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Claiming Kate Bornstein

Started by Nicky, October 09, 2008, 05:18:22 PM

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Nicky

I've never read any of their books, but have been reading a lot of interviews and watching clips on youtube.

I think she would reject being put into our box, but it seems to me that she embodies an androgyne spirit. She is like an ever shifting kaleidoscope of behaviour, a chameleon, often shifting mode mid sentence. Gender transcendent. Plus she is really funny. I saw this clip of her talking about going to a speech therapist and how she was taught to use this uber exaggerated fem voice. I thought it was really funny but so personal at the same time, the sadness they felt and the wrongness of it.

What we do here I sometimes see as us trying to create a gendered niche for ourselves, a community of like people, to make sense of things. I think kate has a much wider net, aiming to include everyone and not worrying about the sense of it.

I personally don't think I could follow her path in the same way she goes about it, my personality is just not up to it. But I think from seeing her talk I feel like a certain message is slowly becoming part of my internal voice. It says behaviour is just behaviour, behaviour does not represent my gender, my behaviour represents me, I just am. She is one interesting person.
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Pica Pica

I saw that thing about the fem voice, it was really funny and struck a real chord in her insistence to talk in er own voice and to do er own things.


I also couldn't do what Kate does, it wouldn't be a fair representation of my own personality, plus it would be completely and utterly knackering.

I like the idea of us here coming together and forming a group of whatever it is what we are, I like the idea of being a group and a community, some people seem to find this insulting somehow.
'For the circle may be squared with rising and swelling.' Kit Smart
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tekla

I personally don't think I could follow her path in the same way she goes about it

Nor would she want you to either, is my guess.  I think Kate is all about people being who they are, regardless of who that is.
FIGHT APATHY!, or don't...
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RebeccaFog


I don't have that colorful of a personality.

I believe in the wide net too, but inside the net, sometimes us fish need some association with like minded fish before we are cooked.
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Nicky

Quote from: Rebis on October 10, 2008, 02:56:41 PM

I don't have that colorful of a personality.


My dear Rebis, you sell yourself short.

Who else can tell you how you look better than your own reflection?
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Shana A

I read Kate's book Gender Outlaw when I was transitioning in '93. The book was very influential for me in realizing that I had more options than the standard (at that time) binary oriented TS path. What sie says isn't right for everyone, but for me, Kate rocks!

Zythyra
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." Oscar Wilde


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Seshatneferw

I read it some time last year, and while e's far louder about eir gender than I'd ever wish to be, a lot of what e wrote made sense. I'm not sure the book was any more influential for me than this forum, but that's just because you people are such a terrific group. So yes, the book did a lot to enable me to realise that the mantra 'sex does not determine gender' is just as valid if you read 'sex' to mean your target sex as it is for the birth one. Regardless of what the target sex, or the gender, turn out to be.

  Nfr
Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me.
-- Pete Conrad, Apollo XII
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