Quotes from Leslie Feinberg

But if theory is not the crystallized resin of experience, it ceases to be a guide to action.

Some mistakes in life are not punishable, others teach you a lesson you never forget.

Where do my tears go? Why is it that I can't cry now when I need to? Yet I knew that later my tears would be unexpectedly triggered by the scent of lilacs, or the low hum of a cello.

I wondered if she would have left me if there had been more inside of me to love, or if I just could have needed less.

Ed," I said, "I really fucked up this time" "Nah," she reassured me, "you just got a little more growing up to do." "I don't know if i can do it," I told her. My friend laughed. "You got no choice.

I remembered Duffy's challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. I closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soar.

All the girls and women looked pretty much the same, so did all the boys and men. I couldn't find myself among the girls. I had never seen any adult woman who looked like I thought I would when I grew up. There were no women on television like the small woman reflected in this mirror, none on the streets. I knew. I was always searching.

To safeguard what we've won and to move forward requires securing, solidifying, and making more permanent alliances with others who are hurt by the same system. Consciousness plays an important role in cementing this coalition. Shared consciousness becomes a material force because what you're fighting for and what you are determined to win together has a big impact on how your foes react to you.

From that moment on I was her butch and she was my femme.

God," she said, "by the time we're old enough to have sex, we're already too ashamed to be touched. Ain't that a crime?

Every day the men around me came to exercise their bodies; I came to exorcise my demons

When you do something out of conviction, my dear, it should be because you believe it's the right thing to do. If you look for approval from everyone, you'll never be able to act.

I had been at the center of her world; she had become my whole world. As my universe shrank, I needed her to be everything for me, and in return I longed to be everything she needed. Neither of us could live up to the expectations.

And I discovered Norton's anthology of poetry in the patients' library – it changed my life. I read the poems over and over again before I began to grasp their meanings. It wasn't just that the words were musical notes my eyes could sing. It was the discovery that women and men, long dead, had left me messages about their feelings, emotions I could compare to my own. I had finally found others who were as lonely as I was. In an odd way, that knowledge comforted me.

Theory is important to those of us who are struggling to transform society because it offers distilled experience so we don't have to repeat mistakes. A scientific materialist view of theory and history gives working and oppressed peoples a roadmap to find the path toward liberation.

I'm not saying we'll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure.

I stared far back into my past and remembered the child who couldn't be catalogued by Sears. I saw her standing in front of her own mirror, in her father's suit, asking me if I was the person she would grow up to become. Yes, I answered her. And I thought how brave she was to have begun this journey, to have withstood the towering judgments.

I don't think I have feelings like other people do. Sometimes you want me to talk to other people inside. Maybe I don't have real feelings.

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

I had learned a lot in three weeks. I realized that the world could do more than just judge me, it wielded tremendous power over me.

As she climbed down from the stage, I thought: This is what courage is. It's not just living through the nightmare, it's doing something with it afterward. It's being brave enough to talk about it to other people. It's trying to organize to change things.

I remembered earlier in the summer I'd found her working in her garden, sweaty and flushed with heat. I laid her down in the grass nearby and pressed her body into the dirt with my hips and kissed her mouth until she made small sounds of desire I recognised.

But no one can deny that rigid gender education begins early on in life—from pink and blue color-coding of infant outfits to genderlabeling toys and games. And those who overstep these arbitrary borders are punished. Severely. When the steel handcuffs tighten, it is human bones that crack.

For revolutionaries, theory that is not a guide to action is a worthless intellectual exercise. Our analysis has to be as taut as a diving board that enables us to springboard into the fray, to be able to recognize allies and enemies, and put an end to economic inequality and social injustice altogether.