Personal Life and Health
Leslie Feinberg identifies as a white, working class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female revolutionary. For more about Feinberg and pronouns, read "We are all works in progress" in Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue. Feinberg personally uses she or ze to describe her/hirself. Feinberg explains: "I was born in Kansas City, Missouri--not Buffalo, N.Y.--into a blue-collar, factory-working family."
Feinberg's partner|lover|spouse is the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt.
Feinberg has carried legal documents for 40 years that state clearly who is, and is not, part of Feinberg's family.
Feinberg web posted: "The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) defines 'family' as: 'The person(s) who plays a significant role in the individual’s life.' My living biological relatives—Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde, and Catherine Ryan Hyde—are not my family. They do not speak for me."
Feinberg states: "Minnie Bruce and I have been family to each other for more than 20 years . Yet authorities routinely grant biological relatives--even if they are virtual strangers and/or hostile--the right to make critical decisions about the lives, and deaths, of relatives who are LGBTQ/+. So in order to help legally protect each other, Minnie Bruce Pratt and I married each other in two states."
Feinberg has been battling the effects of Lyme Disease, Babesiosis, Bartonella and other co-infections caught from a tick bite in the 1970s.
Read more about this topic: Leslie Feinberg
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