Activist's advice: Make life worthwhile
Colin A. Young, September 27th

Author, performer and activist Kate Bornstein had a clear message for the audience assembled to hear her talk at Connecticut College late Friday afternoon. "Do whatever you need or want to do in order to make life worth living,"... "Just don't be mean".

Bornstein's address, titled "Hello, Cruel World: A guide to staying alive for teens, freaks, and other outlaws," was the keynote of the school's mental health and wellness fair and focused on some of the mental health issues facing LGBTQ... youth.

"Sexuality and gender are bully magnets. People get bullied for not looking like a real male or a real female or not acting like one," Bornstein, 65, said. "The bullying often becomes intolerable to the point that it is not worth living anymore. What I try to do is encourage youth who want... to break the rules of gender, do just that."

"I was assigned male at birth and when I was home as a little kid it didn't bother me. But living (as a) boy and eventually a man felt like a lie," Bornstein said.

So, in 1986, Bornstein had gender reassignment surgery and became a woman, but "it felt like a lie, too," she said...

http://www.theday.com/article/20130928/NWS01/309289967/-1/nws