Kate Bornstein Is A Queer and Pleasant Danger—this is her blog

The Great "Gender Outlaws TNG" Blog Tour

 I'm going out on tour, and I'm not leaving the comfort of my writing chair. You can come along too!

The reviews are coming in on Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation: one a day for the next nine days. Seal Press is the publisher of the new anthology. Their slogan is Groundbreaking Books, By Women, For Women. Well, they're stretching that slogan all out of shape. They came up with the fun idea to arrange for a tour of reviews from nine different corners of the feminist/trans/trans-friendly/and genderqueer blogosphere.

I've already had a chance to read the first posted review today. It's by Everett Maroon, and it's up on I Fry Mine in Butter. No puff journalism, this. It's a wonderful essay. I've posted a comment to the blog, and I hope to read and comment on each of the reviews as they're posted. 

(Oh! I'm enjoying this almost as much as I enjoyed working with S. Bear Bergman and Seal Press to put this anthology together in the first place!)

So, here's the rest of the schedule. Enjoy the perspectives!

• Tuesday, Sept 28 -  Rose Spotts posts on Twisted Peppermint.
• Wednesday, Sept 29 -  R. J. posts a comic review on Riot Nrrd Comics.
• Thursday, Sept 30  -  Jamie Ann Royce posts on Stuff Queer People Should Know
• Friday, Oct 1 – Hannah Royce posts on Walking the Labrynth

We take the weekend off, and continue the following Monday.

• Monday, Oct 4 – Zane McHattie posts on ED Recovery
• Tuesday, 10/5 – Nome posts on That’s What Ze Said
• Wednesday, 10/6 – Jac Stringer posts on MWgenderqueer

and we close our blogging tour of GO The Next Generation with...

• Thursday, 10/7 – Bevin Branlandingham posting on Queer Fat Femme Guide to Life

AND...

• Friday, 10/8 – Mr. Sinclair Sexsmith posting on SugarButch!

I'll be tweeting each stop on the tour as it goes up. So... enjoy the next couple of weeks of binary-blowing gendernalysis. And please do join in the conversation along your way with comments on each of the reviews, and right here if you like. I am SO all aquiver!

kiss kiss

Auntie K

Disappeared Sex Positive, Gender Bent Books On Amazon.com

Follow Breaking News on Twitter: #amazonfail

It's been called to my attention that it may not be possible to buy new copies of any of my books on Amazon.com. You can find Kindle editions for Hello, Cruel World and My Gender Workbook. Whoopee. And there's no record of my sales record there, either. Dang.

I'm not the only queer, sex positive, gender bent author to have gone missing.  

Thank you, Melissa Gira Grant at Sexerati, who's got the most up-to-date coverage of this weird, weird right wing news of literary censorship. 

Among the MIA (Missing In Amazon): Barbara Carrellas, Dossie Easton, S. Bear Bergman, Helen Boyd, Laura Antoniou, Candida Royale, Julia Serano, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Lawrence Schimmel. And those were just the first couple I searched for. Holy poop! 

Wasn't Bush voted out of office?? Who is putting this kind of pressure on Amazon.com? Whoever it is, they don't know how subversive and queer Judith Butler is. You can still buy her books on Amazon. But I wouldn't. I'd buy all my books elsewhere, until Amazon comes to it's senses.

I'm writing my agent and publishers to see what's up. In the meantime, you can buy my books through your local queer and sex positive bookstore. If you don't live near a queer or independent bookstore and need to buy online, do check out Powell's Books, a fabulous independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Or you can find them used at ABE Books.

Petitions and write-in campaigns have already begun. Check with your fave queer authors' blogs and websites and Twitter accounts for more updates. I'll post more when I know more. 

In the meantime, persevere. Enjoy your sex positive, genderbent theory and porn.

Frak Amazon.com.

Kate

This Is How I Remember Things

This past Christmas holiday, I visited my partner Barbara's family up in Middletown, RI. I've been going up there for Christmas for the past 12 years. This year, Barbara's cousin gave Barbara a rare photo of her family, gathered round for the wedding of her mom and dad. I told B's family I'd do my best to recover the picture. This is how the photo looked when I scanned it in.

I've been a PhotoShop enthusiast for many years. I've learned tricks and tips reading books by Scott Kelby, and attending his seminars. But I never sat down to recover a picture in as bad a shape as this one. There's scratches, missing faces, burnt out details. You can click on the photo to see it full size.

I went to work, adjusting contrasts, coaxing out details, sharpening blurry parts, removing scratches and splotches. Where the hole was too big, I had to fudge a face or two. In the parts of the photo that were almost completely grayed out, I had to invent new outfits for a couple of the gentlemen in the back row. After about a day's work, I ended up with this photo. I was even able to enlarge it a bit. You can click on it to see the full picture. It's not bad for a first whack at correcting an old photo.

I'm the last one left with many memories and stories about my brother, my father, and my mother. I'm 60 years old, so there's a LOT to remember and I tend to get fuzzy on details. I tend to tell what Mark Twain would call stretchers. But I've sworn to myself to make this new memoir I'm writing as accurate and as loving as I possibly can. So, how do I access the memories I alone possess? That worried me until I corrected this photo. See, I've long been a practicer of Cheri Huber's Zen koan: The way you do anything is the way you do everything. And I realized that the way I corrected this photo is the way I'm going to have to remember my mother, my father, and my brother.  

In writing this memoir, I'm going to be coaxing out details of my memory. I'll do my best to sharpen the blurry parts. If I have to fudge a face or two, I'm going to err on the side of love and the best in them. If I have to dress up any of the stories about people in order to fill in the holes of my memory, I'll do my best to make people look as good as I can most lovingly wish them to look. 

And that's how I'm going to remember enough to write this memoir.

Kiss Kiss

K

PS -- A really good resource for PhotoShop users is the National Association of Photoshop Users. I'm a member whenever I can afford it. The monthly magazine alone is great, plus there's a live chat room with PhotoShop users who've always been able to answer my questions about how to get things done. 

Road Silence Here

Hello. Wanted to let you know it just LOOKS like I'm outta touch. I'm on the road--Twin Cities, MN--no time to blog big, but I'm twittering daily from my phone. You can keep up if you're not already by clicking the li'l "Follow me" button to the left.

Four more days here in the land of my birth, then home to NYC before the next tour. So, no longish posts--but I do my best to keep my tweets fun!

kiss kiss

K

Seeing Beyond Red or Blue: The Value of A Transgender Perspective to a Successful US Presidency

All this talk about Trans for Obama has got me wondering: what is it that trannies can offer a guy who believes he's fully qualified to lead the free world? He says he wants to give us change we can believe in. Well, both Senators Obama and McCain are promising they'll change things for the better. They both say they're going to change this world into a better place for all of us. Change, change, change. Every other word in this furshlugginer campaign is change.

It's my opinion that neither Senator should fiddle around with any change until they learn a lot more about the mechanics of change... and precisely what it is about our culture that needs changing—like the either/or bully tactics of junior high that are playing themselves out in the US presidential campaign. It's time Americans change the way we see ourselves, far beyond Red or Blue. Trannies just may hold the key to accomplishing that. We know the principles of profound, complex change.

Gender Outlaws for Obama: the end... or is it just the beginning?

Yesterday was a such a pisser! We started the day at 105 contributors. At 12:24 this morning (EST), Trans-blogging for Obama Day broke through our target goal of 200 pro-Trans contributors to the Obama/Biden ticket. We raised over $6000 for Obama's campaign. AND, we accomplished this on a day that was not only the start of a Jewish High Holy Day, it was also the day that will go down in history as "Black Monday '08." Despite it all, we flourished. Wait... we're trannies—we do everything with a flourish!

In the future, when I'm asked how far the transgender community has come since my day, I'll point to these days as a great leap for trannies, and even a small step forward for the world we live in. At the level of national elections, we are invisibles no more.

Here's how the day played out...

Gender Outlaws for Obama

Today is Trans-Blogs for Obama Day. The Stonewall Democrats are sponsoring a cyber day on which the transgender community can publicly rally around Senator Obama. We can show him our support and our numbers on a full day of trans and ally fundraising for the good Senator from Illinois. Twenty years ago, I never envisioned a tranny community, much less a tranny community that could make itself heard on a national level.

When I'm out on tour, a question I'm most regularly asked is, "How far has the transgender movement come since your days, when you were transitioning?" I usually duck the question, because the answer isn't as simple as "great" or "awful." Over the last two decades, there have been some wonderful political and cultural advancements. Yet I'm pretty sure that I speak for the majority of trannies when I say that from our perspective, we could certainly use more change than what we've gotten over the last twenty years.

Here's what it was like twenty years ago...

Feast of Kate!

I just had the FUNNEST time speaking with Fausto Fernos and Marc Felion, those two FABULOUS guys from Chicago who run the podcast, FEAST OF FOOLS. And, well, it's up here in cyberspace for everyone to hear. Eeek!

So, point your magic browser and have a listen to Kate Bornstein on Feast of Fools.

xoxo

Kate

it's about you staying alive

Hello, Cruel World is my response to the incidents of September 11th, 2001; and to the terrifying government that grew up here in the name of national security. That government, and the oppressive culture it’s forwarding, is making life really difficult for a lot of sweet people in the world.

Today, on the 5th anniversary of that day, I’m dedicating the first page of my Hello, Cruel Blog as a safe, respectful forum in which readers of the book can speak, to heal, and to focus on making our freaky lives more livable.