I found myself at the Holmes Student Center on Friday, listening to author/activist Kate Bornstein discuss gender theory. Having randomly chosen this meeting for the subject of a homework assignment, I had no idea what I was walking into. Two and a half hours later, I had redefined my concept of gender theory.

“Does it matter if I’m a man or a woman?” Bornstein asked. “Does it matter to you what you are? I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but if it’s important to you, have you ever thought why?” Bornstein strode through the room, asking questions, beckoning us to re-examine the relevance of gender in our identities.

Bornstein lived as a man for 37 years before having her gender surgically changed and has spent the past 16 years as a female. She does not, however, identify herself as a man or a woman. After having spent most of her life analyzing and experiencing the male and female genders, she has come to the conclusion that “conscious gender is naming our dreams and owning them.”

“More and more people are stretching what it means to be a man and to be a woman,” she said. “Why do people think it’s so important to be a man? Why do they feel it’s so important to be a woman?”

Few question the limits of gender in our society because our culture enforces the idea that we shouldn’t. Some people, however, don’t fit cleanly inside the lines of culturally defined gender and Bornstein is a walking example that they don’t have to.

Bornstein brought up the point that our cells completely regenerate every seven years and that her cells have changed on their own in accordance with her sex change. “I’m shedding my identities like I shed my dead and dying cells,” Bornstein said.

What is so exemplary about Bornstein is that through her struggles to discover herself, she has taken great strides in the path of self-acceptance. She has stripped the warning labels off her sexual potential and has voluntarily reassigned a new future for herself and other transgendered individuals.

“I think the real work starts with naming a small dream, any dream at all,” she said. “The way I’m living right now has come closest to the deities I have come to use and love.” She looked around the room with what looked like self-revelation.

“I’m giving myself permission to be sexy,” she said.

What Bornstein helps identify was not a clarification of my own gender but the notion that gender should not put a limit on feeling good about oneself. If one feels like less of a man than they are expected to be – or like an abnormal woman – they still should pursue what they love and hold to be desirable. The struggle may be in identifying these concepts, but Bornstein has shown that letting go of the idea of gender can help.

As Bornstein paraphrased in the words of her junior high English teacher: “‘I’ has no gender, neither does ‘you.’”

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.