All Posts in “Current Affairs”

Trans collage

Trans Is Here To Stay—So Now What Do You Do?!

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Hello Dear Friends, Family, Allies, and Simply Curious,

I'm happy to say that my cancer has been in remission for nearly a year and a half. My strength and stamina continue to improve—and that means I'm ready to hit the road again this fall. Given all that's been happening in the wild and wacky world of trans over the last year or so, it's clear that a new version of Trans 101 is sorely needed. To that end, I've put together a new workshop and I'm taking it on the road:

Transgender Is Here to Stay—So Now What Do You Do?!

Trans collage

On May 29, 2014, Laverne Cox graced the cover of Time Magazine, along with the words, “Transgender Tipping Point, America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier.” Ever since then, there’s been more and more evidence that proves Time’s point. Transgender is irrevocably out of the closet, and smack dab center stage in the culture. Some common questions that all of us are having to ask include:

  • Is gender a binary, a spectrum, or what?
  • What’s the difference between transgender and trans?
  • Other than gender, can you name ten factors that define your sexuality? 
  • What are three can’t-fail ways to be an ally in Trans civil rights? 
    (Hint: it’s not pronouns or bathrooms)
  • What words for trans must you never use? 
    (Hint: there aren’t any—it just depends on who you're using them with)
  • Can you articulate a definitive truth of gender that everyone can agree on?

I’ve designed this lecture/workshop to provide the tools most folks might need to mindfully articulate, discuss, have fun with, and navigate on their own terms, the world beyond a transgender tipping point.

Now Booking My 2015-2016 Speaking & Performance Tours

I’m looking forward to presenting this workshop in your town, at your high school, on your campus, or at  your conference. Here's a shiny new touring catalogue that lays out pretty much everything I'm doing on tour these days:  Download KateBornstein_15-16_Tour_Catalogue

Booking & interview inquiries, please email me at katebornstein at earthlink dot net. To get in touch with me personally, the best way is still Twitter or Instagram @katebornstein.

Hope to see you soon in your town!

xox

Kate

Lambda Literary Pioneer Award Talks, 2014

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First, here's a video (shot by audience member, Jim Fouratt) of Barbara Carrellas presenting & Kate Bornstein accepting the 2014 Lambda Literary Award. The text of both their remarks follows.

 

Barbara Carrellas Remarks,
Presenting Lambda Literary Pioneer Award to Kate Bornstein

Imagine with me, please. Imagine a place that is not here and a time that is before now. Imagine a gathering of ancient bodiless souls, all drinking tea and deciding the social priorities for the 20th Century. One gay soul suddenly turns serious. “I am calling for us as a soul group to congregate in the United States in the mid-20th century. Our time on earth will be short. Almost all of us will have died of a plague they will call AIDS before the millennium. Our task? To love and care and fight for each other so fiercely, to become so strong and so visible, that gay men and lesbians in a large portion of the world will have equal rights shortly after our deaths.

     There are gasps of awe and enthusiastic shouts of agreement. “Count me in! Me, too! Me, three!” When the cacophony dies down, one lone, lovely creature speaks “That is wonderful but, it’s not enough. What about everyone who doesn’t fit into the binary of gay or lesbian? Or man or woman? What about every sexual outlaw and freak of gender? Who’s gonna fight for their rights?”

     The thoughtful soul who had proposed AIDS to the group, says, “You’re right. But I don’t see how we can do it all in one go.” “Ah, but I do,” says the lovely one. “I’ll go down with you, but I’ll take another path while you take on AIDS. By the time you’ve finished, I’ll be ready. I need the time, anyway. I have research to do. I’ve been thinking that most of earth’s problems are caused by gender. Gender on earth operates like a evil cult. I need time to explore the nature of cults. I heard yesterday that someone is creating a new cult. I think they are calling it Scientology. I think I’ll check it out.”

     The lovely loner was not alone for long. Many in the AIDS soul group were so taken with the Gender Project that they volunteered to jump back into new bodies right after their AIDS lifetimes. “Wait for us! We’ll be back to join you. You’ll recognize us. We’ll be the cute ones with great haircuts, unrecognizable gender presentations, and creative pronouns. But we’ll need to be caught up to speed quickly. Write us some books we can read while we’re growing up. Books that will help us keep ourselves safe and prepare us to fight for the new gender revolution.”

     And thus it was decided. 

     Albert Bornstein was born in 1948. He joined the Church of Scientology in 1970, and learned cults from the inside for 12 years. In 1986, Kate Bornstein was born.

     If you ask the question, as I recently did on Facebook and Twitter, “What does Kate Bornstein mean to you?” the overwhelmingly most popular answer is, “Kate Bornstein saved my life.” 

     As writers, we have all collectively and individually inspired lots of people. We’ve changed more than a few lives with the power of our words. But how many of us can say that our writing has saved thousands of lives? 

     It is my fiercest pleasure to present the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award to my beloved partner in life, love and art, Kate Bornstein.

*****

Kate Bornstein Pioneer Award Remarks, Lambda Literary 2014

Thank you Lambda Literary, for this wonderful moment of recognition. You are perfect dears to be doing this for me. 

OK—thank you to so many of you in this room. Last year—and again just over a month ago—over 3,000 people around the world joined together to raise more than $120,000 to help me get through cancer therapy, when I was too sick with side effects or recovering from surgeries, to go out on tour and earn my daily bread. What’s more—something I never thought would happen, but your gifts and well wishes completely crushed, once and for all, my low sense of self-esteem. You saved my life. You made me wanna stay alive. Bless your hearts.

Alright now-pioneering. Only a very few people do that solo. I sure didn’t. In the areas of gender identity and expression, I have many colleagues to thank—as well as writers I’ve followed, imitated, and stolen from. Their names will appear on my blog, but I do need to speak some names here, tonight. 

My path as a writer of books has been guided by remarkable publishing houses and editors: 

  • Serpent Tail Press, Amy Scholder & Ira Sliverberg —  
  • Routledge Press, Bill Germano — 
  • Seven Stories Press, Crystal Yackaki & Amy Scholder — 
  • T Cooper for Akashic Books, — 
  • Tristan Taormino for Cleis Press,— 
  • Seal Press, Brooke Warner — 
  • Beacon Press, Gayatri Patnaik— 
  • and Routledge Press again, Erica Wetter. 
  • Love and thanks Caitlin Sullivan, co-author of Nearly Roadkill. 
  • Love and thanks to S. Bear Bergman, outstanding co-editor of Lammy award winning Gender Outlaws the Next Generation. 
  • Thanks to my tour agent, Jean Caiani at SpeakOut. 
  • Thank you Gail Leondar-Wright, for the publicity that first ever got Gender Outlaw out into the world. 
  • I’m forever grateful to my literary agent—I love you, Malaga Baldi. 
  • My friend and mentor for over 40 years is John Emigh—he’s always pushed me into writing what’s most scary to write about.

Finally, the editor who has been looking at all my words for 17 years now is my bubu, my muse, and my dear imzadi, Barbara Carrellas. When we were both souls outside of time and space, and we were deciding our rebirths: what could we do to ease the suffering of queer people? Well, it was Barbara who decided to make it her life’s mission to pioneer ecstatic sex that wouldn’t spread the plague. Thank you, bubu. You’ve brought ecstasy into my life and into the lives of all my kids—and you’ve always been there as an emergency power source all those times when I was nearly a goner. Love you, Miss Barbara.

*******

We live in interesting times. For the first time since anything trans has come to public awareness on this planet, the face of transgender belongs to a woman of color, Laverne Cox. The literary face of trans belongs to a woman of color, Janet Mock. And the pop culture face of trans belongs to a tranny of color, RuPaul.

Interesting times, indeed. For the first time ever, there are three generations of sex-and-gender theorists, artists, and activists, all alive at the same time—each generation has its unique point of view, each with unique experiences and timeline. 

I’m asking that we three generations of sex and gender artists, activists, theorists, and spiritual leaders come together in a pioneer coalition that deals with race and class within our community—for starters. I want we three generations of LGBTQetc to welcome family living beyond those letters, for we are legion.

Our legion of identities has the common denominators of sexuality, sex, gender identity, and gender expression. But because we live in a culture founded by Puritans, it’s shameful to talk about sex and gender. Nevertheless, all of us are here tonight because of terrific sex and/or fabulous gender. Now, Puritanical sex-negativity shames us into invisibilizing our terrific sex and our fabulous genders. And sadly, institutionalized sex-negativity extends into our own community. We shame each other. We’re being mean to each other. We have got to stop shaming, and distancing ourselves from sissies, sex workers, BDSMers, pornographers, sluts, burlesque artists, trannies and drag queens. These are the funnest people in our family—shaming these people and distancing ourselves from them is mean. It’s a Puritanically-generated mix of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. I’m asking you as your old Auntie: please stop doing that. Someone, pioneer a queer community that doesn't eat its own… please. 

In this spirit of inclusivity, Dear Lambda Literary people, may I be so bold as to tickle your own fabulous pioneering spirit? Please, Lambda Lit, create award categories for sex education, queer Young Adult fiction, queer spirituality, and one more category for books written by people with sex and gender identities not yet expressed by LGBT.

OK, I’m wrapping up now. Here’s the deal: I’ve got lung cancer and leukemia. I know, I know I might be around for another 15 or 20 years, but just in case I’m not, I wanna say this now: Please, my darlings, all of you, take care of each other. Watch each other’s back. Stand up for each other. Please.

Now, go sissy your walk, children. Please, stay alive. Have good sex, have fun with gender, and write great stuff about that.

Auntie loves you. 

Kiss Kiss

Tranny, Revisited by Auntie Kate

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Background: There’s been a firestorm around the word “tranny,” which has been extended to “she-male,” and even to “gender outlaw.” I thought I’d covered all the bases on my stand on tranny five years ago, in this blog post:

http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2009/07/who-you-calling-a-tranny.html

But no, the controversy continues. I’ve been in treatment with chemotherapy and radiation therapy, both of which tend to dull the mind. By last night, I’d recovered enough of my mind to realize that there’s been no definition of tranny to fight over, so I thought I’d come up with one that I could fit into 140 characters. Here’s what I came up with and tweeted:

“How I define #tranny: ANYONE who messes around w gender w little or no care as to how tht might effect their standing in mainstream culture.”

To my way of thinking, a proper and productive response to a proffered definition is to agree with it, disagree and refine it, or disprove it. The majority of responses to my tweet were all about how the word tranny has effected people’s lives. One person, however, managed to refute my definition by saying:

“I fuck with gender. I am not a t*****.”

For this person, I’m clarifying my definition. What I didn’t spell out is that I understand “tranny” to be a radical, sex-positive gender identity. Tranny is to trans person as fag is to gay man and dyke is to lesbian. More to the point of agreeing or disagreeing with tranny as a gender identity for oneself: I’ve been saying since I wrote the book, Gender Outlaw 20 years ago, that the only person who can name our gender identities is ourselves. In my own life, I’ve rejected the gender identities of both man and woman—despite the fact that I managed to live up to many cultural definitions of both those identities. I pass as a woman, I’m called she by strangers. AND I reject the gender identity of woman. Accordingly, if someone fits my definition of tranny and rejects that identity, then I respect their rejection of the identity.

Now, since I’ve opened this wound, I’ve decided to address some of the main objections to the use of the word, tranny. In no particular order, these objections are:

    — Reclaiming a Hate Word Doesn't Work

Tranny is not a reclamation. Tranny has been our word for nearly half a century. Some trannies in Sydney, Australia came up with the term as an umbrella term to unite with love and as family the disparate communities transsexuals and drag queens. This makes it unlike words like nigger and slut. These, and other words invented by haters, have been reclaimed and are being reclaimed with great difficulty.

    — Using the Word Tranny Promotes Transphobic Violence

Policing words out of existence will not stop transphobic violence. At best, it might change the words used during that violence. 

    — When Kate Bornstein calls themself a tranny, 
        it encourages and gives others the right to call all trans women trannies.

No, it doesn’t. Transphobes don’t look to me for permission or encouragement for anything. They may, and certainly have, used my words out of context to support their views. 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.

    — FTMs are not allowed to use the word for themselves.

FTMs are certainly included in my definition if they want to be. 

    — Tranny associates me with pornography & sex workers.

Association with sex and sex workers is often a means of denigrating people. Classist sex negativity is no reason for me to cease celebrating my sex positive identity.

    — Why all this fuss, just to protect an edgy word?

It’s more than an edgy word. Tranny is a valid, vibrant, and vital identity. Protecting that identity is what I’m making the fuss about.

In closing: that people are offended by what I call myself is simply not my problem. Transphobia is our communal problem, and I have stood and will stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone who’s fighting that hatred.

OK, done now. I’m going to get back to healing my body.

Auntie loves you. Have good sex and fun with gender. Kiss Kiss.

 

15 Spaces Comic

15 Spaces of Cultural Regulation, and the Binaries They Pretend to Be

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I've been working on a new version of my touring workshop. This one's called:

World Peace

through Gender Anarchy & Sex Positivity

I tried out early versions of the workshop at both the Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver, and at a recent tour at Hampshire College. I'll be honing and developing the piece over the next couple of seasons' touring. Here's one of the slides I'm using. I told folks at Hampshire that I'd post this online for their reference. I'm trying to contextualize the gender binary as one of many spaces of cultural regulation that more or less pass for binaries in the world. The workshop points toward building a coalition of the margins, with both sexuality & gender activists playing an equal role at the coalition table. This is nothing written in stone. It's just a theory, which means it could be a great big fat lie. But I don't think it is. Comments welcome.

xoxo

Auntie Kate

(click on the image to see full-size. feel free to copy & print.)

15 Spaces Comic

Thankyoucherub

Thank you… who?

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ThankyoucherubThe gender workbook update is written and laid out in a final draft—everything but the acknowledgements. Since this is a crowdsourced book, I've thanked YOU in the dedication—yep, it's dedicated to twibe. Now, I'm asking for your input one last time: who deserves thanks?

You helped teach me, so now I want to know who taught you, because I want to thank them properly too. Please leave a SHORT comment here, or better yet tweet me with names of people—they can be friends, professors, parents, siblings, novelists, pornographers, SciFi show, storytellers, mentors, alive, dead, or in some other state of existence we don't know about yet. Angels, saints, and demons count. So do friendly faeries, elves, hobbits and so on. Who helped you on your sex and gender journeys? 

Wow. It's all done except for this.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

So, please: let me know who I should be thanking for the awesomeness that is YOUR fabulous sexuality and gender. Clock is ticking. Deadline for thank you's is noon (EDT) tomoro, Saturday, July 7. If you tweet your answer, please use the hashtag #MNGW (My New Gender Workbook).

kiss kiss

Auntie Kate

 

QPDcover

A Queer and Pleasant Danger — any minute now!

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QPDcoverMy memoir hits the shelves on Tuesday, May 1st, and I am SO DARNED EXCITED FOR YOU TO READ THIS BOOK! Before I sat down to write the first draft, I got myself a tattoo on the back of my left hand. It says "I must not tell lies." So, A Queer and Pleasant Danger is the truth of me. It's not theory or stagecraft, it's just me. The book is dedicated to my daughter and grandchildren—all of whom are currently members in good standing of the Church of Scientology. Since I've been excommunicated from that cult/religion, no one who's a Scientologist in good standing with the established church is allowed to speak with me.

So, that makes this book the biggest truth of me I've ever written—in hopes that my daughter and grandchildren may one day break free and have a look. But you can read it, too. If you're reading this blog, you're interested in me and/or my work, and for that I'm grateful. Well, this memoir will give you a better look at the roots of all my academic and political words. I hope it makes you laugh. And I 'm sorry—really I am—but parts of the story will likely make you cry. I try to make up for that with pages that leave you gasping out loud.

Thank you for reading me. You can buy the book NOW from from: your friendly local Independent Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powells.

kiss kiss,

Kate

Quotes

"A Queer and Pleasant Danger is a brave, funny, edgy, and enlightening new memoir. I loved it and learned from it. Kate Bornstein shares her fascinating journey—through gender, Scientology, and more—and it was a thrill to tag along on the ride. This book is unbelievably powerful and affecting. If Kate Bornstein didn't exist, we would have to invent her. But luckily for queers, straights, gender outlaws, and general readers, Bornstein is out and out there."

— Dan Savage, author, columnist, and architect of the "It Gets Better Project" 

“I read A Queer and Pleasant Danger over four nights in a bathtub and bed and was totally transported to Kate Bornstein’s world. Kate boldly lets us look under the hood of her own transformations as Jew, Scientologist, boy, girl, Buddhist and parent, leaving us with a richer understanding of the true identity underneath: human. A Queer and Pleasant Danger is a page turner, making sweet love to the paradoxes we all face."

— Amanda Palmer, musician and co-founder of The Dresden Dolls


"To me, Kate Bornstein is like a mythological figure or a historical literary character such as Orlando or Candide who, by illustrating her struggles, shows the rest of us how to live. This book is destined to become a classic."

— Mx Justin Vivian Bond, author of Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels 


"Kate Bornstein's journey from moon-eyed Scientologist to queer icon is harrowing, heartbreaking, and amazing. This narrative is surely not for the squeamish. And yet, in the story of a sea-dog named Al who became a trans goddess named Kate, we see the messy, unsettling, inspiring struggle of a lady trying—and at last succeeding—to let her own soul be known. Disturbing and wondrous."

— Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and I'm Looking Through You 

—————–

So, it's exciting! And, one more time: you can buy the book NOW from from: your friendly local Independent Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powells.

Contact Beacon Press for a review copy, or to arrange an interview with YOU and ME! 

Sex-and-Gender: Social Justice Give-and-Take

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This blog is part of a series I'm writing while I'm updating the fifteen year old "My Gender Workbook" for Routledge Press. I'm asking for your voice to be included in the spiffy new version, because you are so much more than the first version of the book could have predicted. Every couple of days, I'll be posting a new question for you to ponder. If the question tickles your fancy, by all means please speak to it. For more about this update, check out the original blog. Thanks for your help.

Today's questions are deceptively simple and unfathomably important:

As sex and gender activists, what rights and resources must we demand?

Of what value is our sex and gender activism to allied activists of other marginalized groups?

From bathrooms to housing—from the wording of legal documents to job and health care equity—from issues of personal privacies and joys, to safety for ourselves and our loved ones—so much is monitored and regulated by our sexualities and our genders. For over a century, political activism on behalf of sex and gender has gained more and more momentum. To date, most social justice has focused on our needs, raising questions such as:

  • In what spheres of life are we denied equal rights because of our sexualities and genders?
  • What resources are witheld from us because of our sexualities and genders?
  • How does our sexuality-and/or-gender impact our safety?

Our needs and demands range from equal pay for equal work, to gender neutral bathrooms. We want religious freedom that isn't curtailed in any way by our sexuality or gender. We want the freedom to love who and how we want to love. We want the freedom to do with our bodies as we will. We want to strike down any laws that discriminate against or prohibit any expression of sex and gender freedom. 

And as the politics of sex and gender becomes more widely practiced and interlinked with the activism of other marginalized groups, it's becoming more and more clear that we need to link arms with other social activists in a coalition of the margins. So, we're faced with new questions:

  • What have we got to offer the world as sex and gender activists?
  • What do sex/gender activists bring to the table of any coalition of marginalized people?
  • As focused as we are on sex and gender, what have we learned that we can teach other activists?

We've gotten really good at deconstructing binaries of sexuality and gender. And that means we have a great deal to offer other activists in terms of deconstructing the equally corrosive binaries associated with race, age, class, and so on. What's more, we know that sex and gender are a valid pathway to ecstasy—and who doesn't need some more ecstasy in their life? So… what tools, resources, and other goodies have we got to put on the table of social justice to let other activists know we're in it for more than just our own gain?

I look forward to your thoughtful insight and foresight.

kiss kiss

Auntie Kate

Reminder: You can answer in the comments section of this blog, but Twitter is the very best way to respond. Response length, wherever you do it, is maximum 280 characters, two tweels. Your tweets do NOT have to be addressed to me, but DO remember to put the hashtag #MNGW on ALL your tweets about this or any other gender-y thing that might pop into your adorable li'l head.

Seeking 101 Gender Outlaws

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This blog is part of a series I'm writing while I'm updating the fifteen year old "My Gender Workbook" for Routledge Press. I'm asking for your voice to be included in the spiffy new version, because you are so much more than the first version of the book could have predicted. Every couple of days, I'll be posting a new question for you to ponder. If the question tickles your fancy, by all means please speak to it. For more about this update, check out the original blog. Thanks for your help.

In the original version of My Gender Workbook, I sent out a request for identities. I wanted to show the vast number of ways that people define their gendered lives. A lot of people wove their gender and sexuality identities together. Many included race, age, ability and class as more or less primary gender modifiers in their lives. Some gender outlaws broke rules of gender in simple yet profound ways.

You can take a look at the current list of 101 Gender Outlaws answering the question "Who am I" on pages 80 to 89 of My Gender Workbook. But there's no need to look at the list to describe yourself, right?

So now… how about yourself? Please write me a couple of sentences that describes how you break the rules of gender along with the influence of any number of the following factors:

race — age — class — religion — sexuality

humanity — looks — ability — mental health 

family/
reproductive status — language

habitat— citizenship—political ideology

These factors are in no particular order, and the list is by no means complete. But a lot of our gender is dependent on modifications from at least a couple of factors from this list. I'm calling them vectors of oppression or, more benignly, spaces of regulation. Each of these factors privileges us or limits us or regulates our lives. And each of these factors has a direct impact on our genders—making us gender outlaws. 

You DO NOT have to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer — there's LOTS of other ways to break dominant culture's rules of gender. Please tell me yours!

NEW EXPANDED SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR THIS QUESTION ONLY

Twitter is the very best way to answer. Response length is maximum 420 characters, THREE tweels maximum for this particular question. Your tweets do NOT have to be addressed to me, but DO remember to put the hashtag #MNGW on ALL your tweets about this or any other gender-y thing that might pop into your adorable li'l head. 

If you're so amazing and/or complex that it's going to take longer than three tweets, that's just fine. You can answer in the comments section of this blog, or you can email your answer to mynewgenderworkbook at gmail dot com. Please do try to keep it to a couple of sentence maximum. 

kiss kiss

Auntie Kate

Toward a Politic of Desire

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I've been tip-toeing around the idea of a politic of desire, and I just started to get a handle on it when I spoke last November at the Transcending Boundaries Conference (TBC). They'd asked me to talk on the conference theme which was, that year, "beyond the binary." I was in the throes of deadlines for my memoir, and I had no fucking idea of what to write. The night before I was supposed to give my keynote, I skipped out on a performance by my friend, Kelli Dunham, and sat in my room writing notes on hotel stationery until maybe three in the morning.

The next day, I got dressed in my Battlestar Galactica Colonial Fleet fatigues—I was being old lady Starbuck—I needed her madness and her courage to help me get through the talk, which I delievered haltingly. It was new, and I was saying some of these words for the first time—or they were going in the order they were going in for the first time. I needn't have worried. The audience at the conference could not have been more encouraging or welcoming.

Much of what I talked about in the keynote is going to wind up in My New Gender Workbook, due out from Routledge Press in November 2012. Short deadline. So I'd like to have a conversation with you about this notion of a politic of desire. Yes, I'll check this blog at least once daily and I'll dialogue with you about the subject. I think it's an important one, and I think your voice is going to be instrumental in making the notion real and accessible.

So… if you like, please have a read of the text I dictated from those scribbled notes. 

Download KB_keynote_TBC_2012

OK—let's give it a stab at talking together, here in the comment section. Be gentle with me, it's a way early draft. And thank you for your participation.

kiss kiss

Auntie Kate

 

Please Help Me Update My Gender Workbook

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Dear Hearts,

I’m thrilled to write that I’ve been asked by Routledge Publishing to update my fifteen year old book, My Gender Workbook. We struck a deal, I’ve got the green light, and I’ve begun writing My New Gender Workbook. I’m so excited!

WHY AN UPDATE?

I’ve been in touch via Twitter, my blog, and YouTube with a lot of people who regularly read and use My Gender Workbook both in class and daily in their lives. It turns out that people really like the principles of the book—but that many of the cultural references and contexts—even the way some quiz questions are phrased—are out of date, and this sometimes gets in the way of grasping the important stuff. So, an update would involve a page by page combing out of outdated references. For example…

  • There’s much more awareness of intersections of oppression and marginalization.
  • There’s a much more sophisticated understanding of & experience with the Internet.
  • The geopolitical world has grown vastly more polarized since the book came out.
  • In a few places in the world, reat strides have been made in sex-and-gender freedoms.
  • At the same time, many ghastly practices of policing sex and gender have been uncovered.
  • Sex-and-gender activism has become globalized, and shuffled into the deck of social activism.
  • Young Female-to-Male has replaced Middle-Aged Male-to-Female as the face of transgender in the world.
  • Sex and Gender activism & awareness has become increasingly polarized along lines of class, race, and age.

WHERE DO YOU COME IN?

As in the original book, I’ll be looking for a great many voices other than my own. In the original, there were hundreds of voices other than mine, appearing in lists, text boxes and call-outs.  In the new version, I’m aiming to include even more voices. My idea is to maintain a running commentary of multiple voices all through the book. 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All submissions for the workbook should be in the form of tweets, or at most double tweets—that is to say, all submission should be no longer than 140 to 280 characters, including the mandatory hashtag: #MNGW (My New Gender Workbook). Why so short? The very best voices in the original workbook were short, articulate, and right to the point. 

SO—WHAT DO YOU WRITE ABOUT?

Any gender-related topic you damned please.

However, over the course of the next 4-6 weeks, I’ll be asking specific questions on this blog and on Twitter. There’s going to be a new question every couple of days. But you don't have to wait for the questions. If you’ve got anything to say in 140-280 characters, I WANT TO READ IT, and I promise I will.

HOW DO YOU SEND IN YOUR SUBMISSION?

The best way is to use Twitter. Remember, two tweets maximum. All submission tweets must include the hashtag #MNGW or they very likely will slip through the cracks and we most certainly do not want that!

You can also post your answer on this blog. If you do, make sure you give us a way to reach you if we need to. 

Or, you can email your submission to: mynewgenderworkbook at gmail dot com. 

Please note that we will use no one’s words without their express permission. 

Finally, there's no promise that your name will appear next to your words, or that your words will be used. Everyone whose words are used will be credited with the name of your choosing in the acknowledgements.

There’s only one more rule for submissions: don’t be mean. 

ENOUGH ALREADY—HERE’S THE FIRST QUESTION

What’s your gender?

 ____

I cannot WAIT to see your kickass smart answers to this simple li'l question.

Please do retweet and repost and link to this blog to as many places as you can—even the surprising places.

Thank you in advance for all your help and support.

Big love,

Auntie Kate