The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male

by Janice G. Raymond

Fifteen years ago, when it was first published, "The Transsexual Empire" challenged the medical psychiatric definition of transsexualism as a disease and sex conversion hormones and surgery as the cure. It exposed the antifeminist stereotyping that requires candidates for transsexual surgery to prove themselves by conforming to subjective, outdated and questionable feminine roles and "passing" as women. Then as now, defining and treating transsexualism as a medical problem prevents the person experiencing so-called gender dissatisfaction from seeing it in a gender-challenging or feminist framework. Transsexualism goes to the question of what gender is, how to challenge it, and what reinforces gender stereotyping in a role-defined society. In the new introduction to this feminist work, Raymond discusses how these same issues are now debated in the context of transgender. Transgenderism reduces gender resistance to wardrobes, hormones, surgery and posturing - anything but real sexual equality. It assimilates the roles and definitions of masculinity and femininity, often mixing and matching, but never really moving beyond both. In a similar way, transsexualism is thought to be a radical challenge to gender roles, breaking the boundaries of gender and transgressing its rigid lines. But if the transsexual merely exchanges one gender role for another, and if the outcome of such a sex reassignment is to endorse a femininity which, in many transsexuals, becomes a caricature of much that feminists have rejected about many-made femininity, then where is the challenge, the transgression, and the breaking of any real boundaries? This book will be used as a text in women's studies, psychology, sociology, technology and public policy, as well as by medical students, law students, and all who have an interest in feminist issues.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Gender, Politics, Transgender, Queer, LGBT

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Janice G. Raymond is a longtime radical feminist activist who works to end violence against women and sexual exploitation, as well as the medical abuse of women. She is the author of five books, one edited volume, and multiple articles translated into several languages on issues ranging from violence against women, women’s health, feminist theory, lesbian feminism, and bio-medicine.

Reviews

[Loreal Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with the mindset and politics of Janice Raymond, for she is correct. Men, by their aggressive command and conquer nature wish to infiltrate every detail of womanhood or anything not naturally inaccessible for men in this world. There cannot be a domain they feel they cannot infiltrate and take over, that is solely a woman's. Our womanhood, they want access, to own and be apart of everything. We are only fools to sit idle with encouragement. I agree with Janice Raymond; she simply was aware of the passive aggressiveness of the silent war and insult against naturally born women.

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really not what I expected it to be.

I was told it was bigoted and to avoid it. It’s a venomous screed; a hateful diatribe, something to skip over. The author was practically painted as calling for transgender pople to be murdered. I’m pretty sure I’ve read the claim that she is responsible for 50,000 transgender deaths (quite a feat, and not factual at all - I looked it up, and it’s a bizarre reference to a paper the author wrote about whether surgeries should be covered by insurance. She was one of many, including Johns Hopkins University, who highlighted the fact that suicide rates RISE after surgeries and quality of life does not seem to improve), hence I put it off for a while. But, I prefer to make up my own mind, and I think reading challenging books is worthwhile, even if it’s only to strengthen an existing opinion or to understand a different perspective better.

What I found was fairly measured, a little ‘camp’ at times to be sure, but nothing hateful. I found Raymond’s perspective to be interesting and also quite sympathetic towards those who, like women, are screwed over by sex roles and gender stereotypes.

In her suggestions, she doesn’t even call for eliminating surgeries by legal means but attempting to help dysphoric individuals via therapy, consciousness raising, and societal changes to sex roles. She raises the problem that quality of life does not seem to improve after gender reassignment surgeries - even multiple ones.

She raised issues with the formation of the transsexual diagnosis itself, which was pertinent and interesting. From a little of the homophobic history, the way existing stereotypes and sexism play into transsexualism, and the power these doctors have over their patients- and whether these patients can truly consent due to this, to, in what ways, could a transsexual person be considered of their ‘chosen’ sex, which I found interesting (for example, genital sex, chromosomal sex, hormonal sex, etc).

Raymond also questions childhood transsexualism and attempts at gender role retraining (the book ‘Gender Shock’ is a good read for those who would like to know a it more about this) or confirmation (a particularly important issue at present, particularly with centres such as Tavistock in the UK seeing such a huge increase in patients - the several thousand percent increase, etc - and the professionals there speaking out against some of its practices) and its inherent sexism and cruelty.

She even speaks against the US laws that criminalised men ‘passing’ as women (unless their purpose was to attempt something fraudulent, of course) and takes pains to highlight the homophobia here.

I’m actually quite impressed with this book and would like to read a version written for 2020 and the current issues we are handling, particularly childhood transition, the massive increase in transitions, and separating the truly dysphoric from the fetishists.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raymond’s term “transsexual empire” refers to the business of medicalizing distress around sex and sex roles, not a belief that seeking transition makes one villainous. She believes that refusing to conform to roles has great revolutionary potential, and that therapeutic/medical intervention domesticates this revolutionary potential, directing focus towards assimilation instead of challenging the source of gender dysphoria as a culturally iatrogenic illness created by woman-hating and reinforced by professionals through a process of sexist therapeutic/medical abuse. Strong criticism of “the dogmatism of openness at any cost” as a failure of liberalism. This book is prophetic and deserves to be read.

[Lynne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Where to begin? Hate-filled? Yes. Illogical? Yes. Does the author contradict herself? Yes. It's basically a big mess, thanks in part to Mary Daly's guidance, no doubt. Just your average, typical, second-wave, lesbian feminist separatist diatribe against anyone who doesn't fit into the author's view of what a woman is or should be. Simply awful. However, I think it is useful to see where people with these views are coming from, if only to be prepared to explain to them what ignorant asses they are.

[Jon Surame · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book - maybe not perfectly written, and maybe a bit camp - but certainly makes the interesting point that the trans-industry can easily be seen as an extension of the all-consuming nature of the male; the ultimate control of women being the co-opting of their very bodies. She does not shy away from showing up the notion that men who have their bodies reworked can somehow claim womanhood, when in fact they may only have a moderately feminised form. Is being a women more than breasts and a vagina? Is it about how you are perceived from birth, how you bear children and menstruate...can a man with a reformed body know these realities of being a woman? Raymond - and many other feminists, and others - don't think so. In today's climate of fascist feminism that insists that everything is acceptable, Raymond was clearly ahead of her time in fighting the good fight for real women. Read it and make your own mind up; don't be bullied into not.

[Jaclynn (JackieReadsAlot) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot more than Sheila Jeffrey's 'Gender Hurts.' Raymond clearly did her research and wrote with a much less aggressive and insulting tone of voice. It's interesting (and by that I mean incredibly depressing) to see how far this has progressed into 2019, given that this is an early prescient work on the causes and conditions of the driving forces behind the burgeoning phenomenon of transsexual (now primarily transgender) men who want to be seen as women.
The roles of group-think in medical practitioners, huge profits for pharmaceutical manufacturers, erosion of the rights and even the identity of women, and the social contagion suppressing critical thinking are all getting harder to hide now but Raymond was a voice of warning back then. Reading her now prompts an inevitable, "Oh, yeah. How could we not have seen that?" We need a 2020 version ASAP (but you'd be risking being burned alive by angry men and their postmodernist handmaids).

The book is not a polemic and sticks to reasoned discourse. When a book like this raises so much ire in the phenomenon it lays bare (like the bad reviews here), you know that book has been right on the mark shedding light on a reality that some would rather keep in the dark. Highly recommended for anyone who declares themselves a feminist or have interest in the feminist movement.

[Timothy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate this book so much I wrote a paper in college tearing it apart.

[Emma Caterine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This historic piece of phlegminism is the reason I could not get my insurance to cover my hormone replacement therapy until section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act #ThanksObama. Janice Raymond is probably best known for her collaborations with other feminists like Ronald Reagan, Bill O'Reilly, and most recently the majority Republican majority male South Dakota legislature. This book began the long strategy of bullying transgender women to prevent violence against cisgender women, which has been very successful at doing nothing to prevent the restriction of abortion access across the country or women becoming the fasting growing population in prisons, sometimes for the crime of defending themselves from intimate partner violence.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is only partly about transsexual people; primarily it is about the medical industry making “sex reassignment” possible. It was written in 1979, using the language of that time, and it is not a useful diversion to translate into today’s preferred terminology, which in any case is subject to ongoing change. It is a valuable reminder of what was known at that time about the industry and it is possible to recognise many of its themes in today’s debates.

At least one review comments that a lot less was known then than we know today. In some respects, there is an argument that we are as poorly informed in 2020 as we were in 1979, because the transsexual industry is very poor about conducting and reporting good quality, properly controlled, peer reviewed research on its outcomes, while independent research is made very difficult by the kind of abuse evident even in the reviews and comments for this book on Goodreads. In a recent [2020] court case the Tavistock Clinic in London was unable to provide key statistics on the number of people treated or their outcomes, despite being Britain’s specialist provider under contract to the NHS. It’s almost like these medical experts are averse to scrutiny and don’t even want to know their own outcomes. Raymond wrote: “Money and Walker also confirmed this lack of statistics in a recent book review in which they state: “In the absence of any national directory of sex-reassignment applicants, data on patients for surgery are inconclusive.” Thus the nature and incidence of transsexual activity is not clear. This lack of data is very significant in light of the fact that other major surgery statistics seem readily available. [P.23]

Given the poverty of research and the failure to adhere to conventions for the safe introduction of new procedures, Raymond emphasizes the experimental nature of the treatments offered to transsexuals: The transsexual therapist—in adjusting the transsexual mind and behavior to the stereotype of the desired sex— and the medical specialists—in adjusting the transsexual body to the desired body-type of the opposite sex—are dealing with transsexuals as manipulatable objects and reducing them to the world of appearances. ... A not-so-incidental by-product of this particular medical theodicy is ... enabling medical research and technology to acquire a specialized body of scientific knowledge on the manipulation of human sexuality that probably could not be acquired by any other accepted medical procedure. [P145] ...Thus transsexualism is made to appear as an “acceptable” medical venture in which scientific opportunism is admitted but only as linked to therapeutic and humanitarian goals. [P146]

She is not convinced that transsexuals are properly informed about this situation, or therefore capable of giving appropriate consent: Therapy has historically covered a multitude of medical sins. The welfare of the individual or the welfare of society has often provided a camouflage for the worst forms of experimentation ... First of all, the nature of transsexual surgery is experimental on physical grounds alone. There is a substantial amount of evidence that transsexual hormone therapy and surgery cause cancer. Transsexual treatment is far from established as a safe medical procedure and as such is still experimental. Secondly, transsexuals are “volunteering” for surgery that they hope will relieve their sex role “dis-ease” of gender dissatisfaction and dysphoria. But there is no evidence to prove that transsexual surgery “cures” what is basically a problem of transcendence. . Furthermore, there is evidence, at least in some postoperative cases, that transsexuals themselves have come to realize this, but too late. [P.140]

A third issue to consider is just how informed consent can be attained, especially in the face of so many unknown hazards about the experiment. First of all, a truly informed consent would highlight, for the transsexual, the whole issue of sex roles and gender definitions themselves. It would reveal to him how moving from one stereotype to its opposite does not even minimally alter the social basis of sex-role conformity in this culture and how the transsexual, in undertaking surgery, is reinforcing this conformity. These are what might be called the social hazards of the transsexual experiment. My survey of the literature and first-hand interviews with transsexuals and transsexual clinicians thus far have revealed that these social hazards, or even their possibility, are not explored. Furthermore, it has generally been recognized that the withholding or distortion of any relevant knowledge that bears upon the experiment constitutes a violation of informed consent. It is questionable whether even the physical hazards of transsexual treatment and surgery are explained to the would-be transsexual. [P146, 147]

This lack of accountability concerned Raymond even in 1979, because the medical profession has a dismal record of malpractice, particularly in treating either women or non conforming sexual behaviour. She writes: Transsexualism, as a proclaimed form of therapeutic surgery for nonphysical disorders, is located on a historical continuum of similar medical ventures, all of which legitimate (d) bodily intervention for purposes of improving behavior. In the nineteenth century, clitoridectomy for girls and women, and to a lesser extent, circumcision for boys were accepted methods of treatment for masturbation and other so-called sexual disorders. In the 1930s, Egas Moniz, a Portuguese physician, received the Nobel Prize for his “ ground-breaking work” on lobotomies. Moniz operated on state mental hospital inmates, using lobotomy for everything from depression to aggression. The new terminology for brain surgery of this nature today is psychosurgery... But call it lobotomy or psychosurgery, surgeons continue to intrude upon human brains on the basis of tenuous localization theories that supposedly pinpoint the area of the brain where the “undesirable” behavior can be found and excised. [pp131, 132]

Raymond is also doubtful about the motivation behind this industry, clearly inferring that it is driven by business rather than humanitarian goals. Unnecessary surgery is spiraling, especially during the last quarter of a century. A House of Representatives sub-committee reported in July of 1975: “If the scalpels of American surgeons remain as active as they are today, nearly half the women in the country will undergo hysterectomies by the time they’re 7 0, and one of every three men will have hernia surgery.” The same committee reported that at least one third of these operations was unnecessary and concluded that money was a basic factor in their performance. “The business of surgery has boomed in the last decade to become a $25 billion pursuit involving more than 18 million operations a year.” It is not inconceivable that transsexual surgery (and various modifications of it), although it is being done on a minimal level presently, could also skyrocket to high numbers, and that the medical labeling of a condition “known” as transsexualism will increase the number of people with exceptional medical consumer status. [P151] (In this prediction, Raymond was obviously correct.)

It is also relevant to this business model that transsexuals commit to long term dependence, not just a one off procedure: Could transsexual surgery really be called artificially prolonged maintenance? Transsexual existence initially depends upon the questionable notions of passing, synthetic hormone injections, surgery which often becomes polysurgery, and lifelong sustenance from exogenous sources. Thus the transsexual becomes dependent almost totally for his or her well-being on the medical profession. Autonomy is at a minimum, and dependence is at a maximum. [P.173] She does not include in this list the need to monitor for long term health risks.

In the light of these concerns, Raymond examines the claims made for transsexual treatments by its practitioners, and she focuses on the pioneers of the industry There are many reasons I have chosen to do an extensive analysis of Money’s work. First of all, his theories on sex differences have gained wide acceptance, both in academic and lay circles. They have also been widely cited by feminist scholars. No other researcher in this area has developed any comparable body of research. Thus most discussions of sex differences refer to Money’s work as a kind of bible. Second, no one has done a comprehensive analysis and critique of Money’s work, especially as it relates to issues surrounding transsexualism. For example, Money’s much-publicized theory that core gender identity is fixed by the age of eighteen months forms one critical basis for the justification of transsexual surgery, and therefore deserves special attention. Finally, inherent in Money’s proclaimed scientific statements about sex differences are many normative and philosophical statements about the natures of women and men. Under the guise of science, he makes normative and prescriptive statements about who women and men are and who they ought to be. [P.44]

What emerges from a great deal of discussion is the perception that Money and his associates are engaged in a project to produce gender conforming adults, either by therapy or by surgery, without ever questioning or justifying the masculine and feminine gender stereotypes in question. Money talks about genetic males and females failing to develop normal masculine or feminine gender identities. Obviously, Money and his associates accept the stereotypes to some extent. To consistently term assertive and rough-and-tumble behavior on the part of girls tomboyish and to persist in naming certain behavioral qualities as masculine or feminine is to support patriarchal history’s assertion that such behavior and qualities are and should be sex-specific. Here the language of inadequate science becomes subtly transferred to the language of ethics. While it is true that many cultures define certain behaviors, personality characteristics, tasks, and activities as male or female, masculine or feminine (a point that Money and associates highlight), these same cultures define masculinity and femininity in vastly different ways, emphasizing various qualities, interests, and occupations as sex-linked. (Anthropologists such as Mead, Malinowski, and Devereux have written extensively on this subject.) [P60]

If the problem in hand is to resolve the impact of social expectations, in the form of gender roles, upon the well being of individuals, then it is necessary at the very least to acknowledge and address the social basis of this challenge; but this social analysis is totally absent. In conclusion, while the authors admit that society’s attitudes toward cross-gender behavior may be wrong, they create a social-individual split and opt for an individualistic ethic. "While privately, one might prefer to modify society’s attitudes toward crossgender behavior, in the consultation room with an unhappy youngster, one feels far more optimistic about modifying the behavior of that one child than the entire society." Thus the task of social change becomes relegated to a “private preference” and has no significant place in therapeutic situations. Changing society’s attitudes becomes secondary in the immediacy of the therapeutic moment. In the final analysis, it is imperative to note that what has been termed an individualist or personalist position does not foster genuine individualism. The kind of individualism that transsexual therapy promotes is really an individualism that serves a role-defined society and thus it is more realistic to say that it is an ethic of social conformity. [P98]

It is in this way that the transsexual is directed towards a medical pathway, and this is something that women have also been exposed to. Since the 1950s, women who are dissatisfied with their bodies or parts of them, in this case the size of their breasts—in reality their gender image—have been encouraged to have them augmented by breast surgery and silicone implants, leading to disastrous health and safety consequences. In the 1980s and 1990s, the plastic surgery industry, including the association of plastic surgeons, led a campaign to convince women that having small breasts was actually a physical deficiency. According to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, small breasts are not only a deformity but “a disease which in most patients results in feelings of inadequacy.” Thus millions of women have been led to change their breasts, not their image of themselves. [P.xvii]

However, feminists have long been aware of an alternative strategy, and Raymond recommends this to transsexuals seeking therapy or support. Any woman who has experienced the agony of sex-role oppression in a patriarchal society is hardly insensitive to the suffering that transsexuals experience. Like transsexuals, many women have felt hatred of their bodies and its functions, and have found themselves in a psychically disjointed state because they could not accept their role. Through feminism, however, many women have come to understand this physical and psychic fragmentation in political/social terms—i.e., as the product of a patriarchal society that has imposed images and definitions of female existence. Thus feminists have become social critics and have organized, as feminists, around issues of sexism and sex-role oppression. [P176]

As the book title reveals, Raymond’s hostility is not to transsexuals but to the medical industry that has such power over their lives. However, her analysis of sex and gender leads her to recognise this as a fresh and powerful threat to women in every aspect of their lives. Many feminists are opposed to transsexualism. Yet that opposition, having moved outside the limits of tolerance set up by the medical authorities, will often be decried as intolerant. What is happening here is a fundamental reversal. ... It is not only tolerance in the service of medical affluence that we witness in the transsexual situation, but tolerance in the service of medical control—specifically the control of women.

It is a critical time for woman-identified women. Medicalized transsexualism represents only one more aspect of patriarchal hegemony. The best response women can make to this is to see clearly just what is at stake for us with respect to transsexualism and to assert our own power of naming who we are. [177]

[lezhypatia · Rating 5 out of 5]

overcompensating with my rating because this objectively should not have a 2.79 rating on here.

I really enjoyed this. Feminist powers of foresight strike again! obviously, some of Raymond’s analysis is not applicable anymore (the demographic of those who medically transition has shifted to young women), but her moral arguments are astute. I feel that A Passion for Friends is her pièce de résistance, but this is a fundamental work that was way, way ahead of its time.

[Susan]

Glutton for punishment that I am, reading up on the history of 70s lesbian feminist transphobia, I thought I might as well read the Mein Kamf of the genre, where lots of little discourses that had been circulating for nearly a decade finally got woven into one, big, breathtakingly paranoid fantasy. Yes, it really is as bad as I remembered it to be.

[Millie · Rating 1 out of 5]

In regards to the (in)famous quote from this book, "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves..." How does that even make sense? Transgender people are not "raping" anyone else's body by exercising their right to autonomy over their own bodies. Last time I checked, the idea that what someone does with their body is their choice and doesn't magically affect anyone else was one of the fundamentals of feminism.

Also, this isn't widely known, but it was Raymond's lobbying in the early 1980s that got the US government (and state governments) to drop funding for healthcare for trans people, including breast cancer and genital cancer. These policies are still in effect today. The kind of hatred promoted by this book kills.

(Side note: It's interesting that she puts so much stock in "this [cis female] body" as an integral part of female identity and of who she is... guess who else does that? Misogynists.)

[Dresden Feltenstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give it negative stars I would.

[Dylan · Rating 1 out of 5]

....no

[Gwen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Janice Raymond is one of the reasons feminism has a bad rep. Ms. Raymond is arguably the person most responsible for the deaths of thousands of trans women. Congratulations, Ms. Raymond; you've earned your spot in the Who's Who Honor Roll of bigotry!

[Jessica Sideways · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seriously, this is the most fucked up book in existence.

[talia ♡ · Rating 1 out of 5]

fuck this book, fuck janice raymond, and fuck all terfs.

[Davia Finch · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could write a whole book about the problems with this book. People who don't understand a subject shouldn't write books about it.

To be fair to Raymond, she wrote it at a time when not much was understood about the experience of trans people and not everything in the book is bad (compulsory gender norms are obviously bad) but to confuse dissatisfaction with gender norms with gender dysphoria these days is just facepalm-worthy. Trans people experience both (I can have both gender dysphoria and be dissatisfied with the expectations for my identified gender; I know this, because I'm trans and I do). Cis people experience the latter only ("sex role oppression," as she calls it), and I can see why people confuse this with gender dysphoria, but they are not the same thing (just like people aren't gay because they don't like gender norms). The whole book hinges on a misunderstanding. If, at the time, professionals treating transgender patients were often as confused as Raymond is, and were admittedly often completely under the spell of gender stereotypes and did enforce those stereotypes on their patients, it still doesn't change the fact that they are not the same thing. Raymond's well-intentioned suggestions were doomed to fail, and 40+ additional years of clinical experience has repeatedly confirmed it. There's a reason the whole medical community has moved to gender affirmative care; because science.

Gender therapists no longer impose binary stereotypes on patients and haven't for decades. Anyone who has been in therapy with a good gender therapist has received extensive guidance on the difference between gender nonconformity and gender dysphoria because therapists are anxious to avoid regret in their patients. Most trans people are extremely well versed in how all of this stuff works and equally anxious to avoid medical decisions that may lead to regret. It's not possible for most of the people involved to become more conscious of the issues Raymond is talking about; that consciousness does absolutely nothing to eliminate gender dysphoria because dissatisfaction with gender norms and gender dysphoria are not the same thing.

Anyone still taking this book seriously in 2020 is just admitting they don't understand the subject. If you don't understand it, please don't meddle in the affairs of people who have to deal with it.

[Fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit this was good. Please god read this cover to cover before you medically transition, or send feminists death threats for being critical of gender ideology. This is a very, very important book and I think in the coming years, as the fallout from big pharma medicalizing transness grows, the ratings will climb to a fair number.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

janice raymond set out to write a book to prove what she had already a priori decided--that we are all liars--and then dropped a chapter of pure vitriolic untruths in the middle. the arguments presented here have resulted in the denial of medical treatment for thousands of individuals, as she boasts in the preface to the 1994 edition, and social stigmatization. a book that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of my sisters.

[Sid Nunes · Rating 1 out of 5]

The entire books belongs on the garbage heap of history.

[Caroline Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book because of the rise in cissexist/transphobic sentiment in the terminally online "left." I wanted to go to the source of much of this propaganda, and this is it.

Where to begin? Raymond is unscientific in her methodology. She stated that because it was difficult to find “female-to-constructed-male transsexuals,” she thinks there must be less overall (like, in society). She also said that based on interviews with two(!) trans men, she thinks trans men are less masculine than trans women are feminine (?).

She brings up valid points, such as the way in which trans people are forced to pass in order to qualify for medical care. She also brings up the sexism in research around transsexuality, such as the cause of transsexuality being “too much mother and too little father.”

However instead of viewing these issues in a way that affirms them as challenges faced by trans peoples, she instead asserts that transness *itself* is the cause of the cissexism of the medical complex or the sexism in blaming mothers for their children's transsexuality.

She also touches on the fact that trans women resort to street prostitution because they are not able to find work, but does not consider evidence that trans women are pushed out of the formal economy and into the sex trade. She presents it more like it’s a perversion on their part due to wanting to afford operative treatments.

Raymond explicitly characterizes sex-based oppression as the primary social contradiction, quoting Kate Millet in that sex-based oppression is “more rigorous than class stratification” (p. 130). Any Marxist using this book as a theoretical basis for understanding the current trans issue either has not read this book (in which case, they have no right to speak), or they are not a materialist. Period.

At its very root, this analysis is weak and chaotic - leaning on symbolism, reinterpretation of mythology, and idealist musings. Raymond characterizes not men but trans women as the most powerful antagonist of women. The fact that “leftists” rely on this piece of work as the basis of their vulgar analysis of a women/transgender antagonism is embarrassing. For them.

I leave you with a few gems:

“...all transexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact” (p. 104).

“It is my deepest hope that this book will not be viewed as an unsympathetic treatment of the anguish and existential plight of the transsexual” (p. 175).

[Alison · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the most influential pieces of writing towards my work. Also terribly written, terribly researched, bizarrely Catholic and really just all round a putrid disgusting mess of an ideological work.

[Elise Pallagi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I admit to hate reading this ten years ago. That was a mistake. Don't read this pile of transphobic crap, burn it and consign it to the dustbin of history.

[Bruce Majors · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important book.

I am sure they will try to censor it.

They want the world to be like Iran, where a final solution to the problem of gays is to change their sex surgically.

[Francesca · Rating 1 out of 5]

You won't know whether to laugh or cry. Janice Raymond is a blemish on the already-shaky credibility of second wave feminist rhetoric, perpetuating more misconceptions & straight up making shit up about transwomen, gender & power in society than you thought was possible in a single book.

[Josephine (biblioseph) · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are those that read poo, and they should put this on their list. Ruining lives since 1985.

[Lindsey K · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never before have I wished more that a zero star rating existed, but hey, I did learn one thing so maybe that's worth a star. I'll get to that later.
I've never read anything more self aggrandizing and unnecessarily vilifying than this book, but hey, who doesn't love to read the word 'she-male' in 2019 being adamantly defended as if the existence of others going about their daily lives has any impact on your own whatsoever! Raymond truly is someone I'd love to meet just to make her pay for my coffee and then stand her up in a lonesome coffee shop with only one single fluorescent white light casting sharp shadows across her cheekbones that only draw more poetic attention to the way her beady gaze shrewdly and desperately flickers across the smiling faces nearby.
Anyways this book was truly one of the worst things I've ever had the displeasure of reading but it will help me develop an even stronger counter argument as to why trans identities are not only 100% valid and should be accepted, but also just a generic argument towards re-editing a book years later just to complain that many scholars and educated individuals not only hate your work but also generally ignored all of it and continued developing more holistic and progressive understandings of gender identity and intersectional feminism simultaneously. I feel as though maybe one should have to publish their work and accept that its generally accepted as the book that represents transphobia and intolerance and not spend an entire chapter complaining that people keep saying you're a bigot while continuing to spout bigoted views as if they're in any way disproving that you are in fact, a bigot. But hey, what do I know; other than that gender and biological sex are very distinctly two different things, as confirmed by multiple scientists. I guess that's one thing I do know.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not a hate-filled screed. At no point does Raymond wish harm on trans people. In fact, she repeatedly points to the way they are victims of the medical model which takes their socially-borne distress and turns it into a series of profitable surgeries. That this book is regarded as toxic, as akin to Mein Kampf according to one review (tasteful), as the direct cause of the death of trans people (academic radical feminist texts are famously influential, after all), really shows the level to which any questioning of trans ideology is immediately shut down and demonised. The reactions to the book are as illustrative as the book itself.

[Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

The vile transphobic equivilent of Mein Kampf, at best a curiousity piece of feminist history.
Dehumanising, advocates genocide and crimes against humanity.
Intellectually lazy, poorly written and dripping with barely concealed bigotry.