45 Quotes by Leslie Feinberg

The loneliness became more and more unbearable. I ached to be touched. I feared I was disappearing and I’d cease to exist if someone didn’t touch me.

Remember me as a revolutionary communist.

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 remembered what it was like to walk a gauntlet of strangers who stare – their eyes angry, confused, intrigued. Woman or man: they are outraged that I confuse them. The punishment will follow. The only recognition I can find in their eyes is that I am “other.” I am different. I will always be different. I will never be able to nestle my skin against the comfort of sameness.

Never underestimate the power of fiction to tell the truth.

I’ve been going to the library, looking up our history. There’s a ton of it in anthropology books, a ton of it, Ruth. We haven’t always been hated. Why didn’t we grow up knowing that?

Every day I saw others like me in this city – enough of us to populate our own town. But we only acknowledged each other with a furtive glance, fearful of calling attention to ourselves. Being alone in public was painful enough; two could find themselves smack in the center of an unbearable sideshow. We didn’t seem to have any of our own places to gather in community, to immerse ourselves in our own ways and our own languages.

Who was I now – woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.

I wanted to thank you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have known I had a right to be me.