Product Description

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, 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!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #325625 in Books
• Published on: 1997-12-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
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!

About the Author
Kate Bornstein is the author of Gender Outlaw (Routledge, 1994) and co-author of the novel Nearly Roadkill (1996). She lives, writes and rehearses her stage work in Seattle.

Customer Reviews

Gender Values - Recognize the Process and Take Control
Well, o.k. I'm not too objective about this. I read this book while recovering from gender re-assignment surgery (male to female). I was feeling pretty wobbly and uncertain about the future, but reading this book was a wonderful pick-me-up.

It's a very strange book - part treatise on gender, part (as the name says) a "work-book", full of exercises and, at the beginning, questions and tests.

There are, however, interesting dollops of theory to fill out and give substance to the more fun aspects of the book. I'm not too sure of the theory - you'll have to judge for yourself. I like the idea of gender "values" and the way this is juxtaposed with the more traditional ideas of gender "identities" - thus making the formation of gender a much more fluid and ambiguous process. And "process" is something that Kate emphasises continually. To suggest that the gender of a girl is different to that of a young woman which, in turn, is different to that of an old woman (to give one example) is interesting, but it seems that there is some danger of gender being so diluted that it becomes a pretty meaningless concept. Maybe this is the plan, maybe this is the aim and the idea. Maybe I'm being thick.

Anyway, a wonderful book. Even the section on "bad days" when one feels that one's knuckles are dragging along the floor and one's shoulders would look better on a rugby player are dealt with with wit, sympathy and empathy.

Who is this book aimed at? I really don't know. As Kate hirself says at the end of some of the questionnaires - "why are you reading this book?" I read it to gain a different perspective, to start to think more deeply about issues of gender and "queer theory". I got that. And I got a lot more too. Thanks Kate.

So you think you know what you are...
This book - if it can be called that - is about the most extensive course in Gender Studies one could take without walking into a classroom and spending five months with a professor. Kate leads you through every step of the process with humor, insight and compassion - never pulling any of hir punches, though. If you're curious about the creation of gender, thinking about changing or reexamining your own gender, this is definitely a book you need to read.

Curious about gender? Look elsewhere.
This book was not what I expected. Having come around to the idea that gender is a playground, I guess I was looking for some kind of map pointing out the available seesaws and climbing frames and warning of the dangerous swings and roundabouts. Instead it felt a lot more like a combination of playground theory, and things to reassure one for going in in the first place.

The quiz and workbook format is interesting but had a few shortcomings. My biggest problem was that while reading the book, definitions of terms - specifically 'identity', and the already overloaded term 'gender' - were slowly established, but while this is going on you are required to answer questions on them. It's hard to know how to answer a question about something not clearly defined, especially when you find your own (or your dictionary's) definition to be different from the one the author is thinking of.

Another problem I had was the writing style. It's very informal and is supposed to match the kind of writing you'd encounter on message boards and chatrooms across the net. Unfortunately it's a very different dialect to that which I'm used to (double colons instead of asterisks to indicate an action? Crazy! *shakes head*), and also came across to me as fairly condescending, particularly the many sentences ending in 'okay?'.

Finally, I don't know how useful or interesting other people might find this, but a heavy theme of the book was the idea of reaching 'No gender', which to me sounds like no fun at all. Here's a specific quote from early in the book:

"This is the key to the whole workbook. Really. Ready? [this part in large white letters on a huge black banner:] The way you live without gender is you look for where gender is, and then you go someplace else [banner ends]. If you've got that, you don't need to read any further."

I didn't find this to be the kind of thing I wanted to 'get', but I read on anyway. And to be honest, I was glad I did. Despite all my complaints, there's certainly some very interesting content - the gender/identity/power pyramid is a very enlightening way to look at the world, for example. I'm also very aware I can't possibly appreciate how useful the whole thing may be to someone actually undergoing any kind of gender reassignment.

It just wasn't what I was looking for. Although to the author's credit there was a chapter at the end in which you are strongly encouraged to respond, whether you agree or not, to anything in the book you feel strongly about. This is the reason I'm writing this. Feedback is always good. Write on, Kate.