Quotes by Kate Bornstein

Kate Bornstein

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ There is a great answer to that one going around: ‘We don’t know; it hasn’t told us yet’.

Answers

Boys

Girl

Both bisexuality and transgender are fluid notions of identity, while lesbian and gay are fixed identities. Some people believe that means there should be two movements: LG and BT. But then what’re ya gonna do about SM players? And intersexed folks who want their own I in the alphabet soup of sex and gender related politics?

Believe

Mean

Sex

Disney will never make a movie about my life story, and that’s a shame–I’d make a really cute animated creature.

Cute

Shame

Stories

Gender is used as a control mechanism that’s just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you’re free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that’s the tricky part.

Gender

Play

Struggle

Growing up we were secular Jews, but what I got out of Judaism at that time in my life was questions. Everything was a question. “Dad, is there a heaven? Is there a hell?” You never could get an answer. That informed a lot of my reasons for getting into Scientology, because they had all the answers. They said I was not my body, not my mind. I don’t have a soul; I am an immortal soul. I’ve lived many lives and I’ll live endlessly into the future, and as an immortal soul I have no gender.

Dad

Growing Up

Heaven

I have this idea that every time we discover that the names we’re being called are somehow keeping us less than free, we need to come up with new names for ourselves, and that the names we give ourselves must no longer reflect a fear of being labeled outsiders, must no longer bind us to a system that would rather see us dead.

Giving

Ideas

Names

I know and know of more than a few MTF’s (male-to-female trannies) who’ve developed strange cancers. Myself, I’ve got a nice little case of Chronic Lymphocitic Leukemia (CLL).

Cancer

Littles

Nice

I know I’m not a man-about that much I’m very clear, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably not a woman either, at least not according to a lot of people’s rules on this sort of thing. The trouble is, we’re living in a world that insists we be one or the other-a world that doesn’t bother to tell us exactly what one or the other is.

Justice

Men

People

It doesn’t really matter what a person decides to do, or how radically a person plays with gender. What matters, I think, is how aware a person is of the options. How sad for a person to be missing out on some expression of identity, just for not knowing there are options

Expression

Thinking

What Matters

Let’s stop ‘tolerating’ or ‘accepting’ difference, as if we’re so much better for not being different in the first place. Instead, let’s celebrate difference, because in this world it takes a lot of guts to be different.

Acceptance

Differences

Tolerance

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Acceptance

Answers

Artist

Believe

Blow

Boys

Brother

Cancer

Children

Choices

Class

Climate

Cute

Dad

Differences

Expression

Fall

Gangsters

Gender

Girl

Giving

Growing Up

Heart

Heaven

Hero

Holiday

Home

Hunger

Ideas

Joy

Justice

Kings

Littles

Mean

Men

Mom

Names

Nice

Opportunity

People

Play

Real

Religious

Saving

School

Sex

Shame

Simple

Stories

Struggle

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Kate Bornstein

Kate Bornstein

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ There is a great answer to that one going around: ‘We don’t know; it hasn’t told us yet’.

Disney will never make a movie about my life story, and that’s a shame–I’d make a really cute animated creature.

Gender is used as a control mechanism that’s just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you’re free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that’s the tricky part.

I know and know of more than a few MTF’s (male-to-female trannies) who’ve developed strange cancers. Myself, I’ve got a nice little case of Chronic Lymphocitic Leukemia (CLL).

It doesn’t really matter what a person decides to do, or how radically a person plays with gender. What matters, I think, is how aware a person is of the options. How sad for a person to be missing out on some expression of identity, just for not knowing there are options

Let’s stop ‘tolerating’ or ‘accepting’ difference, as if we’re so much better for not being different in the first place. Instead, let’s celebrate difference, because in this world it takes a lot of guts to be different.

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Topics by Kate Bornstein

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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