Written by:
Gretchen Lee
Pink and Blue
As a writer, activist and public speaker, Feinberg has since gone beyond the confines of fiction to further explore issues that bridge the boundaries of gender. With Trans Liberation, a new book of inspired speeches, Feinberg explores life after Stone Butch Blues, and discusses how trans issues affect us all.
In this interview, Curve spoke in depth with Leslie Feinberg about some of the issues raised in the new book.
CURVE: How do trans issues intersect with the lives of lesbians and bi women who do not identify as trans?
Leslie Feinberg: Trans issues are a broad category that embraces the grievances of many trans communities. There are transsexual women and men who challenge the sex they were legally assigned at birth. [There are] intersexual people born on the anatomical sweep between female and male.
Also masculine females and feminine males--including butches and gay males considered to be "effeminate." It includes heterosexual and bisexual cross-dressers, and gay cross-dressers--usually referred to as drag butches (or drag kings or stone butches, etc.) and drag queens...also includes bearded females, androgynous people and those who are bigender--having both a masculine and feminine gender expression....It's clear that lesbians and bi women overlap with these populations, or fall in love with, or are friends with, or organize day-to-day with us.
When we talk about fighting for sex and gender liberation, these are trans issues and lesbian/bi issues. The right of individuals to control their own bodies. The right to express their gender freely without facing harassment or violence. The right to self-definition. The removal of prejudicial attitudes that the dominant culture imbues in femininity and masculinity. The revisiting of the question of what it means to be a woman or a man in this society.
CURVE: What about the current dialogue in our community between butches and FTM (female-to-male) trans people?
Feinberg: It's important to continue and develop this dialogue. There are so many societal misconceptions about butches and transsexual men. First and foremost, there is the misunderstanding that transmen are just butch lesbians who transitioned because they couldn't deal with their oppression--as though it's so much easier to be transsexual in this society!
That isn't true and it's hurtful and serves to create divisions. Not all transmen identified as lesbians before their transitions. Transmen include bisexuals and gay men. And not all transmen were identifiably masculine before their transitions. And not all transmen are masculine, either.
Transmen, like men as a whole, represent a spectrum of gender expressions. I know transmale drag queens.
CURVE: How has your life changed since Stone Butch Blues?
Feinberg: To understand my life, it's important to know that I've been a political activist in the same organization my entire adult life, and it's been an exciting and wonderful experience that makes my life very different from that of my fictional protagonist Jess.
Before Stone Butch Blues, I wrote other approaches to understanding about trans oppression. I developed a slideshow on the roots of trans oppression that formed the basis for Transgender Warriors.
I wrote Stone Butch Blues as an extension of my activism and my grass-roots organizing.... I didn't think that people could be asked to understand an oppression they themselves had never experienced. So I planned to write a novel first, so that people could "see" through the eyes of someone who did experience it.
Some people think that authors must be getting rich off their books. That's only true for writers like Danielle Steele or Michael Crichton. Writing these books hasn't changed my living standards any. And Transgender Warriors was an expensive book for me, because the author has to pay all the research and photo permission costs.
I never could have written the book without the contributions made to me by being in the political movement my whole life, I donated the advance to ongoing struggles against injustice and inequality.
Finishing Transgender Warriors changed me. It made me feel so much calmer and stronger and prouder. All my life, whenever I was confronted by bigots or bashers I knew I had a right to live, but I couldn't articulate it. I just had to finish that book within my lifetime....
So I still have trouble answering what I do for a living. I still have to scrap to make the rent. I travel more than I did before. I meet and hear from even more amazing and wonderfully honest people than I ever could have imagined. I still have to struggle in public with constant hostility and danger, and spend too much of my time trying to find a safe public toilet.
CURVE: As the author of a semi-autobiographical novel, do you find that people often confuse you with your protagonist?
Feinberg: People assume that the novel is semi-autobiographical. I certainly drew on what I've experienced in my life and what I know others experience. But I was really writing in response to much of the gender theory that was being published that felt so removed from my life and experience. I wanted to write a book that revealed the gender theory we all live and place it within the social context of race, class and desire.
Once I decided to write fiction, I quickly discovered that to write a powerful novel, I had to let the characters "live their own lives." All the characters are part of me because I wrote them, but I gave them free reign to make decisions and live the consequences in ways that are very different from my own life.
The limitation of pronouns in the English language made me choose the first person narrative. I think that lent the novel power, and also made it feel more like an autobiographical voice.
I explain to people that it's fictional for two reasons. First, I actually get letters addressed to Jess and other characters in the novel. Secondly, it's important to me as a writer for people to understand that fiction is very forceful. And fiction often contains as much truth-and sometimes more--than non--fiction.
It saddens me that people sometimes feel if it's fiction, it's not truth. It's just a "made up" book that has nothing to do with my life, or others like me. I couldn't have written a fictional work without having lived the non-fictional realities.
To learn more about Leslie Feinberg, see http://www.transgenderwarrior.org |
