Subject: Review of "Transgender Warriors" by Leslie Feinberg
From: [email-masked]
Date: 21 May 1996 16:22:43 -0400

By request of several who e-mailed me after my offer to post this ...

The following is the text of my review of Leslie Feinberg's new book,
as it appears in the current issue of my magazine "Cross-Talk":

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For many months now, many in the transgender community (myself included)
have been awaiting the publication of "Transgender Warriors: Making
History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul" by Leslie Feinberg (Beacon Press, ISBN
0-8070-7940-5).

Leslie, who is a journalist and typesetter by trade, is also the author of
1993's "Stone Butch Blues" (Firebrand), which won both a Lambda Literary
Award and an American Library Association Award. But while that was
ostensibly a work of fiction, "Transgender Warriors" is non-fiction; a
history of those transgendered people through the ages whose very lives
have made a difference both in how we are perceived and how we perceive
ourselves. The common factor in both works is Leslie Feinberg herself;
both the earlier novel and this historical volume draw heavily on her
experiences as a FTM transgenderist.

Just as "Blues" was written as a narrative -- aren't most novels? --
"Warriors" actually tells the true story of how we got to where we are by
drawing on the reality of transgendered life. From the first page of the
preface, where Leslie reacts to having heard the question "are you a guy
or a girl?" all her life, to the last sentence of Chapter 15, in which the
reader is advised to look for transgender warriors in the forefront of the
struggle for humanity's liberation, this is Leslie Feinberg's personal
catharsis, told using the experiences of those who are not that different
>from ourselves. And that is why this is such an *important* book; it draws
on people and events that are known to many, rather than rely on the
personal experiences of the author.

And yet it does that, since this book is the result of Leslie Feinberg's
personal search for identity; in trying to find the reason why her gender
identity did not match the sex on her birth certificate, very few (if any)
stones were left unturned. Thus we learn not only of the intolerance shown
to crossdressers in relatively recent times (raids on "masque balls" in
1939 and court appearances by transgendered people in 1952 whose only
crime was attending a movie crossdressed) but also the rich tradition of
Native Americans, transsexual priestesses in ancient times, women who
masqueraded as men in order to do battle -- not only in well-known cases
like Joan of Arc and Civil War soldier Sarah Emma Edmonds but also
numerous revolutionaries from Mexican and Chinese history -- as well as
African tribes where warriors are expected at times to masquerade as
women; we learn how Biblical passages so often quoted against
transgendered behavior were challenged even in the times of Greek
mythology, when the Old Testament was revered as God's Law; indeed, this
book covers, to varying degrees, every time in history that has relevance
to the question "who -- or what -- are we?"

I could not help but nod my head, reading the later chapters of
"Transgender Warriors", reading of Leslie's attempt to explain what it is
like to live with a gender presentation that contradicts what is expected
based upon physical sex; never have I seen the enigma of language as it
comes up against our reality expressed with such accuracy and frustration.
And I knowingly laugh at the concept of the parents of a newborn baby
being asked "is it a boy or a girl?" only to be told "we don't know, the
child hasn't told us yet." For this is the sad reality of all this
history: Even with all the examples, stretching from the centuries before
Christ to the present day, of people who did not "fit" society's concept
of gender identity, the vast majority of humanity has still not learned
the lesson. And perhaps that is why we find ourselves continuing a
struggle that has gone on as long as this aforementioned history ... the
old saying "those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it" is
applicable not only to the oppressed but to the oppressors as well.

And that is why I find the final two chapters to be of such overwhelming
importance that they overshadow the first 13. Including a "Dykes To Watch
Out For" cartoon drawn especially by Alison Bechdel for this book (and
which seems to be a sequel to the "DTWOF" strip we ran in "Cross-Talk"
#64), the parallels between the gay liberation movement, the women's
movement, and the fight for transgender acceptance and rights have never
been clearer. In this context, the long-running argument over transsexual
inclusion in events such as the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival seem
sillier than they have ever been. And those (both transgendered and
cisgendered) who do not come away from reading this book with new
knowledge and insight about how we have fit into history and how we may
fit in to that part of history as yet unwritten, then they simply did not
read this book.

It is, of course, impossible for me to write an impartial review; this
magazine is dedicated to transgender issues, the author's perspective is
the flip side of my own coin, and Leslie Feinberg is a personal friend.
Despite those disclaimers, it should be obvious that "Transgender
Warriors" is probably the most important book ever written about this
community.

You have absolutely no excuse, in my opinion, not to read this book.

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