SPOILERS for those who haven't read it and don't want to have big moments in the book ruined for them.

Things about this book that always troubled me:

-The main character's self-absorption when her black friend, Edwin, who had endured racist harassment from a mutual friend, tried to make Jess understand her perspective and gave her a copy of The Souls of Black Folk, and Jess never bothers to read it. Later, Edwin commits suicide after attempting to transition to male.

-The incident of rape-by-deception that was described in this very article, that Jess didn't even once seem to question or reflect on whether or not it was right to do...

-At the end, Jess appears to be trying to start a relationship with a TiM named Ruth. I don't remember it clearly or exactly how it was phrased, but it was implied that Jess felt slightly uncomfortable cuddling in bed with Ruth. No shit, because Jess is a lesbian. I truly believe Feinberg was forcing this kind of thing because it was her politics, but underneath it the truth is that Feinberg was a lesbian and the truth slipped out in that subtle moment - Jess (and therefore Feinberg if that moment was based on any real experience of hers) is a lesbian trying to suppress her disgust at this proto-queerplatonic cuddle session with a man who she can't recognize as a man due to gender disease. I feel it's dishonest and traitorous of Feinberg to try to shoehorn that TiM propaganda in to influence readers when she lived the rest of her life with an actual woman, her lesbian partner Minnie Bruce-Pratt.

-There's not a lot of it but several lines in the book reek of the Magical Native American trope and it's just a bit weird?

It was brave and influential and meaningful that Leslie Feinberg spoke up about the trauma and resilience of the working class gay bar scene all those decades ago. I'll never deny that, and I keep this book on my shelf and still think about it now and then. The bits with the butch/butch couple mean so much to me. But I think it was also poorly written and at times it felt like a Very Special Episode/after-school special trying to teach the reader a lesson. The lessons were the sort of thing the 90s queer scene, influenced by postmodernism and queer theory, were cooking up. So in a lot of ways, I believe this book is damaging for dysphoric lesbians.

It also neglects to examine the darker reality of a lot of the bar scene, and if you want to know more about that, read A Crystal Diary by Frankie Hucklenbroich. Hucklenbroich writes about her extensive drug use, alcoholism, and abusing and pimping out her femme girlfriends. I think young same-sex attracted women ought to learn about the full extent of the 40s-60s butch/femme culture. Projecting onto those women to see them as our heroes and foremothers erases the brutality and misogyny they lived through AND inflicted on each other.