Long before the mainstream media began publicizing the epidemic queer teen suicides, Kate Bornstein was saving lives. She did it in 1994 when she published Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, and again in 2006 when she published Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws. Bornstein's work is perhaps the most widely cited and best-known in gender studies. But what is most remarkable and relatable about Bornstein is her often hilarious, sometimes painful, frankness in talking about how her own life informs her material.
She spoke candidly about her strategies for staying alive, her feelings about Transgender Day of Remembrance ( Nov. 20 ) and her own struggles to reconcile fame with a fluctuating self-esteem.
Windy City Times: You wrote Hello Cruel World four years ago, well before the media recently picked up on the epidemic of queer teen suicides. Why did you write the book when you did?
Kate Bornstein: The short answer is [ that ] we teach what we most need to learn. I mean, I'm a mess. And I wrote it in part for me. I believe in like, alternate time continuums. I think writing this book is now helping my younger self.
WCT: Some of the alternatives to suicide that you write about include self-harm, breaking the law and, my favorite, moisturizing. How did you come up with this list?
Kate Bornstein: There was an old beat poet and his name Tuli Kupferberg. ... He sold on the streets a book called "1001 ways to live without working." Complete anarchist. So I started joking. I was, like, "Ha ha. I'm going to make a list of 101 things to do rather than killing yourself!" I just wrote things down that I thought were better than suicide. And I started sharing it with people I thought I could trust ... and one day Crystal Yackaki … [ said ] , "You should make a book." She later became my editor.
WCT: Do you have a favorite thing on that list at the moment?
Kate Bornstein: Do I have a favorite thing on the list? Moisturizing would be the one. Yeah, that's the one I really need.
WCT: That's my favorite, too. I wanted to ask you about the "It Gets Better" project. I saw your "It Gets Better Video." And I was noticing a lot of these videos ask teens to wait for things to improve. What do you say to teens who can't afford to wait until things get better?
Kate Bornstein: I would tell them to run away from home. Get out of there. Do whatever you need to do to be you. If you have to live on the streets for a while, live on the streets. Do whatever you need to do to go on living.
WCT: You yourself are still dealing with many of the personal repercussions of coming out as a trans. Your daughter, as a Scientologist, rejects transness; your mother had a hard time dealing with your transition. But in the trans community, you're a bit of a rock star. Do you have a hard time reconciling fame in the community and your own personal reality?
Kate Bornstein: [ Expletive deleted ] yes! I feel like I am kind of useless. Like, I really, I haven't done enough. I don't deserve, you know, an hour of watching TV. ... Meeting me is like finding out your favorite TV actress or character or whoever has a screwed-up life and they're really in it. Like I said, I'm really, really a mess. I understand the place I hold in my own kind of subculture community. I get that. But I'm [ screwed ] up.
WCT: Kate, do you have plans for Transgender Day of Remembrance this year?
Kate Bornstein: What day is that?
WCT: Nov. 20
Kate Bornstein: Let me see here… Oh, that day I am not speaking. I'll be home. I'll probably be on my Twitter account that day. … Transgender Day of Remembrance is problematic because it's so concerned with death and despair. We should be celebrating. We should be celebrating because those who are gone whether by murder or their own hand are not here to.
WCT: What would you rather do to celebrate Trans Day of Remembrance?
Kate Bornstein: If I could, I would rent us all a big nightclub. We'd all have an orgy, and there would be a fashion show and we would be our queer fabulous selves!
