A Queer and Pleasant Danger: Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor
The iconic "gender outlaw" on escaping the Church of Scientology and talking transgender rights on MSNBC.
—By Nicole Pasulka
| Sat May. 5, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/kate-bornstein-gender-outlaw-queer-and-pleasant-danger-interview"I identify as neither male nor female. . . . I'm neither straight nor gay," wrote transgender performer and author Kate Bornstein in her seminal 1994 book Gender Outlaw. Born in 1948 on the Jersey Shore to a loving mother and a dad who was "a macho, macho man," Bornstein left theater school in Massachusetts at the age of 22 on a spiritual journey that culminated in a 12-year stint in the Church of Scientology's Sea Org, an elite group of members who were based on ships and functioned like a religious order. Bornstein was excommunicated from the Church in 1982 and branded a "subversive person." In exile she's found her voice as a liberated, post-op, transsexual lesbian icon—though, of course, Bornstein bucks labels like these every chance she gets.
What the lengthy title of Bornstein's new memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The True Story of a Nice Jewish Boy who Joins the Church of Scientology and Leaves Twelve Years Later to Become the Lovely Lady She Is Today (on sale May 1, 2012) doesn't reveal is how scared she's been to talk about her time in the Church, until now.
