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Although readers familiar with Feinberg's earlier books will not find much new material here, this collection of hir (this transgendered author's pronoun of choice) speeches, presented with a few essays by other transgendered writers, serves as a good introduction to Feinberg's ideas about the complexities of gender expression and to hir vision for a future "beyond pink or blue." As someone who faces oppression, incomprehension, and violence every day on the basis of hir appearance and the refusal to adhere to a rigid gender designation (Feinberg was once denied emergency medical treatment for endocarditis by a doctor who dismissed hir angrily as "a very troubled person"), Feinberg is in an excellent position to refute the shallow assumptions of the medical establishment and the mainstream media, as well as the more extreme views of the political and religious right. Most compelling are hir arguments on the importance of a broad-based multi-issue coalition among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, an alliance that could easily extend to other progressive groups. "Everyone who is under the gun of reaction and economic violence," Feinberg contends, "is a potential ally."
--Regina Marler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
This collection of occasionally repetitious talks that Feinberg gave in the spring of 1997 is balanced by the inclusion of interviews with other "transgender warriors." Feinberg (Stone Butch Blues; Transgender Warriors) continues here her explication of prevalent gender "dogma"?of "what it means to be a 'real' woman or a 'real' man"?and assesses medical professionals' treatment of society's "Others." The latter category includes women like herself, and men in the process of evolving alternative gender identities and who thus present a "social contradiction": "I've lived parts of my life as a straight woman, as a butch dyke, as a man?both straight and faggot," says one. Capsule portraits include Latino "lesbian" Michael Hernandez, Stonewall veteran Sylvia Rivera and Craig Hickman, who invokes RuPaul's dictum that "gender is performance." Feinberg highlights outdated legal statutes prohibiting cross-dressing, and the social and economic consequences of their implementation. She also discusses "gender reassignment" surgery, which she says is standard practice in the U.S. for infants born with seemingly ambiguous genitalia, but which she sees as more of a service to worried parents than for the children. Above all, Feinberg seeks a reordering of society, with unity as the ultimate goal, and gives frequent examples of the commonalities that transcend race, social class, physical abilities and gender. The material here was meant to be delivered orally, giving the text an immediacy that makes the message all the more compelling, although readers familiar with Feinberg's earlier writings will find it somewhat repetitive.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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