Leslie Feinberg - Infinite Women

Born: 1 September 1949, United States
Died: 15 November 2014
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.

Leslie Feinberg’s award-winning first novel, Stone Butch Blues wasn’t published until 1993, when she was 44. Growing up Jewish in Buffalo, New York in the 1950s and ‘60s, Feinberg began working at 14, dropping out of high school, though she did earn a diploma. Her 20s saw the start of activism that would last the rest of her life, fighting for labor rights, against racism and anti-semitism, and in defense of abortion rights.
The semi-autobiographical Stone Butch Blues is considered a major work in the queer canon for its depiction of both lesbian characters and central themes of gender nonconformity and transgender identity. It won a Lambda Literary Award and American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award in 1994 and was translated into several other languages. She also wrote a second novel, Drag King Dreams, as well as the non-fiction Trans–Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue (1998) and Transgender Warriors: Making History (1996). Feinberg also published two collections of articles: Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba and Lavender and Red, exploring queer history for the Workers World Party.
Feinberg died in 2014, at age 65. In 2019, she was among the first 50 American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. national monument dedicated to queer rights and history.

The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.

Leslie Feinberg was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, author, and communist. Her notable works include “Stone Butch Blues” (1993) and “Transgender Warriors” (1996), which played a significant role in gender studies.
In the 1970s, she joined the Workers World Party, participating in various social and political events. Feinberg wrote for the Workers World newspaper for fifteen years and published her first novel, “Stone Butch Blues,” which received critical acclaim.
Her nonfiction works encompassed transgender issues and history. In 2019, she was honored on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor in New York City. Feinberg described herself as “an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist.”

IW note: Although Feinberg described herself as transgender, she was assigned female at birth and does not appear to have identified as non-binary, gender fluid or male, referring to herself as lesbian, female, etc. Feinberg’s reasoning for calling herself transgender appears to be a conflation of gender presentation and gender identity, based on people mistaking her (as a butch lesbian) for male rather than how she saw herself.