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Week 8: Freaks and Other Outlaws
This week we'll be shifting from the discussion Kristin has initiated, about the relationship between disability, sex and gender, to one that Kate Bornstein describes as addressed to "freaks and other outlaws." In what ways do Kate's books pick up on (challenge, extend?) our recent conversations about disability, sex and gender? What do you find important, what problematic, in her writing? What have you learned from reading it, and what do you want to understand better? What do you want to ask Kate Bornstein next week? What do you want to tell Kate?
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Embrace the Martian
www.youtube.com/watch ... Embrace the Martian by Kid Cudi
For this week I chose the song "Embrace the Martian" by Kid Cudi because I think it encompasses the punchline for Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw- accepting differences. In the song he likens himself to a martian, an out of this world creature unlike the implied humans in this song. While reading Gender Outlaw this is the image I got from Bornstein- a creature not female not male, at the same time "you are me// like it or not I am you//". The rest of the song speaks for itself, as does the book. In addition, I think that this conversation boils down to the origins of any conversation about gender and sexuality...equality and tolerance. Enjoy!!!!
Ixnay on the bullshit man
When I roll back to Cleveland
I can't believe them
Sounds of the nonbelievers, outcasts
Till I'm under before it did hurt
Now I can overstand how you could just miss the front on
Ask me how I feel about the ones with closed eyes
Mouth words how I feel exactly
Aw fuck that
I don't give a damn I met one hater
Talkin' down
Don't be afraid at all y'all
All I ask of y'all is to please
Embrace the martian
Embrace the martian
I come in peace
But I need y'all rockin' with me
Please
Embrace the martian
And this is how it sounds
See I must tell you all now
Keep on acting funny
Cool with me
I am here to trace that
How ya thinkin' often and its startin'
I am here to show you how it feels to be new
Look at what I made true god to teach you
Honest been insecure cool
And you are cool
But I'm havin' heavy amounts of
Malarkey mixed with garbage
I am it dog
Don't be afraid of all y'all
All I ask about y'all is to please
Embrace the martian
Embrace the martian
I come in peace
But I need y'all rockin' with me
Please
Embrace the martian
And this is how it sounds
Embrace the martian
Embrace the martian
I come in peace
But I need y'all rockin' with me
Please
Embrace the martian
Licensed to ill
I promise I won't turn the whole world to Cloverfield
On the real, yeah I will
I'll destroy it and then rebuild
Just for thrills
Sometimes you got to do it
Sometimes you show the tough love
No one is above what you are hearin' now dude
No matter who else included
I'm saluted
I'm saluted
No matter who else included
I'm saluted (Yeah, Yeah)
I'm saluted
Oh
Whether you appeal
Or not
This is the real
We'll recognize real
You
You are me
Like it or not
And I
I am you
You
You
You
Embrace the martian
Embrace the martian
I come in peace
But I need y'all rockin' with me
Please
Embrace the martian
And this is how it sounds
Embrace the martian
Embrace the martian
I come in peace
But I need y'all rockin' with me
Please
Embrace the martian
And this is how it sounds
Oooo
Oooo
And this is how it sounds
In my mind
Ooooo
Las inabilidades de nuestra sociedad.
Not having been exposed to Kate Bornstein or anything concerning such issues which are presented in our class, I really enjoyed reading Gender Outlaw. But what still lingers in my mind, is why? Why does a person have to change the way they look in order to express who they are? If ever I could speak to Bornstein I would ask her this, because it strikes me to think that an individual must endure such hardship, for acceptance. Acceptance not only from the world, but by they themselves. In other words, why can it not be that a person born with certain bodily functions not be able to act out who they feel inside? Why must there be a predeterminer for life?
The Career of a Transgender Pianist
NYT Article: "Anything He Can Do, She Can Do"
www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/fashion/15genb.html
101
I read Kate Bornstein's "101 ways" and loved it. However, as we were discussing in class, I did find her rhetoric to be a little over the top. I guess perhaps the reason for this is that she was writing for a teenage audience, but it seemed like her language almost undermined her points. She would put small side comments in a very serious section, and it almost made scary things like descrimination, depression, and suicide seem like a joke. Maybe I'm looking at it too critically, but I guess it just rubbed me the wrong way.
I did love how she phrased and ordered her 101. It was creatively put together and had a good mix of light-hearted suggestions and important/serious ones. The only times I thought she crossed the lines were when she made assumptions about the reader. I understand you can't write a book without having some idea who you audience is, but it seemed like occasionally she would break her own rules with categorizing and gender transendence etc. For example, as one of my classmates pointed out, she spoke about sexuality without considering asexuality, polyamory, and one other topic I can't remember... Either way I think occasionally she got carried away and took things too far. Generally speaking I was a fan, though.
umm...
this'll be a really quick response because i don't have my book with me, but i think she actually does take asexuality and polyamory into account. possibly both in the section about desire and the section about sex as an alternative. i'll rwite more later when i have my book, but i just wanted to comment before i forgot.
and, i recognize, i could be wrong. in which case, i'm very sorry, and i will admit that once i check the book.
Song!
this song is called "origin of love". it was taken from a clip of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a movie about a man who became a transsexual in order to come to American during the Cold War, and pursue his career as a singer songwriter. I think that this song connects to the idea, that our way of categorizing the world, does not make sense to the immense diversity within society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YO9FpWX57E
Minor Bump in the Road.
I think that Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw, does a really good job of describing how disabilities can disable the individual from functioning within society. What I really found interesting for two reasons was her full on description of the steps one has to take when undergoing a sex change. At first it caught my attention because I thought "oh wow it's nice to know, because now I can appreciate it more", but then I began to question it. Why explain something in great detail, about one's life or the process in general when all it does is contradict what you are trying to accomplish in your book? I found that Bornstein allowed for people to see her in a category by allowing others to say "oh so she was a man first". In describing the process that she went through she becomes a contradictory self, because she herself puts her body in a categories: first a man, then a woman, then a lesbian.
another restroom photo
i think someone posted a link a while ago to photos of the various ways that people have created the male/female bathroom signs. i can't figure out whether that was, but i found a new image that i enjoyed a lot, and i thought i'd share it with you all:
it's still a bit problematic in that it still sorta causes people to out themselves based on anatomy, sometimes (or rather, certain times of month?), but it isn't necessarily gender. also, it's just kinda clever. i still think that the best form of bathrooms are the individual unisex type, but this photo made me smile.
by the way, if the image didn't show up, i found the image at emess.us/images/restrooms_small.jpg
is Kate Bornstein really calling for the end of identities?
in class the other day, Anne said something about how Kate Bornstein wanted there to no longer be identity categories. but i think that, at least in Hello, Cruel World, that's no longer the case. Kate Bornstein references identities several times in the book: "I'm traveling through all sorts of identities, picking and choosing what works and leaving the rest behind" (22); "Somewhere inside me there was an identity I could live with that would allow me to be both girl and boy--and neither to boot" (27); "[Sexuality] is a social identity" (28); "We all want an identity that makes life worth living....You get to decide which identity you are going to be or not be" (31).
that's not an exhaustive list of the places where Bornstein mentions identity, but it supports my point, which is something like this: i don't think Kate Bornstein is promoting the end of identities. i think it's more about a multiplicity of identities and recognizing that identities can change and shift, and people can identify as one thing one day and another identity another day. it's about giving people choices and options, and about not getting too hung up on what our identity is to the point of creating really rigid walls that create boundaries about who is and isn't a certain identity.
Kate Bornstein identifies (at least at the point when the book was written) as a transsexual (21)--sort of (22), as a traveler (22), as a tranny dyke (30). i think it's more about the recognizing the fluidity of identities than about destroying identities.
my thoughts about gender and Kate Bornstein--i think that Bornstein really just wants people to be happy with who they are and who/what they're acting like (and to not be mean to other people). if being a woman, and identifying as a woman, and always acting "like a woman" (whatever that means to you) makes you happy, great. i'm all for you doing that, and i think (although maybe i'm being presumptuous) that Kate Bornstein would be cool with that, too. but if that's not how you feel/identify/want to act, Bornstein wants you to know that that's okay, too.
there are so few sources in society that are all for people being whoever they want to be and acting however they want (as long as they aren't mean to others, which seems to be Bornstein's version of liberalism/"you can do what you want as long as it doesn't harm others"). i think that Hello, Cruel World is wonderful for telling people directly that whoever they are is fine.
other people have said that they don't think Hello, Cruel World is/would be useful. i disagree. while i obviously can't speak for anyone other than myself, i think it's useful. when i started reading Hello, Cruel World for class, i was really stressed about a lot of things. some of the messages in the book were exactly what i needed to hear. not that i was going to go commit suicide and Hello, Cruel World stopped me, or something. just that it made me feel a little better about myself, a little more in control of my life. it's nice when other people legitimize how i see myself. i realize that i shouldn't *need* others to legitimize how i see myself, but i'd be a liar if i said that other people's opinions never affect me.
one thing i liked about the alternatives that Bornstein lists is that they're not all sunshine and bunnies and rainbows. i like the message that sometimes, you can't shoot for perfection and happiness--sometimes, it's enough to just hang on a little longer, to just get yourself in a slightly better place mentally than you were, and then later work from there. Bornstein lets the reader get angry, allows one to rant and rave and pissed off about things, allows people to do things that aren't usually accepted. that's realistic.
by the way, i really liked something under the alternative "Shatter some family values"--"Look . . . Don't kill anyone is a value. Don't be a homo is not a value" (215). it just made me smile.
my last comment is going to be about one of the alternatives, "Go Stealth." "Every outlaw, freak, or outsider dreams at one time or another of passing for normal, and not having to deal with the staring and the questions and the laughter and the harassment. Moments of stealth are moments free from all that. After spending a lot of time looking over your shoulder to see if you're being followed, there's nothing like the wonder and relief of looking at the world through a 'normal' pair of eyes" (187). i think it's really great that Bornstein included this, especially combined with "Run Away and Hide,"--Bornstein writes, "I've hidden out in the open pretending to be like everyone else. I still do that when I'm feeling fragile" (124).
it's nice that Bornstein realizes that sometimes, people just can't handle being strong all the time. and this gives permission to just sort of escape if need be. yes, it's great to be who you are, and a rebel, and an outlaw, and an outsider (i mean, if that's who you are), and it's empowering and i'm all for it. at the same time, sometimes i can only take so much. and like Bornstein wrote, sometimes when i'm feeling fragile, i just try to blend in and hide in plain sight. and then i'll feel bad for not being strong enough. and it's good to hear someone say that it's okay, that i'm not a bad person if i'm not some metaphorical pillar of queer/trans/genderqueer strength all the time.
anyway, my point is that i loved Hello, Cruel World. i don't think it's perfect, but i think it's got a lot of really good messages that some people really need to hear. and maybe you don't need/want to hear anything the book has to say, and that's fine. but it's great that this is here for people who do need those messages--messages that (as long as you're not mean to people) whoever you are is just fine. thank you, Kate Bornstein.
post-identity politics?
okay, not post identity.
how about post identity politics?
(From The Gender Workbook, pp. 67-68):
Pure identities (or identities that pass as pure) are valuable things...because there's a sense that someplace will always be home, a space with others who claim similar pure identities. And our identities are valuable to others. We become easier to deal with. Other people know who we are....This might be how identity politics does itself in. We need to get past this....Taking liberties with identity wreaks havoc with identity politics. It raises questions about the value of identity itself.
Song
www.youtube.com/watch
Here's a song. I think that Kate Bornstein is challenging us to ask "what if"... about ourselves and the world so that our perspective might change a bit. Here's a song by Lucinda Williams about asking "what if?"
Gender Workbook
I didn't particularly like My Gender Workbook. In the beginning I was doing the little exercises and reading all she had to say, but it got to the point where I didn't feel like doing the exercises anymore. It didn't make sense to me. I identify as a woman quite happily. I am proud of my female body, which I feel like many view as a bad thing. We are so into gender neatral pronouns and representations that it makes me feel like being proud of my gender is a bad thing. Regardless, I am proud to be a woman, but I don't actively think about how I am proud of that. I just kind of live how I feel like living. Some days I feel more feminine than others, so maybe I'll wear tighter jeans on that day. Some days I just want to be comfortable, so I throw on my jeans from the men's section, some boxer style underwear and a t-shirt. I don't think "alright, today I am going to have a womanly apperance" or "today I am going to bend the gender spectrum a little and look more masculine." I just live. And Kate Bornstein clearly enjoys living without a gender, and that's cool. But the whole gender workbook made too much of a deal that she was living outside of gender and we could too. Isn't the whole point of gender is that we just do what we feel? Why do we have to talk about it so dam much? I understand it is hard, and maybe that's why she wrote the book - to help us. But to me it seems unneccessary - I take into consideration that that might be because I don't want to live without a gender, so I compared it to something that I am. If there was a workbook that helped me be gay, I would have thought it was really pointless. There can't be exercises to help me live as a gay woman. I would have thought it was patronizing for someone to sit there and give me exercises to help me. I like that I had to figure it all out by myself without knowing one dam gay person to help me. It sucked - it was hard and I was confused, but I did it. And I feel like the gender spectrum should be the same way. I didn't read Kate Bornstein's book on suicide, but I had parts of it read to me and flipped through it. I feel like if I was a teenager who wanted to kill myself, I would have hated that book. So many of us were depressed teenagers, so if I read something that listed different things I could do instead of killing myself complete with little symbols of how hard it was going to be - I would have been pissed. I would have said that she didn't understand. The only way to get over depression is to do it yourself. The only way to be comfortable being gay is to do it yourself. So my thought is that the only way you can be comfotable in your gender is to do it yourself - workbook not needed.
"do it yourself"? hardly.
while i agree that we can't just rely on someone else to figure out gender stuff for us, i don't think that the right answer for everyone is just to "do it yourself." maybe in the sense that no one else can do it for us, but not in the sense that we need to do it alone.
i was actually trying to do that a few months ago, and it sucked. it didn't work, either. and then my friend reminded me that we, as humans, are interdependent creatures, and we get really messed up when we try to pretend otherwise. so, maybe the workbook isn't the best way to go about figuring out gender stuff--i haven't read the whole thing, so i'm not going to comment--but i don't think that that means that we should just do it by ourselves, alone.
also, about the whole "The only way to get over depression is to do it yourself." thing--i think that's wrong. again, maybe you just meant that ultimately, we're the only ones who can pull ourselves out of depression, which is probably true. but i think that at least the way you phrased it is problematic. the thing about depression is that it makes everything seem hopeless, like nothing's every going to get better. so it makes it pretty damn difficult to just get over depression by yourself if the voice in your head is telling you that nothing's ever going to get better.
on the other hand, i'm not entirely sure that Kate Bornstein wrote Hello, Cruel World specifically for people/teens who are really suicidal. it seems to me that it's also aimed at people who are stressed about their lives, feel like they can't handle their lives, feel like freaks/outlaws, feel alone. it's not just about trying to give people alternatives to killing themselves; it feels like it's also about helping people feel better about themselves. and maybe it's not for you, and that's fine, but i really liked Hello, Cruel World.
also, you wrote, "Isn't the whole point of gender is that we just do what we feel? Why do we have to talk about it so dam much?"--i think it's great that you can just do what you feel. and i think it's great that you identify as a woman quite happily, and you're proud to be a woman. wonderful. but for a lot of people, it's really really hard to just "do what we feel." it's really hard to know "what we feel." after internalizing twenty-one years of socialization to be a woman, it's really difficult sometimes to know what's "what i feel" and what's what i feel that i should feel, what i've been told that i feel, what's just internalized socialization. and also, we don't really talk about gender that much. sure, there's tons of girl-power books and stuff like that, but there's really not a lot of stuff for people questioning whether they even fit into the gender catories that society tries to impose on us. there's not a lot about what to do if you're not a woman or a man. there's not even much that includes that as an option. so maybe My Gender Workbook isn't perfect. maybe it's not helpful for you. maybe you don't want it or need it, and that's great for you. but for those of us who could use a book that legitimizes how we see ourselves, or how we might see ourselves, for those of us who might not exist for all that society represents us, even an imperfect book like My Gender Workbook is something important.
diy
I really do believe in doing it yourself. I think when it comes down to it, no matter what it is, you have to be at peace with it and be proud of it, alone. Maybe people who comfort you will make you feel more confident, but they just can't do it for you. So I am a big fan of doing things myself. Especially depression. You don't have to tell me what it's like - I get it, depression makes everything seem hopeless. But you get to a point so low that you just have to turn around and work back up. I firmly disagree with medication and therapy. Depression is cyclical, you think your live sucks so it does suck. You just have to nudge a little bit of positiveness to turn it all around - but no one else can nudge that postive thought into you. It's all up to you.
do it yourself?
I read some of Gender workbook as well and I actually didn't really like it that much either, I also felt it was kind of pointless and that the exercises weren't really doing anything for me. I think I agree that the workbook isn't needed, but I'm not sure about what you said about "do it yourself" is the only way. Maybe I'm not really clear on what you mean by that. I think that being comfortable in your gender, sexuality, body, and many other things has to be a personal accomplishment but that doesn't mean you have to do it all on your own. In high school about half of my friends were gay and then I lived with my lesbian best friend who exposed me to lots of gay culture and I grew up in a very liberal church (UU) and community that was very accepting and open minded about sexual orientation. This made exploring sexual orientation fairly easy for me, there was no fear, no threat, nothing to be scared of. It didn't even feel like a big deal to me, I wasn't much of an outlaw within my community, I felt very normal. I have learned a lot about myself through exposure and have become much more comfortable and confident with my gender and sexuality. I don't feel like this process of learning about myself was something I did on my own and I'm thankful for that. And it was the gay community and culture that made me start living my gender differently. Seeing other people comfortable with their diversity gave me a lot of confidence to see myself as a part of diversity, not uniformity. I think that if I didn't have the same friends, didn't grow up in the same place, I think that I would still be identifying as a straight female, and wouldn't feel comfortable as being seen as anything else. I owe a lot to the people who asked me what my sexual orientation was, who asked me what my gender was, who asked me who I was, because without them I would be much more insecure today.
I didn't like gender workbook very much but I did like Gender Outlaw because I felt like it was more exposure, it was like I was getting to know an individual. And being exposed to other people's perspectives makes me question my own, but having them directly question it doesn't seem to be as affective. Kate Bornstein is making me think a little bit more about my gender. I feel like the question that seems to be pushing me is "do I want to be comfortable with a female identity?" not "am I comfortable with it", and to think about how it might be dangerous to associate a gender to my body. I'm not sure how I feel about all of these things yet, but I'm glad that I'm thinking about them.
HOPEFULLY THIS WORKS!
Okay so I have this song called "We Shall be Free" and it's by Garth Brooks... i think the reason this song reminded of what we've been talking about in class ,was because it describes this breaking of the way of life as it is now. Although it is very narrowed in what keeps us in a rut as a society, it still makes an effort in making a change and i think we can all agree that that is what we would like like out of this class.
http://bb-cockerspaniels.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/gb.mp3
long week
My Gender Workbook has been so fun. I read Gender Outlaw this summer, so this was a nice hands-on approach to her more theoretical/memoir-ish take on Gender Outlaw.
Here's a song that caught my eye (actually one of my fave songs and thought it felt relevant...)
"Seneca Falls" by the Distillers
www.youtube.com/watch
I finished reading the My
I finished reading the My Gender Workbook and I found that this was a self-re-working piece of literature. A lot of the articles and novels I have read have challenged gender, sex and disability in an informative tone. It's been like listening to a lecture. Not that lectures are bad but what Kate does is force us not to rethink, but to think. To really think. I had this (insane) belief that I was the most gender neutral person in the world. I still think I'm doing fairly well. I have a friend at school who is a heterosexual male that perfers to dress like a businesswoman and the only thing that came to mind was that I couldn't look that good in a pencil skirt (and perhaps why the hell was everyone staring at him like that). But after reading, writing, enacting, quizzing (damn you Kate ;-)), I realized I have a lot more to do, a lot further to go, much more to think about.
Something that still remains a mystery to me is one of the questions she (ze) asked about whether we found wearing the underwear of the opposite sex gendered or transgendered. I just feel it's practical. Men's boxer briefs prevents the inevitable wedgie that come from female underwear.
A Song!
"Mother of Pearl" - Nellie McKay
www.youtube.com/watch
more songs- Kimya Dawson
Songs by Kimya Dawson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFvRe_Zk3VI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1wZefhpnkA
for some reason I can't make
for some reason I can't make these into links.
filtered vs. full
i switched you from "filtered" to "full" html, which allows the linking....
dunno why you'd been switched out of that mode, but now you're in business again!
some songs
Here are some songs that I thought of today during class...
www.youtube.com/watch --> "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds
www.youtube.com/watch --> "Hurt" by Johnny Cash (This is also one of my personal favorites, it's really powerful.)
say why?
i mean: what was your thought, connecting our discussion of visible and invisible disability w/ malvina and johnny?
Two other random (but relevant!) encounters this week...
The first with a colleague teaching a course in Behavioral Endocrinology, which turned up a website called Natural Attraction, "a science based company" that sells human pheromones, marketed both to gay men and to heterosexual men and women (where are the lesbians in this picture....?)
The second relevant event was a Meeting To Consider the Future of the South Carolina Episcopal Diocese. This caught my eye, first, because a relative of mine was quoted, speaking on behalf of the diocese. Particularly in the context of Kate's call to get beyond the binaries of either/or and us/them, in order to focus on "our own spirit of inclusiveness" (The Gender Workbook, p. 258), this denunciation of the "Gospel of Indiscriminate Inclusivity" is a strikingly troubling one.
saving the marriage
It would be interesting to desconstruct the narrative of the South Carolina Episcopal Diocese further, where Canon Kendall Harmon is calling for a partial withdrawal from the national church's governance. From the AP article:
“ Harmon likened the resolution to a wife in a troubled marriage moving to a room down the hall.
''The point is it's intended to save the marriage and she is still in the marriage and she is still in the house,'' he said. ''You're trying to do something that is inherently contradictory in order to be heard.''
My reading of this is that his use of metaphor indicates a worldview that involves over-sexualization. In the metaphor, his diocese is the wife and the larger, national Episcopal governance body is the husband, and his resolution declares that they won’t have sex while they are having disagreements in their marriage?!
over-sexualization in Maine
This theme is alive and kicking here in Maine as we prep for the big vote next week. The question we vote on is, "Do you want to reject the new law that let's same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?"
The "yes" voters fill the ad time on tv with "keep homosexual marriage out of our schools," and flash up the words hugging and kissing. Should I take from this that heterosexual marriage is not hugging and kissing? Does the question on the ballot even allude to changing curricula? (No) I don't recall taking a heterosexual marriage class in school. And no you can't call "those" films we saw in 5th grade - informative at any level.
The airwaves are filled with heterosexual couples and their children looking frightened. It reminds me of a skit by my favorite lesbian comic Kate Clinton in response to the "ex-gay" ads she saw in magazines...."Gosh, it can't be going well for straight people, they have to advertise now."
hugs and kisses from Maine,
Betsy