Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

This is a manifesto of transgender liberation. It will be remembered and read for many years to come. As a LGBT person, it really touched me. Some societies have honored us and some have murdered us. It is time for us to rise up and say enough. I will re-read this book.

Leslie Feinberg has created a fascinating compilation of transgender history.This book "works" in that it engages the reader and stimulates thought, questioning and debate. Even the highly negative reviews that appear here reinforce this. The review authors are inflamed by a book of substance, one which presents a consistent theoretical underpinning as it provides a wealth of historical data.A lot of political statements are made on all sides about the natural order of things. Look at the debate over same-sex marriage in which the debate is framed in terms of traditional values.Feinberg, in this work, does the field of gender studies a great service in expanding our awareness of just how much diversity is historically encompassed in our common tradition.Read this book, then reflect, then challenge both it and yourself.

The Stonewall frontliner offers an engaging expedition back through the past into the present through critical transgender-centering reinterpretations of familiar and unfamiliar stories. Hir re-reading of Joan of Arc from a transgender socialist feminist perspective is intriguing, motivating, and delightful. Feinberg is able to achieve visibility for heterosexistly obscured transgender moments and people across a lengthy span of time and geography.Braiding hir own narrative into the work provides a reflexive empassioned appeal to liberation workers that renews spirits to confront gender, desire, and sexed supremacy with a certain pride in transgender revolutionary work. The blend of freshly unearthed truths, experiential revelations, and proffers for theory work well for a feminist readership.

Of course this book is personal. Of course it is passionate. It is an important attempt by a recognized trans author and amateur historian to catalyze a larger project of tracing authentic patterns of gender expression that don't conform to the binary that has been forced upon society since the rise of class divisions (i.e., since the collapse of "primitive" or "tribal" collectivism). And the book thereby contributes to efforts to demystify the notion that "two sexes" are a scientific fact and historical truth.Hopefully others will pick up where Feinberg leaves off and apply other methodologies to uncover what has really been going on throughout human history where it comes to gender.What the book lacks in traditional academic rigor it more than makes up for with its first-person self-consciousness, originality and plausibility in the interpretation of historical data. It is richly illustrated, literate, contemporary and very relevant to today's discourse.

I'm a 20-year-old female-to-male transsexual. Five years ago, I didn't even know other people like me existed. Now, thanks to this book, I know people like me have been around as long as human beings from the more ordinary walks of life. You might think that being transsexual, I'd be pretty open-minded, but I must confess that this book really got me thinking about my own chosen gender and what exactly I want do with my transsexuality. Do I want to blend in with all the genetic XY guys after all, leaving no trace of my 'abnormal' gender? Do I really care if people know I don't have a penis? Must I be 100% male 100% of the time? And what is 'male' anyway? Leslie presents a very personal history of transgenderism. Hir short autobiography echoes that of the many people who don't fit into the male OR female ONLY roles society has pushed us into over the centuries. Being transgendered, I could really emphasise with hir life story, and that of all the other trans* people who have a part in this book. I'd recommend this book not only to other trans* people, but anyone who is interested in something else other than the traditional gender roles we are given. This is such a different prism to look at history and gender through. I want to major in History now. ::grin::