The Postcard
A postcard that was published by Valentine & Sons Ltd. of Dundee and London. The artwork was by Driscoll.
The card was posted in Bridgwater using a 2d. stamp on Thursday the 1st. September 1949. It was sent to:
Mr. & Mrs. L. C. Courtenay,
Alma Farm,
Leighton Road,
Toddington,
Nr. Dunstable,
Beds.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Daddy and Mummy,
I am having a very nice
time.
Tomorrow (Thursday)
there is a girl of my own
age coming, and we are
going picking blackberries.
Would it be alright if I stayed
until Tuesday or Wednesday.
Your loving daughter
Margaret xxxxxxx"
Pope Pius XII
So what else happened on the day that Margaret posted the card to her parents?
Well, on the 1st. September 1949, Pope Pius XII wrote Decennium Dum Expletur, an Apostolic Letter to the bishops of Poland about the suffering of the Polish people.
Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart
The day also marked the birth, in Havana, Cuba, of the nuclear phyicist and government official Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart.
Frequently known by the diminutive Fidelito, he was the eldest son of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his first wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart.
Castro Díaz-Balart killed himself in Havana on the 1st. February 2018, aged 68. He had previously received outpatient care for depression.
Leslie Feinberg
The 1st. September 1949 also marked the birth, in Kansas City, Missouri, of the transgender activist Leslie Feinberg.
Leslie Feinberg was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Her writing, notably Stone Butch Blues (1993) and her pioneering non-fiction book Transgender Warriors (1996), laid the groundwork for much of the terminology and awareness around gender studies and was instrumental in bringing these issues to a more mainstream audience.
-- Leslie Feinberg - The Early Years
Feinberg was raised in Buffalo, New York in a working-class Jewish family. At fourteen years of age, she began work at a display sign shop at a local department store.
Leslie eventually dropped out of Bennett High School, although she officially received a diploma.
Feinberg began frequenting gay bars in Buffalo and primarily worked in low-wage and temporary jobs, including washing dishes, cleaning cargo ships, working as an ASL interpreter, inputting medical data, and working at a PVC pipe factory and a book bindery.
-- Leslie Feinberg's Career
When Feinberg was in her twenties, she met members of the Workers World Party at a demonstration for the land rights and self-determination of Palestinians, and joined the Buffalo branch of the party.
After moving to New York City, Feinberg took part in anti-war, anti-racist, and pro-labor demonstrations on behalf of the party for many years, including the March Against Racism (Boston, 1974), a national tour focusing on HIV/AIDS (1983–84), and a mobilization against KKK members (Atlanta, 1988).
Feinberg began writing in the 1970's. As a member of the Workers World Party, she was the editor of the political prisoners' page of the Workers World newspaper for fifteen years, and by 1995, she had become the managing editor.
Feinberg's first novel, the 1993 Stone Butch Blues, won the Lambda Literary Award and the 1994 American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award. While there are parallels to Feinberg's experiences as a working-class dyke, the work is not an autobiography. Her second novel, Drag King Dreams, was released in 2006.
Her nonfiction work included the books Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come in 1992, and Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman in 1996.
Also in 1996, Feinberg appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's documentary, Transexual Menace. In 2009, she released Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba—a compilation of 25 journalistic articles.
In Transgender Warriors, Feinberg defines "transgender" as a very broad umbrella, including all "people who cross the cultural boundaries of gender" — including butch dykes, passing women (those who passed as men only in order to find work or survive during war), and drag queens.
Feinberg's writings on LGBT history, "Lavender & Red", frequently appeared in the Workers World newspaper. Feinberg was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work.
In June 2019 Feinberg was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted onto the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City's Stonewall Inn.
The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th. anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
-- Leslie Feinberg's Illness
In 2008, Feinberg was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She wrote that the infection first came about in the 1970's, when there was limited knowledge of such diseases, and that she felt hesitant to deal with medical professionals for many years due to her transgender identity.
For this reason, she only received treatment later in life. In the 2000's, Feinberg created art and blogged about her illnesses with a focus on disability art and class consciousness.
-- Leslie Feinberg's Personal Life
Feinberg described herself as:
"An anti-racist white, working-class,
secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian,
female, revolutionary communist."
According to Julie Enszer, a friend of Feinberg's, Feinberg sometimes "passed" as a man for safety reasons.
Feinberg's spouse, Minnie Bruce Pratt, was a professor at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Feinberg and Pratt married in New York and in Massachusetts in 2011. In the mid and late 1990's they attended Camp Trans together.
-- The Death of Leslie Feinberg
Feinberg died at the age of 65 on the 15th. November 2014 in Syracuse, New York. She died of complications due to multiple tick-borne infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, which she had suffered from since the 1970's.
Feinberg's last words were reported to be:
"Hasten the revolution!
Remember me as a
revolutionary communist."
-- Leslie Feinberg and Pronoun Usage
Feinberg stated in a 2006 interview that her pronouns varied depending on context:
"For me, pronouns are always placed within
context. I am female-bodied, I am a butch
lesbian, a transgender lesbian — referring to
me as "she/her" is appropriate, particularly in
a non-trans setting in which referring to me
as "he" would appear to resolve the social
contradiction between my birth sex and
gender expression and render my transgender
expression invisible.
I like the gender neutral pronoun "ze/hir,"
because it makes it impossible to hold on to
gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a
person you're about to meet or you've just met.
And in an all trans setting, referring to me as
"he/him" honors my gender expression in the
same way that referring to my sister drag
queens as "she/her" does."
Feinberg's widow wrote in her statement regarding Feinberg's death that Feinberg did not really care which pronouns a person used to address her:
"She preferred to use the pronouns she/zie
and her/hir for herself, but also said: 'I care
which pronoun is used, but people have
been respectful to me with the wrong
pronoun and disrespectful with the right
one. It matters whether someone is using
the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying
to demonstrate respect'.'"
-- Final Thoughts From Leslie Feinberg
"I live proudly in a body of my
own design. I defend my right
to be complex."
"Gender is the poetry each of us
makes out of the language we are
taught."
"People of all sexes have the right
to explore femininity, masculinity -
and the infinite variations between -
without criticism or ridicule."
"I didn't want to be different. I longed
to be everything grownups wanted, so
they would love me. I followed all their
rules, tried my best to please. But there
was something about me that made
them knit their eyebrows and frown.
No one ever offered a name for what
was wrong with me. That's what made
me afraid it was really bad. I only came
to recognize its melody through this
constant refrain: 'Is that a boy or a girl?'"
"Surrendering is unimaginably more
dangerous than struggling for survival!"
"You're more than just neither, honey.
There's other ways to be than either/or.
It's not so simple. Otherwise there
wouldn't be so many people who don't fit."
"We have not always been forced to pass,
to go underground, in order to work and live.
We have a right to live openly and proudly...
when our lives are suppressed, everyone is
denied an understanding of the rich diversity
of sex and gender expression and experience
that exist in human society."
"It’s a beauty one isn’t born with, but must
fight to construct at great sacrifice."
"More exists among human beings than can
be answered by the simplistic question I'm
hit with every day of my life: 'Are you a man
or a woman?'"
"I began to feel the pleasure of the
weightless state between here and
there."
"Everybody's scared, but if you don't
let your fears stop you, that's bravery!"
"I learned that strength, like height,
is measured by who you're standing
next to."
"If I'm not with a butch, everyone just assumes
I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my
will. I'm sick of the world thinking I'm straight.
I've worked hard to be discriminated against
as a lesbian."
"I think girls and boys should be able
to be any way they want to be without
getting picked on."