Leslie Feinberg Quotes & Sayings

some mistakes in life are not punishable, others teach you a lesson you never forget! — Leslie Feinberg

If I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I'm sick of the world thinking I'm straight. I've worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian — Leslie Feinberg

Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry against transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies. Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other's differences and are willing to fight their enemy together. We are the class that does the work of the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation. — Leslie Feinberg

The loneliness became more and more unbearable. I ached to be touched. I feared I was disappearing and I'd cease to exist if someone didn't touch me. — Leslie Feinberg

It's a beauty one isn't born with, but must fight to construct at great sacrifice. — Leslie Feinberg

Oh, Ruth. I wish we had our own words to describe ourselves, to connect us."
Ruth stood up and opened the broiler. "I don't need another label," she sighed. "I just am what I am. I call myself Ruth. My mother is Ruth Anne; my grandmother was Anne. That's who I am. That's where I come from."
I shrugged. "I don't want another label either. I just wish we had words so pretty we'd go out of our way to say them out loud. — Leslie Feinberg

Who was I now - woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked. — Leslie Feinberg

But if theory is not the crystallized resin of experience, it ceases to be a guide to action. — Leslie Feinberg

I've been fighting to defend who I am all my life. I'm tired. I just don't know how to go on anymore. This is the only way I can think of I can still be me and survive. I just don't know any other way".
Theresa sat back in her chair. "I'm a woman, Jess. I love you because you're a woman, too. I made up my mind when I was growing up that I was not going to betray my desire by resigning to marrying a dirt farmer or the boy at the service station. Do you understand?"
I shook my head sadly. "Do you wish I wasn't a butch?"
She smiled. "No, I love your butchness. I just don't want to be some man's wife, even if that man's a woman. — Leslie Feinberg

I remembered what it was like to walk a gauntlet of strangers who stare - their eyes angry, confused, intrigued. Woman or man: they are outraged that I confuse them. The punishment will follow. The only recognition I can find in their eyes is that I am "other." I am different. I will always be different. I will never be able to nestle my skin against the comfort of sameness. — Leslie Feinberg

Everybody's scared, but if you don't let your fears stop you, that's bravery! — Leslie Feinberg

From that moment on I was her butch and she was my femme. — Leslie Feinberg

I've been going to the library, looking up our history. There's a ton of it in anthropology books, a ton of it, Ruth. We haven't always been hated. Why didn't we grow up knowing that? — Leslie Feinberg

Never underestimate the power of fiction to tell the truth. — Leslie Feinberg

i know the difference between what i can't do and what i refuse to do! — Leslie Feinberg

You're more than just neither, honey. There's other ways to be than either-or. It's not so simple. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many people who don't fit. — Leslie Feinberg

I put on lipstick and high heels and walk down the street arm in arm with you, Jess. This is my life, and I'm damn brave to love who I love. Don't try to take who I am away from me."
My chin trembled, "Well, what do you think's being taken away from me? What the fuck am I going to do, Theresa? Tell me, what can I do?
...I don't want to die and I don't know how to live. I'm really afraid. — Leslie Feinberg

I began to feel the pleasure of the weightless state between here and there — Leslie Feinberg

Are you with women who only bleed monthly on their cycles? — Leslie Feinberg

I have heard an argument that transgender people oppress transsexual people because we are trying to tear down the categories of male and female. But isn't this the same reactionary argument used against transmen and transwomen by those who argue that any challenges to assigned birth sex threaten the categories of man and woman? Transgender people are not dismantling the categories of man and woman. We are opening up a world of possibilities in addition. Each of us has a right to our identities. To claim one group of downtrodden people is oppressing another by their self-identification is to swing your guns away from those who really do oppress us, and to aim them at those who are already under siege. — Leslie Feinberg

I'm sorry it's had to be this hard. But if I hadn't walked this path, who would I be? At the moment I felt at the center of my life, the dream still braided like sweetgrass in my memory. I remembered Duffy's challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. I closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soar. I heard the beatings of wings nearby. I opened my eyes. A young man on a nearby rooftop released his pigeons, like dreams, into the dawn. — Leslie Feinberg

I think girls and boys should be able to be any way they want to be without getting picked on. — Leslie Feinberg

More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: Are you a man or a woman? — Leslie Feinberg

I didn't want to be different. I longed to be everything grownups wanted, so they would love me. I followed all their rules, tried my best to please. But there was something about me that made them knit their eyebrows and frown. No one ever offered a name for what was wrong with me. That's what made me afraid it was really bad. I only came to recognize its melody through this constant refrain: 'Is that a boy or a girl?' — Leslie Feinberg

What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other's oppression. As our activist network grows into marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, we will hammer out language that demonstrates the sum total of our movement as well as its component communities.

Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. This is a very early stage for trans peoples with such diverse histories and blends of cultures to form community. Perhaps we don't have to strive to be one community. In reality, there isn't one women's, or lesbian, gay, bi community. What is realistic is the goal to build a coalition between our many strong communities in order to form a movement capable of defending all our lives. — Leslie Feinberg

Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught. — Leslie Feinberg

Every day the men around me came to exercise their bodies; I came to exorcise my demons — Leslie Feinberg

We have not always been forced to pass, to go underground, in order to work and live. We have a right to live openly and proudly ... when our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exist in human society. — Leslie Feinberg

I remembered Duffy's challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. I closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soar — Leslie Feinberg

Surrenderin is unimaginably more dangerous than struggling for survival! — Leslie Feinberg

I live proudly in a body of my own design. I defend my right to be complex — Leslie Feinberg

The sky was black and strewn with stars. I felt alone on the planet. I was so scared I could hardly breathe. I didn't know where I was headed. I didn't know what to do with my life. I strained to look into my future, trying to picture the road ahead of me, searching for a glimpse of who I would become.
All I could see was the night sky and the stars above me. — Leslie Feinberg

It was over Ed's shoulder that I really saw Milli for the first time. She was standing there just looking at me. Ed glanced at Milli and then, like a good friend, Ed walked away.
I have a few mental photographs I can see in my mind's eye. One of them is Milli, hands on her hips, looking me up and down as if the bike and I were one lean machine. Her body language, the gleam in her eyes, the tease in her smile, all combined into an erotic femme challenge. Milli set the action into irresistible motion by lifting on eyebrow. — Leslie Feinberg

My right to be me is tied with a thousand threads to your right to be you. — Leslie Feinberg

I reserve my right to be complex. — Leslie Feinberg

People of all sexes have the right to explore femininity, masculinity-and the infinite variations between-without criticism or ridicule. — Leslie Feinberg

I want to understand about change--I don't just want to be at the mercy of it. I feel like I'm waking up inside. I want to know about history. I have all this new information about people like me down through the ages, but I don't know anything about the ages. — Leslie Feinberg

But very quickly I discovered that passing didn't just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive. I was still me on the inside, trapped in there with all my wounds and fears. But I was no longer me on the outside. — Leslie Feinberg

...wishing I could do everything in my life once as practice, and then go back and do it again. — Leslie Feinberg

I kept yelling at them that you were a human being, that you mattered, and it was like they weren't even listening to me. I couldn't do anything to help you and I couldn't make them take care of you the way I wanted, you know?"
I nodded. I did know. And now I knew that Duffy did too. — Leslie Feinberg

This is what courage is. It's not just living through the nightmare, it's doing something with it afterward. It's being brave enough to talk about it to other people. It's trying to organize to change things. — Leslie Feinberg

I felt as though I was rushing into a burning building to discover the ideas I needed for my own life.(239) — Leslie Feinberg

Every day I saw others like me in this city - enough of us to populate our own town. But we only acknowledged each other with a furtive glance, fearful of calling attention to ourselves. Being alone in public was painful enough; two could find themselves smack in the center of an unbearable sideshow. We didn't seem to have any of our own places to gather in community, to immerse ourselves in our own ways and our own languages. — Leslie Feinberg

Strength, like height, is measured by who you're standin next to! — Leslie Feinberg

I wanted to thank you. If it wasn't for you, I'd never have known I had a right to be me. — Leslie Feinberg

I'm not saying we'll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure. Take a chance, Jess. You're already wondering if the world could change. Try imagining a world worth living in, and then ask yourself if that isn't worth fighting for. You've come too far to give up on hope, Jess. — Leslie Feinberg

I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it's hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine.

To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write. — Leslie Feinberg