Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul
The author, Leslie Feinberg, is a lesbian ten years my senior whose physical appearance created a lifetime of harassment and secrecy because she looked like a man. I appreciated that she shares her story generously to make clear to the reader where she is on the gender spectrum as this is a topic that cannot be addressed remotely objectively by anybody, I’ve found. I also identified with her story especially since it was not her desire to be a man. She just wanted a place to be as the gender non-conforming female person she was. Published in 1996 it includes an appendix of resources and copious footnotes.
Her working class background demonstrated to her how gender and economics intersected as she could not get any conventionally female jobs because of her perceived presentation as a man so she hid her sex and applied for men’s jobs. She then met members of the communist party who took her under their wing and also interviewed her, each of them, one-on-one, to understand the nature of her oppression as a lesbian and gender outlaw. One of the men mentored her reading of their literature so that she would understand history. This led her to explore the history of cross dressing people prompted by a visit to the Native American Museum in New York where she saw the pictures of Two Spirit people. She also found and interviewed Two Spirit people herself which proved as affirming as the book she and I have both read depicting the shamanic role Two Spirit people were given to play in Native society.
Her research led her to discover that such shamanic roles appeared in all the Asian cultures too. I knew of indigenous transgender culture from living in Thailand, but did not know of their spiritual role. Her study of Joan of Arc led her to unearth the transgender spiritualist role of the pre-history earth based goddess religions of Europe. Joan of Arc was burned specifically because she refused to lose the male garb which she said God had instructed her to wear and which her peasant followers regarded as sacred. I’m totally hooked at this point.
As a well schooled Marxist the author then traced the oppression of the earth based religions and its transgender aspect to a change in the economic system from a communal based one to a surplus hoarding one controlled by the men because they were in charge of the animal herds and easily made themselves guardians of other surplus. They wanted this wealth shared only with other men and passed down to sons. This led to the need to identity people by gender and laws were written requiring men to cut their hair and women to wear theirs long as well as laws strictly forbidding cross dressing (except in the theatre). Reinforcing the idea that in order for capitalism to thrive both women and trans people must be controlled.
She also uncovered stories of rebellions led by cross dressing male peasants against toll roads demanding cash for crossing private lands. Lands made private as part of the enclosure of the commons. I love this vision filling in the gaps of my knowledge regarding response to the enclosure laws.
The modern gay and trans movements she traces back to Germany of 1897 and later to Paragraph 175 during the Nazi era before Stonewall birthed the U.S. rebellion in 1969 led by transgender people. Because of their visibility gender variants are a target in a way that passing gays are not, so it’s not surprising they were in the front lines.
Her final chapter parses out the intersection of women’s liberation and transgender liberation. Here she presents her case that women’s rights and safety are linked with trans people's rights and safety. Based on her research that both women and transgender people were at the peak of acceptance and social status during the matriarchal society of ancient times, I can see why she would argue this perspective and I appreciate that she has given me this common history.
She talks about how she feared for her life countless times because she was a woman who looked like a man thus the need for transgender persons to be able to pass as one sex or another for their physical safety and economic wellbeing. No one she interviews insists that they are biologically their chosen sex. She herself wishes to remain a woman who presents as a man. I admire this desire for transparency. It does not feel as arrogant or dishonest as the insistence that a trans woman or trans man is in every way no different from natal women and men. On the contrary her transgender cosmology is about having more than two genders. At least four or five and preferably a whole spectrum.
She touches on the right of transgender people to affordable hormones and to altering their body, but never once mentions gender dysphoria or even the concept of being in the wrong body. Part of the trans bill of rights (included at the end) states that a trans person should have the right to freedom from psychiatric diagnosis or treatment. The wrong body concept would also imply that there are only two genders—those linked to reproductive biological categories. She quotes the feminists on this—that biology is not destiny.
She prefers that sex identification be abolished altogether even on a birth certificate and suggests that it would be delightful if children let their parents know what gender they are. I think this is where adult trans people and non gender stereotypical adults are being retroactively idealistic in their desire to heal their own past. Children do not create society. Society creates structure in which children are raised and are offered their place in the world. She says herself how hard it was not to see representation of herself in the world or her place in history. Her push for change would direct the dismantling of the current binary system in favor of wider gender expression to provide role models for children to resonate with and choose from. I think we would all benefit from this. I know that I had a leg up because of the inclusion in the Thai language of a word for cross dressing people who lived their lives in this manner. And the Buddhist premise that the human spirit was certain to experience different genders in their various reincarnations and might carry the unresolved imprint of past gender experiences into the current life.
It is too bad that Leslie Feinberg died a decade ago because it would be helpful to have her perspective on how the emerging butch lesbian teens of today are being swept away by the online push to transition as a logical arc of their gender non-conforming status. (The increase in transitioning FtoM teens is so notable a phenomena that the U.K. is undergoing a study on this phenomena of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria as possibly being part of a social contagion. (And the detransitioning stories from these young women are increasing too.) She does mention the increase in consumer societies of gender coded clothing and toys where once there was just a white gown for all infants. Not to mention no marketing to children of gender based toys. Or pink handled tools for women. Grrr.
In the end Leslie Feinberg sticks to her Marxist teachings urging the women’s community and the LGBT community to see in their oppressions a common thread and stay together to preserve political power. I too long for a unifying political issue of any sort in this country, yet I have never before seen both the women’s community and the LGBT community so divided. Assimilationists have made the greatest gains in social acceptance with heteronormative inclusion under marriage equality. The assimilationist path helped normalize presentable gay and lesbian people and support and stabilize gay and lesbian nuclear families. While the rest have been atomized and compartmentalized under their corresponding letters now leaning into the term Queer. We have convinced the public that gay people look just like straight people while all the non-conforming gender expressions are eclipsed by the transition-centric, medicalized transgender category.
In showing the connection between patriarchy and capitalism and the oppression of both women and transgender people, this book illuminates for me a much bigger picture that our society is struggling with on all fronts. I believe the author’s thesis that the ethos of the ancient goddess communal societies were far more just in the treatment of everyone while women and transgender people enjoyed the highest status they have ever had. And that what we are seeing today is the society of a top down elite patriarchy many are attributing to a white supremacy agenda in the U.S. especially given recent efforts to completely control women’s reproductive choices. I would love to see a battalion of men dressed as women led by a female cross dressing chief come to overthrow the patriarchy. Though a shift in politics and voting patterns is hopefully more likely.
This book allowed me to see myself in the transgender struggle and to uncover the butch lesbian parts of me that I largely keep hidden. The book has photos throughout and concludes with a gallery of photos of trans people and their stories. This is very helpful for it helped me to understand the importance of creating visibility for gender outlaws both for the community and for busting out of the patriarchy. I am grateful to this book for offering the common history of a pre-patriarchal spirit based universe. It gives me some ground to stand on for this journey is far from over.
Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul
The author, Leslie Feinberg, is a lesbian ten years my senior whose physical appearance created a lifetime of harassment and secrecy because she looked like a man. I appreciated that she shares her story generously to make clear to the reader where she is on the gender spectrum as this is a topic that cannot be addressed remotely objectively by anybody, I’ve found. I also identified with her story especially since it was not her desire to be a man. She just wanted a place to be as the gender non-conforming female person she was. Published in 1996 it includes an appendix of resources and copious footnotes.
Her working class background demonstrated to her how gender and economics intersected as she could not get any conventionally female jobs because of her perceived presentation as a man so she hid her sex and applied for men’s jobs. She then met members of the communist party who took her under their wing and also interviewed her, each of them, one-on-one, to understand the nature of her oppression as a lesbian and gender outlaw. One of the men mentored her reading of their literature so that she would understand history. This led her to explore the history of cross dressing people prompted by a visit to the Native American Museum in New York where she saw the pictures of Two Spirit people. She also found and interviewed Two Spirit people herself which proved as affirming as the book she and I have both read depicting the shamanic role Two Spirit people were given to play in Native society.
Her research led her to discover that such shamanic roles appeared in all the Asian cultures too. I knew of indigenous transgender culture from living in Thailand, but did not know of their spiritual role. Her study of Joan of Arc led her to unearth the transgender spiritualist role of the pre-history earth based goddess religions of Europe. Joan of Arc was burned specifically because she refused to lose the male garb which she said God had instructed her to wear and which her peasant followers regarded as sacred. I’m totally hooked at this point.
As a well schooled Marxist the author then traced the oppression of the earth based religions and its transgender aspect to a change in the economic system from a communal based one to a surplus hoarding one controlled by the men because they were in charge of the animal herds and easily made themselves guardians of other surplus. They wanted this wealth shared only with other men and passed down to sons. This led to the need to identity people by gender and laws were written requiring men to cut their hair and women to wear theirs long as well as laws strictly forbidding cross dressing (except in the theatre). Reinforcing the idea that in order for capitalism to thrive both women and trans people must be controlled.
She also uncovered stories of rebellions led by cross dressing male peasants against toll roads demanding cash for crossing private lands. Lands made private as part of the enclosure of the commons. I love this vision filling in the gaps of my knowledge regarding response to the enclosure laws.
The modern gay and trans movements she traces back to Germany of 1897 and later to Paragraph 175 during the Nazi era before Stonewall birthed the U.S. rebellion in 1969 led by transgender people. Because of their visibility gender variants are a target in a way that passing gays are not, so it’s not surprising they were in the front lines.
Her final chapter parses out the intersection of women’s liberation and transgender liberation. Here she presents her case that women’s rights and safety are linked with trans people's rights and safety. Based on her research that both women and transgender people were at the peak of acceptance and social status during the matriarchal society of ancient times, I can see why she would argue this perspective and I appreciate that she has given me this common history.
She talks about how she feared for her life countless times because she was a woman who looked like a man thus the need for transgender persons to be able to pass as one sex or another for their physical safety and economic wellbeing. No one she interviews insists that they are biologically their chosen sex. She herself wishes to remain a woman who presents as a man. I admire this desire for transparency. It does not feel as arrogant or dishonest as the insistence that a trans woman or trans man is in every way no different from natal women and men. On the contrary her transgender cosmology is about having more than two genders. At least four or five and preferably a whole spectrum.
She touches on the right of transgender people to affordable hormones and to altering their body, but never once mentions gender dysphoria or even the concept of being in the wrong body. Part of the trans bill of rights (included at the end) states that a trans person should have the right to freedom from psychiatric diagnosis or treatment. The wrong body concept would also imply that there are only two genders—those linked to reproductive biological categories. She quotes the feminists on this—that biology is not destiny.
She prefers that sex identification be abolished altogether even on a birth certificate and suggests that it would be delightful if children let their parents know what gender they are. I think this is where adult trans people and non gender stereotypical adults are being retroactively idealistic in their desire to heal their own past. Children do not create society. Society creates structure in which children are raised and are offered their place in the world. She says herself how hard it was not to see representation of herself in the world or her place in history. Her push for change would direct the dismantling of the current binary system in favor of wider gender expression to provide role models for children to resonate with and choose from. I think we would all benefit from this. I know that I had a leg up because of the inclusion in the Thai language of a word for cross dressing people who lived their lives in this manner. And the Buddhist premise that the human spirit was certain to experience different genders in their various reincarnations and might carry the unresolved imprint of past gender experiences into the current life.
It is too bad that Leslie Feinberg died a decade ago because it would be helpful to have her perspective on how the emerging butch lesbian teens of today are being swept away by the online push to transition as a logical arc of their gender non-conforming status. (The increase in transitioning FtoM teens is so notable a phenomena that the U.K. is undergoing a study on this phenomena of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria as possibly being part of a social contagion. (And the detransitioning stories from these young women are increasing too.) She does mention the increase in consumer societies of gender coded clothing and toys where once there was just a white gown for all infants. Not to mention no marketing to children of gender based toys. Or pink handled tools for women. Grrr.
In the end Leslie Feinberg sticks to her Marxist teachings urging the women’s community and the LGBT community to see in their oppressions a common thread and stay together to preserve political power. I too long for a unifying political issue of any sort in this country, yet I have never before seen both the women’s community and the LGBT community so divided. Assimilationists have made the greatest gains in social acceptance with heteronormative inclusion under marriage equality. The assimilationist path helped normalize presentable gay and lesbian people and support and stabilize gay and lesbian nuclear families. While the rest have been atomized and compartmentalized under their corresponding letters now leaning into the term Queer. We have convinced the public that gay people look just like straight people while all the non-conforming gender expressions are eclipsed by the transition-centric, medicalized transgender category.
In showing the connection between patriarchy and capitalism and the oppression of both women and transgender people, this book illuminates for me a much bigger picture that our society is struggling with on all fronts. I believe the author’s thesis that the ethos of the ancient goddess communal societies were far more just in the treatment of everyone while women and transgender people enjoyed the highest status they have ever had. And that what we are seeing today is the society of a top down elite patriarchy many are attributing to a white supremacy agenda in the U.S. especially given recent efforts to completely control women’s reproductive choices. I would love to see a battalion of men dressed as women led by a female cross dressing chief come to overthrow the patriarchy. Though a shift in politics and voting patterns is hopefully more likely.
This book allowed me to see myself in the transgender struggle and to uncover the butch lesbian parts of me that I largely keep hidden. The book has photos throughout and concludes with a gallery of photos of trans people and their stories. This is very helpful for it helped me to understand the importance of creating visibility for gender outlaws both for the community and for busting out of the patriarchy. I am grateful to this book for offering the common history of a pre-patriarchal spirit based universe. It gives me some ground to stand on for this journey is far from over.