Kate Bornstein calls hirself a gender outlaw. Ze was born Al Bornstein and lived for decades as a man, but ze never felt like a man: “I know I’m not a man—about that much I’m very clear,” ze says. Al took hormones and ultimately underwent sex reassignment surgery to become Kate, assuming that hir certainty that ze was not a man must mean that ze was a woman. So ze tried being a woman, but ze did not feel like a woman either. “I’ve no idea what ‘a woman’ feels like. I never did feel like a girl or a woman,” ze confesses.
Aware that people instantaneously label others according to gender and that the label they choose affects how they interact with each other, Bornstein made an effort to pass as a woman regardless of hir doubts. Ze studied the way gender is suggested by cues such as physical appearance, behavior, legal documents, and power dynamics in order to learn those cues that could be learned and divert attention from those that could not be changed. In part by learning these cues, Bornstein now “live[s] [hir] life as a woman in [hir] day-to-day walking around, but [ze] is not under any illusion that [ze] [is] a woman.”