Sheila Jeffreys - Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism

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 womens 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.

Sheila Jeffreys is Professor of feminist politics in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

GENDER HURTS

A feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism

Sheila Jeffreys

First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

2014 Sheila Jeffreys

The right of Sheila Jeffreys to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Jeffreys, Sheila.
Gender hurts : a feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism / Sheila Jeffreys.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Transgenderism. 2. Transgender peoplePolitical activity. 3. Feminism.
4. Feminist theory. I. Title.
HQ77.9.J44 2014
306.768dc23
2013042861

ISBN: 978-0-415-53939-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-53940-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77826-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Out of House Publishing

This book is dedicated to Ann Rowett with my love and with gratitude for her support and advice throughout this project.

I am indebted to Janice G. Raymond for her pioneering book, The Transsexual Empire (1994, first published 1979). Her work is the foundation on which feminist criticism of transgenderism has been built, and continues to inspire radical feminist thought. I am grateful to all those friends who have read and commented upon chapters of this book: Lorene Gottschalk, Lynne Harne, Kathy Chambers, Ruth Margerison. Lorene Gottschalks contribution was particularly valuable. She was much involved in the initial stages of this project and contributed to the writing of half of the chapters, and she conducted the three interviews that have been so important to . I am grateful, too, to the new wave of radical feminism both online and offline. Radical feminist bloggers such as Gallus Mag from GenderTrender (n.d.a) and Dirt from Dirt from Dirt, among others, have provided invaluable factual material, references and ideas on their blogs, without which it would have been harder to write this book. Indeed, over the period that this book has been incubating, radical feminist bloggers strengthened and clarified my analysis. Radical feminist activists have provided venues at which I have been able to test out my thinking, these being the two very successful radical feminist conferences in London Rad Fem 2012 and Rad Fem 2013. I owe much to these brave women. I salute the courage and tenacity of those radical feminists who are making it possible for radical feminists to speak, and furthering radical feminist analysis. I intend this book as a contribution to the considerable struggle that is presently taking place between mainly male transgender activists and radical feminists over who has the right to define what a woman is: women, or men who fantasise about being women. I am thankful for the support I continue to receive from the University of Melbourne, which has provided a crucible over the last two decades in which to develop my ideas, research and write.

This book will explore the harms created by the ideology and practice of transgenderism, a phenomenon that developed in the mid to late twentieth century. Transgenderism has only been an accepted disorder for which the treatment of choice is the administration of hormones, and perhaps amputation or other surgery, for a comparatively short time. Many US physicians contested the idea of such treatments for the condition until the 1970s, and some still do (Meyerowitz, 2002). In the 1990s, partly as a result of the potential for networking created by the Internet, a political movement of transgender activism was created 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 such rights. These changes have ramifications for lesbian and gay existence and the lesbian and gay community; for the health and life chances of transgenders themselves; for the possibilities of womens equality; for organisations, workplaces, services and the law. There is now a copious literature on transgenderism, on its history, treatment, theory and practice. But this literature is generally positive towards the phenomenon, seeing transgenders as constituting an essential category of persons that has been denied rights and needs recognition. Some of this literature makes the claim that transgenderism is transgressive and part of a revolutionary process of social change, because it destabilises the gender binary.

This book takes a quite different approach. It argues, from a feminist perspective, that transgenderism is but one way in which gender hurts people and societies. Transgenderism depends for its very existence on the idea that there is an essence of gender, a psychology and pattern of behaviour, which is suited to persons with particular bodies and identities. This is the opposite of the feminist view, which is that the idea of gender is the foundation of the political system of male domination. Gender, in traditional patriarchal thinking, ascribes skirts, high heels and a love of unpaid domestic labour to those with female biology, and comfortable clothing, enterprise and initiative to those with male biology. In the practice of transgenderism, traditional gender is seen to lose its sense of direction and end up in the minds and bodies of persons with inappropriate body parts that need to be corrected. But without gender, transgenderism could not exist. From a critical, feminist point of view, when transgender rights are inscribed into law and adopted by institutions, they instantiate ideas that are harmful to womens equality and give authority to outdated notions of essential differences between the sexes. Transgenderism is indeed transgressive, but of womens rights rather than an oppressive social system.