Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Seal Press (2010), Edition: Reprint, 304 pages
Description
"In the fifteen years since the release of Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein's groundbreaking challenge to gender ideology, transgender narratives have made their way from the margins to the mainstream. Today's transpeople, genderqueers, and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being. Gender Outlaws, edited by the original gender outlaw, Bornstein, together with writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, collects and contextualizes the work of this generation's trans and genderqueer forward thinkers -- new voices from the stage, on the streets, in the workplace, in the bedroom, and on the pages and websites of the world's most respected news sources. Gender Outlaws includes essays, commentary, comic art, and conversation from a diverse group of trans-spectrum people who live and believe in barrier-breaking lives." -- Publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member lauriebrown54
In 1995, Kate Bornstein wrote Gender Outlaw. It was a book about her own M to F transition, and a treatise on gender. It helped a lot of trans people get through their lives. Now, 15 years later, she and co-author/editor Bergman have produced a collection of essays, comics and poems, all from
And that is one of the beauties of this book: it shows how members of the trans community have made their way through life; their problems, their solutions, the abuse they’ve endured, the joys and love they cherish. And it shows the incredible variety of genders that exist-a trans-man who gives birth, a ciswoman who performs as a drag queen, an intersex, people who do not consider themselves male or female and that general society has no pronouns for.
The problems that people in the trans community face are numerous, from getting medical care to legal standing to just using a public bathroom or going to the gym. I hope that this book gets a huge circulation and goes a long ways towards getting society to understand and accept trans people and make the changes that need to be made.
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members of the trans community. While the average person thinks of the trans community as made up of drag queens and people who surgically and hormonally transition from one set of genitals to the other, it’s not nearly as cut and dried as that. This book proves something I’ve believed for many years- that gender is not binary but a continuum, and that a person need not always occupy the same spot on that continuum, that they can, if society allows, dance up and down the scale. But society usually doesn’t allow. And that is one of the beauties of this book: it shows how members of the trans community have made their way through life; their problems, their solutions, the abuse they’ve endured, the joys and love they cherish. And it shows the incredible variety of genders that exist-a trans-man who gives birth, a ciswoman who performs as a drag queen, an intersex, people who do not consider themselves male or female and that general society has no pronouns for.
The problems that people in the trans community face are numerous, from getting medical care to legal standing to just using a public bathroom or going to the gym. I hope that this book gets a huge circulation and goes a long ways towards getting society to understand and accept trans people and make the changes that need to be made.
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LibraryThing member PhoenixTerran
I was incredibly excited when I discovered, completely by accident, the upcoming publication of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman, both of whom are transgender trailblazers and activists. Bornstein wrote Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of
Gender Outlaws collects fifty-five short works by fifty-seven creators, including Bornstein and Bergman. The contributions are roughly divided into five vaguely thematic groupings: Part One, "Do I look like an outlaw to you." Part Two, "Being reconfigured is not the same as being reimagined." Part Three, "...which is why I'm as cute as I happen to be." Part Four, "It might not be a picnic, but there's a great buffet." and Part Five, "And still we rise." Also included are acknowledgments and sections devoted to the individual contributors and editors. Each piece is rather short--none are over twenty pages long and most are only five or so pages with plenty that are even less.
Gender Outlaws contains some powerful stuff. Generally, I expect these sorts of collections to vary in quality from piece to piece, but every one of these was strong. Certainly some spoke more to me on a personal level than others, but I was able to take something away from each offering. It's difficult for me to choose a favorite (really, they all were fantastic), but probably the piece that stood out most for me was "trancension," a comic by Katie Diamond and Johnny Blazes. Some entries were amusing, some charming, some heartbreaking, some challenging, but they were all unique and worthwhile. Overall, the collection is very positive and forward thinking although it doesn't ignore the problems, issues, and challenges that trans and queer folk still face today. Happily, things have progressed since Bornstein wrote Gender Outlaw which is one of the reasons this collection was created.
What most impressed me about Gender Outlaws was the wide variety and diversity exhibited by the content and creators. More than three hundred people submitted work to be considered for the collection and Bornstein and Bergman have done a marvelous job in selecting and editing the pieces together into one book. I appreciated the different viewpoints and experiences that each contributor brought to Gender Outlaws; they didn't always agree on everything and I found that to be illuminating and valuable in and of itself. A whole spectrum of gender identity, sexualities, religions, nationalities, and more make up the list of creators. I also loved the range of work included in Gender Outlaws, everything from academic essays to creative nonfiction, poetry, transcripts, and comics. Regardless what form it takes, each entry is intensely personal and makes Gender Outlaws an absolutely fabulous collection.
Experiments in Reading
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Us in 1994 and the book made a huge impact on me when I read it a few years ago. I wasn't even aware that the collection Gender Outlaws was even in the works until I happened to spy its eye-catching cover on a Seal Press' list of books available for review. I requested a copy and was absolutely thrilled when it arrived in the mail. Released in 2010, Gender Outlaws was published sixteen years after Gender Outlaw, hence the book's subtitle, The Next Generation (occasionally referred to as "genderation" in the text.)Gender Outlaws collects fifty-five short works by fifty-seven creators, including Bornstein and Bergman. The contributions are roughly divided into five vaguely thematic groupings: Part One, "Do I look like an outlaw to you." Part Two, "Being reconfigured is not the same as being reimagined." Part Three, "...which is why I'm as cute as I happen to be." Part Four, "It might not be a picnic, but there's a great buffet." and Part Five, "And still we rise." Also included are acknowledgments and sections devoted to the individual contributors and editors. Each piece is rather short--none are over twenty pages long and most are only five or so pages with plenty that are even less.
Gender Outlaws contains some powerful stuff. Generally, I expect these sorts of collections to vary in quality from piece to piece, but every one of these was strong. Certainly some spoke more to me on a personal level than others, but I was able to take something away from each offering. It's difficult for me to choose a favorite (really, they all were fantastic), but probably the piece that stood out most for me was "trancension," a comic by Katie Diamond and Johnny Blazes. Some entries were amusing, some charming, some heartbreaking, some challenging, but they were all unique and worthwhile. Overall, the collection is very positive and forward thinking although it doesn't ignore the problems, issues, and challenges that trans and queer folk still face today. Happily, things have progressed since Bornstein wrote Gender Outlaw which is one of the reasons this collection was created.
What most impressed me about Gender Outlaws was the wide variety and diversity exhibited by the content and creators. More than three hundred people submitted work to be considered for the collection and Bornstein and Bergman have done a marvelous job in selecting and editing the pieces together into one book. I appreciated the different viewpoints and experiences that each contributor brought to Gender Outlaws; they didn't always agree on everything and I found that to be illuminating and valuable in and of itself. A whole spectrum of gender identity, sexualities, religions, nationalities, and more make up the list of creators. I also loved the range of work included in Gender Outlaws, everything from academic essays to creative nonfiction, poetry, transcripts, and comics. Regardless what form it takes, each entry is intensely personal and makes Gender Outlaws an absolutely fabulous collection.
Experiments in Reading
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LibraryThing member Rose999
I bought this book hoping to learn something about and I didn't, at all.
The essays were too disjointed to make much of a point, the writers (or most of them at least) didn't spend enough time trying to explain to the reader how it feels to be them, how they came to be, or much of anything, the
I would have liked a more in-depth look at... well,everything, since the book isn't deep at all, it kind of feels more like a onanistic collection for trans* people that anything else, compiled so they can feel identified and that's it, it didn't work for me though and it sure as hell won't work for anyone that is reading for information and not representation purposes.
The essays were too disjointed to make much of a point, the writers (or most of them at least) didn't spend enough time trying to explain to the reader how it feels to be them, how they came to be, or much of anything, the
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poetry pieces I think are totally uncalled for in a book that is supposed to be about experiences and not creative writing.I would have liked a more in-depth look at... well,everything, since the book isn't deep at all, it kind of feels more like a onanistic collection for trans* people that anything else, compiled so they can feel identified and that's it, it didn't work for me though and it sure as hell won't work for anyone that is reading for information and not representation purposes.
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LibraryThing member Sammelsurium
This book shares the perspectives of various "gender outlaws" who defy cultural or countercultural norms surrounding gender in the societies in which they live. It does a great job of portraying the diversity of the trans and genderqueer community and giving insight into different ways people can
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understand gender. The book remains topical, touching on a lot of issues that I still see discussed surrounding trans people now, online and in real life. Readers will benefit from a basic knowledge of the current American transgender rights landscape, including subjects like bathroom bills, trans-exclusionary radical feminism, and transgender fetishism. As a trans person, I believe there's a lot of insight here for trans and queer people as well as cis ones, particularly in the various essays disussing queer community norms and feminist approaches to queerness. Show Less
LibraryThing member caedocyon
I've read this maybe six and a half times by now or something?
LibraryThing member Griffin_Reads
This anthology of stories, poems, history, and opinions from queer people just goes to show how diverse the queer community is. Given that each of the contributions is by a different person, they all hit a little bit differently. Some of them I connected to rather well, but others I was
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underwhelmed by. There were some good points made throughout, but it did not feel as if it had a sense of direction or purpose behind placing the contributions where they were. Show Less
Awards
Lambda Literary Award (Finalist — 2011)
Publishing Triangle Awards (Finalist — 2011)
ALA Over the Rainbow Book List (Selection — Essays — 2011)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010
Physical description
304 p.; 5.5 inches
ISBN
1580053084 / 9781580053082
Similar in this library
My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely by Kate Bornstein
In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (Sexual Cultures) by J. Jack Halberstam
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Second Edition by Eric A. Stanley