''Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman'', published in 1996, is an autobiographicalSchwartz, Patricia Roth. "Reviews: Transgender." Lambda Book Report, vol. 5, no. 2, Aug. 1996, p. 32.

popular history Popular history is a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistinction to professio ...

Review of ''Transgender Warriors'', by Leslie Feinberg. ''Kirkus'' March 15, 1996 by transgender activist and author

Leslie Feinberg Leslie Feinberg (September 1, 1949 – November 15, 2014) was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Feinberg authored '' Stone Butch Blues'' in 1993.

. Feinberg is best known for her autobiographical novel ''

Stone Butch Blues ''Stone Butch Blues'' is a historical fiction novel written by Leslie Feinberg about life as a butch lesbian in 1970s America. While fictional, the work also takes inspiration from Feinberg's own life, and she described it as her "call to action." ...

''. In ''Transgender Warriors'', she discusses people who have crossed sex and gender boundaries in various places from ancient times to present day. It was one of the first books to articulate a trans-historical understanding of

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

identity and argue for the inclusion of

gender nonconforming Gender variance or gender nonconformity is behavior or gender expression by an individual that does not match masculine or feminine gender norms. A gender-nonconforming person may be variant in their gender identity, being transgender or non-bina ...

people throughout history.

Background

The beginnings of the research that would become ''Transgender Warriors'' first appeared in Feinberg's pamphlet "Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come", which was published by the Workers World Party in 1992. This pamphlet was one of the first works to use

in an expansive sense, and the pamphlet gave the word a new "political charge".Stryker, Susan. ''Transgender History''. Seal Press, 2017 The

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

lens which Feinberg uses in "Transgender Liberation" is also present in ''Transgender Warriors''. Kaivola, Karen. "The Ethics of Difference in an Age of Technological Gender B(l)Ending." Mosaic, vol. 30, no. 3, 1997, pp. 197. Feinberg uses her personal history to frame her discussion of world history and help people relate the information to present day struggles. The book itself is organized into five sections correlating roughly with when Feinberg learned the information she presents and chunking similar information thematically.

Summary

The first section of the book discusses how Feinberg became interested in transgender history. She discusses her childhood in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

and the understanding of gender she gained from the society around her, as well as how she learned about Marxism. This personal background explains how Feinberg researches and interprets the information she presents in the rest of the book, and also offers insight into which elements of ''

'' are autobiographical.Golden, Clara. "Beyond the Impoverishment of Gender Boxes" Review of ''Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman'', by Leslie Feinberg. BOOK REVIEWS, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 4:2, 159-174, DOI:10.1300/J155v04n02_11 Feinberg also discusses gender nonconforming people in Native American traditions and

Joan of Arc Joan of Arc (french: link=yes, Jeanne d'Arc, translit= �an daʁk} ; 1412 – 30 May 1431) is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronati ...

, emphasizing the fact that Joan of Arc was arrested and killed specifically for cross dressing. The second part of the book zooms out to discuss broader historical narratives of transgender people. She talks about how gender nonconforming people have been considered sacred in religions all over the world. She then discusses how

transphobia Transphobia is a collection of ideas and phenomena that encompass a range of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger tow ...

developed alongside

classism Class discrimination, also known as classism, is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes, behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper class at the expense of ...

patriarchy Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males a ...

and

homophobia Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitude (psychology), attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, h ...

to allow class-based societies to concentrate wealth and power among wealthy men. Feinberg specifically discusses gender nonconformity within Greece and Rome and found that they fit her thesis about transphobia being a product of classism. In the third section, Feinberg focuses specifically on Europe. She begins by expanding her research on Joan of Arc to discuss how the Catholic church sought to consolidate power by suppressing

pagan Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. ...

traditions which valorized transgender people. She then goes on to discuss how cross-dressing formed an important part of peasant rebellions and festival days. She finishes with a discussion of individuals who lived as members of the opposite sex during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Feinberg argues that the complexities of passing for long periods of time indicate that a desire to escape sexism or access economic opportunity alone is not sufficient to explain these actions. In the fourth section, Feinberg discusses more contemporary transgender issues. She begins by discussing early instances of explicitly trans organization, such as the

Scientific-Humanitarian Committee The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (, WhK) was founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin in May 1897, to campaign for social recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and against their legal Violence against LGBT people, pers ...

in interwar Germany and the

Stonewall Riots The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of Ju ...

in New York City. Although these events have often been thought of primarily in the context of Gay and Lesbian movements, Feinberg makes the case that transgender people were central to these efforts. In the second chapter in this section, Feinberg goes into more detail about how sex, gender and gender expression relate to each other, and talks specifically how

intersex Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical bina ...

people fit into these distinctions. Feinberg next writes about the relationship between women's movements and trans movements, specifically discussing the need for an understanding of womanhood which can encompass the complexities of trans experiences. She ends with a call for transgender people to join to fight for trans rights and overthrow

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

. The final section of the book consists of a photo gallery of transgender people talking about their lives.

Reception

In general, ''Transgender Warriors'' was better received within the LGBTQ community than by outside groups. Many reviewers found the historical analysis to be lacking

rigor Rigour (British English) or rigor (American English; see spelling differences) describes a condition of stiffness or strictness. These constraints may be environmentally imposed, such as "the rigours of famine"; logically imposed, such as ma ...

,Review of ''Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman'', by Leslie Feinberg. ''Publishers Weekly'', 29, Apr. 1996 but others put a higher value on the interest of Feinberg's life, the possibility of reclaiming transgender history, and contemporary understandings of what it means to be transgender.

References

{{Authority control Books about LGBT history 1990s LGBT literature Transgender non-fiction books Beacon Press books 1996 non-fiction books LGBT literature in the United States