The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

She was a pioneer in trans and lesbian issues, workers rights, and intersectionality long before anyone could define the phrase. Her partner, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and family offered us this obituary.

I wasn't familiar with her, but from reading her bio it sounds like we could use a lot more of her in the world. R.I.P.

Definitely a loss. I mainly know her as a primary source of the current usage of the word 'transgender', which in itself is no small influence; I'll have to check out her writings.

Sunflower

 
Feinberg was formative for me, a huge influence back in the day.  Be aware that hir (lots of contextual pronoun shifts!) work occasionally slips in research quality (there's some uncritical citation of When God Was a Woman, etc.) and is unapologetically Marxist in its slant--reportedly Leslie's last words were "remember me as a revolutionary Communist."  Feinberg's analysis of history is very much one where gender variance and transgender people are placed in a context of class conflict, anti-colonial uprising, labor, and revolution--Transgender Warrior is in particular about highlighting the role of people we might call transgender as leaders in social justice movements.

As a taste, here's a presentation Feinberg gave on receiving the Howard Thurman award from that august theologian's church a few years back--ze's obviously uncomfortable with the religious context but dives right in to talking about liberation theology and working-class solidarity.  http://www.workers.org/2007/us/feinberg-1108/

Here's a series of writing done on Lyme disease and the classed aspects of access to healthcare, issues which ultimately killed Feinberg: http://www.transgenderwarrior.org/lymeseries.html

Those of us who were paying attention to the CeCe MacDonald case will also remember Leslie Feinberg, while sometimes too sick to stand on two feet, nonetheless leading the charge to bring attention to CeCe's case and advocate to get her freed.

Feinberg was one of those once-in-a-generation people, always ready to look for whose back was against the wall and fight for them first.  She came onto a scene where trans people weren't really allowed to write anything but prurient memoir and insisted on getting political--tireless about making it about the greater collective issues, about solidarity and movement and justice and not getting ours individually while leaving others behind, about looking at the economics, about poverty and systemic discrimination and healthcare access and getting people fed.  For all that I'm not on board with everything she wrote, I will always be grateful for that, and my work wouldn't be possible without Leslie Feinberg's.  We lost a great one from the host of the living this week.

She was a pioneer in trans and lesbian issues, workers rights, and intersectionality long before anyone could define the phrase. Her partner, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and family offered us this obituary.

 
What an extraordinary person. She will be in my prayers.