Leslie Feinberg

When asked to name a popular and well-known transgender rights activist in the media today, one would probably think of the actress from Orange is the New Black, Laverne Cox. But there have been plenty of advocates for trans (transgender) rights long before people really understood what the word transgender meant. One activist, Leslie Feinberg, had been advocating and fighting for transgender rights as early as the mid-1960s.

When Leslie was born, in 1949, men and women were not viewed equally at all. Women were seen as housewives, they were simply there to cook, clean and take care of the kids. It was the men of the household who went to their jobs everyday and brought home money to put food on the table. Men didn’t bother with trivial things such as helping the kids with homework or doing the dishes, that was also the woman’s ‘job’.

Imagine this gut feeling deep down telling you that you’re not meant for either of those ‘roles’, now what? If you don’t fit in column A) Housewife or B) Working Man, what other options were there? Well, Leslie realized she needed to find her own way. So she did, by leaving her home where she wasn't accepted for, at the time, identifying as a lesbian, and moving to Buffalo, New York. It would be here in Buffalo that Leslie would become the trans rights activist we are learning about today.   
          

Only fifteen at the time, Leslie had to lie on her working papers so she would be able to get a job in a factory. But it wasn’t in these factories that Leslie came into her own, it was after work, in the bars in Buffalo. It was at these gay bars, known as Drag Bars at the time, that Leslie found her sense of community, a family to call her own. And although police would often raid these bars, she and her friends would still go.

During a talk at Sonoma State University[1], Leslie brought up the fact that she was often asked, ‘Why go to these bars if they are so dangerous?’ Her response was always that it wasn’t the bars that were dangerous it was the fact that “Where ever we went, was dangerous.” The ‘we’ she was talking about there were Leslie and her other LGBT friends, her community. In Outlaw[2], a 1994 short film staring Leslie, she had said that if someone had to question whether or not you were a boy or a girl, it automatically gave them the right to beat you up. In fact it was legal back then to arrest someone who was cross-dressing.

But as time went on, things started happening for the LGBT community. In 1969 the Stonewall riots happened, which were a series of violent riots made by LGBT youth in Greenwich Village, New York at the time.  It was these riots that gave attention to trans and gay youth in America. The riots were their way of saying ‘we’re gay, we’re proud and you can’t change that.' Sadly Leslie wasn’t able to take part in the Stonewall riots, but they did make her realize that if she started talking and voicing what’s unjust and wrong in our country, people might actually listen and learn.

In 1993 Leslie wrote her very first novel called Stone Butch Blues, a somewhat autobiographical story about a butch lesbian trying to make her way in the world. This was one of the first widely recognized books in our country depicting what life was like for someone in the LGBT community. It was this book that really got the ball rolling for Leslie in the media. After her book grabbed the publics’ attention, Leslie was invited to talk on the Joan River’s show in 1993[3]. The fact that a trans person was being asked to talk about what it’s like to be transgender on live television was unheard of. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for Leslie to be able to talk to the American people about gay and trans rights.

So Leslie did what she did best; educate the audience, Joan and the people who were watching at home about what it was like to be a transgendered person at that time. But, rather than letting this segment just be about Leslie and what she had to offer to the people, Joan also happened to invite a ‘clinical sexologist’ who counseled transsexuals. Dr. Roger Poe was there to explain what Leslie had said in simpler terms to the audience. Some may not realize this, but by doing so he erased the fact that this was about a transgender person explaining what it was like being trans. The segment was not supposed to be about a straight white man coming in and re-explaining everything Leslie had just said, while also throwing in scientific terms as to why Leslie was the way she was.

Leslie had said on multiple occasions that she was sick and tired of being looked at like an experiment and that she was done with being analyzed for who she was. She almost didn’t appear on  the Joan River’s show because she didn’t want to sit up there and unintentionally be ridiculed but she also knew that she had to do the show because no other person was around to advocate for transgender rights.

In the end Leslie was diagnosed with Lyme disease on 2008 and later passed away in November 2014. And although Leslie was too ill to talk and hold presentations, she still wrote and posted on her website to keep in touch with the outside world.  Even on her deathbed she wanted people to know that she would never stop fighting. In fact her last words[4], who were to her partner Mini Pratt, were “Remember me as a revolutionary communist”, which is exactly how she will always be remembered.

 Here is a short clip of Leslie Feinberg from Alisa Lebow's short film, Outlaw, 1994

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[1]CSUSonoms. “Beyond Pink or Blue”. Filmed, April 2007. Posted, January 2008.

[2] Outlaw, Directed by Alisa Lebow, Docudrag Productions, 1994

[3] Joshua Gamson. Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity. University of Chicago Press. 1998, see page 103  

[4] Leslie Feinberg, http://www.lesliefeinberg.net/self/, (November 15, 2014)