Leslie Feinberg (September 1, 1949 – November 15, 2014) was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Feinberg authored Stone Butch Blues in 1993. writing, notably Stone Butch Blues and pioneering popular history book Transgender Warriors (1996), laid the groundwork for much of the terminology and awareness around gender studies and was instrumental in bringing these issues to a more mainstream audience.
Early life
Feinberg was born in Kansas City, Missouri and raised in Buffalo, New York in a working-class, Jewish family. At fourteen years old, began work at a display sign shop at a local department store. Feinberg eventually dropped out of Bennett High School, though officially received a diploma. Feinberg began frequenting gay bars in Buffalo and primarily worked in low-wage and temporary jobs, including washing dishes, cleaning cargo ships, working as a sign-language interpreter, inputting medical data, and working at a PVC pipe factory and a book bindery.
Career
When Feinberg was in twenties, met members of the Workers World Party at a demonstration for the land rights and self-determination of Palestinians and joined the Buffalo branch of the party. After moving to New York City, Feinberg took part in anti-war, anti-racist, and pro-labor demonstrations on behalf of the party for many years, including the March Against Racism (Boston, 1974), a national tour about HIV/AIDS (1983–84), and a mobilization against KKK members (Atlanta, 1988).
Feinberg's first novel, the 1993 Stone Butch Blues, won the Lambda Literary Award and the 1994 American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award (now called the Stonewall Book Award). While there are parallels to Feinberg's experiences as a working-class dyke, the work is not an autobiography. It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature in 2007.
nonfiction work included the books Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come in 1992 and Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman in 1996. Both works were finalists for Lambda Literary Awards for Transgender Literature. Also in 1996, Feinberg appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's documentary, Transexual Menace. In 2009, released Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba—a compilation of 25 journalistic articles.
In Transgender Warriors, Feinberg suggests that the term "transgender" was commonly used in two different ways. It served as an umbrella term encompassing anyone who questions or challenges traditional ideas of sex and gender. Additionally, it referred specifically to the distinction between individuals who change the sex assigned to them at birth and those whose gender expression is seen as not aligning with societal expectations for their sex. In a 2006 interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about Drag King Dreams, Feinberg said of her novel's Jewish characters, "for Heshie and Max, this question of the occupation of Palestine goes to the heart of what it means to live an authentic life in a period in which this really historical crime is taking place in their name."
Awards and recognition
In 2007 Feinberg was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work.
In June 2019 Feinberg was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City's Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
In 2023, Publishing Triangle renamed their award for trans and gender-variant literature after her, naming it the Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature.
Illness
In 2008, Feinberg was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She wrote that the infection first came about in the 1970s, when there was limited knowledge related to such diseases and that felt hesitant to deal with medical professionals for many years due to transgender identity. For this reason, only received treatment later in life. In the 2000s, Feinberg created art and blogged about illnesses with a focus on disability art and class consciousness. Feinberg and Pratt married in New York and Massachusetts in 2011. In the mid and late 1990s they attended Camp Trans together which was held outside of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in protest of its trans-exclusionary womyn-born womyn policy. Excerpts from Feinberg's 1994 speech at Camp Trans appear in the Winter 1995 issue of TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism. Feinberg's last words were reported to be, "Hasten the revolution! Remember me as a revolutionary communist."
Feinberg's widow wrote in statement regarding Feinberg's death that Feinberg “preferred to use the pronouns /zie and /hir for herself, but also said: 'I care which pronoun is used, but people have been respectful to me with the wrong pronoun and disrespectful with the right one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.