Transgender author speaks in Berlin
Workers World
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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 24, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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TRANSGENDER AUTHOR SPEAKS IN BERLIN
By Deirdre Sinnott
Berlin
Author, transgender activist and Workers World
Contributing Editor Leslie Feinberg spoke in Berlin July 5
as guest of the German lesbian archive the Spinnboden. Over
450 people crowded into an auditorium to hear Feinberg read
from her novel "Stone Butch Blues" at the Art Academe or
Akademie der K=81nste.
"Stone Butch Blues" has been selling well all over Germany
and Switzerland. Selections were read from both the English
and German versions.
Feinberg was here to take part in observations marking the
100th anniversary of the start of the German Homosexual
Emancipation Movement. In 1897 the first gay-liberation
organization--the Scientific Humanitarian Committee--was
founded in Germany by Magnus Hirschfeld, who was a gay
transgendered Jewish socialist.
The diverse audience included lesbians, gay men,
intersexed people, bisexuals, transsexuals, female-to-male
trans people and communists from the butch/femme tradition.
Indra Salooja from the Spinnboden opened the program. The
archive has an impressive collection of information on
lesbians and the lesbian movement from all over the world,
built over the last 25 years.
Salooja said: "We invited Leslie because it is important
to find out what else can be meant by lesbian or
transgender. There are so many different ways to be, it's
not just two sides of a coin.
"For me transgender reminds me of my own life. I am living
between two cultures. I am Indian and German. I want to
recognize all my parts. The two cultures come together in
me. That's why I feel close to the trans issue. One
shouldn't have to decide which you are. I don't want to lose
any part of me."
Feinberg's opening was in Yiddish. The audience was
visibly moved. Feinberg said s/he wanted to use Yiddish "in
order to meet the audience on a bridge of language."
Dagmar Schadenberg, one of Feinberg's German publishers,
said, "I've never heard Yiddish before but I understood
every word Leslie was saying."
Andrea Krug, another of the publishers, said: "We are
happy. This is the biggest event we have ever had and we're
proud. The lesbian communities came together despite all the
gaps between them. For the moment we all started thinking
about issues again. I am happy that someone drew the
connections between issues and has a communist analysis."
Krug said to Feinberg that after the Berlin wall came
down, "the Left in the West lost their vision. But leftists
and feminists must recognize the economic basis for their
oppression. A lot of people were happy to hear about your
socialist vision."
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