Bornstein joined the Church of Scientology in 1970.[2]:48-50 She found herself drawn to Scientology because thetans are genderless beings.[6] Bornstein eventually would serve on a ship with L. Ron Hubbard and eventually become a high-ranking lieutenant in the Sea Org.[6][7] While serving in this position, she secretly bought porn magazines from Lee Brewster. She would also purchase women's clothes to wear while staying in hotels and later discard them.[2]:127-129 Bornstein later became disillusioned and formally left the movement in 1982. By doing so, she was deemed a suppressive person, which prevented her from contacting her daughter.[6]
Career
Kate Bornstein at SUNY New Paltz in October, 2018
Bornstein settled into the lesbian community in San Francisco, and wrote art reviews for the gay and lesbian paper The Bay Area Reporter.[8] Over the next few years, she began to identify as neither a man nor a woman.[9]
In 2009, Bornstein's Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and Honorbook for the Stonewall Children's and Young Adult Literature.[10] Bornstein edited Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation in collaboration with S. Bear Bergman.[11] The anthology won Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle Awards in 2011.[12][13]
Bornstein is a major cultural icon, influencing the social and political representation of transgender identity. Aperture referred to her as a "gender outlaw."[14] Bornstein was featured in the reality television series I Am Cait.[15]
Bornstein, Kate (2013). My New Gender Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace Through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity. New York: Routledge. ISBN978-0415538657.
Bornstein, Kate (2016). Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (Revised and Updated). New York: Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. ISBN978-1-101-97461-2.
Bornstein, Kate; Sullivan, Caitlin (2025). Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run. New York: Generous Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. ISBN9798991642859.
Theatre
Bornstein made their Broadway debut in July 2018 in the play Straight White Men.[17] She has since created several performance pieces, some of them one-person shows.[18] In 1989, Bornstein created a theatre production in collaboration with Noreen Barnes, Hidden: A Gender, based on parallels between their own life and that of the intersex person Herculine Barbin,[4] starring Bornstein and Justin Vivian Bond.
Bornstein has featured in The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, Hidden: A Gender, Strangers in Paradox, y2kate: gender virus 2000, and Hard Candy.[citation needed]
Bornstein lives with partner Barbara Carrellas in New York City, with three cats, two dogs, and a turtle.[8]
Bornstein never felt comfortable with the belief of the day that all trans women are "women trapped in men's bodies".[19] She 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.[6][2]:42,101,243 She had sex reassignment surgery in 1986.[2]:x
In August 2012, Bornstein was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had surgery which initially seemed successful, but in February 2013 it was found that the disease had returned. Laura Vogel, a friend of Bornstein's, launched a GoFundMe campaign on March 20 to help fund subsequent treatment.[20] In December 2015, Bornstein announced that they had been cancer-free for two years.[21]
Speaking to the LGBTQ&A podcast in July 2021, Bornstein talked about how her view of gender evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic, "Gender became inconsequential to me while I was in quarantine and grappling with old age...This is where you really need to be letting go of shit. I'm letting go of the ability to be cute, in certain ways. I'm too old for that. My face is sagging, my boobs are sagging. Boy, oh boy. They're down to my waist and you let go of that as being necessary to your gender."[22]
Notes
↑ Bornstein uses she/her and they/them pronouns; this article uses she/her for consistency.
1 2 Piechota, Jim (August 9, 2012). "Surviving Scientology". Bay Area Reporter. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 2013.
Gentleman, Rye (2022). "Kate Bornstein" in Noriega and Schildcrout (eds.) 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, Routledge, pp.26–29. ISBN 978-1032067964.
van Deven, Mandy (2011). "Gender Outlaws". Herizons. An Interview with Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman.
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