Zen and the Art of Gender MaintenanceOriginally published in The Dominion Paper June 24, 2004 Are you really in love? Does your best friend really hate you? Are you an annoying person? There is now a new quiz on the market to help with an even more important question: What gender are you, really? Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook uses the artistically neglected literary form of the women's magazine quiz to address the realities of gender politics. Since the demographic that magazine quizzes usually address is overwhelmingly female, and a fairly specific spin on female at that, Bornstein's quiz creates a tension within women-focused "literature". She uses a gender-constructed form to deconstruct gender, showing that the gender is completely constructed to begin with. The architecture of her argument is subtle and humorous. Reversing expectations, be they of literary format or gender, is what Kate Bornstein does best.A sample from the quiz: Your Gender Aptitude, Section I: Assumptions Which of the following most accurately describes you? Your Gender Aptitude, Section VI: No Gender Which of the following statements most nearly matches your idea of gender? Which of the following statements most nearly matches your feelings about gender? Have you ever experienced the nature of gender itself? Have you ever killed off part of yourself you didn't like? Why are you reading this book? At the end of the quiz, you can check your "gender aptitude" score that can range anywhere from "Gender Outlaw" to "You're Captain James T. Kirk!" Yet the quiz is just a vehicle for Kate Bornstein's message and explorations of gender. Transgendered activism is becoming increasingly visible. Sex-change operations have come under attack for staying in the constraining dichotomy of the female or male options, and the link between transgendered people and homosexuality has been all but severed. A call for people to acknowledge a spectrum or pyramid of genders has begun in the transgendered movement, bringing attention to babies born with ambiguous genitalia, Native American berdaches, and other physical hermaphrodites as proof. This spectrum is reflected in Bornstein's quiz (not to mention her own lifestyle); there are four choices per question and an accumulative "grade" at the end. None of the "grades" mention what type of gender you might be acting out, but they do evaluate your comfort and flexibility within that role. My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely was published in 1998, but is still contemporary as Oprah Winfrey is interviewing transgender children; as dozens of AIDS ceremonies and protests were timed with Ronald Reagan's funeral procession; and as the trial for the killing of transsexual teenager Gwen Araujo comes to a close. Yet whether reading the book for a taste of current affairs or for personal interest, you will find yourself asking questions not only about the construction of gender, but about what else might be bogus and spoon-fed to our culture. As a writer and performance artist, Kate Bornstein's most recent work is a play entitled Strangers in Paradox, which opened in March 2003. She is currently touring and performing various works such as "Too Tall Blondes Do Texas," and "On Men, Women and the Rest of Us," which correspond with informal discussions, lectures, workshops and other innovative educational exchanges. The quiz mentioned here is just a small part of My Gender Workbook. Max Liboiron |
