Essay On Gender Identity In Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues

In Leslie Feinbergs’s Stone Butch Blues the main character Jess struggles with many obstacles throughout her life, the hardest one being her inner conflict of who she was and who she wanted to be. Her gender identity, which is a person’s gendered sense of self, was not the same as her gender comportment or gender expression. In Threshold Concepts gender comportment/expression is defined as “bodily actions such as how we use our voices, cross our legs, hold our heads, wear our clothes, dance around the room, throw a ball, walk in high heels” (pg.28). Throughout the book the main character jess is constantly altering her gender identity and gender expression in order to find her perfect combination of who she was and who she wanted to be, inside and out. …show more content…
She realizes that being a man has made her socially acceptable, but she is not who she wants to be. Feinberg writes, “As much as I loved my beard as part of my body, I felt trapped behind it.” Jess socially fits in, but realizes that that this is not who she is. “I simply became a he-a man without a past” (Feinberg 222). Her gender expression is not matching her gender identity and Jess cannot accept that. After all of her searching and testing out different possibilities she decides to go back to the combination she felt was best for her. Jess longed for her gender identity as a butch and her gender expression as a butch to match. Jess had many combinations of her gender identity and her gender expression throughout the story. “I felt my whole life coming full circle. Growing up so different, coming out as a butch, passing as a man, and then back to the same question that had shaped my life: woman or man?” (Feinberg 301). Throughout the story Jess constantly struggled with obstacles from society and within. Jess’s inner conflict between who she was and who she wanted to be, inside and outside, took her on a journey to lead her right to where she