Leslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg was a transgender activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg was a high ranking member of the Workers World Party and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper.
Feinberg's writings on LGBT history, "Lavender & Red," frequently appeared in the Workers World newspaper. Feinberg's partner was the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt. 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.
Feinberg'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. Despite popular belief, the fictional work is not autobiographical. This book is frequently taught at colleges and universities and is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.
Leslie Feinberg was Jewish, and was born female. Feinberg preferred the gender-neutral pronouns "hir" and "ze". Feinberg wrote: "I have shaped myself surgically and hormonally twice in my life, and I reserve the right to do it again."
“Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.”
“We have not always been forced to pass, to go underground, in order to work and live. We have a right to live openly and proudly...when our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exist in human society.”
“Some mistakes in life are not punishable, others teach you a lesson you never forget.”
“Surrendering is unimaginably more dangerous than struggling for survival.”
“Strength, like height, is measured by who you're standing next to.”
“I know the difference between what I can't do and what I refuse to do.”
“Everybody's scared, but if you don't let your fears stop you, that's bravery.”
“I began to feel the pleasure of the weightless state between here and there.”
“If I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I'm sick of the world thinking I'm straight. I've worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian.”
“I felt as though I was rushing into a burning building to discover the ideas I needed for my own life.”
“More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: "Are you a man or a woman?”