Kate Bornstein - Olá Mundo Cruel!

2011, Interview, Kate Bornstein, Portuguese, USA,

"Olá Mundo Cruel!" is the Portuguese language edition of "Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws: 101 Alternatives to Teen Suicide" by Kate Bornstein.

"Celebrated transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein has, with more humor and spunk than any other, ushered us into a world of limitless possibility through a daring re-envisionment of the gender system as we know it. Here, Bornstein bravely and wittily shares personal and unorthodox methods of survival in an often cruel world. A one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello, Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, but alive. 

Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 101 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the highly controversial. Designed to encourage readers to give themselves permission to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings its reader on a self-validating journey, which forges wholly new paths toward a resounding decision to choose life. Tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy, Kate Bornstein is the radical role model, the affectionate best friend, and the guiding mentor all in one.

In 2017, Kate agreed to have an interview with me, and this is what she shared with me: "I was trying to live my life as a boy and as a man. I was always conscious of the fact that doing “boy” and “man” never felt natural to me. I had to watch boys and men to see how they did it. I practiced. Sometimes in the mirror. And gradually, I could perform “boy” and “man” easily and without much thought. But inside, there were always doubts.

Fast forward to six months after my SRS, I was conscious, every day, of the fact that doing “girl” and “woman” does not feel natural. I was watching girls and women to see how they did it. I practiced. Sometimes in the mirror. I wasn’t expressing myself. I was expressing myself - mind, body, and soul - as the boy, man, girl, woman that the culture expected me to be. I finally threw up my hands in despair and went into a deep depression. I guess I wasn’t a woman after all."

According to Wikipedia, Katherine Vandam Bornstein (born in 1948) is an American author, playwright, performance artist, actor, and gender theorist. In the 1980s, Bornstein started identifying herself as gender non-conforming and has stated "I don't call myself a woman, and I know I'm not a man" after having been assigned male at birth and undergoing mtf bottom surgery in 1986. 

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.

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Photo via Heroines of My Life