Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come

by Leslie Feinberg

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, History, Politics, Transgender, Theory

22 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

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."

Reviews

[Will L · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work digs into a very deep history of transgender experience, making the kinds of vast cross-cultural and transhistorical comparisons that sober-minded cultural anthropologists trained in particularism and relativism would likely frown upon- in doing so, Feinberg "[sets] alight the sparks of hope in the past" (Benjamin) by demonstrating the universality of gender variance, though, in my view, without foreclosing the rich possibilities these histories offer us by burdening them with Eurocentric, modern or medical schemes of understanding. The specific terms used can be outdated, but I don't believe there are schemes of thought imposed on the data that prejudice their meaning and the light they can offer us. It is thus a bold statement of power and pride in transgender being, which encourages self-acceptance and self-expression rather than assimilation. Drawing on the past in the manner Feinberg does shows us that gendered freedom is the resurrection and elaboration of these past lives. Its central argument, that liberated joy for trans people cannot be realised until the patriarchal capitalist menace blighting the earth is overturned, remains all too relevant.

[Foley Stocks · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, which is a relatively short work, Feinberg quite clearly outlines a history of the pervasiveness of transgender people, of all kinds, throughout global cultures, despite perhaps the discomfort this may bring for a modern social order that seeks to oppress and hide this facet of human self-expression. Feinberg primarily writes with clarity and precision, and so it is easy to follow what is being said.
Much of the content here can be said to be somewhat outdated, not in language or sentiment necessarily, but in that modern understanding of this has gotten much better, fortunately, and so various explanations are redundant - though Feinberg too calls this a “wonderful problem”.
There is, however, instances where the text's historical position is revealed as obvious: being released in 1992, this text is quite interesting to see the way our modern understanding of transgenderism has been more ‘ironed out’, so to speak, as much of the description here is quite fluid, or ambiguous, as to what gender is what, and where those distinctions lie, and to modern standards, there appears both some conflation, and distinctions that differ - however, being relatively unfamiliar with Feinberg’s other work, this could also be a reflection of their own treatment of gender as a category.

Feinberg's historical examples are easy to follow, but it can be said that the treatment of it itself might be in need of some revision.

Transgender is a very ancient form of human expression that pre-dates oppression. It was once regarded with honour. A glance at human history proves that when societies were not ruled by exploiting classes that rely on divide-and-conquer tactics, “cross-gender” youths, women and men on all continents were respected members of their communities.

This point is not entirely devoid of merit (and in fact I would say the general idea being communicated is fair enough), as Feinberg later gives some evidence for Native American communities, as well as Greek (as well as an, albeit dubious, Egyptian) examples. Yet, for Feinberg especially, someone so evidently progressive on this topic of gender, are we to make the presumption that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are categories immanent across all historical and socio-cultural contexts? Perhaps biologically, the distinction may be made, but gender and sex are certainly different, as Feinberg herself acknowledges just earlier, saying that gender is “self-expression, not anatomy.”
Furthermore, the somewhat vague gesture towards “divide-and-conquer” tactics by the “exploiting classes” also emphasises a point of intentionality, which is problematic in itself, that one ought to seek to avoid in these conversations. How do we take this notion to be true? Taking it to its natural implication, there is some class that determines certain categories to be a way in which disharmony can be disseminated, thereby embarking on a “bloody campaign” by which the oppressed are forced into disunity. This feels incredibly reductive, and discounts instead a complex history of the development of gender, perhaps as a result of the socio-economic factors brought about by the function of capital, which brings us to a present gender binary - this feels like a more intuitive route for Feinberg, a Marxist, to take (and one which she in fact does acknowledge to be the case later, which further begs the question as to why this particular language is being used), rather than gestures towards the “exploiting classes” as a simpler explanation.
We see this somewhat reductive treatment of history again.

In capitalism’s early competitive stage, when the new bourgeoisie were fighting feudalism and all its ideological baggage, they prided themselves on their enlightened and scientific view of the world and society. But once in power, the capitalists made use of many of the old prejudices, particularly those that suited their own divide-and-conquer policies. [...] As the new ruling class established itself, it demanded conformity to the system of wage slavery, and shed its radicalism.

I am not sure that it necessarily “shed its radicalism”, as “radicalism” is largely dependent on the time in which it is espoused, and so we must not be so uncharitable as to not acknowledge the progressive force that capitalism was initially, and we cannot really expect that the object of today’s radicalism can be subsumed within the “radicalism” of a past movement, and to do so would be a dishonest treatment of history.
Looking at what I called the 'dubious' Egyptian example,

Thousands of artefacts have been unearthed dating back to 25,000 B.C. that prove these societies worshipped goddesses, not gods. Some of these deities were transgendered, as were many of their shamans or religious representatives.

This is an interesting point in itself, but one gets the feeling that ‘transgender’ here means something different: if we take gender to be the various modes of expression and various social relations in which we engage, that denote this or that gender, then it feels almost unfathomable that being transgender has the same ramifications in 25,000 B.C., particularly as a god or goddess (though I’m unsure how you get transgender goddesses without gods to transition or be defined oppositionally to), as it would do in the 90s, when this was written. Unless this concept is being applied retroactively, though it is unclear in Feinberg’s display of ‘evidence’.

But I do not want to appear harsh, as the majority is quite agreeable, and there are places where Feinberg's position as a Marxist shines in particular.

Ancient religion, before the division of society into classes, combined collectively held beliefs with material observations about nature. [...] Christianity was transformed from a revolutionary movement of the urban poor into a powerful state religion that served the wealthy elite. Transgender in all its forms becomes a target. In reality it was the rise of private property, the male-dominated family and class divisions that led to narrowing what was considered to be acceptable self-expression. What had been natural was declared its opposite.

Feinberg makes a good point about religion and the way in which it became subsumed within the state apparatus, and furthermore, it is a particular example of the way in which movements among the oppressed are historically taken up by a given hegemony, in an attempt to reduce or quash revolutionary fervour. This is then quite nicely applied to transgenderism.

So overall, despite what appears to be many criticism, Feinberg is evidently a good writer, and Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come is a primarily well-written and researched, easy to read, and clear text, which brings to attention, particularly in the time it was written, the necessity for change. Naturally, due to its length, some depth is missing, which I hope to see in Feinberg's more extensive work, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was reading this again today because I wanted to give it to someone as a sort of Trans / Trans History 101. I hate to say it, but that would be a really bad idea. This pamphlet was written in 1993, and since then language has changed quite a bit. However, even then it was shitty to call a trans man a "transgendered woman" or a two-spirit person a b*rdache (the term two-spirit was decided on by a group of Indigenous activists in 1990, three years prior). Also others (such as b. binaohan in decolonizing trans/gender 101) have pointed out that Feinberg makes it seem like two-spirit people were wiped out by colonization. This is not true! There are still lots of two-spirit people alive and still resisting today. Feinberg also makes it seem as if two-spirit people are an "ancient form" of today's trans people, which is also wrong. Two-spirit people and trans people are different. Some two-spirit people choose to claim the trans label but not all do. Putting all two-spirit people under the trans label is another act of colonial epistemological violence.

It kinda sucks because the core theory of this pamphlet is really good and this could be a really great resource. However, it fails in its goal as a pamphlet for introducing people to trans history and trans struggles.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saw someone talking about this on Twitter and downloaded this short pamphlet on PDF. Written in 1992 covers the basics of the history and vision for liberation of Trans People back in 1992. Very short 22 pages but mentions figures like Joan of Arc and Christine Jorgensen and transphobia in popular culture and unnatural Christian ideas about naturalism that feeds into transphobia. Short document but covers many bases.

Here is a link to a socialist paper that has the PDF.

https://www.workers.org/book/transgen...

https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Docum...

[M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a two-and-a-half read, I thought it would be more about the struggles of trans people during hir time, shat needed to change and how to do it. It is a pretty good account of trans history, or at least gender non-conforming history, but not much more. Also, I’ve seen around some criticisms to the way Feinberg talks about Native/indigenous people, so that’s to keep in mind too. Overall, I do feel like it is pretty outdated (as ze hirself mentions in the preface) and I feel like nowadays it can confuse people. I would just keep the historical bits, they’re a good enough introduction.

[pyziot · Rating 4 out of 5]

oro

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The surtitle of this work sums it up well. "A Marxist view of when and why transgender oppression arose". Its principal sweeping ambition is to (somewhat briefly) summarise a multitude of cultural and historical expressions of gender identity which contrast with or contradict a binary concept of gender which furthermore equates sex and gender. And in so doing, it seeks to address this subject from a Marxist perspective on its history. But in so briefly and so broadly addressing so many historical and cultural contexts, the work cannot help but feel insufficient to the purpose of truly and authentically comprehending any of these individual contexts for their own sake.

I think that, in the end, this work is a valuable time capsule, representing the expanding consciousness, in its time and place, of how gender is constructed in differing cultures, and how history has seen individuals break free of norms of gender expression. I appreciate it, in that regard, and I appreciate what Feinberg sought to do. But I cannot in all honesty appreciate it as history or anthropology. Instead, it is for me a transgender voice making transgender perspectives on history and anthropology heard, using what was available to the individual cross-disciplinary researcher in its time and place.

[Seth · Rating 2 out of 5]

TL;DR: Gender bending used to be associated with high social status and shitty epistemics (i.e., religion), then there was a shift and opposition to gender bending became associated with high social status and shitty epistemics (i.e., religion). Also, we can tell a just-so story about how capitalism is the real problem.

This is, of course, not how Leslie would summarize it, but I wasn't terribly impressed. It's mostly just a gish gallop of historical tidbits, which are kinda interesting, but more than I needed given I didn't buy into the myth that transgenderism is a new phenomenon in the first place. And while I'm generally more upset by hyperstitious slur cascades than I am by hyperstitious slurs, I'd still rather cite a more recent source with current terminology (and ideally no just-so story) to dispel that myth.

[zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

i like this in theory; i do have some issues w certain verbiage and generalizations (ie while i do think joan of arc and queerness are not mutually exclusive, i'd hesitate to place the label of trans on her); i feel like a lot of context was lost in the fact that feinberg chose a short-form kind of thing, but i am a sucker for queer history and considering this was published quite a while ago i can let those other things slide

[Regular Warlock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marxist trans propaganda! I appreciate Feinberg’s firm statements and radical positions. Unfortunately, much of this is a rather misguided historical/anthropological approach. Worth reading and worth critiquing.

[clarissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was interesting but not perfect

[Khanh · Rating 4 out of 5]

a bit scattered and eurocentric, but very well written! i enjoyed the lesbian blues song recs.

[Casey Browne · Rating 3 out of 5]

One thing attempts to create these taxonomies of transness can be white by default with the "norms" that put you in one class or another being raced and classed and attempts to organise around taxonomic labels effectively becoming white-first trans politics - given how Leslie Feinberg was a Revolutionary Communist. It informed the basis of her work for building a radical intellectual and street activist transgender movement.
I should also mention that trans studies have a whole range of critiques around the limits of "transgender liberation", using an umbrella idea for all forms of oppression for people outside of gender norms. I'm pretty sure Vivianne Namaste wrote about it, among others. You don't have to adopt this idea wholesale or without criticism. It's just, given how there's so much ignorance about it, it's important to know what the umbrella is, why it came about and what purpose it serves. Also, apologies for the archaic use of language in this thread, but I'm trying to get to the idea's roots. It's not trivial to translate between its history and present-day online trans culture, especially when many things have collapsed into trans at the same time as trans medicalisation has been massively scaled up from what it used to be. There's a genuine language gap between trans-radical leftism and the ways common liberal NGOs educate most people to use trans terminology, with differences that are hard to translate clearly.

[e☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was excellent!! a very brief but comprehensive historical view of transgender people that clearly shows the reader how trans people have always existed throughout history and that transphobia was and is not something natural or inherent in people, but rather something that was built for class interests and private property. the section on Joan of Arc was especially interesting. i'll come back to a lot of places in this book.