Feinberg complicates the dominant ideology that gender and sex should line up throughout this entire piece. She describes herself as a “masculine female” which this itself complicates the idea of what most people would think of a female being. In this piece she shares a story about herself which shows why transliberation is a matter of life and death. While she is in the hospital extremely sick with an illness that is life threatening she faces such prejudice from the doctor that she is told to get out of the hospital and to never come back. This extreme case of prejudice used against her shows why transliberation is actually a matter of life and death for the people who are transgendered. In the piece she says “ The doctor’s prejudices directed at me during a moment of catastrophic illness could have killed me. The death certificate would have read: Endocarditis. By all rights it should have read : Bigotry. I think that this extreme case that was actually experienced by the author shows us exactly why transliberation is an issue of life and death for the people who are transgendered.

Feinberg works to complicate the social constructionist theory of what gender is. She states that simply telling the questioner what sex she was born simply does not do them justice. She feels that it is important to challenge the idea that we must be either or, categories that have been socially constructed. She says “ the problem is they are try to understand my gender expression by determining my sex.” The people are trying to determine her physical sex to understand her gender identification which does not really work in her situation. The problem is that we are all socialized to believe that we must be either or, pink or blue. Feinberg believes that this is not the case and does her best to complicate this idea. I like how she points out the fact that are biological sex is “supposed” to influence our social direction, and that those who are cross gendered shatter the inflexibility of these social norms. I really liked one point she made towards the end of the piece that was “How can we reach a point where we can appreciate each other’s differences not just tolerate them? I think that is ideally what transliberation is working towards. Not simply are they just tolerated but appreciated. If we could accomplish this goal many people could learn more about who they are as a person by looking and understanding others. We could go beyond the limits that society constrains us to and accomplish more than what we have done today. From looking at the past there have been great improvement but we can do more.