blog — June 20

Free eBook: Hello, Cruel World (2nd Edition)

On June 18, 2025, the United States Supreme Court voted to uphold Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies, effectively shielding similar bans in over 20 other states. While not surprising, this is a significant blow to healthcare access for thousands of trans kids throughout the country, and paves the way for further states to establish bans — or significant resistrictions — on gender-affirming care for minors. 

It’s hard to know what to do or how to fight back when the powers that be are making so many paths to leading full lives inaccessible. But we do know this: we want everyone to survive this moment, even when it feels hopeless. We have to take care of each other. Above all, we have to pool our resources and make sure we all have access to the tools we need.

That’s why we’re making DRM-free (easily shareable) copies of Hello, Cruel World (Second Edition) available to download for free from our website through June 25th. Download a copy for yourself or send it to a friend, a family member, a local teen, or anyone else who might be struggling, or anyone else who might need a guide of this kind.

As Kate says in the first chapter, 

I can tell you this with certainty: You are worthy and capable of finding a way to live your life just the way you really are. And there are plenty of good people in the world who believe that a life like yours needs to be lived. If you work at being as fully you as you can possibly be, you will feel better.

And keep in mind that the you that makes life worth living today probably won’t be the same you that makes life worth living this time next year. Identities aren’t meant to be permanent. They’re like cars: they take us from one place to another. We work, travel, and seek adventure in them until they break down beyond repair. At that point, living well means finding a new model that better suits us for a new moment.

I believe in the truth of you and so do a lot of other people, people you may not even know yet. Whatever you’re being right now, wherever you’ve been traveling, and whatever you might become tomorrow, I believe in you.

This book is a lot about learning how to give yourself permission to go on living even when it really hurts. Right now you might be glad I’ve given you permission. Eventually, you’ll no longer need anyone’s but your own. Permission to do what? Permission to take yet another stab at putting together the kind of identity that makes you feel that you’re being true to yourself and that life is worth living. Go ahead, give yourself permission to become the kind of person you’ve always dreamed you could be.

“You’ll want to keep extra copies of this one on the shelf to give away to friends in need.” —Bitch Magazine 

The twentieth anniversary edition of trans trailblazer Kate Bornstein’s one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive — for teens, freaks, and other outlaws — featuring an introduction by Sara Quin and a new afterword by Paul B. Preciado

Now with 20 additional alternatives and Kate Bornstein’s urgent new essay, “Hello, Cruel Gender,” this edition of Hello, Cruel World offers a much-needed and unorthodox catalog of alternatives to suicide for all of us — ranging from the playful, easy, and irreverent to the controversial, challenging, and earnest. With love, humor, and grit, Bornstein dares readers to re-envision the gender system, encouraging us to unleash our hearts’ desires and journey toward an emphatic embrace of life.

“This book is written for the teen locked inside each of us,” writes Paul Preciado in a new afterword to the book. “The one who has lost their dream, forgotten their infinite desire for transformation, the one who has gotten used to accepting the desires of others rather than pursuing their own.” Here is a trove of insights, at once intimate and edgy, to keep every freak out there alive. 

Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction, 2007 Finalist

Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award, 2009 Honor Book