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By Janice G. Raymond, Beacon Press, 1979 212 pp., $12.95
Other reviews of this book appeared in the May, 1979 GCN Book Supplement (Vol. 6, No. 44).
Having talked with 15 transsexuals, Janice G. Raymond has written a book entitled The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Her general thesis seems to be that certain children become transsexuals by virtue of the sex-role stereotyping that occurs under patriarchy. These children become convinced that their particular human attributes and attitudes (which under patriarchy are ascribed to one sex or the other) indicate to them that their minds are in the wrong-sexed body. They may become uncomfortable enough with this situation to want to rectify it through surgical means.
Raymond goes on to conclude that persons who have undergone such surgery are not "integrated" people and that this lack of integration is bad and should be fought against. We are thus asked to fight sex-role stereotyping and to discourage (though not, she cautions, legislate against) the "transsexual empire" which she ambiguously defines as the medical/psychiatric establishment which controls on whom and under what circumstances surgical interventions may be performed.
The book, on quick glance, seems to make sense. Thomas Szasz, the anti-psychiatry and civil libertarian psychiatrist, among others, has reviewed it positively. Unnecessary surgery is bad. Women for years have been having breasts and uteri removed in a cavalier manner. The medical/psychiatric establishment controls millions of people who while being a "captive audience" are forced to undergo drugging, seclusion, and even psycho-surgery. Yes, we should all Tight against sex-role stereotyping, patriarchy and certainly the medical/psychiatric establishment. However, Raymond's logic is faulty. If sex-role stereotyping causes transsexualism, why are we not all transsexuals or, conversely, why are we not all dyed-in-the wool heterosexuals with absolute and rigid sex-role defined behavior and...