Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw Is a cornucopia of questions with little answers. I shall attempt to answer some of the most interesting of these questions.
Bornstein's first thought provoking question is who should have the responsibility of doling out genders. Traditionally this role is assigned to the doctors. Bornstein also offers the state and the church as organizations that could be responsible for doling out genders. The consequences of allowing anybody to choose their gender is an interesting problem. When could you choose? Who would choose? What are you before you choose? I system that I just worked out relies a bit on predetermined legal ages. It goes like this. A minor had a gender of R. (for minoR) At the age of legal adult hood the newfound adult must decide their gender as either male or female. Interestingly pranksters would enjoy this system.. This system also raises some problems. First it totally undermines the classic American dating system. It also makes no recognition of any biological age or sex drive. Maybe living with a phallocentric binary system isn't too bad. Labels as Bornstein points out are a direction, not a place.
Given my rambling on a selective gender system it must be followed up by gender roles. What is it like to be a man or a woman? Undecidley being a man or a woman is less than a biological determined label. I once thought a new student had joined our school when a friend of mine dressed in drag for a spirit dress up day. I would have thought he was a girl for a good part of the day. I was fooled by several aspects, specifically clothing, and more importantly mannerisms. A man can “be” a woman by acting in the proper manner and dressing like a woman. Conversely a woman can “be” a man by acting in the proper manner and dressing like a man.