Just across the ocean in, say Kenya or Tanzania, a two-gender system is vital for the survival of most of the folks who live there. Men do men's work, women do women's work, and so it all gets done and the jackals can't get into the hut and eat grandpa. So, the future of the transgender movement is like the future of all human rights movements: whatever the state of things in your area now, with some work it all gets a little bit better all the time, even if it is sometimes three steps ahead and two steps back.
Kate BornsteinI know I'm not a man-about that much I'm very clear, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either, at least not according to a lot of people's rules on this sort of thing. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other-a world that doesn't bother to tell us exactly what one or the other is.
Kate BornsteinI have this idea that every time we discover that the names we're being called are somehow keeping us less than free, we need to come up with new names for ourselves, and that the names we give ourselves must no longer reflect a fear of being labeled outsiders, must no longer bind us to a system that would rather see us dead.
Kate BornsteinThe transgender movement even divides itself up by gender, as many folks stick with their same trans-genders (female-to-male or male-to-female). Additionally, the movement gets strangely subdivided among, for example, male cross-dressers, sissy boys, butch women, femme dykes, drag kings, drag queens, transvestites, intersexed, transsexuals (post-op, pre-op, and non-op).
Kate Bornstein