The Transgender Need for Recognition

Transgender Dilemma

Leslie Feinberg was a transgendered activist who wrote the groundbreaking novel, Stone Butch Blues.  Feinberg died in 2014 but her novel is relevant in our culture as America’s political institutions resist inclusion. Her lead character of Jess Goldberg comes from Feinberg’s own bitter experience as a lesbian Jewish woman trying to fit in as living as a man. Trapped in a homophobic society by the male power structure, her struggles are tragic.  The forces which shaped her identity jump off the page with intensity that cannot be ignored.

As Dan Frosch previously noted, “…gay and transgender advocates say transgender students…are vulnerable to bullying and harassment” since institutions measure against a norm. Nonconforming persons are targeted. In the novel, Jess Goldberg and her friend Mona are jailed following a police raid against gays. She says, “The drag queens were in the large cell next to ours. Mona and I smiled at each other… Then she walked forward with them, rather than be dragged out (35)”. This is Jess’s first experience with police brutality against gays. The text continues, “About an hour later the cops brought Mona back…she could barely stand…blood running down (35)”. Mona tells inexperienced Jess, “It changes you…what they do to you in here…everyday on the streets---it changes you, you know?” (35)

 The queer person does not fit in and therefore constantly fights for recognition. Feinberg’s character is not just lesbian, but yearns for female love and a life gendered as a man.  Jess struggles to find someone who understands her quandary.  She lives as a border dweller, vigilant, with a foot in two worlds, trying to survive and how to fit in. Without a model to follow, the unscripted journey fraught with disaster. She dresses as a male but is incomplete without a companion to share her world of fluidity. As Jess’s lover Edna puts it, “I don’t want to go back to the bars and the fights. I just want a place to be with the people I love.  I want to be accepted for who I am, and not just in the gay world (218)”.  

Leslie Steinberg underwent hormone therapy and ultimately decided against continuing disruptive treatment. Toward the end of her life, she reconciled with the body she was born in and tried to increase awareness of the needs of gender queer issues. She is gone too soon.

 Deciding not to undergo gender modifying surgery becomes a political barrier to those identifying documents that signal change for a transgendered person. New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie has vetoed legislation, allowing birth certificates and passports to show transgender name and sex change, unless the person has submitted to sex change surgery. This means that not only is there still a challenge to a person’s liberty to be at peace with one’s self, but there is a political mandate to inflict potential harm on a person’s body.  Not much has changed institutionally since the homophobic abuse of pre-Stonewall police raids on gay and lesbian bars, as so graphically pictured by Jess Goldberg in Steinberg’s Stone Butch Blues.