Man or women? This was a common question asked after only a brief look at Jess Goldberg, the protagonist in Leslie Feinberg’s novel Stone Butch Blues. Each person is born to a specific sex, male or female. Some people in society stray from the norms and become gender variant. Jess’s gender variant life style along with her religion, Judaism, paved the way for an extremely difficult and confusing upbringing. Throughout the novel, Jess encounters many situations that make her uncomfortable due to the ignorance of most of those around her. Jess’s endeavors as a gender variant female allows Feinberg to appeal to the readers emotions, by portraying the obstacles and misconceptions she encounters on a daily basis. Secondly, in the women’s clinic Feinberg introduces the doctor who establishes some type of hope in what seemed to be a hopeless environment. Finally, Feinberg appeals to the reader’s understanding of how uneducated and untrained health and service professionals were at this time and place.

Emotions are something bred into humans reguardless of sex, race, ethnicity, or anything else. Jess has a roller coaster of emotions throughout the novel. Many of the reoccurring emotions occur at the womens clinic. Jess had an unsafe and uncontrollable irriation in her genital region. She sucked up her pride and went to a womens clinic where she wasn’t greeted with much respect. Jess is often misunderstood by the common eye, when Jess told the receptionist her reason for visiting was a vaginal infection, “the receptionist looked me up and down. Are you kidding me?” This causes Jess to feel embarresed and uncomfortable considered that she “debated leaving, but the itching and burning became worse every day.” When Jess answers the receptionist, not only did she get trouble from her, she also got an earloud from her surrounds peers. “Why can’t they just be crazy in their own place?” Jess is commonly humiliated due to the ignorance of those around her, everyone is there for the same reason, but due to her appearance only she gets verbally abused by those around her. Lastly, a fierce emotions coming from Jess is pure anger. “My anger ignited. Fuck you. I shouted” This scene shows how fed up Jess is with everything and her rage and anger causes her to speak violently to others.