“Remember me as a revolutionary communist.” – Leslie Feinberg (September 1, 1949 - November 15, 2014). Picture: Feinberg, c. 2012.
Leslie Feinberg, who died two years ago today, was a pioneering transgender and butch lesbian writer and activist who fundamentally altered the mainstream discussion about gender and sexuality. Feinberg’s writings, particularly “Stone Butch Blues” (1993) and “Transgender Warriors” (1996), were key contributions to the queer canon.
“Stone Butch Blues,” Feinberg’s best-known work, is the partly-autobiographical story of Jess Goldberg, who narrates “into adulthood…and comes to grips with [their] complicated…sexual and gender identity at a time when practicing a so-called alternative lifestyle invited stigma, open discrimination and, in many settings, menacing opprobrium.” With “Transgender Warriors,” Feinberg laid the groundwork for much of the terminology that continues to shape the fight for trans rights; “[t]he struggle of trans people over the centuries,” Feinberg wrote, “is not his-story or her-story. It is our-story.”
Beyond hir (Feinberg’s preferred pronoun) writing, Feinberg also was a lifelong activist: ze organized a 1974 march against racism in Boston, was an early AIDS advocate, and spent much of hir life fighting for reproductive justice.
But it was “Stone Butch Blues,” according to Shauna Miller, that “changed queer history. It changed trans history. It changed dyke history. And how it did that was by honestly telling a brutally real, beautifully vulnerable and messy personal story of a butch lesbian.”
Leslie Feinberg died on November 15, 2014, of complications from tick-borne infections, including chronic Lyme disease, which ze suffered from since the 1970s; ze was sixty-five. Feinberg, who is survived by hir spouse, Professor Minnie Bruce Pratt, attributed hir health crisis to “bigotry, prejudice and lack of science,” issues ze wrote about in “Casualty of an Undeclared War.” #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #LeslieFeinberg #TransWeek
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