In the Life: Interview with Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg [unedited footage]

[Host] So...uh... transgender 101. My first question is, what does this term "transgender" refer to? What is transgender? [Kate Bornstein] Go ahead. [Leslie Feinberg] You go ahead. [Bornstein] You go first. [Feinberg] No, you go ahead [Laughter]. [Feinberg] Inspired by you. [Bornstein] Oh God, alright. Well...uhm... for me "transgender" means... "transgressively gendered", that is, any kind of transgression against the mores and codes that would make up "gender" in the culture. That can be anything from having feelings that, "Well this gender I'm in right now isn't right." It can have...it can mean something like, "Well, I'm a woman... but I don't want to be, you know, barefoot and pregnant in my husband's kitchen all the time." It can mean... uhm... it can even mean, because in this culture, there's this big rule that says, "Real men...love women, real women love men." That's a gendered rule. So anyone who's transgressing that rule- someone, a woman who loves women, a man who loves men- is transgressing a gender rule, is in fact transgender. Transgender is just a big 'ol umbrella term that includes just about everyone I know. [Host] Leslie... [Leslie Feinberg] Well, I think, for me I'm watching the... [Crew requests Feinberg to pause due to technical issues]. [Feinberg] I think for me I'm watching the term evolve and this is what happens when... movements begin to coalesce is that language get hammered out and forged and its meanings change quickly. I saw this happen when the word "gay" was first raised. You know some of my friends said, "Gay? I'm not happy about my situation. I'll never use that word. You know no one will ever..." they all offered their own word and of course I can't remember a single one of them. So these ideas of what these umbrellas mean get hammered out in a collective way. Right now, I think, that there's efforts to forge the largest movement possible of people who are who have crossed the boundaries of sex or gender assumptions that you're assigned at birth. Whether that be transsexual women and men, or masculine women and feminine men, or bearded women who allow their beards to grow, or women weightlifters who can't use the women's bathroom because they've been pumping iron. It can mean everyone who doesn't fit that "Ozzie and Harriet" paradigm of sex and gender. [Bornstein] Whereas Leslie and I do fit the "Ozzie and Harriet" paradigm of gender. [Feinberg] I'm Ozzie and she's Harriet. [Bornstein] Exactly. [Feinberg] You know Helms (?) isn't so happy about that [Bornstein] Not very happy at all. [Feinberg] He just doesn't recognize our potential nuclear family. We do glow in the dark. [Bornsetin] We do. [Feinberg] Yeah. [Host] Uh...some, some of the words you have written.. "He/She", Butch/woman... [Crew requests Host to pause due to technical issues]. [Host] What are some of the...the..the...the terms that would, that would be included in this umbrella? There's many. [Feinberg] Well certainly within the lesbian, gay, bi communities there's a history of transgendeedr expression which has been at the forefront of helping to create the modern liberation movement. And I would say that people who were referred to as "drag queens", "shemales", "female impersonators", "drag kings", "diesel dykes", "butches" etc. Nowadays we think of them sometimes as just being synonymous with a certain kind of sexuality but in fact there's a lot of butch women who sleep with other butches or who are bisexual and the same thing is true with feminine men. But these are currents of our community who have been visible, who had no closets to be in before there was a movement, who have been visible and we've been on the front lines and it was not an accident that it was a transgender and transsexual, lesbian, gay and bi people who are on the front lines of the Stonewall Rebellion. [Bornstein] And continuing that I would say that even outside the lesbian and gay communities uhm... there are people who are intersexed- have anomalous genitalia, anomalous reproductive organs, anomalous bodies, anomalous chromosomes, anomalous hormones... uhm... there are heterosexual cross-dressers going both ways. Anybody, anybody who messes around with gender- female impersonators as a wonderful tradition going all the way back and beyond Shakespeare, for example. Not all of those actors were, you know, "gay blades" or drag queens. That, that was their job. They played the women's parts. This, this just happens. It's part of the culture. It's always been part of the culture. We've been the part that's been swept under the carpet and now we're coming out and we're saying, "No more." [Feinberg] It's interesting you mentioned theater... [Bornstein] Yeah. [Feinberg] I was just...had been reading something by Goethe. You know, I had always been taught, "All these guys who in the theater who played women's roles, you know, don't blame them for what they did on stage. You know, it was just the part that they were playing." But one of the things Goethe was writing about was how well-suited the actors appeared to be for their female roles. [Bornstein] Really? [Feinberg] You know and you could picture Jaye Davidson in "The Crying Game", you know, back playing...That's right. [Bornstein] Laughs. [Feinberg] Where did people like us go to find any measure... you know, access to work, housing and social acceptability? [Bornstein] Where do we go to now? [Feinberg] One of the places... right? [Bornstein] Right, were do we go now? And that's been that's been a big issue of the transgender community. That's why I love your work "Transgender Warriors." [Feinberg] Well you're on the stage... [Bornstein] You address that? [Feinberg] And people can come and be in the audience and suddenly find themselves in space that's been liberated for that evening... you know? We have a mutual respect for each others work. [Bornstein] We do. [Host] I can tell you don't like each other at all. [Bornstein] No! [Feinberg] We love each other. [Bornstein laughs]. [Bornstein] Deeply. [Host] You mentioned a book, I'll start with you Kate, "Gender Outlaw". What is an outlaw? Why that title? What inspired you? [Feinberg laughs] [Feinberg] You go Kate! [Bornstein] "Gender Outlaw"...uhm... I don't know...I came up with the term because I needed a sexy title for the book. But I've always felt like an outlaw. I think anybody who is "other" knows what outlaw is. Probably anybody, you know, watching the show knows what an outlaw is. You're breaking the law. You're breaking the laws of what people say are the laws of Nature. You know and what Nature? You know don't play with Mother Nature, you know. Yeah, let's play with Mother Nature. What is Mother Nature there but to play with? So yeah, I'm a gender outlaw. I break the laws of Nature and the laws of Nature as regards to gender as often...as frequently as I can. [Feinberg] And as a concrete experience of being an outlaw too- when in order to get a driver's license, a passport a bank account, you know credit cards or whatever...you have to check one of two boxes, "M" or "F". Now, does that mean male...female...man...woman... masculine...feminine? I mean, the people who made the boxes up don't really specify but for those of us who will never neatly fit into one or the other... If I put down female...my birth sex appears to be at odds with my gender expression and I'm in trouble every time I show that piece of ID if I even get it. If I put down...check off the "M" box I'm subject to state and federal penalties, I can be in prison, fined or just find myself in a hella fide situation with passport agents, you know, no rights. Or a state trooper in the middle of the highway at night, you know, over a moving violation [Bornstein] See Leslie and I break different kinds of laws. I'm legally a woman, alright. I went through this whole major gender change. I had my birth certificate changed. I'm legally a woman. I don't call myself a woman. I don't believe I am a woman. Doesn't work for me. But on the books I am and I can travel. I can do the passport number. The way I look matches up with what's now on my birth certificate, what's on my passport. Whereas, how do you define yourself? Very differently. [Feinberg] Yeah and what I want to know is if you've got a photo on the ID, why the hell do you have to have an "M" or and "F"? I mean you hold it up and say, "See this picture? See me? Yep, that's me." That's a positive identification. You know, when I was a kid, I was told I had to put race down on documents. It was mandatory- the government just had to know what race you were in order to deal with you. Well one of the dismantling's of the Jim Crow Laws, or the worst of them anyway during the Civil Rights Movement, was to remove that. Well, you're not supposed to be able to discriminate based on whether somebody's male or female and, of course, there's no... there's nothing in between to show that whole spectrum, that whole anatomical spectrum of inter-sexuality. So why do we have to have them? Why can't you have identification papers that have current photos that reflect the changes that people go through in their life? [Bornstein] And even more insidious than that is the use of pronouns. You know you've got "he"," she" and "it." [Feinberg] She has a good point here. [Bornstein] You know, "it" is very demeaning. It's a demeaning... it's come to be a demeaning thing about-"What's that? It. Look at it over there." It's a demeaning thing. But in the same way that the Jim Crow Laws uhm... were taken off the books and we don't have to answer "What race are you?" Well...when, when the Women's Movement in the '60s came along and said, "No, we don't want to be "miss" or "misses." We're going to define ourselves as "Ms', which means, "No, you don't know what my relationship is to some man...if I have any. [Feinberg] That's right. You don't need to know and I don't need to tell you and it doesn't need to be part of my identification." Why should "he" or "she" be part of our identification? So there are a couple of pronouns now-Minnie Bruce Pratt... uses I pronounce it "she/he". [Feinberg] We pronounce it "s/he." [Bornstein] "S/he?" Oh that is beautiful. That's so pretty. I like that better, "s" slash "h" "e." In a recent book I wrote with Caitlin Sullivan, "Nearly Roadkill", we use "z"..."z" e"" which is very common on the internet. And "hir"- "h" "i" "r". "Ze sat down at hir computer and turned it on." Why do we have to know whether that was a man or a woman or neither? [Feinberg] And how many assumptions you bring to it the minute you hear "He sat down to his computer." "Oh, he's doing real work." [Bornstein] Yeah. [Feinberg] Or "She sat down to her computer, she must be keeping a computer diary", you know... [Bornstein] Right or helping her kids do things, paint by numbers or something. [Feinberg] When really if what you know is that this human being sat down to work you think, "What was that person creating?" [Bornstein] Yeah. [Feinberg] You know, who is that person? [Host] Your on the subject actually of the Internet, I was going to ask that later... how, how much has the Internet uhm... [Bornstein sighs]. sort of fueled this movement? Has that played a major role? [Feinberg] Take it away. [Bornstein] I'll start, I'll start with this. Yes "Cyber- queen." The Transgender Movement, if we can loosely call it that...I like Leslie's term, "A Coalition...Trans Coalition of Movements is the first Civil Rights Movement to grow up in cyberspace. And I love that because the nature of cyberspace- "boundary-less", "more-less", "value-less" reflects a transgender experience which is "boundary-less." And so the actual medium reflects the identity, it's just free floating. And in cyberspace uhm... a lot of what are called "offline values", "real-time values"- stuff that doesn't happen in cyberspace- show up very, very sharply in cyberspace. The first question people ask, "Are y'all male or female? 'M' or 'F', they always ask." It's become a word-"MorF"..."M" "O" "R" "F". Meaning, you know, are you male or are you female? And my answer is, "What would you like me to be tonight, honey?" [Feinberg chuckles]. [Feinberg] And I think it's not only an experience for the trans communities but for everyone who gets into cyberspace. You suddenly have a "body-less", voiceless communication. The timbre of your voice, the shape of your body no longer predetermines interactions or assumptions people are going to lay on you. So you have to ask yourself, "Who am I? What name do I want to use in cyberspace? And who is that person?" And if I'm listening to someone else I have to really listen to them because I can't see them and make judgments about them. [Bornstein] It's a great rehearsal space for...life and playing with any identity you want to be and let's forget gender, any identity you want to be. [Host] That's fascinating. I want to go back so that I know that I have this.... you also, you just published a book "Transgender Warrior." [Feinberg] Yes. [Host] What inspired you to write, write that book. I just finished it. It was years and years and years and years in the making. [Feinberg] Yes. [Feinberg chuckles]. [Host] What single event inspired you is probably not the right question but...? [Feinberg] I would say the "Transgender Warriors" is the book that I've had to write my entire life because every time someone said to me, "I just don't get what you are. You know, well, maybe people don't have a right to beat you up or fire you or not hire you in the first place... but it's just not natural." Uhm... every time I sputtered this was what I wanted to be saying... is that every single culture on this planet, every society, every continent- including the North Pole- has always had a range of gender expressions no matter how gender was expressed. And that the oldest, oldest written and oral traditions show us that sex change was once a very sacred path in ancient times and inter-sexuality can be found as part of the Creation stories everywhere of all peoples. But we haven't always been reviled and hunted and hated. That there was a beginning to that and therefore there can be an end to it and we don't have to accept it that bigotry- any form of bigotry or racism- is just a product of human nature that we just have to accept because well, "You can't, what can you do, you know?" But I wrote "Stone Butch Blues" as a novel first with the intention of writing "Transgender Warriors" as my kind of one-two punch on transgender because I felt that it was one thing to reach out to people's thinking, "Say, look at all this information. Look at all these photos. Let it shake up your thinking." But if people hadn't thought about it at all then I wanted to take them with the novel through the life and experiences of someone who is treated completely differently based on whether they're perceived as a masculine woman, as a feminine man, as an androgynous person... and that was "Stone Butch Blues." And from there "Transgender Warriors" had started out subtitled this year as "Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul" but I've updated and written a new afterward for the paperback coming out this spring. Re-subtitling it "Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman" to reflect a very real struggle that's been treated like a circus in the media. A very racist transphobic circus, but in fact has been a very genuine struggle for the dignity of one of the greatest NBA rebounders in history. [Host] Explain Dennis Rodman. [Feinberg] Dennis Rodman is a cross-dressing National Basketball Association superstar and when he went to his book signing in complete drag and the book, in fact, talked about how early he had begun cross-dressing... role playing...that's not a good word but... cross-dressing, let's say, somebody else's role and it's my identity. It's a loaded word... but, you know, people said, "Oh, it was a publicity stunt. You know, Howard Stern did it." Well, you know, to compare an African-American basketball player who's been cross-dressing his whole life with a racist... really a bigot like Howard Stern who whether or not he's privately a cross-dresser... conducts it same mocking sort of tone to cross-dressing in public as he does all his anti-gay, homophobic...you know anti-woman diatribe is, is... trying to reduce the courage of Dennis Rodman coming out to being a kind of a joke like the... this rich men's club that they hold every year, The Bohemian Grove, where you know the presidents and, and the corporate CEO's, you know, they put on half coconut shells and wigs and they prance around. That's not drag, you know, that's as anti-drag as it is misogynist. Well, so is Howard Stern's expression publicly and Dennis Rodman's coming out as a cross-dresser took as much courage off the court as he shows on the court. And the youth in my neighborhood they have jackets with his name on it. They wear his number proudly and a lot of them have even dyed their hair is color, you know. He's given great freedom to youths growing up to express themself and say, you know, "And I could change NBA history too", you know, "I could make a defensive player make the game come to life." [Bornstein] It's kind of like what Martina Navratilova as such a mega sports star did for dykes in general Dennis Rodman is doing for transgendered people in general and... very, very much loved and cherished. [Feinberg] Such a manly sport. [Bornstein] Yes! [Bornstein laughs]. [Feinberg] Bare knuckle ball with painted nails. [Bornstein] Yep. [Host] Uhm...actually while we are on this... uhm... Brandon Teena. What, what are some of the examples of people have heard? Tell me about the violence against transgendered...people. [Bornstein and Feinberg sigh]. Sorry. [Bornstein] Brandon Teena uhm... chose to, was was born Teena Brandon and chose to live as a man in a small town in Nebraska and uhm... moved to this small town as a man, lived as a man, was in all... for all intents and purposes... male, a guy- Brandon Teena. Was discovered by a few people to have what are traditionally known as female genitalia and was summarily raped. He want to report this to the police who laughed at him. Said, "You're kidding get out of here." Uhm... he went to report this despite warnings from his rapist that if he did they would kill him. It took a lot of courage on his part. Uhm... after his rapists found out that he had reported them, they went back three days later. During which three days the police, the local police did nothing... nothing to protect him- to stake out the area, to question the rapist. Nothing, in three days. And they cold-bloodedly raped him, his girlfriend...murdered the two of them and a house guest that they had. Look...look, you know, we can talk about the violence and we can say, "poor us." It happens to anybody whose "other"- it happens to most...gay men, most lesbians once people find out. So I, I, I choose not to dwell on that. I think we need to keep it up there along with the same kind of violence that's perpetrated in the name of homophobia, racism, ageism...you name it. I mean, you get picked on if you're not straight, white, heterosexual, fundamentalist Christian, conservative, uhm... person with a penis, you know. You get picked on and you get picked on to lots of...women for goodness sake! Over 50% of the world's population get picked on more than anybody else. And I'm saying picked on, I don't mean to be demeaning, I mean...it's brutal, its violent. That's what we share. That's where we're trying to say, "Look same things happening. Don't you recognize it. Don't you recognize it, please." [Feinberg] Yeah, I... [Host] Oh, hold on. [Feinberg] Well, I think that's the point is that people don't know the violence is going on and they don't know the toll that it takes in shaping our lives. Every time someone stares at me angrily and nudges their friends or throws a beer can out the window, every time somebody shouts a slur... [Crew member cellphone rings]. [Crew member] Sorry about that. [Host] That's okay. You going to turn that off? [Crew member] Yeah. [Host] Great.We still rolling? Okay. Sorry. [Feinberg] Should I pick up from...? [Host] Yeah, why don't you pick up. [Feinberg] Is that, that's the point...is that people don't know that this violence is taking place. They don't know that it shapes our lives that every time someone shouts a slur at us, throws a beer can out the window, glares in anger and nudges their friends, that you live with the tension of knowing how quickly it can escalate into a life-threatening situation. And as a result when we hear that Brandon Teena whose crime was that he was living in the sex that was home to him in Nebraska was during, while in police custody for a minor infraction, discovered to have been born female that the police "outed" him to this town of a thousand. They put his birth name in the newspaper and then he was kidnapped and gang-raped and later murdered with two other human beings. And we've got to be able to organize and ask what was the role of instigating the violence against him in the first place wouldn't he be alive and well today if the police hadn't "outed" him? What was the crime? And the same thing with Marsha Johnson in this city, in New York City, Marsha P. Johnson. The "P" in her middle name stood for "Pay It No Mind." I mean we all came of age under her tutelage in a sense at 4:00 A.M. on Christopher Street. She was one of... she was an African-American drag queen combatant at the Stonewall Rebellion that was the shot heard around the world that help shaped this modern movement. And when her body was found floating in the Hudson River just a week or so after Pride, the police conducted an investigation that consisted of two phone calls and they said, "Oh, she killed herself." Well, we know about these two human beings and how valuable their lives are that were lost because there was organizing around it. Because the women's movement, the lesbian/gay/bi communities, the trans communities were angry. They put up posters, they wrote articles, they wrote letters and when we can say this violence is taking place and show that it's something that has to be fought right along with the kind of racist and sexist violence that's taking place on the streets. Then we can do something about stopping it and call for allies. And say, "Look I'll be on the front lines with you when it's violence that's being directed at you. Now our lives are on the line. Will you come and stand with us?" [Bornstein] I would want to just say one one thing on that and that's when the sheriff's department "outed" Brandon... I mean, I wouldn't say that the "outing" itself or that, even the that, that act of, "Hey, look at this is. This is a woman." Or whatever they wanted to call him. Isn't...the bottom line, what we have to look at it is, "So what, so what that this person has different genitalia." Why isn't the world up to a point where it can say, "Oh cool. What's your big deal sheriff? Get a life." [Feinberg] Well, I think that when a sheriff said about Brandon Teena to the media, "As far as I'm concerned you can call it...it." [Bornstein] Yeah. [Feinberg] In a town of a thousand you "out" somebody... and...and we don't even know what the role might have been further if the police in that community in terms of whipping up or denying protection for Brandon Teena. Coming out after the murder a week later and saying, "We don't know of any motive for this crime." This has got to be investigated as a role in the violence. I mean, we know from the bar raids what happens when the police set you up, you know. It's like putting you in general population and telling everybody, you know, who you are and then saying, "Well we weren't responsible for the gang rape, you know. We just put you in general population and told everybody you were differently gendered. [Bornstein] I, I agree with you. I totally agree with you and I see that as, you know, a symptom of something a little bit deeper- that we haven't been able to get our identities as complete human beings. Me, you know, neither male nor female. With a male, you know, a male past, you know...looking somewhat female these days and uhm... why isn't that just acceptable. Yes, the police right now the way they work it are... fanning the flames of anger, violence, hatred. Yes...but I think there's still another step to go and that would come to full acceptance on everybody's part of... you know, they're own the mix and blurs of gender..that's all. [Feinberg] That's what organizing against the violence is doing. [Bornstein] Yep. [Feinberg] Making people say, "This is a human life that's been lost, you know. This is a voice that's been silenced forever... and that is a bell the tolls for everyone." [Host] What are...what are some of the experiences that you've both have had? I mean...you obviously felt this first hand as well. [Feinberg] From the time, I'm not safe from the time I leave my house in the morning until the time I lock my door at night. Every single ride on the subway, every walk down the street...my wife, Minnie Bruce Pratt, calls it "the wave effect." You know, when there's people on the street they begin staring. They won't stop staring until we register their rage. It continues down to the next group of people who begin the staring and it begins to escalate at certain points. It percolates during the day and sometimes it breaks out into fights or...or worse. But it's constant. It's omnipresent. There's not a single place that I go to that feels like liberated turf except my own home practically. [Bornstein] I've been held at knife point a couple of times... uhm... and there are some days when I just don't even want to walk out of the house. Some days when it's just easier to sit in your pajamas and do the work, do the writing in the house. Fortunately through the work of a lot of activists... Transsexual Menace... to, to mention one. The embracing of the transgender community to degree by small degree by the larger and earlier and more rooted lesbian and gay communities, is helping. It's helping a great deal. But... you just don't want to be a freak do 'ya? And that's, that's what happens. So finally, I've just said, "You know, the hell with it." I'm dressing wild and I'm six foot tall and I'm strutting and... [Bornstein laughs]. uh... sometimes, sometimes it just takes so...much...energy. [Feinberg] Hmm... [Feinberg] Quentin Crisp said, told me in the '20s and '30s he was walking down Piccadilly and some, you know, somebody comes up nose to nose and says, "Just who do you think you are?" Quentin says, "Oh, do you have to be someone to walk in Piccadilly?" [Bornstein laughs]. That's really the feeling is they, "Who do you think you are being in this world?" [Bornstein] Yeah. [Feinberg] And we have to say every minute of every day, "We have a right to be in this world. We have a right to live." [Host] Why... [Bornstein] Can I add one more thing on this? [Host] Oh, please. [Bornstein] You know, like, I just want to say again...it's not simply transsexuals, drag queens, drag kings, masculine women or feminine men who get this kind of treatment. If anyone perceives you as "other" in any way, you're going to get that hatred. I mean again I just want to make it very, very clear that I don't think that "Oh, poor put upon me because I'm changing my gender that, you know, you have to feel sorry for me." Anybody...and I think we have to look at what's holding that- white middle-class, heterosexual, conservative Christian people with penis- thing up at the top of this ladder that we're going to call gender and what's making us all "other." That's what I think we need to start questioning. [Feinberg] That's hopefully what oppression does, is to wake you up. [Bornstein] Yeah. [Feinberg] You know, your hair's on fire. You go to wake up and figure out what's going on and, and see your relationship to other people who are oppressed in society and feel a kinship or a solidarity that's not based on a identical experience but an identical, intertwined goal. I mean we're not gonna...one of us is not gonna be free until all of us are, period. [Bornstein] Yep. [Host] I want to ask specifically...what...your basically saying... what are the connections between the gay and lesbian liberation movement? And the transgender liberation movement? What are the connections between the movements? What are the significant differences? I mean...there's this... should the TB with the LGB and there's the.. [Feinberg] You bet. [Host]...with the L and G, you know, so... [Host] How do you react to that? I mean, what are the connections and differences? [Bornstein] Daddy? [Feinberg] Well, Kate...okay, mom. Well, Kate and I are a couple of the connections. I mean, we are part of two huge overlapping populations- the drag queens at Stonewall and the transsexuals and the drag kings. If you said now... are you fighting back against the police brutality because you're gay, because you're lesbian, because you're drag queen, because you're Black, Latina because you're homeless, because you're youth... people were fighting back through united identities that were complex and they show that overlap of these two populations. Drag queens... uh... transsexual women and men who are gay lesbian or bisexual... inter-sexual people, there's so many people whose sexualities overlap in these two populations. But aside from that those who would like to see us dead, those who are organizing not only against our civil rights but our right to live, to work to have housing, to have our relationships respected, to have children... see us as queer with a capital "Q" and we are taking that war that's being directed against us and we are organizing the largest possible response and that LGBT represent huge open doors for populations whose, I think, liberation is inextricably bound. I mean, I can remember in New York City, this was before bisexual inclusion, when there was a civil rights bill before the City Council, the New York Times would run this editorial they'd say, "What are these people asking for? Men in high heels and dresses to be firefighters?" Well, how we going to build a strong lesbian, gay, bi communities by saying, "No, no we don't mean those people over there. We're not all like that." We got to be able to say, "Any cross-dresser would know to wear sensible shoes on a job like that. You're trying to divide us. It's job discrimination. We won't stand for it." The lesbian, gay, bi communities have a tremendous stake in being able to stand up against "Transphobia" and "Genderphobia" and all trans people are perceived as being gay. I mean, it doesn't matter who your partner is, what your sexuality is, how complicated... when you're surrounded by bashers, you're queer and that becomes a frontline to fight back on. [Bornstein] I like that, you know, you got L, B, G, T...whatever. I like "Lesba-Gators". I mean, you know, like that...that kind of says it all with the trans in the end there. But I think we are a very real thorn in the side of the current, as it is, lesbian and gay movement if there is such a thing anymore. I think there are strong elements within the lesbian and gay communities in different movements. But I think we're definitely a thorn in the side- we're a challenge. For someone to love me, what if...what if a lesbian loves me? Well, I'm not a woman. What does that make that lesbian? What if a gay man thinks I'm attractive? What does that make him? And what if the gay man's turned on to Leslie? "Oh my, God!" You know, so we're calling the construct of... sexual orientation as a basis for identity into question. We're saying, "Well, maybe there's something else there? You know, maybe...you know...maybe, "Oh my gosh! Maybe, God forbid, the bisexuals had it right." You know, maybe genders got nothing to do with attraction. Well, what does that mean for lesbians? What does that mean for gay men? And I'm not saying there aren't such thing as men. And I'm not saying there aren't such thing as women. I'm saying there probably a lot more categories uhm... which might expand our definitions of sexual orientation. And that's problematic. I acknowledge that. [Feinberg] Well, Maya, I agree that that's one of the contributions that every movement makes... [Bornstein] Yep. [Feinberg]...shake's up people's thinking and that's what the women's liberation movement did and that's what early lesbian/ gay liberation did. But I also am finding and I don't know about your experiences but I'm finding traveling around the country a tremendous excitement... [Bornstein] Oh, yeah. [Feinberg]...by people who...who are the lesbian, gay, bi communities. I mean, they are the the... the heartbeat of it who want things shaken up. [Bornstein] Yeah. [Feinberg] Who feel like the way things are now is really heavy and threatening and ominous and to have a revitalized, more dynamic movement that calls into question all the things that you've been taught which are oppressive and weighty on your thinking, feels like liberation. And that's what an early movement does too. That challenge, I think, can just energize people and thrill them. [Bornstein] Not to mention the fact that we're awfully cute. [Feinberg laughs]. [Bornstein] We are...I mean, you know. That's...that's really part of it, you know. I mean... uhm... God, you know, I love... [Feinberg] You don't just think they love you for your ideas? [Bornstein] I hope not! [Feinberg laughs]. [Bornstein] I hope not. But... [Bornstein laughs]. I think what it...would...what...exactly what Leslie is saying, is that we are shaking things up and I think it may be time to relook at how we're defining our community. Are we going to keep on adding initials ad infinitum? What about intersex? What about S&M players? What about sex workers? You know... how far are we going to go on before we realize that it's got nothing to do with identity anymore. It has everything to do with values. It has everything to do with the need to forge a community based on values of compassion, universal rights, universal access. That's what I think is going to be the upshot of this shake-up. [Feinberg] And I'm not worried about how many initials we add because I always feel like, literally, each one becomes this open door for people who weren't sure before it was in the title if this was their movement too, if they would be welcome. And I always say that when we all get together in the room, when all those little doors in the acronym are open and we're all together we can come up with some shorter words that embrace all of it. But we can't do it 'till we're all in the room and we're all equal partners of the coalition. [Bornstein] It's true. [Host] Tell me about...uh...the Michigan Women's Festival? [Bornstein] Why bother? I mean do you like bugs? I mean, the Michigan Women's Music Festival I mean, you know, people say you know, like, you know, "Oh don't you feel terrible that, you know, transsexual women are not allowed?" No. I think it's a private party and anybody who, you know, anybody who has a private party is well within their rights to say, "We don't want this." I think what has happened with the Michigan Women's Music Festival is they haven't said that. They just haven't said the words, "No transsexuals allowed." If they said that, that would probably be respected but then they would have to start saying, "What is a woman?" They don't say that either. They say, "Women only." That's the problem. Well, some... who's a woman? What's a woman? That questions been asked for umpteen tens of thousands of years...without any success. You know, am I a woman? I don't think so. Is Leslie a woman? Yeah...maybe. [Feinberg] I'm certainly not welcome under those policies. [Bornstein] And whose definition of woman? You know, like, Phyllis Schlafly would walk in there and say, "These are 8,000 creatures. These are not women." Whose definition of "woman"? It's... a mess and I think that any kind of separatism has its place in any movement. I think it's a time for people who need to heal, to get together and get strong. Get real sure of their identity. Sure enough where they can be big enough, big-hearted enough and compassionate enough to throw that door open and say, "You're welcome. We're strong. You're welcome." I think to the degree that they're closing that door, to that degree, it needs to be honored. Obviously some people need some more healing time. I don't like bugs. I don't like sleeping outside. I would go in the camper...eww! [Host] So why did you have the...why did you fight [unintelligible] photographs of you? [Feinberg] Right. Well, I've made it very clear that even though I'm born female in this society that I don't go to or perform in any space that is titled "women born women only. I am very happy to go to space that says "all women welcome" because then it is drawing like a magnet all those who self-identify, who want to be in women's space. And I feel like Kate that all people who are oppressed or discriminated against in this society have a right to get together. You know, whether that be a third world caucus or the women's dance- whatever it is. But I think that when the policy, when you begin to set a policy that defines who's going to be a "woman" and police the boundaries of it then it's not only a threat to everyone who doesn't fit that, you know, "Gee her feet are kind of big, her voice is kind of low, look at that beard growth. What do you think about that one?" It sets up an unhealthy atmosphere. Who's pure enough to decide whose woman enough? And I think also that it reverts back to a biological definition of woman. Which... biological determinism, it's always been a club used against women. You can't suddenly lift that up as a liberating weapon. I think that, that kind of definition "woman-born-woman"- that were all women, we all have identical experiences, its innate- is a setback to the "Women's Movement." [Host] So, the picture that I saw was you and Ricky holding hands going into the... Women's Festival, why did you...what...you actually did speak there? [Feinberg] I, well I had always said that I would go... the only time I go into any space that had been "women born- women only" is when I could go together with my transsexual sisters. And we held a "Camp Trans" outside of the Michigan Women's Music Festival. The first year that I went hundreds of women walked miles and we'd hold these meetings out in the woods talking about what trans liberation meant in relation to women's liberation that were so large that we needed microphones and speakers. It was exciting and a lot of women said it felt like the early days of women's liberation again of challenging, Well wait, what does it mean to be a woman? Is it experiential? Is it innate? What is it? What is our link to each other?" Uh...and finally we were able to go inside. We were invited by the Lesbian Avengers and we held a meeting inside. I don't wanna...I don't wanna specifically look too much at one festival in the Women's Movement. Particularly because it's not the "Movement." Cultural events always lag behind changes in activism that are going on in our community and it makes it be as though the Women's Movement is a sight of resistance to trans liberation. When in fact I feel like the Women's Movement is as much of an ally to trans liberation both potentially and through its growing realization as the lesbian, gay and bi communities are. Movements, if it's not conscious, it's still unconscious. We're in a larger society and our movements have to examine the kind of thinking that we've all been taught early on. And I think that it's a contribution that trans liberation is making to women's liberation- to redraw the boundaries, to show the depth and breadth of sex and gender oppression, that holds up as two of the many pillars of this rotten system. It's going to take all of us to help tear 'em down. [Bornstein] I see trends...uhm... transgender movement, again for lack of a better term, as a logical extension of feminism. [Feinberg] Yes. [Bornstein] Which as Leslie was saying, you know, like biology is not destiny, keep your laws off my body. [Feinberg] Hmm, hmm. [Bornstein] Look at us! [Feinberg] That's right. that's right. [Bornstein] Who is embracing that? Who's living that? Who is going out there getting the throats cut for that? [Feinberg] Hmm...hmm. [Host] Thank you. Hold on. Will hold roll for a minute. I want to look over... wow! I get in...in...in... going live... what... huge question... why is gender, why is it so threatening to society? Why is this so threatening even to the gay and lesbian...to many gays, lesbians? They go, "I don't, I don't get this. Changing your gender, why can't you just be the gender you were born?" Why is this so threatening to society? To this society? To western society? [Feinberg] Well, I... [Host] Again, my question won't be the answer. [Feinberg]...I think that uh... whenever I look to why people are threatened by any form of a liberation movement or a struggle against any form of inequality or discrimination, I look to the system which spawns that rigidity or which depends on that rigidity. And you know the newspapers have been having all these expensive studies that have been saying that there's the greatest polarization of wealth and poverty in this country of any of the 25 industrialized countries. That 1% of the families in this country control almost half the wealth that's produced collectively. And if you were watching a "Spartacus" movie. you know, you could look at it and say, "Oh, see how divide and conquer, see how they're making the slaves all fight each other to keep them from being a slave rebellion and getting rid of those few overlords." But we don't always see it so easily when we're living in it. I think that one of the things the trans liberation is doing is to say, "Why it does...you don't have to know if someone is a man or a woman. Are you asking me out? Are you asking to sleep with me? Well, then maybe or maybe not it becomes a question but not in through daily interaction in a coffee shop. The fact that in a society where women are institutionally treated as less in value than men, then it's very important that you keep a moat between the two and that you you know, make the differences out to be something that's venusian or from Mars, you know, that you just can't bridge the gap. When in fact we're living evidence that there are whole spectrum's of human anatomy, of human desire, of human expression. [Bornstein] And to take a look at what that systemic... uh... oppression is doing on a very individual basis, it's gotten to the point where we actually believe that gender is a very natural thing and that, not only that, there are only two genders- male and female...man and woman. There's four, excuse me! Uhm... but... there are only two genders- men and women, boys and girls...there are six. I'm sorry. I'm getting...having trouble with this but let's just say there are two genders. Okay, that...that's very, very natural. What else in nature is two and two only and by polar opposites of that? How can we say that's natural? Yet, the systemic oppression that Leslie is talking about, which does allow a very few to remain in power, is making us believe that gender is an essential part of our identity. Do you go to bed wondering whether you're a man or a woman? Or why you can't be either? I have every day of my life... many, many people are. But we're not allowed to voice that wondering and so we go quite mad? Why do I have to fit myself into a box that no one has been able to define to date? [Feinberg] Hmm, hmm. Who can define it? What is a man? What is a woman? Why do we have to be one or the other? If those three questions were honestly asked for three minutes by every single person on the face of the planet, those three minutes would change the course of history forever. [Feinberg] I grew up in in a city that was segregated right down the middle so they didn't even have to put apartheid signs on the water fountain and white adults would tell me the separation of black and white, it's God's law. You know it took the Civil Rights Movement and the black and latino liberation movements to say, you know, "I have to look up there to find who wrote the laws, you look right down here on Earth, you know. Those laws serve a purpose, you know, they pit people against each other, keep the divisions in place and... [Host] Oops, hold on. What was that? Blown fuse? This movement's going... is it, is it growing? Is it.... [Feinberg] Well...without the benefit of a crystal ball, I think, that honestly it's not predetermined. [Host] Oh, that's good. [Feinberg] Where... [Host] I just want to make sure you include that. Yeah, okay. I think that... without a crystal ball, it's impossible to say exactly what the transgender, trans liberation movement is going. Movements are predetermined in their course. There are many different currents. Some of who want a movement to be as large and as diverse and as activist as possible. Others may want to go a course of more acceptance and being able to just live their lives quietly. You know, we certainly saw with the Women's Movement how many currents made up what gets loosely called the Women's Movement and different currents can be an ascendancy and push forward like a tidal wave and then receive from...recede from weariness or in a reactionary period. So I think that it behooves everyone who has a trans identity under that great umbrella to be able to coalesce and talk about where we do want to go. There's certainly no end to the grievances or the discrimination that we face in terms of finding issues to fight on. How large a movement we can cement? What kind of solidarity and trust we can build between communities with different identities, I think, will help to determine that course. [Bornstein] What he said. [Feinberg laughs]. [Host] Uhm...I want to go back to the gender identity disorder. What... because I might address that in this...uhm... what are...you, you were saying before that there is, there is actually a benefit to having it on the books. Can you explain that? [Bornstein] I think you're very articulate with that. [Feinberg] Well, I'm speaking as someone who's not transsexual who's in complete support of the right of the transsexual community of transsexual women and men to get together and discuss this issue and I support what comes out of that discussion, what's in the best interest of the transsexual community. I think that as a supporter... I am not in a position to take a side on this. I think that it's... people have a right to surgery and hormones and any other care, health care to be affordable and accessible and currently it requires a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder to get those human rights. And so to just remove that uhm... classification from the American Psychiatric or Psychological Association, from the APA, and not replace it with an accessibility... to surgery and other health care would leave transsexual women and men in the lurch. So I'm ready to fight for whatever solution makes health care accessible for all transsexual women and men and for other people who want to shape their bodies and their identities. [Host] What have, what have been your experiences with the a...recently...with the bulk of the health care industry. How are doctors? [Feinberg] Oy! Well... I'm sitting here with an intravenous shunt in my hand. Having spent 11 months with a very serious potentially life-threatening illness that has been... was mishandled and mistreated in its early stage because of the absolute hatred that was exhibited to me and the care that was denied to me by some health care professionals. I went to an emergency room during a snowstorm with a raging fever and was told by the doctor there to go home and never come back- that I had a fever because I was a very troubled person and I worried too much. I had to leave, in a New York City hospital here, after only less than three days because of the just the level of hostility just grew and grew to the point where I didn't feel safe in the hospital and luckily the Lesbian/Gay Anti-Violence Project here is going to help me pursue a course of activism which will hopefully change that hospitals policy forever. You know, we have a right to have our bodies treated with the kind of respect and dignity that we accord our bodies and we're not getting that. It's going to be a fight. [Bornstein] I...uhm...was a good little girl. I followed all the the right procedures, you know, I went through therapy, I had a second opinion, I had uh... an endocrinologist and I was working in IBM at the time. I had some money to do that. I had some insurance at the time but my insurance at the time didn't cover this whole genital conversion surgery that I went through. I piggybacked on to my wife's Blue Cross at the time. If I hadn't done that I wouldn't have been able to afford it. Uhm... so in a sense, I'm also not in a position to say. I was able to, you know, kind of wrangle the system to make it happen. Uh... I'm not sure... this is a really tricky line here, I'm not sure that body modification is an answer. I know it's not an answer for everybody. I know it's not either/or. I know it's not based on genitals. It is a matter of an individual comfort level- some people need that body modification for comfort and to be able to live their lives as fully as they can. I think far fewer people will need that to the degree that we can simply acknowledge that there are lots of different types of gender expression- so there are women running around with male genitalia, so there are men running around with female genitalia. So what? You know and I think to the degree that becomes more and more... understood and acceptable, than the number of people demanding or needing... a deep, deep need... for body modification will probably drop and it will probably never ever drop to zero. I am really glad I went through this. I'm very, very, very glad of it. I probably would have been horribly miserable if I hadn't. But I'm a product of having grown up in the '50s. I'm a product of that kind of modernist, "essentialist" culture, you know. I grew up at "Leave it to Beaver" and I was the beaver... so to speak. [Feinberg] I'm gonna to touch that one. [Bornstein] Not going to touch that one. [Feinberg] Well, I'd like to add something to that because of the vantage point of some of the research that I've been doing that... it's been interesting for me to find how ancient sex change is... surgical and I would hypothesize, perhaps hormonal, since our earliest ancestors knew a good deal about the effects of herbs and things on this, the system. That sex change...surgical sex change...took place in societies where people were treated with respect and equality- very different from the societies we live in now. I think that sex change has been very much presented to us as a high-tech phenomenon, or a product of... a... the sort of straight-jacketing of the sex and gender choices that the...only binary choices that are being made for us in society. It's been interesting for me to find that even in societies that allowed for more than two sexes that people went through surgical sex changes. So I think that it's very simple, in a way, it's what the Women's Movement has been demanding, it's why we've linked arms in front of abortion clinics at dawn in the cold rain to say that each person has a right to control their own body-which means the right of inter-sexual infants not to be butchered and genitally mutilated when they're a few days old and most certainly have not given their consent, the right of transsexual women and men to shape their own bodies, the right of women to reproductive freedom. It's really the right of each person to control their own body and the moment we hand that over to someone- the church, the state, a public poll all of our bodies are in danger. [Bornstein] I agree and I think that gender itself needs to be a matter of informed consent. And...uhm... I don't think a person is fully informed if they believe that there's only man or woman. That is not informed consent because here I am. I am neither. I'm neither a man nor a woman. They're least three genders if not three quadrillion genders. Uhm... and so when a decision for body modification is based on a belief that if I'm not one I have to be the other, in order to be the other I have to modify my body then, I think, uhm... some more thought processes...some more in-depth looking needs to take place. If, when all that looking has taken place, your like... "Okay, okay. I've seen all this spectrum available to me now I still want my body modified." Great, go get it done and as Leslie saying there should be proper access and freedom to that access. But I think... I would really, really, really be sad to see someone leaping to body modification on the belief that there are only two genders and that they're based on bodies. [Host and film crew talking, unintelligible]. [Film Crew] We're rolling. [Bornstein] This is called...uhm...My Gender Workbook and it's a series of exercises. It takes it from uhm... spiritual, physical, political... all different kinds of angles to get you to look at really what is usually...to get you to...be able to make an informed consent decision on what your gender is, you know. [Film crew talking to Bornstein, unintelligible]. [Bornstein] Yes, you can think of Diane Damasa[?] doing a little Katie cartoon. She's gonna draw Kate going through this little book. [Feinberg] "Hot Head Kate Pornstein." [Bornstein] "Hot Head Kate Pornstein", yes! [Film Crew] Okay. let's go... [Bornstein laughs]. [Host] Leslie, what are you working on right now? [Feinberg] I'm working on a novel called "Drag King Dreams" and I'm working on a nonfiction book about how it is, throughout the ages, that individuals have been able to affect the greatest change in their societies.