STEPPING BEYOND THE STONES OF SEXISM: A CRITIQUE OF GENDER IN LESLIE FEINBERG’S 'STONE BUTCH BLUES' (Pages 27-33) by Ms. Jyolsna. B in THE ENGLISH RESEARCH EXPRESS / ISSN:2321-1164 (Online); 2347-2642 (Print)

Mainstream society has always been critical about non-normative and alternate lifestyles outside cultural norms. Individuals who do not fall into the standard models of gender, race, ethnicity, caste and sexuality are always marginalized and exploited. Among these the LGBT community continues to experience various forms of oppression and discrimination despite the social, political and legal advances that have been launched in an attempt to grant them basic human rights. The social stigma attached to transgender people tend to be relatively larger because they neither conform to the normative notions of sexuality nor to the conventional notions of male or female gender roles. Society and law was largely silent about the plight of this section of society and had always turned a blind eye to their suffering. In most of the countries, transsexuals and transgender are discriminated against and such practices are considered criminal and illegal. Placed in this context, Leslie Feinberg’s semi autobiographical novel Stone Butch Blues (1993)can be seen as a groundbreaking portrayal of a transgendered protagonist. It is one of the first novels to tackle the question of transgender subjectivity. Through her work, Feinberg, a transgender lesbian activist and revolutionary working-class intellectual has delved into the previously hidden history of transgender people and of the revolutionary working class movements for social and gender liberation. This paper is an attempt to showcase how Feinberg challenges the heterosexist notions of a gendered society and capitalist notions of a bourgeois society and her work effectively blends literature with activism through her working class protagonist Jess. Keywords: Transgender, activism, Feinberg, stone butch blues, lesbian