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Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue Reading Group – Week 1, June 7 - June 14 – Chapter 1 (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Welcome to the first week of reading Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue by Leslie Feinberg!

Each week we'll read one chapter and discuss it in the comments. There are 8 chapters, and each chapter isn't too long, so this will be relatively light reading for most of you.

Also, THIS BOOK ISN'T JUST FOR TRANS PEOPLE. Obviously the book discusses trans issues, but as I've said before, it covers discussion on gender topics that would be relevant to basically everyone. So I highly encourage you to join if you're interested, regardless of whether you're trans or not.

To get started, here is a list of resources taken from the previous reading group session:

pdf download
epub download - Huge shout out to comrade @EugeneDebs for putting this together. I realized I didn't credit them in either post but here it is. I appreciate your efforts. ❤️
chapter 1 audiobook - Huge shout out to comrade @futomes for recording these. No words can truly express my appreciation for this. Thank you so much. ❤️
chapter 2 audiobook
chapter 3 audiobook
chapter 4 audiobook
chapter 5 audiobook
chapter 6 audiobook
chapter 7 audiobook
chapter 8 audiobook

Also here's another PDF download link and the whole book on ProleWiki.

In this thread we'll be discussing Chapter 1: We Are All Works in Progress.

CWs: Discussion of transphobia, abuse, SA. I should also mention since this came out in 1998, some of the language used might feel a little dated (specific language used is also a good topic of discussion imo).

I'll also ping a discussion list each week. Since this is the first week, the ping list will only include the few who've mentioned they're interested, but please let me know if you'd like to be added (or removed).

This is my first time doing something like this, so let me know if you have any feedback for me. Thanks!

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[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So the following section is one of my favorite quotes in the entire book:

Now another movement is sweeping onto the stage of history: Trans liberation. We are again raising questions about the societal treatment of people based on their sex and gender expression. This discussion will make new contributions to human consciousness. And trans communities, like the women's movement, are carrying out these mass conversations with the goal of creating a movement capable of fighting for justice — of righting the wrongs.

We are a movement of masculine females and feminine males, cross-dressers, transsexual men and women, intersexuals born on the anatomical sweep between female and male, gender-blenders, many other sex and gender-variant people, and our significant others. All told, we expand understanding of how many ways there are to be a human being.

Our lives are proof that sex and gender are much more complex than a delivery room doctor's glance at genitals can determine, more variegated than pink or blue birth caps. We are oppressed for not fitting those narrow social norms. We are fighting back.

Our struggle will also help expose some of the harmful myths about what it means to be a woman or a man that have compartmentalized and distorted your life, as well as mine. Trans liberation has meaning for you—no matter how you define or express your sex or your gender.

If you are a trans person, you face horrendous social punishments — from institutionalization to gangremoved, from beatings to denial of child visitation. This oppression is faced, in varying degrees, by all who march under the banner of trans liberation. This brutalization and degradation strips us of what we could achieve with our individual lifetimes.

And if you do not identify as transgender or transsexual or intersexual, your life is diminished by our oppression as well. Your own choices as a man or a woman are sharply curtailed. Your individual journey to express yourself is shunted into one of two deeply carved ruts, and the social baggage you are handed is already packed.

So the defense of each individual's right to control their own body, and to explore the path of self-expression, enhances your own freedom to discover more about yourself and your potentialities. This movement will give you more room to breathe - to be yourself. To discover on a deeper level what it means to be your self.

One thing that really stood out to me about this is how radically inclusive it is. I feel like efforts at categorizing different types of queer/trans people can sometimes drift towards gatekeeping and/or boxing people in. On the other hand, the definition of "trans" that zie presents in this book is inclusive of pretty much everyone who expresses their gender in a way that falls outside mainstream gender norms. I feel like this more inclusive definition makes it easier for trans people (including eggs) to accept their transness (example: internal questions of "Am I really trans?") as well as extending the scope of trans rights and social trans acceptance to a larger group.

Would love to hear other thoughts on this.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

That was the passage that made me tear up unexpectedly (specifically around the "Our lives [...] Our struggle" part) doggirl-cry I was really moved by how zie spoke plainly about the pain, suffering, and humiliation inflicted upon gender non-conforming people by a bigoted society while still giving voice to such a bold and hopeful vision for the future, as well as explaining to cis people that their freedom from the oppressive gender binary is also tied up in the struggle for trans liberation. You can definitely tell that the book was adapted from speeches: hir voice came through so strongly that it was like zie was right there in front of me. It's rare that I feel hope, but hearing people like Leslie speak with such conviction keeps that tiny ember alive. I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the book, and thank you so much for hosting this reading group! cat-trans

only tangentially related personal musingsNot particularly related to anything in the chapter, but I felt a pang when I realized that Leslie grew up around the same time as my own mother, and yet their views on gender could hardly be more different. Well, that's a little unfair: my mother is no bigot, and I've never heard her say anything negative about trans people. But she also is someone who adheres strongly to societal norms, and I think a large part of that grows out of fear of judgment.

The other day she was randomly talking about how her neighbor's kid must have just graduated, and when I looked her name up in the school paper to see what her post-graduation plans were, rather than (what I presume to be) her deadname I found an unmistakably feminine name attached to her unique surname. In the silence, I could hear the gears in my mom's head turning, after which (to make a long story short) it was clear that she was considering the possibility that the neighbor kid was trans but dared not speak it as if it would bring a curse upon the kid's family or something. In the end, she changed the subject, and I didn't press the issue, which I regret. My feeble defense is that I'm deep in the closet and I wouldn't want to do anything that would garner suspicion, but if I'm honest with myself I think I was afraid to probe my mom's beliefs more deeply.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If you think about it, the suffragettes were really just transing their gender.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Not sure exactly what you mean so apologies if I'm way off base, but I would think that's more related to broad legal restrictions instead of an individual's gender expression?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That was a half-joking comment but only half since fighting to change what a gender as a class is legally or politically allowed to do is part of expanding individual freedom of expression, I think! Perhaps Feinberg would agree too since zie places trans liberation as a new frontier or continuation of the fight for the emancipation of women.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Ah ok, that makes sense and I definitely see those things as intertwined.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Or approaching this from a slightly different angle: if we are to be inclusive and regard any kind of gender deconstruction as being/becoming transgender, those women who said "we deserve to be educated and vote and work and dress how we like despite the social construct" very much qualify to be included.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Sorry for the very late reply to this. I agree with you and it's honestly something I've been thinking about all week. When I first read this the questions that popped into my head were more along the lines of "Are femboys, crossdressers, dragqueens, etc. trans?" but the case you bring up is very interesting. Obviously most people these days wouldn't see something like women wearing pants or having short hair as "trans" in any way, but it's true that at one point women dressing like this and taking on strictly male roles was seen bold act of crossing gender lines. In this case, they were able to successfully change social norms to the point where this is no longer something anyone even thinks about it, which gives me hope that we will eventually win and move past our current situation.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

In this case, they were able to successfully change social norms to the point where this is no longer something anyone even thinks about it, which gives me hope that we will eventually win and move past our current situation.

idk girl, I'm more pessimistic about this. to people who believe in the conventional gender hierarchy in which men are above women, it just Makes Sense for some women to try to want to increase their status by being more masculine. within this worldview, MTF persons are Acting Illogically, and to them, must therefore be "impaired" in some way or acting with ulterior motives.

what would give me hope is a sign of any significant amount of the population realizing that it's fucking BS that whatever was between your legs when you spawned in defines how to have to relate to people. I wish I could say zoomers achieved this, it seems to be generation with the most q/gq people within recent memory in the western world, but it also seems to have some of the most reactionary/trad people, so I don't know if anything has actually changed.

personal anecdote: at my previous job, there was one co-worker who happened to be a trans man. I actually didn't learn this until after about 5 years of working with him, and I only learned it in passing. None of the guys ever gave him shit for it, even though I guess everyone who started there before me knew for whatever reason. Yet these same people had nothing but vile shit to say about trans women to the point where it was one of the reasons I left.

it's not just a dividing line, it's a hierarchy, and comes with the complexities that you see in other hierarchies like race and socioeconomic class

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

No worries, I appreciate your response even more now that I also had time to ruminate on this!

I personally think that any attack on the established gender system qualifies as being/becoming transgender. Two interesting consequences of thinking this way are, first, that the "third gender" role/class in some societies does not qualify as long as it is accepted as part of the established system and, second, that my dream of fully automated gay space communism necessarily involves the word "transgender" becoming meaningless because there will be no gender system in the first place.

The transition of transgender to meaningless will feel similar to what we are talking about right now – today it feels pretty meaningless to call early fighters for women's emancipation transgender because they have won and gender has successfully been transed (mostly, in certain parts of the world, caveat, caveat). In general, I think, it makes more sense to talk about transgender dialectically, i.e., as a process rather than a phenomenon, which deemphasises the "who is transgender" and emphasises the "when and how is transgender".

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It is 2020 and I am reading Trans Liberation leslie-feinberg

It is 2025 and I am ~~reading~~ listening to Trans Liberation leslie-shining

Edit: wow the quality gets much better on the audiobook on chapter 3

edit 2: I'll make this more substantive! I had forgotten the passage about the womens liberation movement in chapter 1. The seismic shift it presented for the roles and rights of women, and the abject failure of reactionaries ever since to put that genie back in the bottle is inspiring, even if much else has remained the same. Feinberg is a wonderful writer and this is making me want to re-read stone butch blues as a throwback. And then Settlers. I actually wish settlers got discussed more here, it used to be more commonly brought up, back when we had more libs in our midst

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

This was a very powerful introduction and I'm excited to read more. Difficult to believe that this was published in 1998, especially for someone like me, who grew up in an environment with extremely strict gender roles (even among queer people) and had to reach all the same conclusions through my own painful experience. I wish I read this 20 years ago.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

FIRST CHAPTER IS STARTING!!!

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Thanks for setting this up! I look forward to reading this with everyone.

Some initial thoughts, after reading Chapter 1:

-Feinberg is an incredibly gifted writer. Sie writes with fire and strength while displaying deeply personal struggles and pain.

-This is a clearly inclusive text, one that Feinberg does a great job of roping the reader in.

-Heartbreaking anecdotes regarding the brutality of the medical system as it deals with bigoted doctors. This is such a huge problem, and Feinberg does an amazing job with highlighting it off the bat.

Overall, loved chapter 1, and looking forward to discussing the rest with y'all!

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Feinberg looking smug as shit on the cover lol

Been really feeling this particular excerpt lately:

I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity 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.

That is why I do not hold the view that gender is simply a social construct — one of two languages that we learn by rote from early age. To me, gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught. When I walk through the anthology of the world, I see individuals express their gender in exquisitely complex and ever-changing ways, despite the laws of pentameter.

I know I want a more feminine physical form, but when it comes to gender expression (which to me is in how I present myself and how I interact with other people) neither of the two binary "languages" is sufficient? The male language is too restrictive for me, and the female language doesn't have all the "words" I'm looking for, and can be restrictive in some ways as well...

Semi tangential thought, but I feel like this phenomenon is what's behind the whole puppygirl/boy thing younger trans people are into. That's not something cis people of either binary gender does (at least not in noticeable numbers) but I guess a lot of trans people find it useful as a way to express something inside them that can't be expressed with the two languages society allows us to speak.

(I sure hope I won't be wearing a collar before the end of summer oh-shit )

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think you’re right about the puppy thing and maybe it also ties into furry culture? It makes total sense to me that people with an internal identity that is outside of societal norms would seek out personas that better fit how they feel.

There is one portion of that segment I’m confused about:

That is why I do not hold the view that gender is simply a social construct — one of two languages that we learn by rote from early age. To me, gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.

Wouldn’t this imply that gender IS a social construct? Or is zie trying to differentiate individual expression of gender from social norms here?

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Or is zie trying to differentiate individual expression of gender from social norms here?

I think it's that one. the concept of gender as it exists presently is a social construct (you were born with x genitals, therefore you are x gender, therefore you do x and not y), but can be a means of individual expression if society were to get rid of it.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Maybe not so much differentiate as point out the dialectical relationship between the individual and social. We learn the language, yes, but then we speak it and, by speaking it, we are creating it.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

This makes perfect sense.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

This was a very beautiful metaphor and yes, we are not just writing new poetry, we are building an entirely new language.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

(I sure hope I won't be wearing a collar before the end of summer )

I sure hope I will doggirl-smug

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Semi tangential thought, but I feel like this phenomenon is what's behind the whole puppygirl/boy thing younger trans people are into.

I thought the whole puppygirl thing was pushback against this bizarre gendering of dogs/canines as masculine and cats/felines as feminine even though there are obviously female dogs and male cats. This is seen with a sexually open older woman being called a cougar. This is also why reactionaries latch onto the "lone wolf" even though a solitary wolf is completely nonthreatening and an actual solitary apex predator is some large feline (cougar, tiger, jaguar). A feline pretty much shits on any equivalently sized canine, so you would think loser fascists would identify more with strong and tough felines than weak and feeble canines.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

ooh i wanted to read this last year but didn't get around to it and now i've finished the first chapter! this part got me thinking:

While keeping his eyes fixed on me, he approached one of the nurses, seated at a desk, and began rubbing her neck and shoulders. He talked to her about sex for a few minutes. After his pointed demonstration of “normal sexuality,” he told me to get dressed and then he stormed out of the room.

i wonder if i still would have rejected my imposed gender so harshly if i hadn't seen it performed in such a consistently abusive way. feeling society trying to groom me to become that eventually reached a boiling point and it was hard not to outright hate any performance of that "normal sexuality" which was expected of me

thanks for doing this and please add me to the ping list if you could! ❤️

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

I have to say. Every time I read about trans people's experiences with doctors, it makes me not want to go to the doctors. I'm reminded of how the government medical efforts in countries with large rural populations have to go through great lengths to convince the rural folk that the doctors won't screw them over. It's interesting to see how there is both a "assimilate into us at all costs!" and "we need the existence of marginalized/unassimilated populations else our society collapses!" dynamic at play.

Also, the whole thing about the doctors writing off the author is just more proof that modern GPs play a role of gatekeeping medicine.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Oh shit what I wish I had some more notice for this this has been on my list for a long time

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If it helps, we’re going relatively very slow with this. The first chapter isn’t long at all and you should be able to get through it in one sitting.

Also, we’re only doing one chapter a week and I plan on leaving every thread open to discussion even after the week passes.

So what I’m saying is, you should definitely join us!

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

First chapter audiobook is only like 20 mins!

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Never thought I would join a reading group, but I’m really impressed by what I’ve read so far and the slow pace of 1 chapter per week is perfect for me.

So right off the bat, if we ignore the "transexual" I would have never guessed that this was written in the 90s, and it’s really nice to know that trans terminology was already pretty developed back then.

Also this part is really strong:

This doctor's prejudices, directed at me during a moment of catastrophic illness, could have killed me. The death certificate would have read: Endocarditis. By all rights it should have read: Bigotry.

Doctors are always so paranoid about getting sued for malpractice and usually do everything they can to prevent that. But when it comes to marginalized patients they suddenly don’t give a shit about being "professional" anymore, because they know that our lives are seen as worthless and that between a doctor, who is highly-respected by society, and a trans person most people (especially those in power) will always side with the doctor.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Doctors are always so paranoid about getting sued for malpractice and usually do everything they can to prevent that. But when it comes to marginalized patients they suddenly don’t give a shit about being "professional" anymore, because they know that our lives are seen as worthless

this reminds me of how most Amerikkkans were serious or at least cautious about covid until research came out that it disproportionately affected PoC, then suddenly it was a "plandemic" and "just the flu"

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Fascists in Austria were also the first to call for lockdowns until they actually happened and immigration numbers plummeted as a result of that. They quickly needed a new scapegoat to rally against.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

It was serious when it was the "boomer remover"

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I'm pretty excited to check this out and participate in my first reading group. Just ... need a few hours to do some other shit (homework deeper-sadness ). But yeah, ping me up please!

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

No worries! We have all week to discuss this first chapter and I’ll leave the threads open afterward as well in case folks have more to add.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Oh fuck I completely forgot i was reading this book sign me up please

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I started the audiobook when kristina made a post about it a while ago but fell off due to various distractions, good time to try again

this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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