Book Review: Gender Outlaw: Men, Women, and the Rest of Us
- Al Preston
- Jan 3
- 5 min read
By Al Preston
It’s the middle of the night. Mechanically, I’m placing boxes of pasta and pasta sauce on the shelf. I’m trying not to cry.
Playing in my earbud is the audiobook version of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of us. Kate Bornstein, the author, is the one narrating. She tells me with a sure voice and commanding tone about herself—myself—her life story, what gender means to her.
I’m trying not to wince as she describes how a penis is turned into a vagina, my own metaphorical penis aching (I long to know what the opposite would be like and when she tells me, I’m disappointed).
She tells me stories I understand only inherently, it’ll take a number of years before I can understand it consciously. I slow my stocking speed as she keeps telling me about gender, so I don’t walk out of that aisle and into the greater grocery store with red eyes and tears threatening to fall.
Finally. Someone else understands.
I’m not crazy.
I’ve read a considerable amount before and for The Holiday Pride. As a scholar, that’s my job; to read, process, and make new things from what others have written down before me. As a scholar for a topic that services also as a piece of my identity, sometimes I’ll read something I can’t help but be a little emotional about.
The first time I read Gender Outlaw, I was at a low point, at a complete loss of what to do with my life. I had this idea. A formless idea, that I wanted to tell the public about people like me, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where. It was only an idea. Listening to Bornstein talk about her wild and varied life, I thought, for perhaps the first time, that maybe it could be more than just an idea.
Bornstein is a transgender activist. She (her pronouns are she/they) has written a number of books about their experience. She’s written plays and performed as all genders. She had worked for Scientology and in sales. She worked for a phone sex company and now goes out into the world to speak about gender and society.
Gender Outlaw was first published in 1994 and was updated in 2013. I have read both versions.
Just as I will read works for scholarly purposes and find myself emotional, I can also sometimes not be unbiased or objective about a source. This is one of those sources. I have a powerful fondness for this book. At a low moment in my life, it was the push I needed to move forward again.
So, I won’t try to give you a half-hearted or skewed review. I’ll give you some facts and then answer some of the questions that Bornstein poses in Gender Outlaw for myself. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is questioning their gender and even people who question how anyone could question their gender.
This is not just about gender and the theories surrounding it, it’s also a memoir of Bornstein’s relationship with gender. She talks about how she isn’t a man—never even felt like one despite being raised as one. However, she isn’t a woman either—she was never taught how to be one. She, much like many transgender people, struggles with what gender even means.
Why do transgender people exist? Where do we fit into society? What even is gender?
Bornstein approaches these questions in the only way she knows how. If you read Gender Outlaw, be prepared for purposeful untraditional formatting. There are main body paragraphs but also asides from Bornstein’s mind or from the words of others. Some sections of words or thoughts are entirely to one side of the page or the other. She addresses this less traditional look as being a part of her transness. It has no negative effect on the meaning of her words, and it could be argued enhances them.
Bornstein also asks a lot of questions but provides few answers. She gives her own thoughts about the answers, but the aim is for the reader to ask themselves and find their own answers. I will do that now.
Much like Bornstein, I don’t know what it’s like to be a man or a woman. Entirely on accident, my parents didn’t raise me as a girl, despite that being the marker on my birth certificate. They didn’t raise me as a boy either. They raised Al. They loved Al.
When I went through a hero phase, specifically Superman, my mother made me a costume. It wasn’t Superman’s logo or even Supergirl’s. It was something new, something for me. I was Super Al.
I had toy cars and dinosaurs and Barbies and fake food and science kits and art supplies. I was Al. Who made up wild stories, pretended to cook, and could beat my older sister at chess. I was Al who was welcome to love art, history, and robotics. Who played the male lead during make believe and wore my clothes, not boy or girl clothes.
‘Al is a girl’ didn’t matter until I was away from home. Until the world demanded to know. I was gendered late in life because my parents never put any weight on it. We could be and do anything we wanted.
My head never fit my body. I was not a girl, I was Al, but Al had a body that didn’t match the body in my head. Aesthetically, I prefer the masculine look. Flat chest and square shoulders. Ties, vests, blazers, slacks, loafers.
Looking masculine makes me a man, so I am one. I feel better being addressed as a man, despite the fact that I don’t necessarily feel like one. I certainly don’t feel like a woman. I’d rather just be ‘Al’.
My hobbies would mark me a woman. Sewing and art, writing and cooking. Traditionally feminine pastimes. I have a romantic leaning for men (my wife defines herself as ‘just here’; she/her is just convenient for the rest of the world). All of this combined…why bother transitioning?
Something inherently bothers me to be a woman. I’ve read a considerable amount. There are theories that gender is a trauma thrusted upon us all. I wonder if being perceived as male is just how I cope with that trauma.
Just me—not what I am perceived to be. To be understood, not judged on sight. I’m not a man, I’m not a woman, but a strange amalgamation of the two, as everyone is.
I want to be Al. Who sews and builds. Who fixes computers and teaches history. Who wears suits and designs dresses. Who is happy and content with everything ‘Al’ is.
If all of this means I am identified as male, so be it. That doesn’t bother me. Yet, I wonder what ‘genderless’ might be like.
Comentários