To lead a fulfilling life, you must take charge of your identity, desires and ability to obtain resources, said transgendered author and performer Kate Bornstein in a workshop at Flora Rose House Nov. 8.

Bornstein, whose visit was sponsored by the LGBT Resource Center and Cornell Minds Matter, used material from her book "Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws" to offer strategies for combating negative feelings and alternatives to suffering as an outsider.

Although it may seem simple for young adults to access their identities, Bornstein pointed out that they are often vulnerable.

"If you're walking around campus and someone calls you ... whatever epithet you find most harmful, your identity is immediately compromised," she said. "Along with it, you'll lose your confidence in your desires and your ability to access those desires."

Bornstein, who has a history of depression, spoke about how her midlife transition from male to female left her still unsatisfied with her identity. Because she did not feel comfortable identifying as either gender, she found herself on the outskirts of society.

"I started to think about how binaries create inequality," she said. "Male or female, black or white, rich or poor -- one's always going to be in the position of power over the other."

As a result, Bornstein made a point of gearing her message toward those whom she called "outlaws": people who are either disadvantaged by the public binary or placed outside of it altogether.

"To take back your power, you have to deconstruct the binary," Bornstein said. "Once you establish that you don't have to be one or the other, you can find an identity that doesn't necessarily fit into a box."

Using her transgendered status as an example, Bornstein demonstrated how to deconstruct one particular binary that excluded her: heterosexual versus homosexual.

"Even the traditional LGBT acronym leaves people out," she said, before proceeding to list at least 40 other subcategories that could be found outside of the heterosexual/homosexual divide.

By doing this for every dichotomy, Bornstein showed, a person excluded for his or her life choices could avoid falling into depression.

"Post-modernism could quite literally save your life," she joked, referring to the common academic term for this deconstruction exercise.

Bornstein also cautioned depressed students to try to avoid swinging from extremely negative feelings to extremely positive ones.

"If I felt hopeless at this very moment, which I do a lot, there'd be no way I could go from that all the way to feeling joyful. I'd just slide right back down," she said.

Instead, Bornstein advised working one's way up the scale of expressible emotions. By turning sadness into anger, anger into pessimism and pessimism into hope, she explained, students could find long-term solutions to negative feelings that they may have regarded as insurmountable.

Above all, Bornstein said, individuals should pursue all of their passions, regardless of societal implications. She did, however, add one caveat.

"Just don't be mean," she said. "Do whatever it is that makes your life worth living, as long as you're not being mean. And when you are mean, because everyone is, forgive yourself. That's the only way to stay alive."

While on campus Nov. 7-9, Bornstein also performed in the Schwartz Center and presented a keynote on gender identity and expression in the LGBT community in Anabel Taylor Hall.

Kathleen Jercich '11 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.