INTRODUCTION Erica Rand In 1993, at a feminist bookstore, I happened upon Stone Butch Blues, a new novel by trans activist Leslie Feinberg that had just been published by a small press, Firebrand Books. It concerns a character, Jess, whose sex/gender...
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INTRODUCTION Erica Rand In 1993, at a feminist bookstore, I happened upon Stone Butch Blues, a new novel by trans activist Leslie Feinberg that had just been published by a small press, Firebrand Books. It concerns a character, Jess, whose sex/gender identity does not match the female sex assignment that Jess received at birth. I brought the book to my lover, Jed Bell, because it reminded me of some things that she, as I knew him then, had said, things I had little reference for or relation to. (When a student recently asked what I would do if I could change one thing about being a woman, I answered, on a far shallower plane than she expected, that I wished high beds were good for your health.) Stone Butch Blues shook my lover's world, and consequently mine. He came to understand himself as FTM, or female-to-male, identified. I, too, had to reexamine my own knowledges, identifications, and pleasures. What does it mean about sex and gender if someone can change categories: that the... See less 
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