Gender Outlaw

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

By Kate Bornstein

1996, Routledge

245 Pages



From the Cover

Gender Outlaw is the work of a woman who has been through some changes - a former heterosexual male, a one-time Scientologist and IBM salesperson, now a lesbian woman writer, actress and performance artist. In this disarming account of her life and genders, Kate Bornstein covers the "mechanics" of her surgery, as well as everything you've always wanted to know about gender (but were too confused to ask).

In her funny, compassionate voice, Kate Bornstein asks and answers questions, sharing stories on her way towards a radical new world of sexuality and gender.

A manifesto, a memoir, and a performance all rolled into one, Gender Outlaw challenges our most basic assumptions about what it means to be a man or a woman. Or something else entirely.


Table of Contents

1. Transgender Style: Some Fashion Tips
2. The Hard Part
3. Interlude: Nuts and Bolts
4. Naming All The Parts
5. Interlude: The Lesbian Thing
6. Abandon Your Tedious Search! The Rulebook has been Found!
7. Which Outlaws? or, Who Was That Masked Man?
8. Gender Terror, Gender Rage
9. Send In The Clowns
10. First You Die, And Then You Get Their Attention
11. The First Question, or, They Have Those Funny, Staring Eyes
12. The Other Questions
13. Transsexual Lesbian Playwright Tells All!
14. Queer Life/Queer Theater
15. Hidden: A Gender
16. The Seven Year Itch (what goes around, comes around)