Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) was a LGBT activist who fought for workers' rights, transgender rights, and women's rights. Feinberg reached adulthood in the midst of the Stonewall Riots. She was, in the words of her partner Minnie Bruce Patt, "an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist." Feinberg authored multiple tracts on gender, sexuality, and society, but the best-known, and perhaps most important, piece of writing was Stone Butch Blues, a novel that explored the complexity of non-binary gender and the connotations of the term 'butch' in reference to sexuality.
Stone Butch Blues was Feinberg's debut novel, published in 1993. The protagonist is Jess Goldberg, a young, butch lesbian, who tests the boundaries of gender and sexuality in the late 1950s. Throughout the novel, Jess is beaten, bloodied, and rejected by her family and society as a whole, eventually finding a safe haven with a group of LGBT women. One may see elements of Feinberg's life reflected in Jess'; she too was rejected by her family and suffered discrimination based on her identity and appearance before settling down with Minnie Bruce Patt, her "partner in love and life."
In an interview in 2006, Feinberg said, "I am female-bodied, I am a butch lesbian, a transgender lesbian... I like the gender neutral pronoun 'ze/hir', because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you're about to meet or you've just met." In a later 2013 interview, Feinberg elaborated, "I have been referred to in my life as a butch, as a he-she, as a passing woman, as a drag king. None of those were words that I chose." Her unapologetic embrace of her identity was revolutionary in a political climate that demanded adherence to a strict gender binary. Stone Butch Blues helped to give butch lesbians a voice; its popularity allowed LGBT people to see themselves represented in a story that was heartbreaking and joyful and real all at once. Feinberg's work revolved around ensuring that all people, especially those of future generations, would be able to choose how they defined themselves.