The 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).
My 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.
"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
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.
I'm trying to break down sexuality into its component parts. If you're reading this blog, you know that sexuality is more than the gender of your partner(s). And if you've been reading my twibe's tweets about asexuality, you know that sexuality doesn't always include sex. So, what are the components?
Here's what I've come up with so far. I'm asking for your input: besides the following factors (in varying degrees in different people), what else is a component of a person's sexuality?
INTEREST IN SEX
BODY PARTS, CONFIGURATIONS, & IMAGE
GENDER ASSIGNMENT, IDENTITY & EXPRESSION
SENSATION
EROTIC/EROGENOUS ENHANCEMENTS & TOYS
LOCATION & TIMING
PERCEPTION & COMMUNICATION
DEBGREES OF CONSENT
TRUST, VULNERABILITY, PRIVACY & INTIMACY
CONFIDENCE & POWER DYNAMICS
SAFETY
LOVE & ROMANCE
PARTNERING
COMMUNITY, SOCIAL SKILLS, & INTERACTION
COMFORT & RISK
WHIMSY, FANTASY, FLIRTATION & PLAYFULNESS
MORALITY
INTELLIGENCE, SPRITUALITY & WISDOM
HUMOR & COMEDY
EMPATHY & RESPECT
COMPATIBILITY *
* I'm tying compatibility to placing varying degrees of importance upon perceived gender, race, age, class, religion, sexuality, looks, ability, mental health, family/ reproductive status, language, habitat, citizenship, political ideology, and humanity.
So… what else goes into defining a person's sexuality? The first draft of My New Gender Workbook is coming into the home stretch. Looking forward to your comments and tweets!
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.
No, not the party drug. I'm talking about the real deal: that great big whoopee. Have you got some of that? Have you ever had some of that? Want some? Oh, do read on.
I’m thrilled to kick off the blog tour for the new book by Barbara Carrellas:Ecstasy Is Necessary: a practical guide. This is an awesome book—one of those must-have manuals for making our lives more worth living. It may come as a surprise to some that Ecstasy Is Necessary is not a book about sex. Rather, it's a book that pulls back the curtain behind sex—and gives us a peek at why sex is such a big deal. Ecstasy Is Necessary is a book about why there are so many different ways we choose to do or not do sex.
People are going to be looking at this book from many different perspectives, and I think it’s fair that you know more about the person who wrote it and why you can trust her. Full disclosure: Miss Barbara is my girlfriend, my art partner, the love of my life and my BFF. August 2012 marks our 15th anniversary. Barbara and I are objects in space, locked into each other’s gravitational field, so I know a lot about this woman and what she’s capable of.
Here’s how I look at my girlfriend’s book:
It starts off with a gutsy-as-all-hell title. Ecstasy is necessary? Yep. And this is indeed a practical guide. The book, after all, comes out from Hay House Publishing—the awesome international self-help publishing company founded by Louise Hay, a woman who has saved countless lives. Her gabillion-selling book, You Can Heal Your Life provided much comfort to many gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the USA. The life-saving miracles that Louise Hay accomplished on a spiritual/psychic level, Barbara regularly accomplishes today on a spiritual/body level.
At the same time Louise Hay was working her magic in the 1980’s, Barbara Carrellas was a Broadway baby—a general manager in the New York City theater scene. The height of the AIDS epidemic was a hard time for her—she was losing up to four dear friends a week. Barbara was heart-broken. She joined the New York Healing Circle to help teach people with AIDS how to have great safer sex. That's where she became fast friends with sexpert pioneers, Joseph Kramer and Annie Sprinkle. Not that Barbara was a stranger to sex. It's not my place to give you details, but don't worry—Barbara doesn't spare details of her personal sex life stories in the book. Goodness gracious, they're delicious.
Barbara Carrellas' unique sexual orientation has always been an inspiration to me. Barbara has sex in order to experience a connection with the goddess—the earth—the cosmos—whatever you want to call the great big good. Sex for Barbara is a doorway to the ecstasy you see in the faces of the saints—in those early paintings of their moment of connection with God. That kind of ecstasy. Want some for yourself? Me too. So, let’s jump to the sub-title of the book: a practical guide.
Barbara Carrellas is a skilled guide and workshop leader who’s developed techniques by which anyone who wants to can achieve ecstasy. Her book is a step-by-step exploration of the unique ecstatic frontiers of our lives. Yes, that discovery might be made through sex and erotic energy, but not necessarily. Carrellas posits that often the road to ecstasy lies in the direction of the more risky areas of our lives, whatever those may be. The following ten steps are section headings in the chapter, “Erotic Risk-Taking: Playing With Fire:”
Erotic Risk-Taking in Ten Simple Steps
Find your turn-on.
Consider the risk.
Make a commitment.
Find support.
Enjoy the anticipation.
Jump into the water.
Release the need to be perfect.
Rest and regroup.
Try, try again… or don’t.
Surrender and enjoy.
How’s your risk-taking been lately, anyway? Barbara writes pages about each step, but I bet you could put this list to use today in some fashion. I can tell you that since I read this section of the book, I can't imagine taking a risk—erotic or otherwise—without taking all of these steps.
Ecstasy Is Necessary takes woo-woo to hitherto unexplored edges. Barbara follows her own advice about risk taking, and she tells us some hair raising stories: from braving her extreme claustrophobia by climbing into an FMRI machine to measure her brain waves during a breath-and-energy orgasm (commonly referred to as “thinking off”)—to taking a class in branding with the legendary Fakir Musafar. Yes, branding—like hot metal to the skin, sizzle sizzle. Thankfully, Barbara is such a talented and good-hearted writer, she makes that story easy to read. Nevertheless, it may be a challenge for you to read and put this book to use in your life. Ecstasy always is challenging. So please, ask yourself…
Have you ever had a moment of ecstasy?
If so, would you like to regularly re-create that moment?
If not, would you like to find out what the big deal is all about?
In closing, allow me please to say that if you’re reading this, you're most likely already some sort of sex and gender explorer. Or maybe you’re an artist—or you're a nerd. Maybe you're little or a lot crazy, and your craziness is your greatest superpower. Or you're some combination of all of the above. In any case, you’re my people. Well, Barbara wrote this book for us. It’s one thing to explore and acknowledge our identities—it’s quite another to understand that who we are is precisely how we can live ecstatic lives. That’s what Ecstasy Is Necessary is going to help you discover—I promise. Buy Barbara Carrellas' new book, and find yourself some ecstasy. I bet you need it. I know you deserve it.
kiss kiss,
Kate Bornstein
PS: Almost forgot to tell you! Got any questions or comments? Barbara will be available to respond to you in the comments section here on Thursday March 1st. xoxo K
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.
The designation LGBT is problematic for many reasons, but primarily:
LGBT conflates identities based on sexualities with identities based on gender. That's not problematic, because both sexuality and gender have roots in desire and desireability—so we fit together just fine, even though we are two spaces of categorization.
LGBT—the four letters, and even a few more—doesn't begin to cover the number of people who claim identities that hinge on sexuality and gender. This is a problem, because people get left out or they're actively barred from membership and that's just not right. It's way past the time when we can exclude people based on shades of meaning.
Over the past few years, I've been putting together a list of claimed identities who hinge on gender anarchy and sex positivity. These are the people I want to hang out with. These are the people whose activism I would support, and whose rights I would stand up for. With your help, I've increased the list from 141 identities to 185!! I know that I'm far from done. I need your help, please, to finish this list. Kindly let me know what identities I've missed, and what identities I may have erroneously added to the list.
I'm particularly interested in regional slang, and names of identities from countries other than North America. I'm not looking for names that other people may call us in order to shame or degrade us—but if we use one or more of those words for ourselves with pride and dignity, then it goes on the list. In some cases, I've made words up—I've indicated these with an asterisk, and I'll be defining them in the list that ends up going into the workbook.
Here are the requirements for membership
The identity is based in outlawed or marginalized sexuality or gender. I sum that up as gender anarchy and sex positivity.
Those who've got more privilege than others use their privilege to uplift, support and encourage others.
No members can be mean to others.
So, here's the updated PDF of people I'd like to have in my clubhouse:Download GASP 2
See if you can spot yourself on the list thus far. Let me know who I've missed, or anyone I've added by mistake. I'll try to update the list daily, so keep checking back so you don't miss out on any of the fun.
Thank you so much.
Auntie Kate
PS — if there's a word or identity on this list you don't know, give it a google!
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.
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.
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.
I've just returned home to New York City from this year's Femme Conference in Oakland, California. The theme was "No Restrictions." My head is still dizzy and swirling. I met wonderful people, connected with many dear friends, and found myself a whole new set of dangerous dreams and damned desires to consider.
I didn't finish writing the address until the night before I delivered it to over 500 beautiful femmes, and those who love and celebrate us. I was scribbling notes on my notes until half an hour before I stood up. I told my twibe on Twitter that I'd make a copy of the text available for download, so I've integrated all the versions, and here it is in PDF format: Download KB_keynote_Femme2010.
Okay, it's late, Mercury is in retrograde, I'm exhausted and exhilarated and I'm missing my femme family. I hope you enjoy the keynote address and that it helps make life more worth living for ya.
I'm deep-deep-deep in the writing-writing-writing of my memoir, but I wanted to let you know I'm still thinking about you and wanted you to enjoy some fun writing I did a few months ago. Women, Action & The Media asked me to contribute something for their benefit auction. I decided that for the highest bidder, I'd pornographize their favorite fairy tale and cast them in whatever roles they liked. Well, a lovely lesbo couple took the high bid, and asked me to re-write The Tale of The Sleeping Beauty. I spent some time speaking with the winning bidder—she wanted the story as an anniversary present for her partner. This was back in April, and I've heard that both Rachel and Tania enjoyed the story a great deal. So, here it is in PDF format, ready to download for your summer reading enjoyment.
The 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? 
