IN MEMORIAM Leslie Feinberg Beheld a World without Gender

MARTHA E. STONE N Transliberation: Beyond Pink or Blue (1998), the late writer-activist Leslie Feinberg, who preferred the gender- Ineutral pronouns hir and ze, described hirself as “a mas- culine feminine”: “I do not identify as a male, so I don’t believe that I should have to change my body to ‘match’ my gender expression so that authorities can feel comfortable. ... Being a masculine female means I am uni-gendered, not bi- gendered.” Feinberg, who died at the age of 65 in Syracuse, , on November 15, 2014, really just wanted to be Les Feinberg. Hir spouse, the poet , who stated that Feinberg was the “first theorist to advance a Marx- ist concept of ‘ liberation,’” died of complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme dis- ease. Earlier in hir life, Feinberg had been near death from endocarditis, an infection of the heart valves. Transphobic health care providers offered only contempt, and the condi- tion was left untreated for too long, leading to other medical problems. Born Diane Leslie Feinberg in Kansas City, Missouri, ze recounted a few anecdotes of hir childhood in Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rod- man (1996), a well-researched history of transgender people through history and across cultures. Transgender Warriors ulated by Max’s friends: drag queens and kings, immigrants includes a slightly blurred photo of Feinberg, around age falsely accused of terrorism, and unlikely friendships that seven, looking as forlorn and hopeless as any child in a war- arose among them all. Through political activism, Max—who torn country. The family later moved to Buffalo, the setting works off the books as a bouncer in an East Village drag for part of Stone Butch Blues (1993), Feinberg’s first pub- bar—is able to find hope for the future. lished and best-known book. In this semi-autobiographical As a young adult, Feinberg fell in with congenial people novel, butch lesbian Jess Goldberg tells the story of growing who happened to be communists and became involved in up in Buffalo in the 1950s and running away at the age of Workers World, an American Marxist-Leninist party that, sixteen. Feinberg goes into chilling detail about police bru- since 1959, has protested against racism, sexism, war, and tality that butches, femmes and drag queens faced when cap- imperialism. Feinberg became managing editor of Workers tured in bar raids. In the 1960s, Jess decided that she “can’t World newspaper, a position ze held for many years, and survive as a he-she much longer” and decided to start taking wrote a 120-part series from 2004 to 2008 exploring the links male hormones to “pass as a guy.” between socialism and LGBT history and politics. Hir last In 1994, Stone Butch Blues, which was reviewed in the book, Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba (2009), is a col- in the Fall 1994 issue of this magazine, won the American lection of 25 essays that originally appeared as a series of ar- Library Association’s (ALA) Gay and Lesbian Book Award ticles, “Lavender & Red,” in Workers World. (now known as the Stonewall Book Award), as well as the Author’s Note: Thanks to John DeSantis for his assistance in prepar- Lambda Book Award for lesbian fiction. One member of the ing this article. ALA awards jury vividly recalls a celebratory dinner on Ocean Drive in South Beach. This group of librarians had been waiting half an hour for Feinberg to show up, and fi- nally the author arrived, breathless, direct from the airport, where ze had flown in from New York after speaking at a twenty-fifth anniversary commemoration of the . Feinberg, who was a powerful, dynamic speaker, had a deep and unwavering love of libraries and the librarians who helped give voice to the powerless. Drag King Dreams, Feinberg’s second novel, was pub- lished in 2006 and was reviewed in the September–October 2006 issue of this magazine. Set in the days just after 9/11, it is narrated by Max Rabinowitz, a butch lesbian, and is pop-

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