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gender TRANS

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WITH A NEW AFTERWORD

or of Stone Hutch Blurs

'Men and women have had

their histories. This is the history

book for the rest of us. " - katf. bornstein

author of Gendei Outlaw

TRANS GENDE

Warriors

TRANS

gender WARRIORS

MAKING HISTORY

FROM JOAN OF ARC

TO DENNIS RODMAN

LESLIE FEINBERG

Beacon Press

BOSTON

BEACON PRESS

25 Beacon Street

Boston, Massachusetts

02108-2892

Beacon Press books are published under the

auspices ofthe Unitarian Universalist Association

ofCongregations.

Printed in the United States ofAmerica

01 00 99 98 97 8 76543 2

Book Design and Formatting

by Lucinda Hitchcock

EPIGRAPH CREDITS

Part One: "Before the Scales, Tomorrow," by Otto

Rene Castillo from Poetry Like Bread: Poets ofthe

Political Imagination From Curbstone Press, edited bv

Martin Espada, Curbstone Press, 1994. Translation

with permission by Curbstone Press.

Part Two: Schlipp, P. A. Albert Einstein, Philosopher-

Scientist. NewYork: Tudor, 1950.

Part Three: "Still I Rise," from And Still I Rise, bv

Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random

House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Feinberg, Leslie, 1949-

Transgender warriors: making history from

Joan ofArc to Dennis Rodman / Leslie Feinberg.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 0-8070-7940-5 (cloth)

isbn 0-8070-7941-3 (paper)

1. Transsexualism - History. 2. Transvestism -

History. 3. Gender identity - History. I. Tide

hq77.9.f44 1997

305.3 -dc21 96-37682

Part Four: Written by Karl Marx in the spring of

1845. First published bv Frederick Engels in

Stuttgart in the 1888 Appendix to the separate edi-

tion of his book LudwigFeuerbach und der Ausgang

der klassischen deutschen Philosophie.

The Crossing Press Feminist Series, Freedom. Cali-

fornia: 1984.

DEDICATED TO

TWO TRANSGENDER WARRIORS

WHO FELL IN BATTLE

Brandon Teena

Marsha P. Johnson

CONTENTS

PART

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

one TheJourney Begins 3

two My Path to Consciousness 1

three The Give Away 21

four They Called Her "Hommasse" 31

five Our Sacred Past 39

six Why Bigotry Began 49

seven But They Had Slaves! 55

eight Natural Becomes "Unnatural" 61

nine "Holy War " against Trans People 6 7

ten Leading the Charge 75

eleven NotJust Passing 83

twelve From Germany to Stonewall 91

thirteen To Be or Not to Be 101

fourteen Sisterhood: Make It Real! 109

fifteen Making History 121

Portrait Gallery 131

APPENDIX A.

International Gender Bill ofRights 1 65

APPENDIX B.

Transgender Organizations 1 71

APPENDIX C.

Transgender Publications 177

Notes 1S1

Selected Bibliography 1 95

Photo Credits 1 99

Index 205

Contents VII

PREFACE

I've heard the question all my life. The answer is not so simple, since there are no pronouns in the English language as complex as I am, and I do not want to simplify

myself in order to neatly fit one or the other. There are millions more like me in the United States alone.

We have a history filled with militant hero/ines. Yet therein lies the rub! How can I tell you about their battles when the words woman and man, feminine and masculine,

are almost the only words that exist in the English language to describe all the vicis-

situdes of bodies and styles of expression?

Living struggles accelerate changes in language. I heard language evolve during

the 1960s, when I came out into the drag bars of western New York and southern Ontario. At that time, the only words used to describe us cut and seared - yelled at

us from the window of a screeching car, filled with potential bashers. There were no

words that we'd go out of our way to use that made us feel good about ourselves.

When we all first heard the word "gay," some of my friends vehemently opposed the word on the grounds that it made us sound happy. "No one will ever use 'gay',"

my friends assured me, each offering an alternative word, none ofwhich took root. I learned that language can't be ordered individually, as if from a Sears catalog. It is

forged collectively, in the fiery heat of struggle.

Right now, much of the sensitive language that was won by the liberation move-

ments in the United States during the sixties and seventies is bearing the brunt of a

right-wing backlash against being "politically correct." Where I come from, being

"politically correct" means using language that respects other peoples' oppressions

and wounds. This chosen language needs to be defended.

The words I use in this book may become outdated in a very short time, because

the transgender movement is still young and defining itself. But while the slogans

lettered on the banners may change quickly, the struggle will rage on. Since I am

writing this book as a contribution to the demand for transgender liberation, the

language I'm using in this book is not aimed at definingbut at defending the diverse

communities that are coalescing.

Preface IX

I don't have a personal stake in whether the trans liberation movement results in

a new third pronoun, or gender-neutral pronouns, like the ones, such as ze (she/he)

and hit (her/his) , being experimented with in cyberspace. It is not the words in and

of themselves that are important to me - it's our lives. The struggle of trans people over the centuries is not his-story or her-story. It is owr-story.

I've been called a he-she, butch, bulldagger, cross-dresser, passing woman,

female-to-male transvestite, and drag king. The word I prefer to use to describe

myself is transgender.

Today the word transgender has at least two colloquial meanings. It has been

used as an umbrella term to include everyone who challenges the boundaries of sex

and gender. It is also used to draw a distinction between those who reassign the sex

they were labeled at birth, and those of us whose gender expression is considered

inappropriate for our sex. Presently, many organizations - from Transgender

Nation in San Francisco to Monmouth Ocean Transgender on theJersey shore - use this term inclusively.

I asked many self-identified transgender activists who are named or pictured in

this book who they believed were included under the umbrella term. Those polled

named: transsexuals, transgenders, transvestites, transgenderists, bigenders, drag

queens, drag kings, cross-dressers, masculine women, feminine men, intersexuals

(people referred to in the past as "hermaphrodites"), androgynes, cross-genders,

shape-shifters, passing women, passing men, gender-benders, gender-blenders,

bearded women, and women bodybuilders who have crossed the line ofwhat is con- sidered socially acceptable for a female body.

But the word transgender is increasingly being used in a more specific way as

well. The term transgenderist was first introduced into the English language by trans

warrior Virginia Prince. Virginia told me, "I coined the noun transgenderist in 1987

or '88. There had to be some name for people like myselfwho trans the gender bar-

rier - meaning somebody who lives full time in the gender opposite to their

anatomy. I have not transed the sex barrier."

As the overall transgender movement has developed, more people are exploring

this distinction between a person's sex - female, intersexual, male - and their gen-

der expression - feminine, androgynous, masculine, and other variations. Many

national and local gender magazines and community groups are starting to use

TS/TG: transsexual and transgender.

Under Western law, doctors glance at the genitals of an infant and pronounce

the baby female or male, and that's that. Transsexual men and women traverse the

boundary of the sex they were assigned at birth.

And in dominant Western cultures, the gender expression of babies is assumed

at birth: pink for girls, blue for boys; girls are expected to grow up feminine, boys

masculine. Transgender people traverse, bridge, or blur the boundary of the gender

expression they were assigned at birth.

However, not all transsexuals choose surgery or hormones; some transgender

people do. I am transgender and I have shaped myself surgically and hormonal^

twice in my life, and I reserve the right to do it again.

But while our movement has introduced some new terminology, all the words

X TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

used to refer to our communities still suffer from limitations. For example, terms

like cross-dress, cross-gender, male-to-female, and female-to-male reinforce the

idea that there are only two distinct ways to be - you're either one or the other - and

that's just not true. Bigender means people have both a feminine side and a mascu-

line side. In the past, most bigendered individuals were lumped together under the

category of cross-dressers. However, some people live their whole lives cross-

dressed; others are referred to as part-time cross-dressers. Perhaps if gender

oppression didn't exist, some of those part-timers would enjoy the freedom to

cross-dress all the time. But bigendered people want to be able to express both facets

ofwho they are.

Although I defend any person's right to use transvestite as a s^Z/definition, I use

the term sparingly in this book. Although some trans publications and organiza-

tions still use "transvestite" or the abbreviation "TV" in their titles, many people who

are labeled transvestites have rejected the term because it invokes concepts of psy-

chological pathology, sexual fetishism, and obsession, when there's really nothing

at all unhealthy about this form of self-expression. And the medical and psychiatric

industries have always defined transvestites as males, but there are many female

cross-dressers as well.

The words cross-dresser, transvestite, and drag convey the sense that these intri-

cate expressions of self revolve solely around clothing. This creates the impression

that ifyou're so oppressed because ofwhat you're wearing, you canjust change your

outfit! But anyone who saw La Cage aux Folks remembers that the drag queen never

seemed more feminine than when she was crammed into a three-piece "man's" suit

and taught to butter bread like a "real man." Because it is our entire spirit - the

essence of who we are - that doesn't conform to narrow gender stereotypes, many

people who in the past have been referred to as cross-dressers, transvestites, drag

queens, and drag kings today define themselves as Iransgender.

All together, our many communities challenge all sex and gender borders and

restrictions. The glue that cements these diverse communities together is the

defense of the right of each individual to define themselves.

As I write this book, the word trans is being used increasingly by the gender com-

munity as a term uniting the entire coalition. If the term had already enjoyed pop-

ular recognition, I would have titled this book Trans Warriors. But since the word

transgender is still most recognizable to people all over the world, I use it in its most

inclusive sense: to refer to all courageous trans warriors of every sex and gender -

those who led battles and rebellions throughout history and those who today

muster the courage to battle for their identities and for their very lives.

Transgender Warriors is not an exhaustive trans history, or even the history of the

rise and development of the modern trans movement. Instead, it is a fresh look at

sex and gender in history and the interrelationships of class, nationality, race, and

sexuality. Have all societies recognized only two sexes? Have people who traversed

the boundaries of sex and gender always been so demonized? Why is sex-reassign-

ment or cross-dressing a matter of law?

But how could I find the answers to these questions when it means wending my

way through diverse societies in which the concepts of sex and gender shift like sand

Preface xi

dunes over the ages? And as a white, transgender researcher, how can I avoid foist- ing my own interpretations on the cultures of oppressed peoples' nationalities?

I tackled this problem in several ways. First, I focused a great deal of attention on

Western Europe, not out ofunexamined Eurocentrism, but because I hold the pow-

ers that ruled there for centuries responsible for campaigns of hatred and bigotry

that are today woven into the fabric of Western cultures and have been imposed

upon colonized peoples all over the world. Setting the blame for these attitudes

squarely on the shoulders of the European ruling classes is part of my contribution to the anti-imperialist movements.

I've also included photos from cultures all over the world, and I've sought out

people from those countries and nationalities to help me create short, factual cap- tions. I tried very hard not to interpret or compare these different cultural expres-

sions. These photographs are not meant to imply that the individuals pictured

identify themselves as transgender in the modern, Western sense of the word.

Instead, I've presented their images as a challenge to the currently accepted West-

ern dominant view that woman and man are all that exist, and that there is only one way to be a woman or a man.

I don't take a view that an individual's gender expression is exclusively a product

of either biology or culture. If gender is solely biologically determined, why do rural

women, for example, tend to be more "masculine" than urban women? On the other hand, if gender expression is simply something we are taught, why has such a

huge trans segment of the population not learned it? If two sexes are an immutable

biological fact, why have so many societies recognized more than two? Yet while

biology is not destiny, there are some biological markers on the human anatomical

spectrum. So is sex a social construct, or is the rigid categorization of sexes the cul-

tural component? Clearly there must be a complex interaction between individuals

and their societies.

My interest in this subject is not merely theoretical. You probably already know that those ofus who cross the cultural boundaries of sex and gender are paying a ter-

rible price. We face discrimination and physical violence. We are denied the right to live and work with dignity and respect. It takes so much courage to live our lives that

sometimes just leaving our homes in the morning and facing the world as who we

really are is in itself an act of resistance. But perhaps you didn't know that we have a

history of fighting against such injustice, and that today we are forging a movement

for liberation. Since I couldn't include photos of all the hard-working leading

activists who make up our movement, I have included a collection of photos that

begins to illustrate the depth and breadth of sex and gender identities, balanced bv

race, nationality, and region. No one book could include all the sundry identities of trans individuals and organizations, which range from the Short Mountain Fairies

from Tennessee to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco.

It is time for us to write as experts on our own histories. For too long our light has

been refracted through other people's prisms. My goal in this book is to fashion his-

tory, politics, and theory into a steely weapon with which to defend a very oppressed

segment of the population.

I grew up thinking that the hatred I faced because of my gender expression was

XII TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

simply a by-product of human nature, and that it must be my fault that I was a target for such outrage. I don't want any young person to ever believe that's true again,

and so I wrote this book to lay bare the roots and tendrils of sex and gender oppres-

sion.

Today, a great deal of "gender theory" is abstracted from human experience. But

if theory is not the crystallized resin of experience, it ceases to be a guide to action.

I offer history, politics, and theory that live and breathe because they are rooted in

the experience of real people who fought flesh-and-blood battles for freedom. And

mywork is not solely devoted to chronicling the past, but is a component ofmy orga-

nizing to help shape the future.

This is the heart of my life's work. When I clenched my fists and shouted back at slurs aimed to strip me of my humanity, this was the certainty behind my anger. When I sputtered in pain at well-meaning individuals who told me, "I just don't get

what you are?" - this is what I meant. Today, Transgender Warriors is my answer. This

is the core of my pride.

Preface XIII

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I've been forced to pack up

and move quickly many times in the last twenty years - spurred by my inability to pay the rent or, all too often, by a serious threat to my life that couldn't be faced down. Yet no matter how much I was forced to leave behind, I always schlepped my cartons of transgender research with me. Thanks to my true friends who got up in the middle of the night, wiped the sleep from their eyes, and helped me move. You rescued my life, and my work.

Over the decades, my writings on trans oppression, resistance, and history have appeared as articles in Workers World newspaper, and Liberation and Marxism

magazine. I have spoken about these topics at countless political meetings, street

rallies, and activist conferences. So I thank the members ofWorkers World Party - ofevery nationality, sex, age, ability, gender, and sexuality - for liberating space

for me, helping me develop, and defending a podium from which I could speak about trans liberation as a vital component of the struggle for economic and

socialjustice.

Some special thanks. To Gregory Dunkel for waking me some twenty years ago to the need to archive the images I'd found, and then helping me every step of the way. To Sara Flounders, for proving to be such a good friend and ally to the

trans communities - and to me. My gratitude and love for Dorothy Ballan is right here in my heart. I'm especiallv grateful for the unflagging support from my transsexual, transgender, drag, and intersexual comrades - especially Kristianna

Tho'mas.

In 1992 I wrote the pamphlet Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time

Has Come, which became the basis for my slide show. I traveled the country show- ing slides in places as diverse as an auditorium at Brown University and a back

room of a pizzeria/bar in Little Rock, Arkansas. Thousands of you asked ques-

tions during or after the program, which contributed to this finished work.

Maybe you sent me a clipping, photo, or book reference. You've all offered me support. I am grateful for this kindness and solidarity. My gratitude to each of the trans warriors included in this book. But many

other transsexual, transgender, drag, intersexual, and bigender warriors gave

Acknowledgments xv

me a heap of help and support, including: Holly Boswell, Cheryl Chase, Loren Cameron, Dallas Denny and the valuable resources of the National Transgender Library and Archive, Lissa Fried, Dana Friedman, Davina Anne Gabriel, James Green, David Harris, Mike Hernandez, Craig Hickman, Morgan Holmes, Nancy Nangeroni, Linda and Cynthia Phillips, Bet Power, Sky Renfro, Martine and Bina

Rothblatt, Ruben, Gail Sondegaard, Susan Stryker, Virginia Prince, Lynn

Walker, Riki Wilchins, andJessy Xavier.

Chrystos, you really served as editor of Chapter 3; I loved working with you!

Thanks to other friends and allies who also gently helped me to express my soli- darity with people ofother nationalities in the most sensitive possible way: Yamila

Azize-Vargas, my beloved Nic Billey, Ben the Dancer, Spotted Eagle, Elias Fara- jaje-Jones, Curtis Harris, Larry Holmes, Leota Lone Dog, Aurora Levins

Morales, Pauline Park, Geeta Patel, Doyle Robertson, Barbara Smith, Sabrina

Sojourner, and Wesley Thomas.

Then there was the research. Leslie Kahn, you are my goddess of transgender library research. Miriam Hammer, I will always remember you coming to my home at the eleventh hour after I'd lost my manuscript and research to a com- puter virus. Thanks to Allan Berube, Melanie Breen, Paddy Colligan, Randy P.

Conner, Bill Dragoin, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Jonathan Ned Katz, and Julie Wheelwright.

My warmest thanks to Morgan Gwenwald and Mariette Pathy Allen - who worked on this project as photographic consultants and advisors. Amv Steiner. thanks! And I owe a debt of gratitude to the many brilliant documentary and art photographers, amateur shutterbugs, graphic artists, and a wildly popular car-

toonist - who all contributed to this book. Special thanks to Marcus Alonso,

Alison Bechdel, Loren Cameron, Stephanie Dumaine, Greg Dunkel, Robert

Giard, Steve Gillis, Andrew Holbrooke, Jennie Livingston, Viviane Moos, John

Nafpliotis, Lyn Neely, V.Jon Nivens, Cathy Opie, M. P. Schildmeyer, Bette Spero,

Pierre Verger, and Gary Wilson. And my regards to the darkroom folks, particu- larly Ligia Boters and BrianYoung at Phototechnica, and the guys at Hong Color.

As I saw how much archivists, librarians, and researchers all over the world cared about preserving our collective past and making it accessible, mv respect for their work soared. Special thanks to archivistJanet Miller, and your Uncom-

mon Vision, and the staffs of the Schomburg Collection, Museum of the Ameri- can Indian, Smithsonian Institute (especially Vertis), Library of Congress, State

Hermitage Museum of Russia, Mansell Collection, British Library, National Library of Wales, Royal Anthropological Institute, British Museum, Louvre,

American Library Association, Bettmann Archive, New York Public Library, Musee de Beaux Arts de Rouen, Staatliche Museen, Clarke Historical Library,

Verger Institute, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Cleveland Museum ofArt, Guild-

hall Library, and Art Resource.

For support that came in many forms, my gratitude to: John Catalinotto. Kate Clinton, Hillel Cohen, Annette Dragon, Bob Diaz, Ferron, Nanette

Gartrell, Diane McPherson, Dee Mosbacher, Joy Schaefer, Adrienne Rich.

Beth Zemsky, and Carlos Zuriiga.

XVI TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

To my agent, Charlotte Sheedy - it's an honor to work with a pioneer who marked the trail for so many of us. To Deb Chasman, my editor at Beacon -

you've demonstrated that editing genius is sharp style, and a whole lot of sensi-

tivity. My gratitude to Ken Wong for grammatically scrubbing this book. And I thank the whole staff at Beacon for their contributions - not the least of which

was enthusiastic support.

Thanks to those whose astute reading ofmy drafts greatly developed this book - especially Elly Bulkin and Deirdre Sinnott. For teaching me how to be ajour- nalist, over two decades, I credit you, Deirdre Griswold - longtime editor, long-

time friend.

Now I go a bit deeper. Thanks to my sons - Ben and Ransom - for loving and supporting your Drag Dad. I love you each dearly. To my sister Catherine, and my "chosen family" - Star, Shelley, Robin, Brent and my mom Wyontmusqui - how else can I thank you for your love except to love you right back.

To my wife, my inspiration, and my dearest friend, poet-warrior Minnie Bruce Pratt - 1 couldn't have gotten through this without you. I've stoop-picked beans

and stretch-picked apples, but this book was the hardest work I've ever done.

Your brilliance, insight, and generous love got me through each day. How could I possibly thank you in the way you deserve? Tell you what - As we grow old hap-

pily - one day at a time - I'll try to find the ways.

The sum total of everyone's contributions to this book is a collective act of sol-

idarity with trans liberation. Since the movement to bring a better world into

birth developed me and my world view, I give this book - and every cent of the advance royalties, an author's wages - back to the struggle to end all oppression.

Acknowledgments xvn

TRANS GENDER

Warriors

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

And when the enthusiastic

story ofour time

is told,

for those

who are yet to be born

but announce themselves

with more generousface,

we will come out ahead

— those who have suffered mostfrom. it.

from "Before the Scales, Tomorrow,"

BY OTTO RENE CASTILLO,

Guatemalan Revolutionary,

EXECUTED IN 1967.

Part One

WHEN I WAS BORN

in 1949, the doctor confidently declared, "It's a girl." That might have been the last

time anyone was so sure. I grew up a very masculine girl. It's a simple statement to

write, but it was a terrifying reality to live.

I was raised in the 1950s - an era marked by rigidly enforced social conformity

and fear of difference. Our family lived in the Bell Aircraft factory housing projects.

The roads were not paved; the coal truck, ice man's van, and knife-sharpener's cart

crunched along narrow strips of gravel.

I tried to mesh two parallel worlds as a child - the one I saw with my own eyes and the one I was taught. For example, I witnessed powerful adult women in our work- ing-class projects handling every challenge of life, while coping with too many kids

and not enough money. Although I hated seeing them so beaten down by poverty, I

loved their laughter and their strength. But, on television I saw women depicted as foolish and not very bright. Every cultural message taught me that women were only capable ofbeing wives, mothers, housekeepers - seen, not heard. So, was it true that

women were the "weak" sex?

In school I leafed through my geography textbooks and saw people of many dif- ferent hues from countries far, far from my home. Before we moved to Buffalo, my family had lived in a desert town in Arizona. There, people who were darker skinned

and shared different customs from mine were a sizeable segment of the population.

Yet in the small world of the projects, most of the kids in my grade school, and my

teachers, were white. The entire city was segregated right down the middle - east

and west. In school I listened as some teachers paid lip service to "tolerance" but I

frequently heard adults mouth racist slurs, driven by hate.

I saw a lot of love. Love of parents, flag, country, and deity were mandatory. But I

also observed other loves - between girls and boys, and boys and boys, and girls and

girls. There was the love of kids and dogs in my neighborhood, soldier buddies in

foxholes in movies, students and teachers at school. Passionate, platonic, sensual,

dutiful, devoted, reluctant, loyal, shy, reverent. Yet I was taught there was only one

official meaning of the word love- the kind between men and women that leads to

Part One /Chi TheJourney Begins 3

right: The author at

about the age of nine.

far right: Christine

Jorgensen in her home

in 1984, sitting below a

portrait of herself.

bottom right: Inside the

police van are some of

the ninety-nine arrested

for wearing women's

clothing at a 1939

raid on a New York

City "Masque Ball."

marriage. No adult ever mentioned men loving men or women loving women in my presence. I never heard it discussed anywhere. There was no word at that time in my English language to express the sheerjoy of loving someone of the same sex.

And I learned very early on that boys were expected to wear "men's" clothes, and girls were not. When a man put on women's garb, it was considered a crudejoke. By the time my family got a television, I cringed as my folks guffawed when "Uncle Miltie" Berle donned a dress. It hit too close to home. I longed to wear the boys'

clothing I saw in the Sears catalog.

My own gender expression felt quite natural. I liked my hair short and I felt most relaxed in sneakers,jeans and a t-shirt. However, when I was most at home with how

I looked, adults did a double-take or stopped short when they saw me. The question

"Is that a boy or a girl?" hounded me throughout my childhood. The answer didn't matter much. The very fact that strangers had to ask the question already marked

me as a gender outlaw. My choice of clothing was not the only alarm bell that rang my difference. If my

more feminine younger sister had worn "boy's" clothes, she might have seemed styl-

ish and cute. Dressing all little girls and all little boys in "sex-appropriate" clothing

actually called attention to our gender differences. Those of us who didn't fit stuck

out like sore thumbs.

Being different in the 1950s was no small matter. McCarthy's anti-communist witch

hunts were in full frenzy. Like most children, I caught snippets of adult conversa-

tions. So I was terrified that communists were hiding under my bed and might grab

my ankles at night. I heard that people who were labeled "reds" would discover their

4 TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

names and addresses listed in local newspapers, be fired from their jobs, and be

forced to pack up their families and move away. What was their crime? I couldn't

make out the adults' whispers. But the lesson seeped down: keep your mouth shut;

don't rock the boat. I overheard angry, hammering accusations on radio and televi-

sion against grownups who had to answer to a committee of men. I heard the words:

commie, pinko, Jew. I wasJewish.

We were the onlyJews in the projects. Our family harbored memories of the hor- rors that relatives and friends had faced in Czarist Russia before the 1917 revolution

and in Eastern Europe during World War II. My family lived in fear of fascism, and the McCarthy era stank like Nazism. Every time a stranger stopped us on the street

and asked my parents, "Is that a boy or a girl?" they shuddered. No wonder. My par-

ents worried that I was a lightning rod that would attract a dangerous storm. Feeling

above left: This person

is about to face a 1951

Chicago grand jury, charged

with failure to report to the

draft board for induction.

above right: These two people

are being led into Manhattan

felony court in 1952.

Their crime? They went to

the movies together. The

manager spotted them and

called the police.

far right: Police raid on a

Manhattan Ball in 1962.

helpless to fight the powers that be, they blamed the fam-

ily's problems on me and my difference. I learned that my survival was my own responsibility. From kindergarten to high school, I walked through a hail of catcalls and taunts

in school corridors. I pushed my way past clusters of teenagers on street corners who refused to let me pass. I endured the stares and glares of adults. It was so hard to be

a masculine girl in the 1950s that I thought I would cer-

tainly be killed before I could grow to adulthood. Every

gender image - from my Dick andJane textbooks in school

to the sitcoms on television - convinced me that I must be

a Martian.

In all the years of my childhood, I had only heard of

one person who seemed similarly "different." I don't

remember any adult telling me her name. I was too young

to read the newspaper headlines. Adults clipped their vul-

gar jokes short when I, or any other child, entered the

room. I wasn't allowed to stay up late enough to watch the

television comedy hosts who tried to ridicule her out of

humanity.

But I did know her name: ChristineJorgensen.

I was three years old when the news broke that Chris-

tine Jorgensen had traveled from the United States to

Sweden for a sex change from male to female. A passport

agent reportedly sold the story to the media. All hell

broke loose. In the years that followed, just the mention

of her name provoked vicious laughter. The cruelty must

6 TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

have filtered down to me, because I understood that the jokes rotated around

whether ChristineJorgensen was a woman or a man. Everyone was supposed to eas- ily fit into one category or another, and stay there. But I didn't fit, so Christine Jor-

gensen and I had a special bond. By the time I was eight or nine years old, I had

asked a baby-sitter, "Is ChristineJorgensen a man or a woman?" "She isn't anything," my baby-sitter giggled. "She's a freak." Then, I thought, I

must be a freak too, because nobody seemed sure whether I was a boy or a girl. What

was going to happen to me? Would I survive? Would Christine survive?

As it turned out, Christine Jorgensen didn't just endure, she triumphed. I knew

she must be living with great internal turmoil, but she walked through the abuse with

her head held high.Just as her dignity and courage set a proud example for the thou-

sands of transsexual men and women who followed her path, she inspired me - and who knows how many other transgendered children.

Little did I know then that millions ofchildren and adults across the United States

and around the world also felt like the only person who was different. I had no other

adult role model who crossed the boundaries ofsex or gender. ChristineJorgensen's

struggle beamed a message to me that I wasn't alone. She proved that even a period of right-wing reaction could not coerce each individual into conformity.

I survived growing up transgendered during the iron-fisted repression of the

1950s. But I came of age and consciousness during the revolutionary potential of

the 1960s - from the Civil Rights movement to the Black Panther Party, from the

Young Lords to the American Indian movement, from the anti-Vietnam War strug-

gles to women's liberation. The lesbian and gay movement had not yet emerged.

But as a teenager, I found the gay bars in Niagara Falls, Buffalo, and Toronto. Inside

those smoke-filled taverns I discovered a community of drag queens, butches, and

femmes. This was a world in which I fit; I was no longer alone.

It meant the world to me to find other people who faced many of the same prob- lems I did. Continual violence stalked me on the streets, leaving me weary, so ofcourse I wanted to be with friends and loved ones in the bars. But the clubs were not a safe

sanctuary. I soon discovered that the police and other enemies preyed on us there.

Until we organized to fight back, we werejust a bigger group of people to bash.

But we did organize. We battled for the right to be hired, walk down the street, be served in a restaurant, buy a carton of milk at a store, play softball or bowl. Defend-

ing our rights to live and love and work won us respect and affection from our straight co-workers and friends. Our battles helped fuel the later explosion of the

lesbian and gay liberation movement.

I remember the Thaw Out Picnic held each spring during the sixties by the lesbian

and gay community in Erie, Pennsylvania. Hundreds and hundreds of women and men would fill a huge park to enjoy food, dancing, softball, and making out in the woods. During the first picnic I attended, a group of men screeched up in a car near the edge of the woods. Suddenly the din of festivity hushed as we saw the gang,

armed with baseball bats and tire irons, marching down the hill toward us.

"C'mon," one of the silver-haired butches shouted, beckoning us to follow. She

picked up her softball bat and headed right for those men. We all grabbed bats and beer bottles and followed her, moving slowly up the hill toward the men. First the\

jeered us. Then they glanced fearfully at each other, leaped back into their car and

peeled rubber. One of them was still trying to get his legs inside and shut the car

door as they roared off. We all stood quietly for a moment, feeling our collective power. Then the old butch who led our army waved her hand and the celebration

resumed.

My greatest terror was always when the police raided the bars, because thev had the law on their side. They were the law. It wasn'tjust the tie I was wearing or the suit

coat that made me vulnerable to arrest. I broke the law every time I dressed in fly- front pants, or worejockey shorts or t-shirts. The law dictated that I had to wear at

least three pieces of "women's" clothing. My drag queen sisters had to wear three

pieces of "men's" clothing. For all I know, that law may still be on the books in

Buffalo today.

Of course, the laws were not simply about clothing. We were masculine women

and feminine men. Our gender expression made us targets. These laws were used to

harass us. Frequently we were not even formally charged after our arrests. All too

often, the sentences were executed in the back seat ofa police cruiser or on the cold

cement floor of a precinct cell.

But the old butches told me there was one night of the year that the cops never

arrested us - Halloween. At the time, I wondered why I was exempt from penalties

for cross-dressing on that one night. And I grappled with other questions. \Vh\ w as

I subject to legal harassment and arrest at all? Why was I being punished for the wa) I walked or dressed, or who I loved? Who wrote the laws used to harass us, and why? Who gave the green light to the cops to enforce them? Who decided what was nor- mal in the first place?

8 transgender WARRIORS: MakingHistory

These were life-and-death questions for me. Finding the answers sooner would

have changed my life dramatically. But the journey to find those answers is my life.

And I would not trade the insights andjoys of my lifetime for anyone else's. This was how myjourney began. It was 1969 and I was twenty years old. As I sat in

a gay bar in Buffalo, a friend told me that drag queens had fought back against a police bar raid in New York City. The fight had erupted into a four-night-long upris-

ing in Greenwich Village - the Stonewall Rebellion! I pounded the bar with my fist

and cursed my fate. For once we had rebelled and made history and I had missed it!

I stared at my beer bottle and wondered: Have we always existed? Have we always

been so hated? Have we always fought back?

Part One / Ch 1 Thejourney Begins 9

IE WOMAN

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HAD NEVER OCCURRED

to me to search history for answers to my questions. I didn't do well in history classes in school. Actually, that's an understatement. I could never make sense out of his-

tory. I couldn't remember whether Greece or Rome came first. The Middle Ages were a monolithic boulder I couldn't chip. I always got confused about who were

allies during which war.

I couldn't find myselfm history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed. But I had to know why I was so hated for being "different." What was the root

cause of bigotry, and what was its driving force? Some people expect to find answers

to questions like these in hallowed halls of learning. But I found what I was looking

for on another path - by working in the factories and the political movement for

justice.

Looking back, I can see that growing up blue-collar shaped my life and my con- sciousness in general, but it didn't automatically make me progressive. My parents instructed us not to be racist when we were kids because they thought it was wrong

to teach children to hate. That was a good start, but it wasn't until I began working

in the plants as a teenager that I really learned the function of institutionalized

racism. I quickly understood the phrase "divide-and-conquer." Whenever a strike

loomed, the foremen suddenly tried to cozy up to a few of the white workers, "advis-

ing" us not to trust the African-American, Latino, and Native workers. "Don't count

on the women, either," they would whisper to the white men. "They've got their hus-

band's paycheck, too. They won't stand with you." And the supervisors and their

helpers hung out near the time clock as we all punched in, their voices rising on the

epithets "bulldagger" and "faggot."

Sometimes other workers told me the foreman had informed them that all Jews were rich bankers and industrialists responsible for the suffering of the working

class. But I'd remind my co-workers they labored alongside Jews like myself on the

assembly line every day, and since when did the foreman care about our misery! It

became clear to me that racism and anti-Semitism - like woman-hating and homo-

phobia- were designed to keep us battling each other, instead of fighting together

to win real change.

Part One /Ch 2 My Path to Consciousness 11

However, my understanding of class dynamics was limited to factory life. This was the 1960s. There were plenty ofjobs. We had won livable wages. The system seemed to be working for me. It didn't occur to me that this economic prosperity was based on weapons production and government spending for the Pentagon's

war against Vietnam. So I didn't make the connections as I sat, stalled in traffic on

my motorcycle, as anti-war protestors marched down Main Street chanting "Big firms get rich, GI's die!

My view of the world was limited to my factory, the gay bars, my friends, and mv lover. Outside of my own small sphere, society was roiling. This struggle also raged in Buffalo. University students occupied the local campus. Tear gas wafted across

Buffalo streets. The African-American community rebelled in righteous fury. I

could even hear the impact of the women's movement in our conversations at work.

Change was rocking the world outside mywindow. But it took one more event to rad- ically change my consciousness - unemployment. When factories were humming with production during the war years - and mam-

young men were being shipped to Vietnam - everyone was considered emplovable. But as the boom economy receded during the early 1970s, we stood in block-long linesjust to get ajob application. If I forgot for a momentjust how "different" I was, the recession reminded me. I was considered far too masculine a woman to get ajob in a store, or a restaurant, or an office.

I couldn't survive without working. So one day I put on a femme friend's wig and

earrings and tried to apply for ajob as a salesperson at a downtown retail store. On the bus ride to the interview, people stood rather than sit next to me. Thev whis-

pered and pointed and stared. "Is that a manT one woman asked her friend, loud enough for us all to hear.

The experience taught me an important lesson. The more I tried to wear cloth- ing or styles considered appropriate for women, the more people believed I was a

man trying to pass as a woman. I began to understand that I couldn't conceal mv

gender expression.

So I tried another experiment. I called one of the older butches who I knew

passed as a man on a construction gang. She lent me a pair of paste-on theatrical sideburns. After gluing them on, I drove to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. As I

walked around, nobody seemed to stare. That was an unusual experience and a

relief. I allowed my voice to drop to a comfortably low register and chatted with one

of the guards about thejob situation. He told me there was an opening for a guard and suggested I apply. An hour later, the supervisor who interviewed me told me 1

seemed like a "good man" and hired me on the spot. I was suddenly acceptable as a

human being. The same gender expression that made me hated as a woman, made

me seem like a good man. My life changed dramatically the moment I began working as a man. I was free of

the day-in, day-out harassment that had pursued me. But I also lived in constant ter-

ror as a gender outlaw. What punishments would I face when 1 was discovered? The

fear moved me to make a complex decision: I decided to begin taking male hor-

mones, prescribed to me by a local sex-reassignment program. Through this pro-

gram, I also located a surgeon who would do a breast reduction. Shaping mv body

12 TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

was something I had long wanted to do and I've never had any regrets. But I started

taking hormones in order to pass. Ayear after beginning hormone shots, I sprouted a full, colorful beard that provided me with a greater sense of safety - on thejob and off. With these changes, I explored yet another facet of my trans identity.

The years I worked at the art gallery impacted my consciousness. I spent eight hours a day surrounded by centuries of artwork. Listening to the tour guides, I

began to understand how developments in technology - like the camera - influ-

enced art. I got a luxury education.

But I soon learned that the art gallery wasn't designed merely for the enlighten-

ment ofworking-class people like myself. I discovered there was another class in Buf-

falo I'd never seen before, and the gallery was one of the elegant places where they

entertained. They arrived in limousines. They wore tuxedos in mid-afternoon. They

clinked champagne glasses served to them by waiters they didn't notice.

One morning as I punched in, the atmosphere at the gallery felt electrically

charged. My supervisor ordered me to straighten my tie and polish my black shoes until they gleamed - Nelson Rockefeller would be paying a visit. I was assigned to be

the guard at the entrance of the gallery when he arrived.

I paced around the front entrance, smoking one cigarette after another. "Is he

here, yet?" the head guard asked again and again. I saw the glint off a line of sleek

black limos as they turned into the parking circle in front of the gallery. Squinting

to see through the dark glass, I noticed dozens of protesters waving placards that

read "Attica's blood on Rockefeller's hands! " When the lead limo driver got out and opened the rear car door, I recognized Rockefeller from his pictures in the newspa-

pers. He sneered at the demonstrators and flipped them the finger.

My boss shouted at me, "Open the door for him! Open the door!" As I reached

forward and held the door open, Rockefeller stepped inside. "Thanks, boy," he mut-

tered without looking at me.

That moment was an epiphany.

No matter how much passing as a man had changed my daily life, I understood

then that the rock foundation ofmy class had not changed. Until that moment, I had

directed all my rage against the foremen and the middle-class people - like small

business owners - who were arrogant and rude to me. I had thought they held the

reins of power. But suddenly I had an opportunity to watch Rockefeller and his

wealthy associates stride down the hall, oblivious to a handful of middle-class art

gallery volunteers hurrying to keep up with them. I snapped a new mental picture of

middle-class people as literally caught in the middle - between Rockefeller and me.

I realized that the men in tuxedos who strolled through the gallery halls like they

owned the world really did! Here was Rockefeller hobnobbing with the Knoxes and

Schoellkopfs and other men who privately owned the very factories I had worked in

and the banks where I cashed my checks. They represented just a few families, yet

they claimed as their own industry, finance, and communications - all the massive

tools that sustain human life.

I thought about the huge factories of Buffalo: Anaconda Copper, Chevrolet,

Bethlehem Steel. People like me built them from the ground up. Our muscles set

those tools of production into motion. So why did these families who didn't work

Part One /Ch 2 My Path to Consciousness 13

there own it all? And why, after lifetimes of labor, did working-class people like myself own little else than the ability to toil for a paycheck?

I thought about the placards that demonstrators angrily waved at Rockefeller

when he arrived. I knew the Attica prisoners were workers, too. Yet they were paid

only pennies a day for their labor. When these prisoners - predominantly men of color - rose up and demanded to be treated as human beings, not beasts, Rocke- feller ordered troopers to open fire and mow them down. I found several books on labor history at the library about miners who organized and demanded economic justice. They were cut down by bullets with another Rockefeller's name on them. 1

Now I felt connected to this vortex of struggle. Soon after the Rockefeller incident, I quit myjob at the art gallery and found

work as a third-shift dishwasher at a local diner. As I hauled heavy pans filled with

dishes and silverware into the kitchen, I listened to the radio blaring from a shelf

over the sink. The big news, night after night, was the bloody military coup in Chile.

Newscasters reported tens of thousands of Chileans were being tortured or had fled

in exile. The junta generals smashed the workers' organizations and boasted thev

would hang aJew from every lamppost.

One morning after my shift, I told one of the short-order cooks who had been a merchant sailor how upset I was by a news report that the CIA was behind the coup

in Chile. He explained to me that when the Chileans had elected a socialist as pres- ident, big U.S. companies like ITT and Anaconda Copper started plotting the coup

with the CIA. He told me you can'tjust vote for socialism, you have to fight to win it. I was angry and sickened at so much genocide by the U.S. military - from the mas-

sacre at Wounded Knee to the war against Vietnam. I wanted to travel to Latin Amer-

ica to join the resistance movement. But when I applied for merchant seaman

papers and asked a clerk what was required tojoin, he said a physical exam. My ide-

alistic dream hit a dead end.

Weeks later I asked one of the day-shift waitresses out on a date for Friday night.

She said no, she attended meetings every Friday evening. Nobody I knew went to

meetings about anything. "What are you?" Ijoked, "a communist?" All conversation

stopped in the restaurant. She flushed. A co-worker dragged me into the kitchen. "What did you do that for?" she scolded me. "You could get us fired." She said thev

were both members of the Workers World Party. 2 1 was working with two communist

waitresses! I apologized profusely. I hadn't meant to hurt anyone. To me, "commu-

nist" had always been a meaningless slur, not a real person. I didn't even know what

the word really meant.

I began to dawdle over breakfast during shift changes, asking both waitresses

questions. After weeks of inquiries, they invited me to a demonstration, outside

Kleinhan's Music Hall, protesting the Israeli war against Egypt and Syria. I was par-

ticularly interested in that protest. The state of Israel had been declared shortly

before my birth. In Hebrew school I was taught "Palestine was a land without peo-

ple, for a people without a land." That phrase haunted me as a child. I pic tured cars

with no one in them, and movies projected on screens in empty theaters. When I

checked a map of that region of the Middle East in my school geography textbook,

it was labeled Palestine, not Israel. Yet when I asked my grandmother who the Pales-

tinians were, she told me there were no such people.

14 TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

The puzzle had been solved for me in my adolescence. I developed a strong friendship with a Lebanese teenager, who explained to me that the Palestinian peo- ple had been driven off their land by Zionist settlers, like the Native peoples in the

United States. I studied and thought a great deal about all she told me. From that

point on I staunchly opposed Zionist ideology and the occupation of Palestine.

So I wanted to go to the protest. However, I feared the demonstration, no matter

howjustified, would be tainted by anti-Semitism. But I was so angered by the actions of

the Israeli government and military, that I went to the event to check it out for myself.

That evening, I arrived at Kleinhan's before the protest began. Cops - in uni-

forms and plainclothes - surrounded the music hall. I waited impatiently for the

protesters to arrive. Suddenly, all the media swarmed down the street. I ran after

them. Coming over the hill was a long column of people moving toward Kleinhan's.

The woman who led the march and spoke to reporters proudly told them she was

Jewish ! Others held signs and banners aloft that read: "Arab Land for Arab People !

and "Smash Anti-Semitism!" Now those were two slogans I could get behind! I wanted to know who these people were and where they had been all my life!

Hours later I followed the group back to their headquarters. Orange banners

tacked up on the walls expressed solidarity with the Attica prisoners and the Viet-

namese. One banner particularly haunted me. It read: Stop the War Against Black

America, which made me realize that it wasn'tjust distant wars that needed oppos- ing. Yet although I worked with two members of this organization, I felt nervous that

night. These people were communists, Marxists! Yet I found it easy to get into dis-

cussions with them. I met waitresses, factory workers, secretaries, and truck drivers.

And I decided they were some of the most principled people I had ever met. For

example, I was impressed that many of the men I spoke with talked to me about the importance of fighting the oppression of gays and lesbians, and of all women. Yet I

knew they thought they were talking to a straight man.

From then on, my Friday nights were also reserved for meetings of Workers

World Party (WWP) and its youth group, Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF) . I

saw that I didn't have to sail around the world to join the struggle for justice! But

when I joined the organization, everyone thought of me as a man. I had a bushy

beard, and I had been passing, full-time, for more than four years, so I didn't con-

tradict their assumptions.

I divided my free time between educational meetings and protest demonstra-

tions against racism and war, sexism and anti-gay bigotry, and in defense of Native

sovereignty and prisoners' rights. The moment I joined a larger movement for

socialjustice, I wasn't struggling alone anymore. It felt so good to win important bat-

tles. I felt connected to struggles around the world.

However, I lived in fear of what the police would do to me if I was arrested. And

although my comrades fought alongside me, shoulder to shoulder, I felt they didn't

really know me. I longed to live openly and proudly as a transgendered person - not

as a man. But what if I told them about myself and they didn't accept me? Would I

have to return to fighting back daily as an individual? The fear of loss began to tear

me apart. On March 8, 1973, 1 attended my first celebration of International Women's Day.

Before the meeting began, all the Workers World Party women Were reading over

Part One /Ch 2 My Path to Consciousness 15

each other's speeches; all the men took organizational tasks, so I was on security. I watched the women together, and the men, and I couldn't find my place among either. Later that night I had a terrible dream: I was standing in a small, airless room;

one of the walls was a dam with tremendous water pressure behind it; small cracks split the plaster. I woke up drenched in sweat.

I called Jeanette Merrill, who had helped found the Buffalo branch of Workers World Party. I remember asking her husband, Eddy, to leave the room. I can't recall

how I explained my situation toJeanette or what words I chose to explain that I was a "he-she" who had experienced such hatred and violence because of my gender expression that I couldn't live safely or find work. When I finished,Jeanette said she didn't completely understand, but she knew oppression when she heard it.

In the weeks that followed, the WWP's women's caucus meetings and women's

self-defense classes were opened to me. The leading women sat down with each member to explain my situation and help them relate to me sensitively. One by one, the men and women ofmy organization visited me at home. Each brought a cake or pie or soup or an entire case of beer, and adjusted themselves to listen to me in a dif- ferent way. I told them about my life; each one told me about their own.

Eddy Merrill, who I had asked to leave the room while I talked toJeanette, waited

patiently for an opportunity to talk to me. One night, he found me standing in the WWP literature room with tears in my eyes. The small storeroom was filled with pamphlets and books - slim and thick - about history, politics, and science. I had

been an insatiable reader growing up, but I had stuck to fiction. Outside the class-

room, I had made it a policy not to read non-fiction books, because I feared I wasn't

smart enough to understand the facts inside.

But I had reached a point where I really wanted to educate myself about the past

and present of the world I lived in. However, as I stood in the literature room leafing

through book after book, I couldn't comprehend what I read. I told Eddy I felt stupid.

"Don't worry," he reassured me. "These are books you'll read later. First you need

to understand the events and the people they're talking about. It's like a founda-

tion. Pretend you're building a brick wall - one brick at a time."

"Eddy," I sighed, "I really want to learn. But I'm terrible at history. I don't even

know how to approach the subject."

Eddy offered to help me study, so I took him up on it. But he didn't start me out on a diet of history. He dropped four quarters into the literature money box and

handed me a pamphlet about an anti-racist struggle in a factory I knew very well, "Come over for dinner after you've read it," he offered, "and we'll talk." Eddv nod-

ded toward the books. "Some of the answers you're looking for are in there. But

whenever someone has the courage to talk about an oppression that hasn't been dis-

cussed before, they make a contribution. I have a feeling you will, too."

I spent many exciting hours talking to Eddy about politics. Before he lent me

each book, he'd talk to me about it. After I'd read it, we would sit and discuss the

ideas. I began studying political science ferociously. I had thought Marxists wore all

white men. Eddy introduced me to the important writings of Che Guevara,

Nkrumah, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Rosa Luxemburg. I read insatiably and

soon felt confident enough to attend weekly WWP classes, many of them led by

16 TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

women. I quickly learned that the real proof of understanding a complex idea was

how clearly you could state it.

Like many among the generations ofworking-classJews before me, I discovered that Marxism was a valuable science, not a religion. In fact, I began to view the anti-

communism that had been drummed into me since childhood as an unexamined cult ideology.

Suddenly, history didn't seem boring at all. I began to see the seasons - or stages -

of history. I learned that human society has undergone continuous development and has been transformed many times over the course of centuries.

One fact rocked my thinking: All of our earliest ancestors lived in communal societies based on cooperation and sharing. I knew that many Native peoples on this

continent had still lived communally, even as colonialism stormed these shores. But

I didn't know that was true all over the planet.

Group cooperation required respect for the contributions and insights of each

individual. Communal societies were not severed into have and have-nots. No small group held power over others through private ownership of the tools necessary to

sustain life. Therefore the earth, sky, and waters were not viewed as property that

could be bought or sold. The word communist derives from communal.

All my life I had heard the cynical view that intolerance and greed were products of a flawed human nature. But "thou shalt not steal" would have been a bewildering

command to people who lived in societies where everyone ate or everyone starved

because their survival relied on teamwork. I realized that human nature has

changed along with the organization of society.

While I didn't expect to find my own modern self-definitions or consciousness mirrored in the economic systems of our earliest ancestors, I wondered if some

form of transgender had existed in early communalism. I began examining the

roots ofwomen's oppression. I studied Frederick Engels's classic work, Origin of the

Family, Private Property and the State. 3 Then I turned to a pamphlet by Dorothy Ballan,

one of the founding women of my organization, entitled Feminism and Marxism.4 1 read as much as I could find written by socialist feminists in the women's liberation

movement who researched the material origin of sexual oppression.

I was surprised at what I discovered. In these ancient communal societies, blood

descent - the basis for paternal inheritance today - was traced through mothers.

Women enjoyed equality and respect for their vital roles in both collective production and reproduction. Women were the heads of gens, which were kinship groups that bore little resemblance to today's patriarchal nuclear family. Since blood descent was

traced through the mothers, women headed these extended economic units.

A man lived with his mother's family. If he married a woman, he left his mother's economic unit and became a part of his wife's gens. There he was surrounded by all of

her relatives in her household. And if the woman wanted a "divorce," she merely asked

him to pack up his personal possessions and leave. He then had to move back to his

own mother's household, with all of her relatives. How could a man beat or abuse a

female partner in those societies? Where was the material power for male domination?

However, the material basis for women's oppression is precisely what today's rul-

ing-class "fathers" do not want opened up to scrutiny. They seek to shape history in

Part One /Ch 2 My Path to Consciousness 17

their own image. To hear the bible-thumpers, you'd

think that the nuclear family, headed by men, has

always existed. But I found that the existence of

matrilineal societies on every continent has been

abundantly documented. Up until the fifteenth century, a great majority of the world's population

lived in communal, matrilineal societies. This was

true throughout Africa, large parts of Asia, the

Pacific islands, Australia, and the Americas. If all of

human history were shrunk to the scale of one year,

over 360 days of historical time belong to coopera-

tive, matrilineal societies.

A deeper understanding of the roots ofwomen's oppression had great meaning to me, particularly

because of my experiences growing up as a girl in a woman-hating society. But my oppression was not just based on being "woman." Was there a material

basis for transgender oppression? Surely transsex-

ual women and men, or people like me who expressed their gender differently, were not merely

products of a high-tech capitalist system in decline.

I came full circle to one of my original questions as well: Have we always existed?

I felt further from an answer than ever before.

Fortunately, feelings are not facts.

In the meantime, the economic crisis of 1973

was wreaking havoc on my life. I could not find work

anywhere. Even the temp agencies had nojob open-

ings - at least not for a he-she like me. I made my deci-

sion to move to New York City. Since that's where the

Workers World national headquarters was located. I

knew I would get help in finding an apartment and a

job, and I looked forward to becoming a journalist

for Workers World newspaper.5

As I said tearful goodbyes to my friends in the

Buffalo branch, I asked several of them, "Do you

think I'll ever find the answers I'm looking for?"

They each reassured me I would. As a parting gift.

Jeanette and Eddy gave me one of their own old vol-

umes of Lenin's writings. They had inscribed it: "To

Les, with great expectations." That precious gift is

next to me on my bookshelf as I write these wends.

But at the time, I feared their expectations were

unrealistic.

18 TRANSGENDER WARRIORS: Making History

The author, circa 1973.

THE GIVE AWAY

I FOUND MY FIRST CLUE

that trans people have not always been hated in 1974. 1 had played hooky from work

and spent the day at the Museum of the American Indian in New York City. The exhibits were devoted to Native history in the Americas. I was drawn to a dis-

play of beautiful thumb-sized clay figures. The ones to my right had breasts and cra- dled bowls. Those on the left were flat chested, holding hunting tools. But when I

looked closer, I did a double-take. I saw that several ofthe figures holding bowls were

flat chested; several of the hunters had breasts. You can bet there was no legend next

to the display to explain. I left the museum curious.

What I'd seen gnawed at me until I called a member of the curator's staff. He asked, "Why do you want to know?" I panicked. Was the information so classified

that it could only be given out on a "need to know" basis? I lied and said I was a grad-

uate student at Columbia University.

Sounding relieved, he immediately let me know that he understood exactly what I'd described. He said he came across references to these berdache* practically every day in his reading. I asked him what the word meant. He said he thought it meant transvestite or transsexual in modern English. He remarked that Native peo-

ples didn't seem to abhor them the way "we" did. In fact, he added, it appeared that

such individuals were held in high esteem by Native nations.

Then his voice dropped low. "It's really quite disturbing, isn't it?" he whispered.

I hung up the phone and raced to the library. I had found the first key to a vault con-

taining information I'd looked for all my life.

"Berdache"was a derogatory term European colonizers used to label any Native person who did notJit their narrow notions

ofwoman and man. The blanket use of the word disregarded distinctions ofselfexpression, social interaction, and complex

economic and political realities. Native nations had many respectful words in their own languages to describe such people; Gay

American Indians (GAI) has gathered a valuable list of these ivords. However, cultural genocide has destroyed and altered

Native languages and traditions. So Native people ask that the term "Two-Spirit " be used to replace the offensive colonial word

- a request I respect.

In a further attempt to avoid analyzing oppressed peoples ' cultures, I do not make a distinction between sex and gender

expression in this chapter. Instead, I use sex/gender.

Part One / Ch 3 The Give Vway 21

A FASCINATING PERSONAL JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY BY ONE OF

THE MOST PROMINENT TRANSGENDER ACTIVISTS TODAY.

"[Transgender Warriors] leaves us with a sense that a transgendered concept

of what it is to be fully human and psychologically whole is both valid and nothing new. A brief review cannot do justice to this amazing resource, not only for our communities, but for the world."

- Patricia roth schwartz, Lambda Book Report

"[Transgender Warriors] does far more than document the history of trans-

genders. It delves into the transgender experience, inviting the reader to

consider a spectrum of gender possibilities."

— linda gebroe, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"No book since Toni Morrison's Beloved gives so much and holds itself so well. History becomes art, the political becomes transformative, the per-

sonal becomes universal."

-craig hickman, Gay Community News

"The challenge Feinberg sets forth - a complex, multisided one - is to take up

the banner of feminism and extend it, stretch it, until it has room for all

women."

-rosemarie c. sultan, Sojourner

"A ground-breaking gift to both the transgender community and the world

at large."

-rachel reed, Synapse

"A well-written, well-researched compendium of transgender history."

-Harriet L. Schwartz, Philadelphia Gay News.

"Nobody will remain unaffected by this book."

- heather findlav. Girlfriends

Leslie Feinberg has been a grassroots activist, journalist, and lecturer on

behalf of the lesbian/gay/bi and transgender movements. S/he is the author

of the acclaimed novel Stone Butch Blues.

GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, & TRANi