Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us

Gender has been described as the battleground for the 90s. As we watch the emergence of ‘gender-bending’ in popular culture, the lines are being drawn and sides taken up. Somewhere above both sides stands Kate Bornstein, with a unique, funny and lucid voice. Gender Outlaw is the work of a woman who has been through some changes - a former heterosexual male and one-time Scientologist and IBM salesperson, now a lesbian writer and actress who makes regular rounds on the TV talk shows. In her book, Bornstein covers the ‘mechanics’ of her surgery; everything you’ve always wanted to know about gender (but were too confused to ask); the place and politics of the transgendered; and the questions of those who give the subject little thought. Kate Bornstein takes on various communities: gay, lesbian, straight, S/M and transgender, along with the ‘society at large’. In her witty incisive observations is the foundation of a radical new politics of sexuality and gender. The book also includes Bornstein’s play, Hidden: A Gender . Gender Outlaw is an ideal response to the belief that everyone talks about gender, but no one does anything about it. Kate Bornstein has taken (dramatic) steps, and invites the reader along for the trip.