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 am so sorry to tell you that it's really hard to find copies of my book Hello, Cruel World.
Last night, I wanted to get buy a couple of couple of copies for friends. I'm watching my budget, so I went to Amazon, who carries the book at the lowest price. I found out that the book is not currently available. Amazon says it might ship in anywhere from one to four months. I tried to buy it someplace else, and this is what I found:
Barnes & Noble is carrying the book and say it's in stock… cost is 30% more than Amazon
I found about 20 copies atwww.abe.com. 8 copies are available at cost. 9 copies are available from US$ 26 to US$ 60.
11 copies of the book are available on eBay. 5 are reasonably priced, the rest range from $47 to $122.
Borders says it's on back order, and will ship in 1 to 4 weeks.
My literary agent, Malaga Baldi, and I are working with my publisher, Seven Stories Press to fix this. They publish some magnificent titles, and I'm honored to be part of their stable. But the economy is the economy, and I'm told that it looks like the book will go into it's 4th printing and back on the shelves sometime in the first week of October. In the meantime…
The book is available at many school and public libraries.
There are also many LGBTQetc centers who keep a copy of the book on hand.
Hello, Cruel World is available as an ebook. It's easy to find. I hate it. It looks ugly. But it's cheap, and all the words and most of the pictures made it into the electronic editions.
You can find great tips from me and a whole slew of teens, freaks, and other outlaws by searching the Twitter hashtag #stayalive. I'm sorry, but you will need to set up a Twitter account to search it. But, then you can contribute #stayalive suggestions of your own. Instant interactivity, plus everyone wins and gets to stay alive.
Again, my most sincere apologies for allowing this to go un-noticed. I'll do the best I can to make reasonably priced copies of the book available again as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you know where there's a stash of these books, please post a link in the comments section of this blog. Thanks.
My BFF and co-author of Nearly Roadkill, Caitlin Sullivan (the two of us in this photo at the Seattle Public Library) just sent me this quote from Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
Damn, I keep wrestling with this stuff and some people are just so frakking eloquent about it. Read it and weep for joy that we're not alone in our freakdom, not by a long shot.
big love,
Auntie Kate
—————-
“For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.”
Happy holidaze. Right this minute, I'm on the home stretch for writing the first draft of my memoir, Kate Bornstein Is A Queer And Pleasant Danger. This is an image I made to remind myself to write from my heart. I figure that if you're reading this, you're a writer too. You write books or a blog, articles, journals, FaceBook updates, email, tweets—whatever—you write.
So, here's my holidaze card for the writer you are. If you click on the image, it'll open into a full-sized mini-poster, 8 inches by 10 inches, at a high enough resolution to print. I figure the more that all of us write from our hearts, the better off the intertubes will be for our writing.
Happy holidaze, dearest hearts, with love and respect from
Twibe: What r some of the most important things u want 2 know abt a new person in yr life? (whether a love/sex interest or not).
By day's end I got a whole slew of answers and I think they're important enough to share with you.
kiss kiss
Kate
@danseparc: I want to know zir dreams, zir view of the world, zir passions, zir joys, and zir sorrows. What inspires zir to DO-FEEL-LOVE.
@queerfatfemme: Their reputation for being an ethical member of our community. Have been burned in life & love by people w/ a scorched path.
@whateversusan: I'd want to know what a person loves, I think… and what they remember. But I'm so bad with people, I don't know
@eugenetapdance: I need to know that they're kind and that they don't believe in being willfully ignorant.
@gnesbitt: i would want to know how open-minded they are, and whether they have a positive attitude about the world in general
@Wylddelirium: That they have a hungry sense of curiosity, a drive for adventure, a developed sense of ethics, and is kind to most.
@AmalgamGlass: are they honest with me & themselves.
@glitterbomber: I want to know if they act more out of compassion than anger cause that's the soof person for me.
@Mollena: I need to know that 1) they are compassionate 2 …they can listen, and *hear* me. 3) …they love red velvet cake.
@AliceSinAerie: I want to know if they have a sense of humor, integrity & what they enjoy in life
@scoutout: Whadda I wanna know bout nu person? Do people I respect respect them? (aka are they changing the world?) If so, cool.
@steph_infection: Can I trust them? (And that's not always easy to figure out, sadly.)
@lilithvf1998: I'd want to know how they perceive the world and what makes them feel alive. People are boring outside of these nuances. 🙂
@adamfishpoet: it's old-fashioned, I know, but I always like to make sure they're not armed. srsly, I always check that ppl are smart & have a sense of humour.
@kwalsham: I'm with @firefaunx – how they react to/treat those society deems inferior
@jaymgates: I want to know if they are willing to take their life into their own hands and make their own dreams come true.
@sandykidd: Do they read for pleasure? I can connect with almost everyone who loves to read. Bonus question: Love science? Lol
@LuciaBlowPop: the more i know the better in almost every circumstance
@ammre: what is important to them. That shows where their motivation in life is
@polerin: If they laugh, and if I'll have too keep my mouth shut (about social/political issues)
@NJrugger45: want to know are they compassionate, do they care abt social justice, what do they read, who do they call family?
@firefaunx: how they treat animals and old people, mostly.
@SheIsAnarchy003: i want to know their level of tolerance, meaning i can be tough to love sometimes and i need to know if they are patient. i also need to know what their police record looks like..haha
I'm going to keep this short and sweet, to keep myself from wandering off intoMobius stripsof 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."
Who knew? Not me. I'd only begun to hear the word about a year ago but according to its own Wikipedia page, cisgenderhas 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'smyproblem. 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 albreak cisgender rules of fixed desire.Trans,Genderqueer,Drag et albreak 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 womenmustdefend 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. Ithas not been my intention to offend anyone. This is a theory in progress.I believe thatno valid theory of identity, desire, or power can other a single sentient being. If you feel offendedI was wrong.I'll do my best to right the wrong.I'm talking about this on Twitterso 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.
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.
I 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.
Three years ago this month, I was turning in the final copy for Hello, Cruel World to my editor, Crystal Yakacki at Seven Stories Press. One of the earliest interviews I did for the book was a 45 minute show out of the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts. The show is Madness Radio. Will Hall is the host, who's got ties to The Icarus Project, a peer-to-peer support group for youth diagnosed with bipolar and related disorders. I'm a big fan of both The Icarus Project and Madness Radio.
Last night, I had the chance to recommend Icarus to a friend who's going through some hard times, and today I got an email from Will Hall. Oooooh! Synchronicity! Wil was writing to let me know that after three years on the web, the episode just got its first ever comment. LOL! In celebration of this event, I'm opening the vaults. Enjoy the listen.
It's been called to my attention that it may not be possible to buy new copies of any of my books on Amazon.com. You can find Kindle editions for Hello, Cruel World and My Gender Workbook. Whoopee. And there's no record of my sales record there, either. Dang.
I'm not the only queer, sex positive, gender bent author to have gone missing.
Thank you, Melissa Gira Grant at Sexerati, who's got the most up-to-date coverage of this weird, weird right wing news of literary censorship.
Among the MIA (Missing In Amazon): Barbara Carrellas, Dossie Easton, S. Bear Bergman, Helen Boyd, Laura Antoniou, Candida Royale, Julia Serano, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Lawrence Schimmel. And those were just the first couple I searched for. Holy poop!
Wasn't Bush voted out of office?? Who is putting this kind of pressure on Amazon.com? Whoever it is, they don't know how subversive and queer Judith Butler is. You can still buy her books on Amazon. But I wouldn't. I'd buy all my books elsewhere, until Amazon comes to it's senses.
I'm writing my agent and publishers to see what's up. In the meantime, you can buy my books through your local queer and sex positive bookstore. If you don't live near a queer or independent bookstore and need to buy online, do check out Powell's Books, a fabulous independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Or you can find them used at ABE Books.
Petitions and write-in campaigns have already begun. Check with your fave queer authors' blogs and websites and Twitter accounts for more updates. I'll post more when I know more.
In the meantime, persevere. Enjoy your sex positive, genderbent theory and porn.
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. 
