Product Description

This stirring call for tolerance and solidarity from the acclaimed activist and author of Transgender Warriors collects Leslie Feinberg's speeches on trans liberation and its essential connection to the liberation of all people.

Leslie Feinberg is author of the underground classic Stone Butch Blues.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #306586 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Amazon.com
Although readers familiar with Feinberg's earlier books will not find much new material here, this collection of hir (this transgendered author's pronoun of choice) speeches, presented with a few essays by other transgendered writers, serves as a good introduction to Feinberg's ideas about the complexities of gender expression and to hir vision for a future "beyond pink or blue." As someone who faces oppression, incomprehension, and violence every day on the basis of hir appearance and the refusal to adhere to a rigid gender designation (Feinberg was once denied emergency medical treatment for endocarditis by a doctor who dismissed hir angrily as "a very troubled person"), Feinberg is in an excellent position to refute the shallow assumptions of the medical establishment and the mainstream media, as well as the more extreme views of the political and religious right. Most compelling are hir arguments on the importance of a broad-based multi-issue coalition among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, an alliance that could easily extend to other progressive groups. "Everyone who is under the gun of reaction and economic violence," Feinberg contends, "is a potential ally." --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
This collection of occasionally repetitious talks that Feinberg gave in the spring of 1997 is balanced by the inclusion of interviews with other "transgender warriors." Feinberg (Stone Butch Blues; Transgender Warriors) continues here her explication of prevalent gender "dogma"?of "what it means to be a 'real' woman or a 'real' man"?and assesses medical professionals' treatment of society's "Others." The latter category includes women like herself, and men in the process of evolving alternative gender identities and who thus present a "social contradiction": "I've lived parts of my life as a straight woman, as a butch dyke, as a man?both straight and faggot," says one. Capsule portraits include Latino "lesbian" Michael Hernandez, Stonewall veteran Sylvia Rivera and Craig Hickman, who invokes RuPaul's dictum that "gender is performance." Feinberg highlights outdated legal statutes prohibiting cross-dressing, and the social and economic consequences of their implementation. She also discusses "gender reassignment" surgery, which she says is standard practice in the U.S. for infants born with seemingly ambiguous genitalia, but which she sees as more of a service to worried parents than for the children. Above all, Feinberg seeks a reordering of society, with unity as the ultimate goal, and gives frequent examples of the commonalities that transcend race, social class, physical abilities and gender. The material here was meant to be delivered orally, giving the text an immediacy that makes the message all the more compelling, although readers familiar with Feinberg's earlier writings will find it somewhat repetitive.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Choosing which public bathroom to useAmen's or women'sAseems a simple thing most of us do everyday without thinking. That decision raises complex issues, however, for a diverse and growing group of people. "Transgender is the term that has come to refer to all those who blur or bridge the boundary of gender expression they were assigned at birth: cross-dressers, transsexuals, intersex people, Two Spirits, masculine females, feminine males, drag kings, and drag queens." Feinberg (Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul, LJ 7/96) identifies as a "masculine, lesbian, female-to-male cross-dresser and transgenderist." During the spring of 1997, Feinberg spoke around the country to such groups as the Texas "T" (Transgender) Party in Richardson, TX, where she addressed 350 heterosexual cross-dressed men and their spouses. She stresses the need for coalitions in the trans-liberation movement. Interspersed among adaptations of those powerful talks are short self-portraits of a wide variety of transgender activists. Taste This was formed in 1995 by a group of four writers and performers (Anna Camilleri, Ivan Elizabeth Coyote, Zoe Eakle, and Lyndell Montgomery), who alone or in various combinations tell stories, play music, sing, and "sort of" dance. Their first book is based on material originally written for performance, here transformed into evocative narrative fiction. In her brief foreword, Kate Bornstein refers to these stories as scary and forbidden, told with "great dignity, great gentleness, grace, and gallantry." The handsomely designed volume is illustrated with 75 images of the group on the road and at home. Both titles raise consciousness about different ways of being in the world, and each speaks eloquently to the need for civil rights for all of us.AJim Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Leslie Feinberg is everyone's trans-activist
I appreciate every author that attempts to promote understanding and tolerance for transgendered people, but none more than Leslie Feinberg. The collection of personal stories from many different people are combined here with Leslie's own heartfelt appeals for equal rights, equal access. Trans Liberation is a terrific book, part insight, truthful experience and signpost on the sometimes unfriendly highway the author traverses to support the cause of transgendered people.

Celebrate gender diversity!
In this beautifully written and persuasive volume, trans activist Leslie Feinberg articulates a deep and compassionate vision of trans liberation that interconnects issues of trans oppression with issues of poverty, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism. (Like the labor saying goes, "An injury to one is an injury to all.") As a working-class, effiminate gay young man living with AIDS, I especially appreciated hir class analysis. I also enjoyed the fact that s/he included essays by other trans activists in this book, making it multi-dimensional. Read this book and encourage your friends and family to do so as well. The fresh perspectives of this volume will enrich your life and better equip you to challenge the forces of inequality, violence and discrimination in our world.

Opening eyes to different colors of oppression
Although a masculine heterosexual male, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and found it applicable to my own life. Feinberg's examination of the restrictive ideas of sexuality and gender are insightful, and have made me think a lot more about being more open in all areas of my life.
I also think it's important that Feinberg notes that while advocating individuality, s/he also supports unity and the right for everyone's expression-whether they be what is socially acceptable or the most radical, looked-down upon revolutionaries. I also like the fact that she saw this unity as necessary, because anti-transsexual/transgender attitudes are not "special" but related to ALL forms of oppression, including homophobia, racism, sexism, classism, and discrimination based on physical disabilities. Feinberg looks at the manifestations of all this oppression-from gang rape and beatings, to refusal of medical care and cutting of social support institutions-explores how these attitudes developed, and suggests how they can be combated. Overall, a very good read whether you know about transgenderists or transsexuals, are only vaguely familiar with them, or know nothing about them at all, for it is valuable in becoming aware of the myriad forms of oppressive norms, laws, and behaviors that we are daily subjected to.
I also think it's important that s/he recognizes that labels and circumstances do not define who you are, but actions. Feinberg makes a significant and not too frequently voiced claim that Democrats are no better than Republicans-they are basically Republicans in disguise.
Feinberg's writing style is not boring. Even those who do not care much for political or social reading might enjoy this. While many of the issues cover violence and emotionally rending accounts of discrimination, there is also humor in the text, and optimism. Feinberg also frequently uses literary devices such as metaphor, making the text less dry, with such colorful phrases as: "To me, gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught."
The brief essays by other people are useful portraits of a diversity of people and the different hardships they endure.
My one complaint is that I wish there was more on what to actually do in order to actively combat these attitudes. While some attention is given to this subject, ideas far overshadow specific suggestions for how to fight discrimination in daily life. I think a more thorough exploration of the moral implications of such issues-and the possible consequences toward social attitudes-would have been a great addition.