Useful, as Feinberg argues, not for us as free people but for the ruling classes who need to mechanically restrict our gender expression for their own devices. All neatly carved into a tidy dichotomy: male and female. And then you see it everywhere: in the way people talk, walk, their hairstyles, their mannerisms, their beliefs, their favourite colour, their partners, the way they have sex or who they want to have sex with. It's definitely true that if you want a meticulous, detailed, jargony drudge through trans history then this is not the book: it neither has the style, content or length for that kinda project.īut this book from the beginning opens as a personal story of discovering oneself *through* history, rather than the more boring (in my view!) task of discovering history per se (though this is important in other contexts of course).Īs someone who has always had an atypical gender expression, when you start discovering the possibility of gender variance the way the world neatly compartmentalizes into two - male and female - begins to smack you quite rudely in the face. I do think this kind of critique misses the point: quite spectacularly. I've read a few reviews of this and a lot seem to bash Feinberg for not presenting a thoroughly academic history of transgender identity. Feinberg wrote: "I have shaped myself surgically and hormonally twice in my life, and I reserve the right to do it again."
Feinberg preferred the gender-neutral pronouns "hir" and "ze". Leslie Feinberg was Jewish, and was born female. This book is frequently taught at colleges and universities and is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.
Despite popular belief, the fictional work is not autobiographical. Feinberg was also involved in Camp Trans and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work.įeinberg's novel Stone Butch Blues, which won the Stonewall Book Award, is a novel based around Jess Goldberg, a transgendered individual growing up in an unaccepting setting. Feinberg's partner was the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt. Feinberg was a high ranking member of the Workers World Party and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper.įeinberg's writings on LGBT history, "Lavender & Red," frequently appeared in the Workers World newspaper. Leslie Feinberg was a transgender activist, speaker, and author.
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