Stone Butch Blues

by leslie feinberg

“Are you a girl or a boy?” (SBB). Did you ever deal with such questions while growing up? Most people do not have to deal with this ridicule, but in Leslie Feinberg’s novel Stone Butch Blues, that is only where the trouble begins for a masculine looking girl, Jess Goldberg. When she was just a young girl, an Indian woman next door told her parents she would walk a different path in life. She leaves home early on after continuous ridicule in school, including rape and being brutally beaten. Feinberg tells a story of what life was like for pre-Stonewall, working class, transgendered, lesbian and gay people in the urban Northeast. Because of her androgeny, she found she was able to pass as a man inside of the factories. Several times, people close to her accidently exposed her gender and got her fired, or she quit. She just wanted to get ahead without being put down for her gender. She didn’t necessarily feel she was born into the wrong body though. She just knew that the stereotype of woman didn’t fit her and just wanted to be seen as normal. Normal could only mean passing as a man, since that was what she was close to and what enabled her to work.

Today a hot topic with equality is the glass ceiling and how men are paid more than women are. In many instances, employers take men more seriously. Many jobs are labeled by what sex “should” be doing it. The book Stone Butch Blues brings up that inequality between men and women. She feels it is easier to dress as a man to get jobs that pay well. Besides changing herself to be taken seriously, it was also a personal decision that meant a lot to her.

Besides equality in the workplace, this book brings up struggles that people have when they appear differently than their assigned sex. Feinberg’s novel is based from the 50s to the 70s but still applies to today in some aspects. I feel as if transgenderism is more acceptable today than it was in that period. But we still have a long ways to go for people to understand the transgendered and respect them as equal beings.

I am very into issues such as equality within the LGBTQ community. I like writings by Leslie Feinberg because she educates with her own life stories and also incorporates fiction. She writes about what has happened or what is happening and how it is a problem. I feel as if many people arent aware of how many hate crimes are going on. She is a good read.