My New Gender Workbook
What
“A step-by-step guide to achieving world peace through gender anarchy and sex positivity.”
Format
- Book with clear chapters
- Designed to look like composition notebook (cover)
- Mostly text, with some images
Content
- Narrative text describing different aspects of gender identity
- 3 Kate avatars, representing 3 different Kate identities, with additional commentary/stories, sprinkled throughout text in margins
- Tweets, comments, stories from other voices (often twitter users) about topics in margins
- Incorporating twitter voices even more, whole sections devoted to twitter threads and twitter users answers to questions like, Who Am I?
- Blank (or mostly empty) pages for jotting down ideas, completing Kate’s assignments, several blank pages in the back
- Various exercises, like “The 10 minute a day gender outlaw exercise” (56-57)
- Crossword puzzles
- Section on the beginning about comfort (4-7)
- Concluding chapters explore what to do with new information/understanding developed by completing gender workbook
- Book ends with series of Kate’s favorite “g’nite” tweets that Kate has written
Purpose
A resource/survival guide for readers to use to “put the ideas and theories [introduced/discussed in workbook] to work with the intention of putting an end to the suffering of all sentient beings” (xiii).
Useful for my book?
I like the inclusion of Kate’s many voices (3 different avatars) and the incorporation of tweets (in margins). I wouldn’t mind including some of my own tweets + social media posts (tumblr? instagram?). I also like how Kate uses the margins to create space for alternative accounts–zie puts different voices/theories/ideas beside each other. And, I like Kate’s use of quizzes. I had some quizzes in my last book and found it be a lot of fun to create them.
I appreciate how Kate leaves some blank pages at the end and encourages readers to write on/in the text. For my project, I want to experiment with how to get readers to take notes, write in margins. Is leaving bigger margins enough? Should I provide instructions/exercises for writing in the book? I’m not sure about this one. Does it become too heavy-handed when you ask the reader to write in the margins? How do you encourage that marginalia without requesting it?