“At first, everything was fun. The world stopped feeling like a gauntlet I had to run through. 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.”
I recently read the late Leslie Feinberg’s classic Stone Butch Blues (1993). The powerful, semi-autobiographical novel following Jess Goldberg, a working-class butch navigating life in 1960s and 70s America, was a fascinating read, especially in combination with Begehren und Widerstand by Joan Nestle. This landmark in lesbian and trans literature explores themes of gender identity, labor struggles, and the resilience of the queer community in the face of systemic oppression and police brutality. It’s a raw, emotional journey of survival and self-discovery. Content note: As Leslie Feinberg mentions in the introduction, it is an anti-oppression novel, and as such explicitly descibes instances of oppression and (sexual) violence.
Thoughts?