My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else...

My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely | Kate Bornstein | Good book but could be better

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My Gender Workbook...

	My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely Kate Bornstein Routledge, 1997 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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Gender isn't just about "male" or "female" anymore - if you have any doubts, just turn on your television. RuPaul is as familiar as tomato ketchup with national radio and television shows, and transgendered folk are as common to talk-shows as screaming and yelling. But if the popularization of gender bending is revealing that "male" and "female" aren't enough, where are we supposed to go from here? Cultural theorists have written loads of smart but difficult-to-fathom texts on gender, but none provide a hands-on, accessible guide to having your own unique gender. With My Gender Workbook, Kate Bornstein brings theory down to Earth and provides a practical approach to living with or without a gender.

Bornstein starts from the premise that there are not just two genders performed in today's world, but countless genders lumped under the two-gender framework. Using a unique, deceptively simple and always entertaining workbook format, Bornstein gently but firmly guides you to discover your own unique gender identity. Whether she's using the USFDA's food group triangle to explain gender, or quoting one-liners from real "gender transgressors", Bornstein's first and foremost concern is making information on gender bending truly accessible. With quizzes and exercises that determine how much of a man or woman you are, My Gender Workbook gives you the tools to reach whatever point you desire on the gender continuum.

Bornstein also takes aim at the recent flurry of books that attempt to naturalize gender difference, and puts books like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus squarely where they belong: on Uranus. If you don't think you are transgendered when you sit down to read this book, you will be by the time you finish it!

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Excellent introduction to nonstandard gender

Kate Bornstein's writing is a pleasure to read! My Gender Workbook is a great way to start looking at nonstandard genders if you're used to thinking in strictly binary terms. While there's room in her viewpoint for girly girls and manly men, there's definitely a bit of bias towards transsexual and genderqueer folks. The quotes from different sources in the sidebar create a variety of perspectives on gender, in case you don't identify too strongly with Kate Bornstein's personal story (which, let's face it, isn't common to most of us).

If you're already breaking the gender binary- that is, if you're the sort of person who'd be interested in this book- then likely it wouldn't provide much more than some much-needed encouragement. However, if you're new to transgressing gender, then this is probably the book for you.

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Good book but could be better

The layout of this book -- as a workbook with exercises you can do as you move through it -- makes this a very interesting way to examine gender issues in your own life. However I found two problems with the book. First, not all of the sections flow smoothly and the stream of consciousness moments can be distracting and patronizing on a few occassions. Secondly, I think the definition used of "gender" is far to broad to really give the book a solid foundation to build on. You'll find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with much of the book -- isn't that the appropriate thing for a book of self-growth?

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Well-Meaning, and Sometimes Well-Done, But Often Flawed

There is stuff here that is good, and all of it is well-meaning. That said, this book is very much a mixed bag.

It suffers from having little sense of who it's audience is. I'd certainly wager that a large majority of people who are reading this book are feminists, queers, or transpeople - or, like myself, *all* of these - and a lot of it is very basic, even frustratingly so, for these people, and this simplicity often shifts back and forth with more advanced stuff. This means that the beginners who do read this may well get lost, and that the people who get the basics will get bored. A lot of it also feels simply cheesy, and even if I wasn't already familiar with the theories and practices presented, I think I would feel condescended to.

It also seems somewhat more MtF oriented than FtM; I can't really give a specific example, but it seemed to have more of a by-and-for trannygirls vibe. I suppose this is part of the problem with having the whole book on genderqueerness written by one white, MtF, middle-class person. Ze certainly tries to give voice to people of different backgrounds, and often succeeds, but having side comments and self-descriptions is different than having real input. This isn't so much an issue of specific instances; rather it's the assumption that one person's experience - any one persons experience, no matter how gender-transgressive they are - is sufficient to write what tries to be a guide to transgressing gender and identity; I think this book would have been much better as a collaboration.

That said, a lot of it is very good. It certainly will help some people understand some more things about themselves, their own (lack of) gender(s), and gender as a whole. The very least it will do is reassure trans/genderqueer/gender-variant people in it that they are not alone, no matter how much it seems so - a worthy goal.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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