Gender at the Junction of Feminist and Trans Thought: Reading Minnie Bruce Pratt’s <i>S/HE</i>

This essay argues that Minnie Bruce Pratt's 1995 lyrical and auto-theoretical text <i>S/HE</i> provides a powerful and still-relevant lesbian feminist, anti-racist vision that is not simply trans-inclusive, but that also highlights deep overlaps between trans and lesbian feminist thought, politics and community. Reading <i>S/HE</i> challenges the notion that feminist and trans approaches to gender are necessarily divergent. To make this argument, I develop close readings of <i>S/HE,</i> interpreted in the context of Pratt's participation in Camp Trans, especially during the summer of 1994, and of the interviews Pratt gave surrounding the publications of her book. I show how Pratt's understanding in <i>S/HE</i> of her own identity and of her relationship with Leslie Feinberg provide approaches to gender, sex, and sexuality that disrupt trans-exclusive feminist logics. Reading <i>S/HE</i> clarifies an important point of intersection-not difference-between some lesbian feminist and trans histories: an attachment to something akin to gender identity.