The choice between two of something is not a choice at all, but rather the opportunity to subscribe to the value system which holds the two presented choices as mutually exclusive alternatives.

Kate Bornstein

Categorized in : Two Opportunity Choices

The whole transgender movement idea is happening in waves around the world. Some areas of the world are further along politically than others. The economy has a lot to do with that, as does moral or religious climate.

climate religious ideas

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.

growing-up dad heaven

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

shame stories cute

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.

names giving ideas

I honor anybody who wants to be a man and do the work of becoming a man. I honor anyone who mindfully becomes a woman. That's cool. But, I really don't get how there's only two choices. There's no two of anything else in the entire universe; why should there only be two genders? I don't get it.

choices men two

When you're a Scientologist it's like the movie Goodfellas, where the gangsters hang out with only other gangsters. We only hung out with each other, so we knew we were saving the world.

gangsters saving world

I was a lonely, frightened little fat kid who felt there was something deeply wrong with me because I didn't feel like I was the gender I'd been assigned. I felt there was something wrong with me, something sick and twisted inside me, something very very bad about me. And everything I read backed that up.

sick lonely kids

I was obsessed, and like most obsessed people, I was the last one... by Kate Bornstein

I was obsessed, and like most obsessed people, I was the last one to know it.

lasts obsession people

There are Easter eggs in every book I've ever written. I think in the first one I called Scientology "Diabology," but I was scared, so I didn't tell many people what it really meant.

easter book thinking

Drag queen is a gender like no other, and with practice I'd learn... by Kate Bornstein

Drag queen is a gender like no other, and with practice I'd learned to rise to it.

gender queens practice

You can support trans-positive legislation, tranny artists, and the inclusion of trannies in your neighborhood, schools, place of worship, whatever. For the long term? Join or initiate some good legal battles against the puritanical laws that exist around sex and gender.

artist sex school

This Western culture of ours tends to sacrifice the full range of experience to a lower common denominator that's acceptable to more people; we end up with McDonald's instead of real food, Holiday Inns instead of homes, and USA Today instead of news and cultural analysis. And we do that with the rest of our lives.

holiday real home

Sex work may be an illegal thing, but it's far from being a bad thing. Quite a few of us on the male-to-female side of the coin have done sex work. I've done it myself for a couple of years. It's a place we can make a living and have some fun doing it. It's a place we seem to fit in.

couple fun sex

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 nice littles

Just across the ocean in, say Kenya or Tanzania, a two-gender system is vital for the survival of most of the folks who live there. Men do men's work, women do women's work, and so it all gets done and the jackals can't get into the hut and eat grandpa. So, the future of the transgender movement is like the future of all human rights movements: whatever the state of things in your area now, with some work it all gets a little bit better all the time, even if it is sometimes three steps ahead and two steps back.

ocean men two

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?

mean believe sex

Look, nearly everything in the culture says we're freaks. Doing sex work, we're desired; we can get rewarded for being what we've always wanted to be. What's so bad about that? My own notion is I wish sex work would be decriminalized (not legalized, please note the distinction) so that more trannies could get into the field if they wanted to and not get into trouble for it.

would-be wish sex

Sex is f-king, everything else is gender. by Kate Bornstein

Sex is f-king, everything else is gender.

gender kings sex

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

what-matters expression thinking