Digital Transgender Archive

Journal of a Transsexual

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A short theoretical piece in the form of a memoir by Leslie Feinberg, published in 1980. This work was Feinberg's first public attempt to put forward a political stance on trans liberation outside of Feinberg's work as a comrade within Workers World Party, an independent communist party. WWP's publishing arm was "World View Publishers," which printed this pamphlet and also Feinberg's expanded 1992 theorizing in "Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come." This pamphlet articulates Feinberg's thoughts at the time on the intricacies of gender and gender nonconformity as lived within capitalism. The work engages with these ideas in the context of the life of a working-class person who specifically says "I am a very masculine woman," and proceeds to show the social penalties and the survival strategies of such a person on a daily basis. To see how Feinberg’s understanding shifted, in addition to the 1992 work, read "Author's Note on the 20th Anniversary Edition," Stone Butch Blues (2013), which includes these words from Feinberg: "I can only note that, like planes, trains and automobiles, the same technological vehicles of hormones and surgeries take people on different journeys in their lives—depending on whether their oppression/s is/are based on sex/es, self/gender expressions, sexualities, nationalities, immigration status, health and/or dis/abilities, and/or economic exploitation of their labor."

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