Cabrini Conference Keynote Speaker Kate Bornstein

Julia Hart, a graduate student in Professor Lutes’s GWS graduate course, attended Cabrini College’s Body Image Conference Keynote, speaker Kate Bornstein, on October 22. She wrote this in response to the amazing presentation.  

 

Kate Bornstein: A Message of Affirmation

The first day of Cabrini College’s undergraduate conference on body image culminated with a talk by the keynote speaker, Kate Bornstein. An author, artist, and gender theorist, Ms. Bornstein discussed a range of topics, but all of them tied back to her three primary points of focus: gender, sex, and desire.

Throughout her talk, Ms. Bornstein drew upon her personal experiences as an individual who was born male but eventually received sex reassignment surgery and now identifies as female. However, she also noted that she does not feel entirely like a man or entirely like a woman and talked about how it can be a struggle for others to understand her fluid, shifting relationship with gender and sex. While she related her experiences as a transsexual individual to body image, she also discussed her own personal battle with anorexia and the journey she has undergone throughout her life in pursuit of self-acceptance.

While Ms. Bornstein’s talk also touched on other topics—including the role of religion and spirituality in individuals’ understanding of gender, sex, and desire—the core of her discussion was a message of self-acceptance. Her talk displayed her powerful abilities as a speaker as she held the audience captivated for the entire hour, skillfully encouraging audience members to think about the issues she discussed by posing questions and urging listeners to contemplate their responses individually. She was not afraid to make jokes and drew frequently upon humor in her talk, but neither was she afraid to delve into intensely emotional topics, including rape and suicide, in her discussion of the fundamental roles gender, sex, and desire play in our lives. 

Ms. Bornstein’s talk was equal parts humorous, engaging, informative, thought-provoking and poignant. Her message was one of affirmation, and she called for the need for all of us to put an end to the self-loathing and self-hatred so often imposed by society; to learn to accept ourselves and others, regardless of how we look or dress; and, finally, to stop feeling ashamed of gender, sex, and desire. Instead, Ms. Bornstein suggests, we should start embracing them proudly and fearlessly.