinky artificial intelligence.

That’s a lot of letters, and I’d fight on the front lines of a coalition of desire like that. And that’s just the beginning.

Queer is the ever-expanding edge of Desire of any given culture. How can your generation articulate a vision and take action on an even larger frontline? You could put together a truly intersectional, international coalition of all the people in the world who form the ever-expanding edges of Identity and Power. 

That would be a lovely Mitzvah for your generation to perform. Because we cannot come together as a coalition of desire without including in our fight all the other people who are pushed out to the edges of the dominant culture.

Sure, it’s your religion, your sexuality and your gender expression that make you a target of both Jews and Queers. For some of us, age makes us a target. Your race makes you a target. Your class makes you a target of the dominant culture. Your looks, your ability, your citizenship all can make you targets of America’s bully culture that says to us: if you want any power in this world, then it’s our way or the highway. Choose one or the other. Well, either/or has no place in the politics of desire. 

You create a politic of desire whenever you desire well-being for people besides yourself and people just like you. It’s called generosity. It’s called compassion. Everyone in this room has known love like that. Mitzvah is always more than doing something solely for yourself or for people just like you. 

***************

I’m going to leave you with a few words about sex that I hope you carry with you into a Sabbath that opens your heart to the true nature of your Desire. This is from my latest book, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws.

Sex doesn’t have to mean marriage, children, or even I love you. 

Sex can be right this minute or next year some time. You get to decide. And you get to change your mind about that whenever you want to. 

Sex can be a passionless quickie. 

Sex can be any way you imagine it can be.
Sex doesn’t have to be any way you don’t want it to be.
Sex doesn’t have to be with one person all the time, or even with one person at a time. Sex doesn’t have to be with anyone but yourself. You get to control the guest list. 

Sex doesn’t have to happen only with other Jews. Sex can be with anyone of any race, religion, gender, age, class, education level or body type as pleases you. 

And sex doesn’t have to be for free. You can buy or trade sex for things if you need and want to do that. 

Sex doesn’t mean you’re a slut or a whore, unless of course that’s what you’d like to be. 

Sex doesn’t have to be genital and you don’t have to do it in private. 

Sex doesn’t have to end with an orgasm for everyone. 

During sex, you can be any gender you want to be. You can be any age, race, class, animal, object or alien life-form that you’d like to be as long as you both or all agree that’s what you’re safely being together. 

Sex doesn’t have to be in the missionary position. 

Sex doesn’t have to happen on the bed in a bedroom in the dark. 

Sex can be really yummy, sick-o, gross, painful, scary, bloody and/or degrading when you all or both agree to do it that way safely together. Sex can be hilariously funny. 

Sex can be a lovely gift you give someone or someone gives you. 

Sex can be a blessing, a prayer, and a generous act of healing. 

Sex can involve costumes, props and a script. 

Sex can be on your way home this afternoon, or even before I’ve finished speaking.

***************

Look—and I’m wrapping up now—the ONLY way that the politics of power can deal with sex is to demonize, silence and invisibilize sex.

The ONLY way that the politics of identity can deal with sex is to police it.

The ONLY politic that can LIBERATE sex is your personal politic of conscious desire, your personal politic of love. 

When I was a little boy, I made up prayers every night. 

Every night, I prayed to be a girl.

I’m working on a new prayer now, and I’d like to offer this prayer as my wish for you, my most cherished children:

May all your deeds be Mitzvahs.
May you find the fulfillment of your Desire in Sabbath.
May your power increase with every shred of power you give away in service to another.
May you realize the goodness in yourself by admiring the goodness in others.
May your face be the face of your most cherished Deity.
May you come to respect yourself
whether or not anyone else gives you the respect you wish for.
May you know your own worth to humanity 
whether or not anyone else knows this about you.
So say we all… Amen.

❦