Last night, I was asked to speak at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, my synagogue in New York City. I go there when I'm in need of solace or succor or someplace with peaceful family. Well, it's an LGBTQetc inclusive congregation, and each year they have a Pride Sabbath, and they invite a cool person who speaks to them about pride. This year they chose me.
Every week, on the Sabbath, a different part of the Jews' journey to freedom is read. I asked Rabbie Sharon Klenibaum (upon whom I am secretly crushed out) what portion of the Torah would be read that evening. She told me that every Pride Month Sabbath at CBST, the congregation hears the story of how Noah finally sets foot on dry land, right after a HUGE MOTHER-FUCKING FLOOD has wiped out humanity. But God promises never to drown humanity again. He didn't preclude other methods, but we are definitely NOT going to drown. God makes this covenant with Noah, and to seal the bargain, He gives Noah a rainbow.
My queer Jew people in New York City hear that story every year, and it always gives us goose-bumps, the rainbow part—God's presence as we step out of the closet and onto dry land. So, I was supposed to talk from the bimah for 10-15 minutes—about anything I wanted. I thought it best to stick to the scripture, so I told a midrash—that's a Jew version of a parable, and sometimes even a koan. A midrash is a person's re-telling of some part of the Torah. I wanted to stay on point, so I told a story that I think makes the rainbow an even more important synbol LGBTQetc Pride. Download KB CBST Pride Shabat 2012 I closed the evening with a prayer, and a lot of people have asked me to post it. So, here's my Pride Sabbath Prayer for you. Enjoy being proud. kiss kiss, Auntie Kate
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.
This blog is part of a series I'm writing while I'm undating 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. Be sure you've read the submission guidelines before you write your answer. Thanks for your help.
Dear Gendered, Somewhat Gendered, and Non-Gendered Peeps,
The workbook update is moving along on schedule. Thank you for the terrific input so far. It sure looks like this version of the workbook will have more voices in it than the first.
Well, let me get right to it then—here's the next in the series of questions I'm posing for your consideration:
How does politics impact your gender?
Politics, like age, race, class, sexuality, etc, etc, is a space in which our identities, desires, and powers can be socially regulated. And, like gender and all those other spaces, the huge space that contains all the possible politics that could ever be, is masquerading as a binary. In the USA, binary politics plays out as left wing with extremist liberal moonbats, and right wing with extremist conservative wingnuts. Each political point of view socially regulates gender by it's own take on what's a real man, what's a real woman; what's right behavior for boys and girls; and just how should we deal with the increasing number of people who claim they're both male and female and/or neither.
We are at the beginning of an election cycle here in the United States—and that means that the powers that be will ramp up every divisive binary they can think of. This country and by extension the world will be awash with us versus them, good guys and bad guys, moonbats and wingnuts, red states and blue states… every single one of them saying, my way or the highway. Divide-and-conquer has pretty much always been the modus operandi of choice by politics of power and identity politics. So, what does all that mean for your extremely personal gender identity and gender expression? Here are some questions for ya to chew on:
Have conseravtive or liberal social theories shaped your gender identity or expression in any way?
Have you been cut off from someone or some group or place that you love because your gender expression violates someone's politics?
Do politicians and elected officials stand up for you and people gendered like you?
Has your gender identity or its expression left you defenseless against the social domination of some extremist law?
Do you define as left wing or right wing politically? If so, how does that help or hinder you express yourself through your gender?
Are you more or less safe or at risk compared to others of your gender who have another political point of view?
Have you been empowed because of your political views, compared to people with genders other than yours?
Have you been disempowered by your political views, compared to people with genders other than yours?
Yes, yes—there's a lot more to politics than moonbats and wingnuts. But those are the folks who are currently vying for control of the so-called free world, so those are the politics I'm most interested in. OK then… politics, gender, and you. Ready? Set? Go!
kiss kiss
Kate
WAY FUN UPDATE!
@PinkBatPrincess asked if trans politics was included in the question. How cool! I hadn't thought of that. Yes, by all means you can speak to any gender politics, including but not limited to trans politics. And yes, please do write about issues around political correctness and gender policing within our own communities. Where possible, please tie these ideas into the larger binary of liberal/conservative politics. Thank you, @PinkBatPrincess. The pink background is for you!
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.
Last night—Monday, April 25th, 2011, I was honored to present Mx Justin ViVian Bond with an award of recognition and appreciation from Performance Space 122 in New York City.
I've known Mx (Justin ViVian's salutation of choice) Bond… well, it's coming up on twenty years. V (Justin ViVian's pronoun of choice) is simply one of the dearest people I know. But I had to be brief. The evening's coordinator, Lucy Sexton, was quite clear that I had only two minutes to speak, and no more. I stretched it to three, maybe four. Afterwards, she laughed and told me that she'd only said two minutes so I wouldn't go on for ten or fifteen! I could have done that easily. But here's more or less the text of what I had to say before presenting Mx Bond with v's award.
Justin ViVian, I love you. Always have, always will.
Too many people kill themselves for no other reason than their religion says they're better off dead than queer. I'm so sorry if someone is telling you that. It's just not true.
You probably already know this already, but I don't hear it said nearly often enough: It's not "the Christians" who go after gays, lesbians, transgender folk or bisexuals. It's not the Christians who walk calmly into church and assassinate abortion-providing doctors. It's not the Christians who wanna re-build the Berlin Wall across the southern border of Texas.
It's not the Jews. It's not the Muslims. It's not any of the wondrous sects and denominations that evolved from these world-class religions, becoming world-class religions in their own right. Those are not the folks who are keeping us in our sex and gender closets.
Sure, as sex-and-gender freaks, we might make some Christians, Jews and Muslims uncomfortable. They may not wanna hang out with us. But it's not them who threaten, harass, rape or kill us. It's the people who follow the fundamentalist canon of any religion, sect, or cult.
Fundamentalist canon is easy to spot, because it's all written with the linguistic trick of either/or. That's how it gets its strength. Fundamentalist canon says this is good, that is evil; this is right, that is wrong; this gets you into Heaven, and for that you'll go straight to Hell. Fundamentalist canon is unquestionable, unswerving, and unashamed of the violence committed in it's name. Fundamentalist canon says My way or the highway. We are damned if we don't go along with them.
If you're some sort of sex-and-gender outlaw and you're living in that kind of a world, get out of there as fast as you can! Find yourself another denomination of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, or any number of other faiths that have more wiggle room than an either/or morality. Google around… you'll easily find yourself a congregation of people who know that God loves you just the way you are.
About.com has a whole page of alternative denominations who welcome LGBTQetc outlaws. That's good news, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily going to welcome you as a sex worker, pornographer, adult entertainer, sadomasochist or polyamorist. Some modern denominations of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam may indeed welcome you as a more radical sex and gender outlaw—but you might have to become the person who opens them up to the idea. For the latter sort of sex and gender outlaw, you might find more solace and support in Goddess-based religions.
Religion is fine and dandy. Religion saves lives. What the LGBTQetc movements need is more religion. What no one needs more of is bully fundamentalism.
To the leaders, membership, and supporters of The Human Rights Campaign, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and state-wide groups supporting marriage equality as your primary goal,
Hello. I'm Kate Bornstein, and I've got a great deal to say to you, so you deserve to know more about me: I write books about postmodern gender theory and alternatives to suicide for teens, freaks and other outlaws. I'm a feminist, a Taoist, a sadomasochist, a femme, a nerd, a transperson, a Jew, and a tattooed lady. I'm a certified Post Traumatic Stress Disorder survivor. I'm a chronic over-eater who's been diagnosed with anorexia. I'm sober, but I'm not always clean. I've got piercings in body parts I wasn't born with. I'm also an elder in the community you claim to represent, and it is with great sorrow that I must write: you have not been representing us.
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Let's talk about a love that unites more people than have ever before been united by love. Let's defend some real equality.
The other day, New York State's lesbian and gay bid for marriage equality went down in flames, enough flames to make people cry. Thousands of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people and their allies spent a lot of money and heart-filled hours of work to legalize marriage equality, with little to show for it. That sucks, and I think the reason it didn't work is it's because marriage equality is an incorrect priority for the LGBTQetc communities.
Marriage equality—as it's being pushed for now—is wasting resources that would be better deployed to save some lives. There are several major flaws with marriage equality as a priority for our people:
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Marriage as it's practiced in the USA is unconstitutional… if you listen to Thomas Jerfferson's interpretation of separation of church and state. The way it stands now, if you're an ordained leader in a recognized religion, the US government gives you a package of 1500-1700 civil rights that only you can hand out to people. And you get to bestow or withhold these civil rights from any American citizen you choose, regardless of that citizen's constitutionally-granted rights. The government has no constitutional right to hand that judgment call over to a religious body.
Marriage equality—as it's being fought for now by lesbian and gay leaders who claim they're speaking for some majority of LGBTQetc people—will wind up being more marriage inequality. Single parents, many of whom are women of color, will not get the 1500-1700 rights they need to better and more easily raise their children. Nor will many other households made up of any combination of people who love each other and their children.
When lesbian and gay community leaders whip up the community to fight for the right to marry, it's a further expression of America's institutionalized greed in that it benefits only its demographic constituency. There's no reaching out beyond sexuality and gender expression to benefit people who aren't just like us, and honestly… that is so 20th Century identity politics.
Marriage is a privileging institution. It has privileged, and continues to privilege people along lines of not only religion, sexuality and gender, but also along the oppressive vectors of race, class, age, looks, ability, citizenship, family status, and language. Seeking to grab oneself a piece of the marriage-rights pie does little if anything at all for the oppression caused by the institution of marriage itself to many more people than sex and gender outlaws.
The fight for "marriage equality" is simply not the highest priority for a movement based in sexuality and gender. By simple triage, the most widespread criminality against people whose identities are based in sex and gender is violence against women. Women still make up the single-most oppressed identity in the world, followed closely by kids who are determined to be freaky for any reason whatsoever.
Lesbian and gay leaders must cease being self-obssessed and take into account the very real damage that's perpetrated on people who are more than simply lesbian women and/or gay men, more than bisexual or transgender even. Assuming a good-hearted but misplaced motivation for all the work done on behalf of fighting for marriage equality, it's time to stop fighting on that front as a first priority of the LGBTQetc movement. It's time to do some triage and base our priorities on a) who needs the most help and b) what battlefront will bring us the most allies.
I'm asking that you to fight on behalf of change for someone besides yourself. Please. I promise the rewards of doing that will revisit you threefold. Who needs the most help is easy: women. To lesbian and gay leaders, I ask you to ally yourselves with the centuries-old feminist movements and their current incarnations. You want to get a bill passed through Congress? Take another run at the Equal Rights Amendment. Unlike gay marriage, the ERA stands a better chance of making it into law, given the Obama Administration and our loosely Democratic majority in congress.
Stopping the violence against women and freaky children, and backing another run at the ERA have got the good chance of creating national front, lots of allies. On the home front of sex and gender, there's plenty of room for change that doesn't require millions of dollars and thousands of hours.
Looking into the community of people who base their lives on sexuality and gender, there's a lot of door-opening to do. Beyond L, G, B and T, there's also Q for queer and Q for questioning. There's an S for sadomasochists, an I for intersex, an F for feminists, and another F for furries. Our community is additionally composed of sex educators, sex workers, adult entertainers, pornographers, men who have sex with men, women who have sex with women, and asexuals who have sex in whatever manner they define their asexuality. You want to create some real change? Make room for genderqueers, polyamorists, radical faeries, butches, femmes, drag queens, drag king, and other dragfuck royalty too fabulous to describe in this short letter.
There are more and more people to add to this ever-growing list of communities whom you must own as family and represent in your activism. You cannot afford—politically, economically, or morally—to leave out a single person who bases a large part of their identity on being sex positive or in any way a proponent of gender anarchy.
That's what I have to say to you. That and thank you for the good hearts you've clearly demonstrated in your activism. I'm asking you to open your hearts further is all.
You're welcome to leave comments on this blog, but the best way to engage me in a conversation or recruit me to help is to contact me through Twitter. I look forward to talking with you, and I hope we can work together on the terms I've outlined above.
