The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male (Athene): No. 39 (Athene S.)

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We can safely conclude that the policies Raymond helped create contributed to the death and suffering of trans people. When confronted by such charges, Raymond asserts: In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote the famous novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus . The premise of the book is that modern science, stripped from the constraints of ethics and nature, will end up creating monsters. “Trans-affirming” doctors are the post-modern version of the book’s protagonist, Doctor Frankenstein. Stone claimed she understood, and to some degree shared in, the suspicions of her feminist detractors, pointing out that both autobiographical and official accounts of transsexuality tended to reproduce sexist norms, stating, "It may come as no surprise that all of the accounts I will relate here are similar in their description of 'woman' as male fetish, as replicating a socially enforced role, or as constituted by performative gender." [11] :5 She discusses radical feminism critically not for its apprehension of this trend, but rather its goals of reducing trans women to instruments of patriarchal domination and rejecting them as eligible speaking subjects in their own discourse. Being transgender is one of the great joys of my life. The trans community is the most loving and supportive I know, and no amount of outside hostility could make me regret joining it. None of the painful experiences I have had as a trans person were due to my trans identity. They were, and are, to do with the way trans people are treated by the wider world. And unfortunately, the treatment of trans people in the UK has gone from bad to worse.

It is clear from this and from other transgender scholarship that the transgender movement is inherently political. Its reconstruction of personal identity is meant to advance a collective political reconstruction or transformation. Some trans activists even view their movement as the future of Marxism. In a collection of essays titled Transgender Marxism , activist writer Rosa Lee argues that trans people can serve as the new vanguard of the proletariat, promising to abolish heteronormativity in the same way that orthodox Marxism promised to abolish capitalism. The bathroom issue is apparently so evergreen that it is dragged even into places where it has no relevance. It became, for example, a central talking point in the debate about reforming the Gender Recognition Act. But trans people with and without gender recognition certificates have always used public bathrooms for the same mundane reasons as everyone else. Reforming the Gender Recognition Act could not possibly have any bearing on this, because no public bathroom requires proof of legal gender as a condition of entry. But focusing on the “why” of this link is missing the point. To those asking this question, I would ask: Why do you want to know? What would you do with the answer? I am suspicious of this line of questioning for the same reason I am suspicious of attempts to identify a so-called “gay gene”. The next logical step, after the search for a cause, is the search for a cure. This then is the smoking gun. Here we have a private insurer quoting word-for-word a governmental policy which relied on Raymond for 1/3 of its findings; specifically, it’s finding that trans care is ethically controversial. Thus we can easily follow the timeline for Raymond’s part in the decimation of trans care in America: From Raymond’s Transsexual Empire (1979) Transitioning is an umbrella term to describe the process that someone goes through to bring their external self more closely into alignment with their gender identity. For some people that might mean changing their gender expression and the clothes that they wear or how they wear their hair. It might mean using a new name and different pronouns. And that’s wonderful. For others, it can involve taking medication to make their body more closely aligned with how they identify in terms of gender—typically, that’s masculinizing or feminizing medications or hormone therapy. People can also choose to pursue gender-affirming surgeries, which are surgical interventions to bring their body more closely in alignment with their gender identity.Over and above the medical and scientific issues, it would also appear that transsexual surgery is controversial in our society. For example, Thomas Szasz has asked whether an old person who desires to be young suffers from the “disease” of being a “transchronological” or does the poor person who wants to be rich suffer from the “disease” of being a “transeconomical?” (Szasz 1979). Some have held that it would be preferable to modify society’s sex role expectations of men and women than to modify either the body or the mind of individuals to fit those expectations. (Raymond 1980).”

Raymond asserts that hers was but one source the OHTA considered and this is true, very strictly speaking. The OHTA report relied upon Raymond’s NCHCT report for the heavy lifting to support the “controversy” claim and the other piece of “research” the OHTA considered was… wait for it… A review of Raymond’s 1979 book, The Transsexual Empire, The Making of the She-Male that Raymond pointed out in her NCHCT report. Therefore, strictly speaking, Raymond wasn’t the only source the OHTA considered when supporting their “controversial” claim. However, it is false to assert that Raymond’s work wasn’t the only source informing the claim that trans care was “controversial.” It was her book, The Transsexual Empire and her NCHCT report alone that informed the opinions leading the OHTA to conclude that trans care was “controversial.” Raymond, Janice G. (1980). The Transsexual Empire. London: Women's Press. p. iv. ISBN 978-0-7043-3857-9.The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) began seeing trans clients in the 1960s and developed a trans care program in the early 1970s. Dr. Cole was a resident in 1975 and I briefly interviewed him for this story. He was aware of indigent trans people being served in the early days of that program. “I believe that they did the lab and medical work that way.” He noted that for some of the early patients, their surgical costs were covered. “Some of those surgeries were totally covered.” I also interviewed Dr. Meyer, a founder of the UTMB trans program and past president of WPATH. He too noted that indigent trans clients were served. “I remember one particular patient who was on Medicare and that patient was approved for genital surgery.” He went on to say that this client received publicly insured trans services through UTMB’s program prior to Raymond’s NCHCT paper. “This would have been in the late 70s, maybe 1978 or 79.” Raymond believes that “transsexuals ought to be eradicated on moral grounds” (Synnøve Økland Jahnsen, falsely quoting The Transsexual Empire in Klassekampen, August 31, 2013). Fact:

Historically federal and state aid has not funded transsexual treatment for anyone so it could not be ‘eliminated’ by any paper I or anyone else wrote.” De Cuypere, et al., reported that the rate of suicide attempts dropped dramatically from 29.3 percent to 5.1 percent after receiving medical and surgical treatment among Dutch patients treated from 1986-2001. To be pedantic, I need to note that what HHS calls the 1981 “NCHCT Report” I call the 1981 OHTA report because by the end of 1981, the NCHCT had become the OHTA. The 1981 report states that it’s the product of the OHTA. If I had to guess, HHS refers to it as the “NCHCT Report” because when the report was being written, OHTA was still NCHCT and it’s easier to just refer to the organization as NCHCT instead of having to go into how and why a report which began life as an NCHCT report was published as an OHTA report. Halberstam claims that surgical intervention in the case of “sex-change” serves to “fictionalize” gender (i.e., render Recall that OHTA said the NCHCT “was directed to consider broadly the implications of new and existing medical technologies, including their legal, ethical and social aspects.” The OHTA report explicitly claims that Raymond’s NCHCT report functioned to support this purpose.FM If trans and autistic people have one thing in common – and this has been my experience as someone who falls into both categories – it is that we are not taken at face value when we talk about our identities and desires. There is also evidence of a link beyond that. A 2020 study found that autistic people are six times more likely to not identify with their birth sex. Autistic people are more likely to be LGBT in general, not just trans, with one study finding that 69.7% of autistic adults were not heterosexual. It is telling that the focus is on why autistic people are more likely to be trans in particular. It’s less publicly acceptable to express concern about young people identifying as LGB. Serano, Julia (March 8, 2016). Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Seal Press. p.234. ISBN 978-1-58005-154-5. [...]Janice Raymond (who, in addition to writing the anti-trans screed The Transexual Empire, tried to convince the National Center for Health Care Technology to deny transsexuals the right to hormones and surgery)[...] Bow, Leslie (2010). Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-9132-5 . Retrieved 8 September 2020. This article was amended on 22 April 2021 because an earlier version, quoting Maya Forstater, incorrectly indicated that those remarks had been made on social media. In fact the specific phrases cited were in a letter which she sent to her MP. It was also amended to clarify that hormones bought online are sometimes from unregulated sources.