Gender is not as simple as “he” or “she” for transgender activist and author Leslie Feinberg.
Feinberg identifies as a “masculine, lesbian, female-to-male cross-dresser and transgenderist,” but the author perhaps best known for the 1993 novel “Stone Butch Blues” prefers to be identified by gender neutral pronouns — such as “ze,” a derivation of “she” and “he,” or “hir,” a combination of “him” and “her.”
The gender neutral pronouns used more and more by queer people who refuse to identify as either male or female are discussed in Feinberg’s 1999 book of speeches and essays compiled in “Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue.”
“Our queerness doesn’t have a language for it yet,” Feinberg says, discussing her most recent novel, “Drag King Dreams,” released in March.
“There are cross-dressers, tri-gendered people — the LGBT is just an approximation of what’s out there.”
It was Feinberg’s 1993 novel “Stone Butch Blues,” winner of the American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award, that put a face on the struggles transgender people face in daily life. Protagonist Jess Goldberg, a working-class lesbian conflicted with her gender identity, struggles with where she fits in the “he-she” social structure during the pre-Stonewall era.
Feinberg says the story resonated with many readers who for the first time saw their lives and struggles recognized in writing. Today, it stands as one of the iconic gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender books.
Sixteen years later, Feinberg follows with “Drag King Dreams,” the story of Max Rabinowitz, a New York loner and a bouncer in an East Village drag club. Rabinowitz finds solace with a tight-knit group of gender queer friends who also don’t fit exactly into male/female categories, and who constantly face violence, hatred, oppression and chaos in post-9/11 New York as they try to eke out a simple but meaningful existence.
Rabinowitz, who identifies as a “suit-and-tie butch; bad-ass bulldagger, old-gay drag king,” even acknowledges that working in gay bars offers a simple amenity — being able to use the bathroom without looks or stares or even harsh words.
From a heterosexual male cross-dresser who is violently murdered to a drag queen friend with AIDS who receives poor treatment in the hospital after the staff learns she is biologically male, Feinberg pulls no punches in showing the harsh realities in the lives of her characters.
“There’s bleakness to the existence circumscribed by oppression, but there is also hope,” Feinberg stresses.
“I’m not a professional writer. I’m not making art for art’s sake. I write as part of my activism,” Feinberg says. “The e-mails I received when ‘Drag King Dreams’ came out were from people saying they feel so hopeful now — they thought no one else lived at the intersection of oppression, that they didn’t have a language for it. And after they read it, they wanted to do something to help change the world.”
Feinberg says she doesn’t try to interpret the world, but change it.
“I planted [the book] like a flag to say, ‘Here’s the subject, the life, who wants to come talk about it,’” she says.
“Drag King Dreams” is definitely an activist’s novel. Topics range from the war in Iraq to communism versus capitalism, from the hatred of Muslims to the war between Israel and Palestine and gender neutral pronouns. The novel reads a great deal like a textbook with an agenda, intermingled with glimpses into various characters’ lives.
Gender neutral pronouns pop up unexpectedly — and italicized — in a small portion of the novel when Rabinowitz begins work at a new gay bar where young drag king performers are a huge attraction. When interacting with the performers, Rabinowitz identifies them as “hir” or “ze.”
“As to gender-neutral pronouns — they are used for characters in this novel who either don’t identify as he or she, or else the viewer — in this case the protagonist Max — does not know how they would identify,” Feinberg explains.
The audience Feinberg seeks is not mainstream. The activist writes for readers who live in the margins and need a voice in society.
“I wrote this book for who I always write for — for the people who are the most downtrodden, for my neighbors, my co-workers, people in jail, for people who tell me they usually don’t read books,” Feinberg says. “I think they read it because I write in a voice they can trust. It’s coming from my own experiences, even if their experiences aren’t necessarily the same.”
But writing a fictional novel as a piece of activism is not intended to mislead readers into believing what’s on the page is not true and does not reflect Feinberg’s life.
“It was hard for readers of ‘Stone Butch Blues’ to think of it as a novel, and I don’t want readers to feel flim-flammed,” Feinberg says. “But I wrote these novels to tell more truth — a novel gives me freedom to tell about oppression.”
The author felt obligated to let the characters express themselves and find their own voices.
“Things came up I didn’t expect,” Feinberg says. “When writing fiction, I think about the characters and wait until they take shape in my head, when I can hear their voices. It’s as though I’m transcribing their conversations.”
But ultimately, Feinberg’s life is much different than those described in “Stone Butch Blues” and “Drag King Dreams.”
“I have a great life,” the writer notes. “I still have to cobble together enough money every month to pay rent. But through these characters in my novels who are finding themselves and are making a difference, that’s where readers find their hope — and where I find my hope, too.”
