Latest Kate Bornstein Quotes from Interviews

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• Both bisexuality and transgender are fluid notions of identity, while lesbian and gay are fixed identities. Some people believe that means there should be two movements: LG and BT. But then what're ya gonna do about SM players? And intersexed folks who want their own I in the alphabet soup of sex and gender related politics?

  Kate Bornstein

  Sex, Believe, Mean

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• Sex work may be an illegal thing, but it's far from being a bad thing. Quite a few of us on the male-to-female side of the coin have done sex work. I've done it myself for a couple of years. It's a place we can make a living and have some fun doing it. It's a place we seem to fit in.

  Kate Bornstein

  Sex, Couple, Fun

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• Look, nearly everything in the culture says we're freaks. Doing sex work, we're desired; we can get rewarded for being what we've always wanted to be. What's so bad about that? My own notion is I wish sex work would be decriminalized (not legalized, please note the distinction) so that more trannies could get into the field if they wanted to and not get into trouble for it.

  Kate Bornstein

  Sex, Wish, Would Be

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• The real problem devolves around class lines once again: it's the street hormones that folks without insurance, or folks who are too young for prescriptions without parental okay, use. Sometimes those hormones can be pretty rough.

  Kate Bornstein

  Real, Class, Use

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• You can support trans-positive legislation, tranny artists, and the inclusion of trannies in your neighborhood, schools, place of worship, whatever. For the long term? Join or initiate some good legal battles against the puritanical laws that exist around sex and gender.

  Kate Bornstein

  Sex, School, Artist

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I know and know of more than a few MTF's (male-to-female trannies) who've developed strange cancers. Myself, I've got a nice little case of Chronic Lymphocitic Leukemia (CLL).

  Kate Bornstein

  Nice, Cancer, Littles

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Just across the ocean in, say Kenya or Tanzania, a two-gender system is vital for the survival of most of the folks who live there. Men do men's work, women do women's work, and so it all gets done and the jackals can't get into the hut and eat grandpa. So, the future of the transgender movement is like the future of all human rights movements: whatever the state of things in your area now, with some work it all gets a little bit better all the time, even if it is sometimes three steps ahead and two steps back.

  Kate Bornstein

  Ocean, Men, Two

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• My own take on the word "transgender" is that it's an umbrella term for anyone who breaks any rules, laws, guidelines or protocol of gender. So, to really be an ally, it's important that you recognize and embrace your own transgender nature. Really, I haven't met a single person who doesn't break some rule of gender. In other words, we will assimilate you. Resistance is futile.

  Kate Bornstein

  Law, Important, Allies

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• The transgender movement even divides itself up by gender, as many folks stick with their same trans-genders (female-to-male or male-to-female). Additionally, the movement gets strangely subdivided among, for example, male cross-dressers, sissy boys, butch women, femme dykes, drag kings, drag queens, transvestites, intersexed, transsexuals (post-op, pre-op, and non-op).

  Kate Bornstein

  Queens, Kings, Boys

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

• The whole transgender movement idea is happening in waves around the world. Some areas of the world are further along politically than others. The economy has a lot to do with that, as does moral or religious climate.

  Kate Bornstein

  Religious, Ideas, Climate

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The current transgender movement is composed of a great number of factions, divided by those old favorites of class, race, age, language, region, and nationality.

  Kate Bornstein

  Race, Class, Numbers

  Source: www.pbs.org

• When you're a Scientologist it's like the movie Goodfellas, where the gangsters hang out with only other gangsters. We only hung out with each other, so we knew we were saving the world.

  Kate Bornstein

  World, Saving, Gangsters

  "'A Queer and Pleasant Danger': Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor". Interview with Nicole Pasulka, www.motherjones.com. May 5, 2012.

• I honor anybody who wants to be a man and do the work of becoming a man. I honor anyone who mindfully becomes a woman. That's cool. But, I really don't get how there's only two choices. There's no two of anything else in the entire universe; why should there only be two genders? I don't get it.

  Kate Bornstein

  Men, Two, Choices

  "'A Queer and Pleasant Danger': Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor". Interview with Nicole Pasulka, www.motherjones.com. May 5, 2012.

• There are Easter eggs in every book I've ever written. I think in the first one I called Scientology "Diabology," but I was scared, so I didn't tell many people what it really meant.

  Kate Bornstein

  Easter, Book, Thinking

  "'A Queer and Pleasant Danger': Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor". Interview with Nicole Pasulka, www.motherjones.com. May 5, 2012.

• Growing up we were secular Jews, but what I got out of Judaism at that time in my life was questions. Everything was a question. "Dad, is there a heaven? Is there a hell?" You never could get an answer. That informed a lot of my reasons for getting into Scientology, because they had all the answers. They said I was not my body, not my mind. I don't have a soul; I am an immortal soul. I've lived many lives and I'll live endlessly into the future, and as an immortal soul I have no gender.

  Kate Bornstein

  Growing Up, Dad, Heaven

  "'A Queer and Pleasant Danger': Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor". Interview with Nicole Pasulka, www.motherjones.com. May 5, 2012.