Transgender Warriors and Burn the Place 

By Vaughn Frantz Miller

Transgender Warriors 
By Leslie Feinberg 

As far as many are aware, the modern transgender phenomenon began in the past couple decades.

Some will blame Laverne Cox, others Caitlyn Jenner’s exposé, still many point to the internet for convincing kids to hop on this ‘transgender trend.’

Turns out that ‘trend’ is nearly as old as human civilization.

Did you know that there were peasant uprisings in Europe during the 1700s led by crossdressers? Did you know that in the twentieth century, trans people didn’t have to worry about getting arrested on Halloween? Do you know how far back that tradition goes? Did you know transphobia hit the Church so hard they once put a rooster on trial because it laid an egg (and then burned that rooster at the stake!)?

I didn’t know any of these facts, but I sure do now!

Note: Feinberg went by many different pronouns in hirs life. I will be using ze/hir/hirs in this article because Feinberg emphasizes hir transexual identity throughout the book, and in 2006 stated that hirs pronouns were “context dependent.”

In the book Transgender Warriors, Leslie Feinberg lays out thousands of years of global history in a relatively short and easy read. The book flows between Feinberg’s own navigation of homophobia and transphobia in hirs personal life and ze’s investigation of where those bigotries originated from.

“I grew up thinking that the hatred I faced because of my gender expression was simply a by-product of human nature, and that it must be my fault that I was a target for such outrage. […] I’ve discovered that bigotry is a relatively recent historical development that had to be forced on human beings for several thousand years before it took hold.”

I have never before seen or read of any bigotry being explained from its inception to its present state, especially in such a comprehensive manner.

Feinberg’s research and narration provide incredible clarity on what should be a confoundedly complex topic. Feinberg’s research takes us around the world and as far back as the earliest civilizations to assert that trans people are not only an ancient occurrence in our species, but for most of our history have been valued, respected, even revered. I had no idea how far back the history of trans people went.

Feinberg takes many aspects of history and presents a concise narrative, making the history of trans people relevant to the present. ‘The present’ in this case being 1996 as that was when the book was published. Feinberg explores how hir relationship to unions and experience with antisemitism, transphobia, and homophobia are all based on the issues which date back to the earliest instances of transphobia ze could find.

Here is a final fun fact I’ll share that’s not in the book: Feinberg has some ties to San Diego; ze was the first trans person to be a keynote speaker at San Diego Pride’s rally in 1998.

Transgender Warriors is not available at any public libraries in San Diego, currently. I personally think this is a book worth owning, and encourage you to purchase a copy through your local bookstore.

Burn the Place
By Iliana Regan 

“Before I had a restaurant and was adorned with the shining Michelin star and all that nice media, I was just some lady obsessed with mushrooms, the woods, catching frogs, and things like that.”

So Iliana Regan summarizes in her memoir Burn the Place. Picking up this book will allow the reader to explore her unique life starting in rural Indiana.

You’ll travel through a timid childhood, tumultuous teenage and young adulthood years, and eventually Regan building herself into the chef she is today. Through her life’s story, whether she’s five years old in the kitchen with her parents after a day in the woods or she is in her thirties marrying her wife, food is a vivid, mouth-watering memory.

Overall, this is a cool book. I found Regan’s bouncing narrative to sometimes be difficult to follow, and the cliffhanger she starts the book with never is directly addressed, but neither of these complaints made me want to stop reading. I appreciated her honesty in sharing her early confusion on gender and her struggle with alcoholism; I think such narratives are more common than some of us might admit. In Burn the Place, Regan approaches each aspect of her life with honesty and without shame, creating the portrait of one badass chef.

Burn the Place is available at multiple San Diego Public Library locations.