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A review by genderterrorist
Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue by Leslie Feinberg
5.0
Bold. Captivating. Revolutionary, of course.
A collection of essays from Leslie Feinberg that were talks given by hir across the country in 1997, shortly after recovering from a deadly infection of the heart. Leslie interweaves hir own words and thoughts with anecdotes from other transgender and gender non-conforming persons.
This book is, of course by today's standards, outdated in many ways based on terminology and what has been discovered by and for transgender people in the proceeding years. Of course Leslie, being a Communist who understood dialectical materialism, knew this would happen. Nonetheless, it provides a very insightful, historical look into how gender and specifically, transgender studies was in the late 1990s. We hear from Indigenous trans people [the man interviewed calls himself a trans man and specifies that he is not Two-Spirit, hence why i dont use that word here], cross-dressers, drag queens, trans women [Sylvia Rivera makes perhaps one of her final appearances in this book, providing an anecdote on Stonewall and trans liberation, before her untimely death in 2002], and the wife of a gender non-conforming person, among others, who provide what trans liberation looks like to them in the current era.
One thing that Leslie Feinberg did effortlessly in hir writing, that I don't think many Marxist writers can do, or maybe don't do, or need to do better...is make the argument for Marxism, without saying directly that it's Marxism. Perhaps it's Leslie's being born and raised in the McCarthy era, when Communism had to be sneaky and underground, but ze does it so effortlessly -- you are reading a flowing work of identity and being, listening to the stories of vast sexuality and gender, and being exposed to history you were never taught in school, and at the end, you may realize that this is Marxism you just joyfully sat through, turning page after page ready to read more. It's truly captivating.
Of course, like I said, some theories, thoughts, and terminology are outdated. Of course! People can only use the words they are left with, in order to forge new words and ways of thinking to move forward. That doesn't make them wrong in that current context -- of course if someone called me a "transvestite" now, we'd probably be fighting in a hot second, because it is used purposely to be offensive now. But at this time, that word was not entirely out of fashion, because there were trans people who were born in the 1930s and 1940s, when that WAS the word, who were still alive here, and were only in their 50s and 60s. I can overlook that. You should too.
A luta continua! is really what i can sum up the most from this book. Read it.
A collection of essays from Leslie Feinberg that were talks given by hir across the country in 1997, shortly after recovering from a deadly infection of the heart. Leslie interweaves hir own words and thoughts with anecdotes from other transgender and gender non-conforming persons.
This book is, of course by today's standards, outdated in many ways based on terminology and what has been discovered by and for transgender people in the proceeding years. Of course Leslie, being a Communist who understood dialectical materialism, knew this would happen. Nonetheless, it provides a very insightful, historical look into how gender and specifically, transgender studies was in the late 1990s. We hear from Indigenous trans people [the man interviewed calls himself a trans man and specifies that he is not Two-Spirit, hence why i dont use that word here], cross-dressers, drag queens, trans women [Sylvia Rivera makes perhaps one of her final appearances in this book, providing an anecdote on Stonewall and trans liberation, before her untimely death in 2002], and the wife of a gender non-conforming person, among others, who provide what trans liberation looks like to them in the current era.
One thing that Leslie Feinberg did effortlessly in hir writing, that I don't think many Marxist writers can do, or maybe don't do, or need to do better...is make the argument for Marxism, without saying directly that it's Marxism. Perhaps it's Leslie's being born and raised in the McCarthy era, when Communism had to be sneaky and underground, but ze does it so effortlessly -- you are reading a flowing work of identity and being, listening to the stories of vast sexuality and gender, and being exposed to history you were never taught in school, and at the end, you may realize that this is Marxism you just joyfully sat through, turning page after page ready to read more. It's truly captivating.
Of course, like I said, some theories, thoughts, and terminology are outdated. Of course! People can only use the words they are left with, in order to forge new words and ways of thinking to move forward. That doesn't make them wrong in that current context -- of course if someone called me a "transvestite" now, we'd probably be fighting in a hot second, because it is used purposely to be offensive now. But at this time, that word was not entirely out of fashion, because there were trans people who were born in the 1930s and 1940s, when that WAS the word, who were still alive here, and were only in their 50s and 60s. I can overlook that. You should too.
A luta continua! is really what i can sum up the most from this book. Read it.