Kate Bornstein
Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Use American English Template:Infobox person Katherine Vandam Bornstein<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> is an American author, playwright, performance artist, actor, and gender theorist. As a transgender pioneer since the 1980s, Bornstein's reflections on sex and gender nonconformity have influenced various spheres of queer culture. SheTemplate:Efn has stated "I don't call myself a woman, Template:Em I know I'm not a man".Template:R Bornstein now identifies as non-binary,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and has also written personal accounts of having anorexia, surviving PTSD, and being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.Template:R
Early life and education
Bornstein grew up just outside of Asbury Park, New Jersey, in an upper middle-class Conservative Jewish family of Russian and Dutch descent.<ref name="LGBTJewishHeroes" /> Bornstein studied Theater Arts with John Emigh and Jim Barnhill at Brown University (Class of '69).Template:RTemplate:R
Scientology
Bornstein joined the Church of Scientology in 1970.Template:R She found herself drawn to Scientology because thetans are genderless beings.<ref name="motherjones" /> Bornstein eventually would serve on a ship with L. Ron Hubbard and eventually become a high-ranking lieutenant in the Sea Org.<ref name="motherjones">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> While serving in this position, she secretly bought porn magazines from Lee Brewster. She would also purchase women's clothes to wear while staying in hotels and later discard them.Template:R Bornstein later became disillusioned and formally left the movement in 1982. By doing so, she was deemed a suppressive person, which prevented her from contacting her daughter.<ref name="motherjones"/>
Career
Bornstein settled into the lesbian community in San Francisco, and wrote art reviews for the gay and lesbian paper The Bay Area Reporter.<ref name="Piechota2012">Template:Cite news</ref> Over the next few years, she began to identify as neither a man nor a woman.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2009, Bornstein's Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and Honorbook for the Stonewall Children's and Young Adult Literature.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Bornstein edited Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation in collaboration with S. Bear Bergman.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The anthology won Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle Awards in 2011.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Dead link</ref>
Bornstein is a major cultural icon, influencing the social and political representation of transgender identity. Aperture referred to her as a "gender outlaw."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Bornstein was featured in the reality television series I Am Cait.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Books
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- Template:Cite book — winner of a 1999 Firecracker Alternative Book Award<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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- Bornstein, Kate (2016). Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (Revised and Updated). New York: Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Template:ISBN.
- Bornstein, Kate; Sullivan, Caitlin (2025). Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run. New York: Generous Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Template:ISBN.
Theatre
Bornstein made their Broadway debut in July 2018 in the play Straight White Men.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She has since created several performance pieces, some of them one-person shows.Template:R In 1989, Bornstein created a theatre production in collaboration with Noreen Barnes, Hidden: A Gender, based on parallels between their own life and that of the intersex person Herculine Barbin,<ref name="LGBTJewishHeroes">Template:Cite web</ref> starring Bornstein and Justin Vivian Bond.
Bornstein has featured in The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, Hidden: A Gender, Strangers in Paradox, y2kate: gender virus 2000, and Hard Candy.Template:Citation needed
Personal life
Bornstein lives with partner Barbara Carrellas in New York City, with three cats, two dogs, and a turtle.<ref name="Piechota2012" />
Bornstein never felt comfortable with the belief of the day that all trans women are "women trapped in men's bodies".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She did not identify as a man, but the only other option was to be a woman, a reflection of the gender binary, which required people to identify according to only two available genders.Template:RTemplate:R She had sex reassignment surgery in 1986.Template:R
In August 2012, Bornstein was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had surgery which initially seemed successful, but in February 2013 it was found that the disease had returned. Laura Vogel, a friend of Bornstein's, launched a GoFundMe campaign on March 20 to help fund subsequent treatment.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In December 2015, Bornstein announced that they had been cancer-free for two years.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Speaking to the LGBTQ&A podcast in July 2021, Bornstein talked about how her view of gender evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic, "Gender became inconsequential to me while I was in quarantine and grappling with old age...This is where you really need to be letting go of shit. I'm letting go of the ability to be cute, in certain ways. I'm too old for that. My face is sagging, my boobs are sagging. Boy, oh boy. They're down to my waist and you let go of that as being necessary to your gender."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Notes
References
Further reading
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- Gentleman, Rye (2022). "Kate Bornstein" in Noriega and Schildcrout (eds.) 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, Routledge, pp. 26–29. ISBN 978-1032067964.
- Template:Cite news An Interview with Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman.
External links
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- Interview: Template:Cite web
- Interview: Template:Cite web
- Template:Cite web Lecture by Kate Bornstein
- 1948 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American artists
- 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century American Jews
- 20th-century American LGBTQ people
- 20th-century American novelists
- 21st-century American artists
- 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights
- 21st-century American Jews
- 21st-century American LGBTQ people
- 21st-century American novelists
- Academics from New Jersey
- Actresses from Monmouth County, New Jersey
- American former Scientologists
- American gender studies academics
- American LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights
- American LGBTQ novelists
- American LGBTQ rights activists
- LGBTQ American activists
- American activists with disabilities
- American non-binary artists
- American non-binary writers
- American people of Dutch-Jewish descent
- American people of Russian-Jewish descent
- American performance artists
- American transgender actresses
- American transgender artists
- American transgender women
- American transgender writers
- Brown University alumni
- Former Scientology officials
- Jewish American artists
- Jewish American dramatists and playwrights
- Jewish American non-fiction writers
- Lambda Literary Award winners
- LGBTQ people from New Jersey
- LGBTQ studies academics
- Memoirists from New Jersey
- Non-binary dramatists and playwrights
- Non-binary memoirists
- Non-binary novelists
- Novelists from New Jersey
- People from Neptune City, New Jersey
- People with borderline personality disorder
- Transgender dramatists and playwrights
- Transgender Jews
- Transgender memoirists
- Transgender non-binary people
- Transgender novelists
- People with post-traumatic stress disorder
- Transgender people with disabilities
- Writers from Monmouth County, New Jersey
- Non-binary Jews
- Jews from New Jersey