Transgender Warriors

Content Warning: This section discusses racism, anti-trans and anti-gay violence (including murder), rape, and death by suicide.

People constantly ask whether Leslie Feinberg is a man or a woman. As the English language is limited to the words “man” and “woman” to describe “all the vicissitudes of bodies and styles of expression” (ix), she has no easy answer to this question. She was assigned female at birth, but she has always had a very masculine gender expression and is often perceived as a man. Feinberg came of age in the liberation movements of the 1960s and ’70s, and was particularly involved in the early transgender liberation movement. She recognizes that some of the terms she uses in this text will soon become outdated, as the accepted language to describe transgender people is evolving quickly. Feinberg is not overly concerned with specific terms for herself; she has been called many things, but overall she prefers to refer to herself as transgender. She uses “transgender” as an umbrella term for the many varied gender experiences of people who challenge “the boundaries of sex and gender” (x). Some people do not fit into a binary gender category and are “bigender,” meaning they “have both a feminine side and masculine side” (xi).