Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight is an author, activist, speaker, editor, photographer and one of the leading transgender activists. Today's spotlight is Leslie Feinberg.

Leslie Feinberg was born September 1, 1949 in Kansas City, Missouri, into a working-class family. In the 1960’s, she came of age in the gay bars of Buffalo, New York.

After surgically transitioning from female-to-male, ze became an outspoken opponent of traditional Western concepts about how a “real man” or “real woman” should look and act. Feinberg supports the use of gender-neutral pronouns such as s/he, “ze” instead of he or she, and “hir” instead of him or her.

Feinberg is well-known for forging a strong bond between the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, and other oppressed minorities. “Everyone who is under the gun of reaction and economic violence is a potential ally,”

Hir acclaimed first book “Stone Butch Blues” written in 1993, is a semi-autobiographical novel about a lesbian questioning her gender identity. It is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.

The story is based around Jess Goldberg, a transgender individual growing up in a conservative town in New York and discovering the burgeoning gay community in Buffalo during the 1970s and 80s. The book,which won the Lambda Literary Award, is frequently taught at colleges, universities and some high schools.

“Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Ru Paul”, hir first nonfiction work, examined the structures of societies that welcome or are threatened by gender variance. It was selected as one of The Publishing Triangle’s “100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books.”

Hir third book, “Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue” documents Feinberg’s near-death experience after being denied medical treatment for a heart problem. The doctor, after discovering his patient was transgender, turned hir away.

In 2006 Feinberg returned to fiction with hir second novel.“Drag King Dreams” picking up where “Stone Butch Blues” left off, chronicling the issues of transgender life today.

Ze is also a national leader in the Workers World Party and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper. Hir writings on LGBT history, "Lavender & Red," frequently appeared in the Workers World newspaper.

S/he has also been involved in Camp Trans and has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work.

In October 2007, ze was the keynote speaker at the Annual Convocation of The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, where ze was given the Howard Thurman Award “for hir activism and advocacy in defense of oppressed nationalities, women, disabled, the working class movement and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.” Hir speech focused on finding common ground where communists and religious activists can be in solidarity in the struggle for social transformation and liberation.

Proclamations congratulating hir were issued by the California State Legislature and the City and County of San Francisco. The mayor’s office named Oct. 21st “Leslie Feinberg Day.”

In 2008, after becoming disabled from a degenerative disease, which made writing difficult, s/he began telling hir stories through photography.

Ze has delivered speeches at colleges, universities, conferences and Pride festivals across the country and was named one of the “15 Most Influential” in the battle for gay and lesbian rights by Curve Magazine.

Feinberg is married to poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt.

Ze has carried legal documents for 40 years that s clearly state who is, and is not, part of hir family. Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde and Catherine Ryan Hyde, though biologically related, are legally defined as not part of hir family. The documents also define Feinberg's partner Pratt to be hir family; and also refers to certain other chosen people as family.

"Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught."