Leslie Feinberg - My Interview with Leslie from 1996

Leslie Feinberg died November 15, 2014. Author of “Stone Butch Blues” & "Transgender Warriors," she was a gender outlaw and political activist.  I interviewed Leslie for "Downtown Magazine" in 1996 (it ceased publication in 1997) in a café in the West Village. At the end of the interview, Minnie Bruce Pratt came into the restaurant and Leslie stood up from her chair and walked towards her as if there was nothing more important in the world than that moment. When I heard of Leslie’s death today, that 18-year old image of the two of them greeting each other in the cafe returned.

Re-reading the interview after 18 years, so much has changed -- and yet so much has remained the same. I remember Leslie fondly.

photo credit: Leslie Feinberg self-portrait in setting sun
from her website: www.transgenderwarrior.org

The interview is over 6,000 words. Here are two excerpts: 

The opening:

DS:  When I read Transgender Warriors (“Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Denis Rodman,” 1996) I could see a lot of similarities in the stories in that book and those told in the first person narrative in your novel, Stone Butch Blues.

LS:  I would say that there is nothing in Stone Butch Blues that is autobiographical but then, of course, I wrote from what I knew in terms of class relations -- what jobs realistically would be open in what period of time to someone, when those jobs would close -- things like that. But, it is completely a novel and a work of fiction and that was important to me for two reasons.  One, I made a choice to write fiction because I actually felt I would write more truth or go more to the heart of emotional truth in fiction; plus, I wanted to create a vehicle for gender theory that was accessible.  And you can’t always use your own life to do that.  You can’t draw on enough experiences, but through fiction it’s wonderfully flexible for that purpose.  Also, I found that to be true to fiction and to be fair to your characters and to your reader, you’re really going to have to allow characters to develop on their own paths, their own relationships, etc. It may sound metaphysical to someone who doesn’t create fiction, but if you’re going to create characters, you’re going to have to close your eyes and picture them and listen to them speaking instead of trying to put your own experiences into their mouths.

Excerpt from the end:

DS:  The history about transgender people, except for Joan of Arc, was new to me and the law about the three pieces of clothing, wow, I could be arrested right now!

LF:  Even if the laws are different in different places; it doesn’t have to be a three piece law on clothing for some cop to pull you over or a store detective to pick you up.

DS:  But it was a law.

LF:  There have been specific laws around the country.  They’re a masquerade.  All the pictures even from the late 60’s of drag queens and transgender people being rounded up and put in police vans, they all had some laws, masquerading, cross dressing, not wearing three pieces of women’s clothing, wearing fly-front pants, they were all gender laws.  They were all saying okay I’ve got a reason to drag you in, you don’t have the right label on your clothing.  It’s absurd but the harassment is real.

DS:  I’ve recently come across the fact that it was not only the drag queens but also the drag kings that were responsible for Stonewall.

LF:  On the front lines, yeah.  And that was true of all the years before fighting.  If you could pass in society as not being gay then you didn’t need to be all together, but if you were hunted and hounded wherever you went, you looked to find a community of people like you.  And you had no place to go except to stand and fight and so a lot heroic individual battles were fought.

DS:  And some of the women were not even in drag, they were just in what they considered comfortable.

LF:  I don’t know about a lot of other cities but in the blue collar bars women did cross dress.  I mean they wore suits and ties...

DS:  And passed.

LF:  Yes.  Whether they did or not depended on their degree of masculinity, their body type.

DS:  Sometimes not necessarily passing but preferring to wear the masculine garb.

LF:  I would say most people cross-dressed especially if it was a Friday or Saturday night.  It’s like all day long you wear crummy clothes at the factory and then you want to dress up and look nice, well what do you like to get dressed up in.

DS:  Yeah, I was cross-dressed in ‘82 in a bar on Avenue A where I had a few drinks with a male friend.  After a few beers, without thinking, I went into the women’s bathroom and three guys pounded on the door yelling, “come out you faggot.” I was scared.

LF:  Right.

(end of interview)