The Transsexual Empire

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.

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stereotyping that requires candidates for transsexual surgery to prove themselves by conforming to subjective, outdated and questionable feminine roles and passing as women.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.

In an age when falsehoods are commonly taken as truth, Janice Raymond's new book illuminates the "doublethink" of a transgender movement that is able to define men as women, women as men, he as she, dissent as heresy, science as sham, and critics as fascists.The medicalization of gender dissatisfaction depicted by Raymond in her early visionary book, The Transsexual Empire, has today expanded exponentially into the transgender industrial complex built on big medicine, big pharma, big banks, big foundations, big research centers, some attached to big universities. And the current rise of treating young children with puberty blockers and hormones is a widespread scandal that has been named a medical experiment on children.Whereas transsexualism was mainly a male phenomenon in the past with males undertaking cross sex hormones and surgery, today it is notably young women who are self-declaring as men in large numbers. Doublethink makes us aware of the consequences of a runaway ideology and its costs -- among them what is at stake when males are allowed to compete in female sports and when pschools dupe facilitating a child's hormone treatments.

It is only recently that transgenderism has been accepted as a disorder for which treatment is available. In the 1990s, a political movement of transgender activism coalesced to campaign for transgender rights. Considerable social, political and legal changes are occurring in response and there is increasing acceptance by governments and many other organisations and actors of the legitimacy of these rights. This provocative and controversial book explores the consequences of these changes and offers a feminist perspective on the ideology and practice of transgenderism, which the author sees as harmful. It explores the effects of transgenderism on the lesbian and gay community, the partners of people who transgender, children who are identified as transgender and the people who transgender themselves, and argues that these are negative. In doing so the book contends that the phenomenon is based upon sex stereotyping, referred to as 'gender' – a conservative ideology that forms the foundation for women's subordination. Gender Hurts argues for the abolition of ‘gender’, which would remove the rationale for transgenderism. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, feminism and feminist theory and gender studies.

Female Erasure is an anthology that celebrate female embodiment while exposing the current trend of gender-identity politics as a continuation of female erasure and silencing as old as patriarchy itself.

This feminist classic explores the many manifestations of friendship between women and examines the ways women have created their own communities and destinies through friendship.

Transgender studies is the latest area of academic inquiry to grow out of the exciting nexus of queer theory, feminist studies, and the history of sexuality. Because transpeople challenge our most fundamental assumptions about the relationship between bodies, desire, and identity, the field is both fascinating and contentious. The Transgender Studies Reader puts between two covers fifty influential texts with new introductions by the editors that, taken together, document the evolution of transgender studies in the English-speaking world. By bringing together the voices and experience of transgender individuals, doctors, psychologists and academically-based theorists, this volume will be a foundational text for the transgender community, transgender studies, and related queer theory.