A Queer and Pleasant Danger

March 26, 2012
Bornstein (Gender Outlaws) is a former Scientology VIP and, for nearly 40 years, a man named Al. Before age five, Bornstein realized “I wasn’t a boy, and therefore must be a girl.” In college, he has sex with women, whom he loves, but also goes for men who make him feel like a girl. This tempest of confusions brings him to Denver, where he finds refuge in Scientology, learning that he’s a gender-free being called a thetan. “The battle of the sexes raged in my mind, day and night. Can you imagine a more appealing theology for someone like me?” For the next decade, Bornstein is blissfully happy with a wife and daughter, and at one point is outranked by only 50 other people in the entire organization. He writes that in 1982, he was excommunicated from Scientology after discovering some private information about L. Ron Hubbard. On his own, he starts therapy, concludes he’s a transsexual, and after living for a year as a woman, changes his name and has reassignment surgery. In the right body, refusing to claim a gender and calling herself a lesbian transsexual, she struggles with rejection from the transsexual, transgender and lesbian communities, but likes the person she is becoming. Bornstein can be a challenging and confusing narrator at times, but is sympathetic in her universal struggle to be comfortable in her own skin and her attempt to come to peace with the paradox that is her life.

March 15, 2012
A nervy, expansive memoir from a pioneering gender activist. When she was Al Bornstein and a member of the Church of Scientology, Kate Bornstein (Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws, 2006, etc.) signed a billion-year contract pledging to serve the church in both his present and future lives. Though she eventually left the church, the idea that a soul can endure forever doesn't seem so implausible when you read her story, which takes us from a bizarre childhood to a troubled young adulthood to her stint in Scientology, which lasted more than a decade. That's just the first two parts of the book, and even one of those experiences could have been the basis of a full memoir. Bornstein then goes on to discuss, with frank and arresting detail, her diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, her transition from Al to Kate, her immersion in the S&M community, her emergence as a powerful voice in the transgender community and her success as a performance artist, author and speaker. Bornstein frequently exposes the slippery nature of truth by telling a compelling and believable story and then immediately informing the reader that it was fabricated. Late in the book, some of the dialogue with her friends in the lesbian/S&M community reads more like a script (Bornstein is also a playwright) than conversation. Nevertheless, the backbone of the book, and of Bornstein's life, is her admonishment in to "do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living." This cri de coeur, which appears in a letter to her estranged daughter and grandchildren, suggests that Bornstein has made real sacrifices to follow her own advice, and can therefore dispense it with integrity.

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