Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, originally published in 1994, remains one of the most radical and tenderly honest books about gender ever written. Its Japanese edition, titled Kakusareta Jendā (隠されたジェンダー), meaning Hidden Gender, delivers Bornstein’s voice to Japanese readers through a bold, defiant, and at times humorous interrogation of the binary gender system. Far from being a mere translation, this edition, introduced by cultural scholar and gender theorist Makiko Tsutsui, represents an act of cultural transposition, bringing Bornstein’s queer artistry into conversation with Japan’s own complex, layered understandings of gender and identity.
Bornstein is not just an author; she is a performance artist, a theorist, and a survivor of numerous cultural and personal traumas. Born in 1948 in North Dakota and assigned male at birth, she underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1986. But rather than settling into a comfortably recognizable womanhood, she stepped beyond the binary altogether. “I don’t call myself a woman, and I know I’m not a man,” she has said, a statement that underlies everything in Kakusareta Jendā. What emerges in the book is not a linear journey from male to female, but a spiraling, theatrical dance through and beyond categories, expectations, and imposed identities. Kakusareta Jendā is structured in seven parts, each one building on the last like acts in a play or layers of a performance. It begins with The Opening Act (始まり、始まり！), laying the groundwork of Bornstein’s early life and internal conflict with traditional masculinity.
This is not just autobiography but artistic self-sculpting: Bornstein takes the conventions of the memoir and blends them with theory, comedy, spoken word, and vaudeville. From there, Sorting the Seed (種を選り分ける) examines the binary system that dictates so much of society’s treatment of gender. The metaphor of seed-sorting evokes agriculture and artificial selection, highlighting how systems sort, discard, or cultivate people according to rigid criteria. Bornstein resists this sorting with everything she has, offering instead a new language and a new set of gestures, gender as play, as performance, as resistance.In Claiming Power (主張する力), Bornstein moves into full activist mode, dissecting the privileges embedded in masculinity and femininity, and laying bare the cruelty of the system that insists trans people perform "authenticity" in ways cis people never have to. There’s deep anger here, but also immense generosity. She doesn’t shame those who fall into these roles, she invites them to dream bigger.
The middle sections of the book (ジェンダーの探求 and 第三の場所を創る) deepen Bornstein’s theoretical engagement. These chapters are where the book turns fully philosophical, exploring what it means to inhabit a "third place", a location beyond man or woman, not in between, but outside. This is where Japanese readers may find profound resonance, as Japanese culture itself has historically included liminal gender identities (such as onnagata in Kabuki or the wakashū of Edo-period art), even while modern Japanese society remains deeply structured by gender norms.
Kate Bornstein’s writing is courageous because it does not settle. Her own language shifts: at times she uses "she/her" pronouns, at others "they/them." She rejects the idea that there is a final, correct version of gender identity. This flexibility and resistance to closure are mirrored in her later comments on aging and gender. In a 2021 podcast interview, she joked that her breasts now sag down to her waist, but what mattered was not the shape of her body, but her freedom from gender anxiety. “Gender became inconsequential to me,” she said, “while I was in quarantine and grappling with old age.”
That journey, from gender anxiety to gender irrelevance, is part of what makes Kakusareta Jendā such a radical work. In Japan, where the pressure to conform, to label, and to fit into social roles remains intense, Bornstein’s refusal to be pinned down is both disruptive and healing.
Her book dares to ask: What if you could build a gender that wasn’t about conformity or rebellion, but about joy?
The translator, Makiko Tsutsui, deserves special mention. A scholar of American cultural studies, she brings not only linguistic skill but deep empathy to the task. Translating Bornstein is not easy, her prose swings from poetic to punchy, theoretical to theatrical, often within a single page. Tsutsui’s work ensures that Kakusareta Jendā is not just a Japanese version of Gender Outlaw, it is a conversation between cultures, a weaving of voices, and an invitation to Japanese readers to step into a new kind of gender freedom.
At its core, Kakusareta Jendā is not just about gender. It’s about the act of living truthfully in a world that tries to silence inconvenient truths. Kate Bornstein has always been inconvenient, in the best way. Her writing reminds us that gender is not a problem to be solved, but a song to be sung. Loudly. Off-key. With glitter.
Bornstein never felt comfortable with the belief of the day that all trans women are "women trapped in men's bodies." They 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. Another obstacle was the fact that Bornstein was attracted to women. Bornstein now identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them and she/her.
Available via kinokuniya.co.jp
and Goodreads
Photo via Heroines of My Life
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