Revival of an old bogey-person

TAO and Angela Douglas

Angela Douglas (1943 - 2007) musician, activist

History of TAO: part 1: to 1971. USAF, music, GLF

History of TAO: bibliography

History of TAO: Part 2: 1972-80. TAO in Miami Beach

History of TAO: Part 3: aftermath

Kimberley Elliot (1953 - 1980) TAO, Neo-American Church

More on Angela Douglas

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Those of you who pay attention to my sidebar may have noticed a surge in visits to my June 2007 article on Angela Douglas. In fact there have been 450 visits in the last week. I am not always able to find where such surges come from, but in this case I was able to find that it came from a Gender Critical Reddit thread. The first line in my article suggests that visitors also read my July 2015 History of Tao. I can see from my statistics that very few of the Reddit visitors did so.

I assume that the participants in the thread are youngish. Their older sisters would have been quite aware a long time ago of Douglas’ ‘scandalous’ letter, which was published in Sister magazine Aug-Sep 1977. That is 42 years ago. The infamous Janice Raymond published a selection from it in her The Transsexual Empire, 1979.

"Free from the chains of menstruation and child-bearing, transsexual women are obviously far superior to Gennys in many ways .... Genetic women are becoming quite obsolete, which is obvious, and the future belongs to transsexual women. We know this and perhaps some of you suspect it. All you have left is your 'ability' to bear children, and in a world which will groan to feed 6 billion by the year 2000, that's a negative asset."

Now again this is being used to justify negative emotions. One of the Reddit contibutors writes:

“These dudes are so full of rage that they will never be us. They KNOW they are just men with fetishes in bad wigs. I used to think HSTS trans weren't AGP, but I've since been disabused of that myth. This is only further proof.”

There are various adjectives that could describe Douglas’ letter: satirical, ill-advised, arrogant, foolish, counterproductive. The editors of Sisters magazine in 1977 had enough sense of humour to print it, and their readers laughed at it, and that should have been the end of it. However two years later Raymond was looking for things said or done by trans women that she could pretend to be scandalized by, and as her book is still read by anti-trans people, the tale of Douglas’ letter gets repeated again and again.

The Reddit thread suggests that one foolish person can bring an entire movement into disrepute. That game goes both ways. Here is a list of lesbian serial killers. Here is review of a book about the suffragettes pointing out that some of them went way too far, e.g. bombing unoccupied houses (unoccupied meant that only the servants were there).

In fact all non-fascist social movements contain good and bad, wise and stupid, eccentric and otherwise. This encyclopedia features all kinds. Here is a pointer to trans persons convicted of murder – to balance the lesbian serial killers link.

Douglas did good in organizing TAO in Miami. Douglas did bad in sending trans women to Dr John Brown.

All of Raymond’s books are aligned with dogmas of the Catholic Church. In addition to transgender, she is also against abortion, contraception, reproductive technologies and the decriminalization of prostitution. In the early 1980s she campaigned against medical care for trans people, and both federal and private insurance care was thus denied to those who needed it. It must be the case that some died as a result.

Women in the US and elsewhere have their rights under attack. Serious issues like the right to choose, access to contraceptives, access to medical care, misogynist murders etc. Real issues! And these women on the Reddit forum are spending their time getting worked up about a letter written 42 years ago that perhaps deserved momentary attention, but not four decades of people saying the same thing again and again.

________________

Kay Brown’s early comments on Angela Douglas, part of her Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History, long unavailable is again available courtesy of the Wayback Machine. Read it here.

Image from Dyke Quarterly #5

​

Sylvia Rivera Part IV: Other activities to 1973

Part I: beginnings
Part II:  GAA & Weinstein Hall
Part III: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Part IV:  Other activities to 1973
Part V:  Later years

Young Lords and the Black Panthers

Sylvia was also involved with Puerto Rican and black youth activism, with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers.

While GLF had openly supported The Panthers, had helped them with bail money etc, there was a constant problem with the Panthers’ homophobia. They had been confronted on this issue by GLF at a rally at New Haven on 1 May 1970. Shortly afterwards Panther Huey Newton published an admonishment that militant blacks should acknowledge their insecurities about homosexuality.

The GLF was invited to send a delegation to a Panther convention in Philadelphia, and Sylvia was chosen as part of the delegation. Huey even remembered her from a demonstration in New York.

New York City Council's General Welfare committee

In late 1971, GAA succeeded, after lobbying and protesting, in getting the New York City Council's General Welfare committee to discuss the problems faced by gays and transvestites. GAA equivocated and for a while agreed to the removal of transvestite protections. However it ultimately endorsed them.

Lee Brewster, Bebe, and Sylvia argued transvestites “were being used as scapegoats by the gay movement” seeking to explain its failure to get the asked-for protections.

Sylvia, usually an extemporaneous speaker, had had her face bruised after a confrontation with police at a recent demonstration, wore a conservative dress and her hair in a bun, and read in muted fashion, a statement based on STAR’s platform.

The bill was was not passed even in 1973, when it went forward with the caveat that nothing in the definition of sexual orientation “shall be construed to bear upon the standards of attire or dress code".

There was an impromptu blockade of Brooklyn Bridge, and Sylvia and others were arrested. A few days later, during a protest at City Hall, Sylvia in polyester bell-bottoms, fortified by speedballs and a few drinks, kicked off her heels, and scaled the outside of the building.

Part VI: 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day

At the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day (CSLD), the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the tensions within the gay movement that would lead to separatisms were becoming apparent.

The CSLD committee, mainly GAA members, attempted a harmonious march and rally by focusing on entertainment and speakers not involved in the city’s infighting.

Of the traditional drag show nightclubs, only Club 82 was left and it was ceding the stage to the emerging glam, glitter and punk scene. However there were still some showgirls left and Bebe Scarpi went and got them to march – in costume. Prominent were International Chrysis and Jean Chandler. Old-style performer Ty Bennett was conveyed in a convertible.

Lee in tiara; Sylvia in jumpsuit

Sylvia, wearing a jumpsuit that had belonged to the now deceased June from StarHouse, and not a listed speaker, pushed her way on to the stage, and gave an impassioned speech for Gay Power:

“They’ve been beaten up and raped. And they have had to spend much of their money in jail to get their self home and to try to get their sex change. The women have tried to fight for their sex changes or to become women of the Women’s Liberation and they write S.T.A.R., not the women’s group. They do not write women. They do not write men. They write S.T.A.R. because we’re trying to do something for them.”

Jean O’Leary of Lesbian Feminist Liberation insisted on an opportunity to reply. She asserted biological sex, and that Sylvia was “a genital male”. She read a statement on behalf of 100 women that read, in part,

"We support the right of every person to dress in the way that she or he wishes. But we are opposed to the exploitation of women by men for entertainment or profit."

She was booed and MC, Vito Russo, the film historian, asked the crowd to let her continue. Lee Brewster, jumped onstage and responded,

"You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!”

The situation was calmed only when performer Bette Midler took to the stage and sang.


All this angry public confrontation left Sylvia in such a state that she attempted suicide.

Julie Bindel and Jane Fae agree that 'real women' a nonsense term

Charing Cross GIC – addendum

Part I: 1818-1982
Part II: 1983-now
Addendum
Stuart Lorimer

There has been an article “Fifty years on: The Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic and the funding of a category without parallel” published at Youth Trans Critical Professionals and again at Gender Trender.

The author is given as “Susan Matthews, UK Academic”, but does not list any academic qualifications.

The article gets off to a very bad start with one error after another.

“It [CXGIC] was founded in 1966”

I have already discussed this. Treating intersex patients, the clinic dates from the 1930s, treating transvestites and transsexuals, from the 1950s.

“at Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic, the world’s first GIC  founded the previous year” [1965]

Actually the UCLA GIC was founded by Stoller in 1964.

“The founding clinician at Charing Cross, Richard Green, came with an impressive academic pedigree, having worked with Money, collaborating on research on boys who demonstrated cross-gender behaviour.”

Richard Green was reported to be in London in 1966 and 1969. He very likely visited the existing Charing Cross clinic, but he certainly had no position there. He is not even mentioned in John Randell’s book. Also the Feminine Boy Project was still in the future: it was done in the 1970s.

“Up until the second half of the twentieth century, the word ‘gender’ referred to grammatical gender, a feature of language not human identity.”

Not this canard again! Obviously Matthews does not read 17-19^th century novels. Some examples:

Henry Fitzgeffrey 1620: “Now Mars defend us! seest thou who comes yonder? Monstrous! a Woman of the Masculine Gender.”
Susanna Centlivre, early 18^th century playwright reported that theatre managers 'treated her ... in the Masculine Gender'. 

George Byron, Don Juan, 1824, having got his protagonist into female dress justifies using female pronouns: 'I say her because,/The gender still was epicene'.

Matthews then writes about John Money, lobotomy, John Money again, Bruce Reimer of course. She does not at all mention the Charing Cross doctors who worked with trans patients in the 1960s, ie. John Randell, Lennox Broster, Peter Philip. Come to that, there is also no mention of a certain Harry Benjamin. For Matthews, it seems, Money alone invented transsexualism!

Matthews writes: “For the Reimer case is open to many different readings. Zoe Playdon attributes the failings of UK gender identity clinics to this history”. This is a remarkable statement in that the details of the Reimer case would not be known for another 20 or 30 years. Certainly there is no mention of it in Randell’s 1973 book.

Matthews seems to think that Money was such an overwhelming influence that Charing Cross followed his lead: “The science of gender emerged from a tiny group centred on John Money and its findings were ethically compromised”. If this were so why cannot it be demonstrated from Randell’s writings?

Here is the bibliography from Randell’s book.

 The only mention of Green or Money is the 1969 anthology, which would be included as Randell contributed a paper to it. However none of Money’s or Green’s writings are listed, nor are they in the index, nor are they mentioned in the text.

In the 1960s the UK was less dependent on US fashions. To take two contemporary examples, that is 1965-7, compare the anti-psychiatry of RD Laing to the Scientology fellow-traveller Thomas Szasz, or the radical difference between the psychedelic music of Pink Floyd and Soft Machine from that which came from San Francisco. John Randell, whatever else we may think of his attitude, was his own man, and no-one has argued that he was a disciple of Money.

Having ignored the history of the CXGIC, Matthews jumps quickly to the 21^st century, and as proof of Money’s influence she writes: “Echoes of the founding beliefs are still apparent in a 2011 paper by James Barrett, currently lead clinician at Charing Cross GIC. ‘Disorders of gender identity have probably always existed, inside and outside Europe’, Barrett writes, citing a 1975 study (Heiman).”

Heiman is not in her bibliography. Comments about trans people being everywhere are found in every popular survey. May I suggest Oscar Gilbert’s Men in Women's Guise: Some Historical Instances of Female Impersonation, 1926 or many News of the World articles over the decades. To claim this as part of Money’s influence is to show that Matthews does not begin to understand what he had to say.

She spends most of the paper attacking Barrett and the fact that he has said different things at different times. He is wrong when he and other clinicians decide what to do ignoring the patients’ wishes, and he is wrong when he listens to the trans persons who come to the clinic and he accepts their self-diagnosis. “This claim is important, for if trans were a disorder (as in 1966), the work of the clinic would belong in a worrying tradition, one that harks back at the worst to lobotomy and calls up disturbing memories of the treatment of David Reimer. If trans has any links to body dysmorphia, to anorexia, or to self-harm, then it could not be appropriate to medicate or to offer surgery, however acceptable to the patient, however fiercely demanded.”

Having attacked Money for not listening to David Reimer’s self-diagnosis that he was not a woman, Matthews is still not willing to accept the equivalent self-diagnosis of trans persons. She connects trans and trauma: “Perhaps the most important voices are those of transitioners and detransitioners who are now beginning to explore what they see as a relationship between trans and trauma, challenging the constricting logic which demands that the complexity of human experience must fit the constructs of the gender narrative.”

Let us suppose that there is merit in Matthew’s linking of trans and trauma. She undermines her own case by distorting the history of the CXGIC and especially her (how shall we put if) Money-fication of its history and by paying no attention at all to the clinic’s pioneers.

Maritza/Mark Cummings (1964–) Part II: serial monogamy and dissent

Continued from Part I. 

In 2012 Mark met his second wife female partner, Jessica Lynn (1974 - ), in a transgender show girl bar. Jessica transitioned in her 30s with the help of a therapist after two failed suicide attempts and a few years as a gay man. She took Mark's surname even before though they were married never registered their relationship. They had each others name tattooed on their bodies.

"In spite of our differences, Aries and Cancer, I have never loved anyone as much as I love her".

They started the internet program Transition Radio, which featured extensive video interviews with various US trans persons and others. A recreational vehicle was purchased, they set up a new blog Transgender Highway and traveled around the US. Mark published a health guide for travelers.
In 2013 their relationship was featured in both The New York Post and The Daily Mail.

Mark and Jessica

In 2014 Mark was interviewed in LGBTQIA where he spoke about how he felt

"honored to be part of the many great inspirational Trans men that [Lynn Conway] has showcased on her site. Success is a very personal word and means many different things to many people. I personally believe that being successful means being happy with who you are and what you have accomplished." and "“I believe being transgender is a gift a Spiritual awakening that is manifesting in physical form … We as transgender individuals have a major responsibility to enlighten the world. Instead we are blending in and doing much of the same, this solves nothing and that is why we continue the hamster wheel".

Later that year, Mark was told that he had been selected for the 2014 GLAAD Trans100, (a list that seems to have been removed from the internet).  However he made critical statements about Janet Mock and her interview by Piers Morgan. He was then deselected. On his Facebook page he wrote:

"I am seeing a very strange twist in our community, and why are we all of a sudden admiring individuals who have recently come out as advocates with little to no experience in that role. One is an actress, the other stealth for many years working at Peoples magazine behind a cubicle and now decides to write a book and is identifying as a fierce advocate? Both trans woman of color, which seems to be a very prominent twist these days as if they are the only ones in the trans community who have suffered and constantly harp on how bad they have it, leaving behind the rest of us. Separating themselves, creating their own groups and associations and hijacking the community at large."

For this he was denounced as prejudiced against persons of color. In July Mark and Jessica sympathetically interviewed Cathy Brennan, the Maryland attorney associated with antagonism towards trans persons. Shortly afterwards they broke up as a couple.

Mark's third wife is Lynna Lopez who also took his surname when they married in June 2015.

Lynna & Mark

“Falling in love for the first time in my life has allowed me to feel my true nature, which
is my feminine self".

Lynna is now co-host on Transition Radio, which has changed its message. Mark now denounces the therapist and surgeon who enabled him to transition:

“I went on Testosterone, and 5 months later, I had my precious breast and my amazing reproductive organs ripped out of me, all in a quest to be a ‘man’. What sane person does this, and what medical professional who swears to do no harm goes along with this diabolical plan? I am sorry but now that I have come to my senses and see what this vile community has become, I see the reason for the vileness and the darkness in its intent.”

Transition Radio lost all its sponsors, and Lynn Conway removed Mark form her Successful Trans Men site. Mark/Maritza is also now speaking out against supporting trans kids and especially against prescribing puberty blockers to them. The New York Times gave him a platform where he argued that no-one should transition before their mid-20s.  He has said: "And it’s usually a Munchausen by proxy-driven mother and it’s always a kind of wimpy dad-kind of thing going on, mom wears the pants in the family.”

 Transition Radio featured DirtyWhiteBoi, who in return published an interview on her blog with Matitza:

"I always felt different but never the typical programed response the community harps on. In my opinion there is no such thing as being born in the wrong body. It’s a neurological impairment, behavioral and mental issue, nothing wrong with the body. … I think much different now. But unfortunately, the changes are so deep, that it is hard to go back. I do identify as a female, I will never deny my truth. … I regret all my surgeries, they are butchery and not necessary. Hysto and top surgery. … I got sick of the trans community and how they badger people. I saw the vile behavior, the lies, I could not longer be part of that. They have deeper issues than gender problems and are in denial about it. Its time the gender specialists stepped up and did their job and looked at the deeper issues."

When Dawn Ennis writing for The Advocate asked Mark to nominate a sponsor or well-known public figure to speak on his behalf, he suggested Cathy Brennan.  Mark still chooses to be addressed by male pronouns as that has been the case for the 12 past years.  He says that  he and Lopez now identify  as “two-spirit” or “gender-variant,” saying, “We all have this duality".

• Julia Reischel. "See Tom be Jane". The Village Voice, May 30, 2006. www.villagevoice.com/news/see-tom-be-jane-6427828.
  
• Mark Angelo Cummings. The Mirror Makes No Sense. 79pp AuthorHouse, 2006.
  
• Herb Sosa. "Mark's Transition". Ambiante, May 2006. www.ambiente.us/506MarksTransition.html.
  
• Mark Angelo Cummings. "Mark's Story". TSsuccesses, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20150322222057/http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/FtM/Mark's Story.html. 
• Roberto Santiago.  "Casting fear aside, he told his story".  Miami Herald, June 03, 2006.  Online 
  
• Letter in response to Debbie Schlussel. "Raising RuPaul: Parents Who Should be SUED for Malpractice". www.debbieschlussel.com/2071/raising-rupaul-parents-who-should-be-sued-for-malpractice.
  
• Carla A. Pfeffer "Bodies in Relation—Bodies in Transition: Lesbian Partners of Trans Men and Body Image". Journal of Lesbian Studies, 12:4, 325-345, 2008. PDF
  
• "Married twice as a woman, once as a man! Real life story!". 5Perc Angol, 09.Dec 29. http://webshop.5percangol.hu/mobile/cikk/married_twice_as_a_woman_once_as_a_man_real_life_story
  
• Father Tony. "Mark Angelo Cummings - Songs in the Key of F2M". Bilerico, April 06, 2010. www.bilerico.com/2010/04/mark_angelo_cummings_-_songs_in_the_key_of_f2m.php.
  
• Bob Fredericks. "Lovebirds to marry after both changed genders". New York Post, November 26, 2013. http://nypost.com/2013/11/26/lovebirds-to-get-hitched-after-both-changed-genders.
  
• Matt Blake. "'Our relationship is the kind that people dream of': Love-at-first-sight couple get engaged... after both undergoing sex change operations". Daily Mail, 26 November 2013. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2513765/Florida-couple-engaged-undergoing-sex-change-operations.html.
  
• Mark Angelo Cummings. The Healthy Travelers Guide No More Excuses. Lulu, 2013.
  
• Jaye Johnson chats with Mark Angelo Cummings. "Trans* Man on a Mission". LGBTQIA, Apr 14, 2014. https://medium.com/lgbtqia-im-ru/trans-man-on-a-mission-62ce9b0519d3.
  
• Kelli Busey. "GLAADS Trans100 the slickest trans assimilation scheme ever, or just a great thing?" Planet Transgender, May 7, 2014. http://planettransgender.com/glaads-trans100-the-slickest-trans-assimilation-scheme-ever-or-just-a-great-thing.
  
• "Cathy Brennan interviewed on radical feminism and 'transphobia'". Deep Green Resistance, September 24, 2014. http://deepgreenresistance.blogspot.ca/2014/09/cathy-brennan-radical-feminism-transphobia.html.
  
• Mark Angelo Cummings. "Transitioning Is for Those Who Can Vote and Drink". New York Times, June 18, 2015. www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/18/is-there-a-right-age-to-change-ones-sex/transitioning-is-for-those-who-can-vote-and-drink.
  
• Dirt. "Some questions for Transition Radio's Maritza (Mark) Cummings". The Dirt from Dirt, June 23, 2015. http://dirtywhiteboi67.blogspot.ca/2015/06/some-questions-for-transition-radios.html.
  
• Dawn Ennis. "'Ex-Trans' Activists Exposed: The Big Name Behind Their Fight Against Gender Transition". Advocate, July 17 2015. http://www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/07/17/ex-trans-activists-exposed-big-name-behind-their-fight-against-gender-transit?page=0,0.
  

TransitionRadio    Vidensbanken     TransgenderHighway
_____________________________________________________


With each wife, Cummings discovers love for the first time!!   A gentleman would not take that attitude to his previous wives.

"And it’s usually a Munchausen by proxy-driven mother and it’s always a kind of wimpy dad-kind of thing going on, mom wears the pants in the family.”  This is of course a return to Robert Stoller, the 1950s and the sexist idea that homosexuality, transgender and many other psychoanalytic conditions are caused by a weak absent father and a dominant mother.

Whether or not Cummings is racist, to denounce him as prejudiced against 'persons of color' is problematical as he himself is Hispanic.

Whilst not aligning with Cummings' position, some of the issues that he has raised should be getting more discussion within the trans community: 

• The issue of the increase in numbers of trans persons over the last 50 years as due to the toxic chemicals in the environment has the virtue of being the only theory that explins the increase in numbers.   The classic account is by Christine Johnson, 2004.  PDF.   It is summarized in Deborah Rudacille's The Riddle of Gender, 2006, Chp  7.
• the increasing practice of adulating trans persons when they step out of the closet or from stealth and shunting aside the activists who have been working for years or decades.  Cummings was rather careless in naming only black celebrities.  He should have paid more attention to what happened to Peter Tatchell.   There is no shortage of white celebrities who could have been mentioned: Bono, Beck, Maloney, Jenner.

 ______________________________________________________________________________

Dawn Ennis' article on the Cummings includes "Brennan’s statement, however, contradicts a February finding by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine who concluded 'there is increasing evidence of a biological basis for gender identity'."   As Gender Identity Watch was delighted to point out, this sentence is not to be found in the journal article in question.   The claim was not needed for Ennis's article, and it was a sloppy error to make. 

Camille Paglia (1947 - ) academic, media pundit.

Camille Paglia is the elder daughter of Italian Immigrants to the US. Her father eventually became professor of Romance Languages at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York. Camille was a tomboy who enjoyed dressing as male, and considered for a while that she had been born the wrong sex.  She read Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, while still in high school. She graduated with a BA from Binghamton University in 1968, where she wrote her final thesis on Emily Dickinson.

She did a PhD at Yale 1968-72 where she was openly lesbian, and was mentored by Harold Bloom. Paglia taught at Bennington College, Vermont from 1972. One of her students was Judith Butler.

In 1973 Carolyn Heilbrun issued her tepid Towards a Recognition of Androgyny. Paglia, then an unknown, reviewed it anonymously in the Yale Review:

"Heilbrun's book is so poorly researched that it may disgrace the subject in the eyes of serious scholars".

She defended her thesis, Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, in December 1974.

She fell out with her colleagues at Bennington College. After a standoff with the administration, she accepted a settlement and resigned in 1979. She supported herself with part-time positions, and some journalism. She completed the book version of Sexual Personae, but could not get it published. In 1984, she was hired to teach humanities by the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, which merged in 1987 with the Philadelphia College of Art to become the University of the Arts.

In 1990 Sexual Personae was published by Yale University Press. In it she analyzes Western art in terms of the contrast between Dionysos and Apollo, an approach that had been pioneered by Friedrich Nietzsche. Unlike Nietzsche she contrasts masculine, phallic sky religion with feminine, chthonic, earth religion, and portrays culture as a struggle between the two. She find paganism undefeated by Judeo-Christianity, androgyny, sadism and the aggressive Western eye in both classical art and pop culture. Against the feminism of the 1980s she stresses the biological basis of gender differences. She identifies 23 sexual personae which she labels:

Amazon, androgyne of manners, android, beautiful boy, court hermaphrodite, dandy, Decadent aesthete, drag queen, Epicoene, Gorgon, Great Mother, Khepera, lesbian, male heroine, manufactured object, Mercurius, Pythoness, Teiresias, transsexual, twin, vampire, Venus Barbata, virago.

All 23 are androgynous in different ways. The power of androgyny comes through in three key concepts:


Charisma, the radiance produced by the interaction of male and female elements in a gifted personality. The charismatic woman has a masculine force and severity. The charismatic man has an entrancing female beauty. Both are hot and cold, glowing with presexual self-love (p521);

Psychoiconicism, the literary phenomenon where a dominant androgyne so dominates a text that both the plot and other characters lose fictive energy and fade into the background. She specifies the examples of Geraldine in Coleridge's poem 'Christabel'; Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It; Virginia Woolf's Orlando; Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights; Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray. Wuthering Heights and Orlando in particular weaken in their second half once the authors Sexual Metathesis, expressed in a fascination with the central character, is completed and there remains a struggle to complete the plot (p345 );

Sexual Metathesis, the special erotic thrill produced by a change in gender. Several of the literary examples disguise a gay relationship, but the public evasion is no more than a small part. 'An ampler spiritual economy is at work. Sexual metathesis is a metaphysical advance, an expansion of identity through a mentally prolonged erotic sensation’ (p350,455).

All this of course refers to the androgyny inherent in our culture. She says very little about real-life trans persons. The major statement is on p368:

"We are still untangling the legal and and moral problems caused by the invention of a new sex, the transsexual, produced by chemical and surgical manipulations of the body. The transsexual is a technological androgyne whom we are happy to call 'she' out of the courtesy owed to all inspired makers of fiction. Close to transsexual is my favorite technological androgyne, Luciana Avedon, formerly the Princess Pignatelli, who radically resculpted face and body in her quest for beauty."

The book drew strong criticisms, both pro and con. Sexual Personae was nominated for a National Book Award and after being released as a paperback became a best-seller. She said that a second volume focused on popular culture had also been written, but the book has never appeared.

Two years later she released Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays which contains her critical review of Marjorie Garber's Vested Interests, and "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf" in which she tackles Foucault, Halperin and their ilk for their ignorance of earlier theorists and their ignorance of culture in general. This essay was much discussed even by classical historians.  She expresses enthusiasm for drag queens:

"I sensed then, and now know for certain, that Madonna, like me, is drawn to drag queens for their daring, flamboyant insight into sex roles, which they see far more clearly and historically than do our endlessly complaining feminists. (p9) ... The castrated, tranvestite priests of Cybele, honored in disco-like rites of orgiastic dance, survive in today's glamourous, flamboyant drag queens. (p23) ...The drag queen has emerged in America in the Nineties as a symbol of our sexual crisis.  A pagan priest whose ancestry is in the ancient cults of the Great Mother, the drag queen defies victim-centered feminism by asserting the dominance of woman in the universe. (p99) ...You know, I'm really happy there wasn't all this talk about sex changes back then, since I probably would have gotten this fantasy that I was a man born in a woman's body, and I think that I might very well have become obsessed with the idea of a sex change, which would have been a terrible mistake.... I've acclimatised myself to to my sex role -- thanks to gay men and drag queens!  Drag queens have influenced me enormously.  Their analysis of the mythology of male and female  and the theater of gender and so on, I've absolutely taken into myself.  (p256)"

She became a media celebrity known for her disagreements with other feminists and media pundits. Because she would not conform to the left-wing party lines, she was dismissed as a conservative, but regards herself as a libertarian Democrat, with pro-choice positions on abortion, pornography, euthanasia etc.

Her first movie was Female Misbehavior, 1992, where she is profiled along with Annie Sprinkle and trans man Max Valerio. In It's Pat, 1994, a street gang have a battered copy of Sexual Personae and accuse Pat of being an androgyne, which s/he is. Paglia has appeared in 38 films, usually playing herself. In 2001 she recorded a commentary track for the DVD of Basic Instinct. She wrote regular columns for Interview Magazine and Salon.

She was partnered with Allison Maddex 1993-2007 and legally adopted Maddex' son.

In 2009 (although the segment was not released until May 2011), in an interview with Xtra, Paglia confirmed the suspicion that she does not really understand what transsexuality is by opposing Chaz Bono's decision about himself, by referring to him as 'she' and 'Chastity', and repeating that when she was young that she was convinced that she was the wrong gender and if it were allowed that she might have done the same.

• Anonymous (Camille Paglia). "Review of Towards a Recognition of Androgyny".  The Yale Review, LXII, 4, 1973.  
• Camille Paglia. Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art. PhD Yale 1974.
• Camille Paglia. Sexual Personae. Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. Yale University Press, 1990.
• Camille Paglia. Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays. Vintage, 1992.
• Joan Smith. "Book Review / Madonna of academe: 'Sex, Art and American Culture' - Camille Paglia: Viking, 18.99". The Independent, 10 Jan 1993. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review—madonna-of-academe-sex-art-and-american-culture--camille-paglia-viking-1899-1477762.html.
• Camille Paglia. Vamps and Tramps: New Essays.Vintage, 1994.
• Camille Paglia. The Birds. BFI Film Classics, 1998.
• Camille Paglia. Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems. Pantheon, 2005.
• Robert M. Stewart. "Paglia, Camille (1947 - )". In Alan Soble. Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press, 2005
• "Camille Paglia". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_paglia.
• "Sexual Personae". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Personae:_Art_and_Decadence_from_Nefertiti_to_Emily_Dickinson.
• "Camille Paglia Biography". Biography Finder. www.biographyfinder.com/s1721-Camille-Paglia-biography.html.
• "Camille Paglia". Biographicon. www.biographicon.com/wiki/dpivu.
• "Paglia, Camille (b. 1947)". glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, & queer culture. www.glbtq.com/literature/paglia_c.html. 

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Sexual Personae is enormously better than Towards a Recognition of Androgyny.  There is probably an eternal dialectic between transsexuality and androgyny, as there is between gender identity and sexual orientation, and Sexual Personae is still the best book about androgyny. 

Sexual Personae also has a rare enthusiasm not usually found in books on literature, that sends you to read the original texts.  I at least dug out the poems and stories that she discusses to either read them for the first time, or to re-read them.

It was a bit naughty of Xtra in May 2011 to put up the clip of Paglia talking about Bono without mentioning that it had been filmed two years previously.

dirtywhiteboi (197?–) Butch activist.

dirtywhiteboi, sometimes Dirt, is a butch activist in the Detroit area. She seems to be the only person in the New Radical Lesbian Feminist front which proclaims:

"We are opting out of the LGBTQI 'gender revolution' and reclaiming our proud heritage as Lesbian Feminists. We believe we were forcibly conscripted into the Brave New World of queer theory. We want out. We reject the gender colonization and appropriation of the Butch-Femme dynamic by the hetero mimicking of queer theory proponents."

She has several blogs, of which the most active is the one at blogspot.com. She writes frequently about trans people, especially those born female, whom she urges not to transition. Her side bar has a link to "The TRUTH about Testosterone effects and transmen", which lists the obvious

"Testosterone will change the smell of your urine"

as well as the inflammatory

"I will add here trans(men) are not above murdering a woman, these crimes often get buried by the trans community as well, some of which have blamed the murdered woman rather than the trans(male) murderer".

The side bar also has An Open Letter to the Trans Community:

"Despite the rising numbers of young women/lesbians who've fallen prey to the trans trend, the dominating numbers of post transition remains straight (white) men. Straight white men, are NOT my, a BUTCH LESBIAN'S community! The gay men who transition because of their pathological internalized homophobia? No, not my community either. The lesbian females who transition, a high percentage of which testosterone alters their lesbian sexuality to that of heterosexuality by way of sex with gay men? Nope, females whether they pass as male or not who screw/partner with men are NOT my community. The lesbian females who transition partnering with screwed up straight women (straight women co-opting and colonizing Femme/lesbians identities and spaces) who are then defaulting to "straight" (thats up for debate-can we say Craigs list)? Umm no, again, heteroville isnt MY community and those bored-I-wanna-be-different-cuz-different-is-fun-and-exciting when your are a bored and not so exciting teeny bopper types who are jumping onto the trans trend? Again, little straight girls chasing gay men? NOT MY community."

She uses 'autogynephiles' for 'hetero MtFs' and refers to trans women as 'MtF men".

She herself is a proud Butch who passes easily as male:

"I pass 24/7 and no I am not flat chested and no I of course do not 'bind'. I'm Butch and Butch women pass a great deal of the time. And this 'passing' isn't a desirable state, it hurts us and it invisiblizes us and personally I hate it."

On 25 November 2010 Dirt wrote an article for The Magazine Project, "Are Trans Trenders the New Goth?" It was removed three days later, but then again reinstated.

"The hugest difference in the female youths who are falling prey to this trans trend is that most of these young women are heterosexual. They begin transition believing that they are and will be ‘gay men’ once transitioned. Many, once on testosterone seek gay male sex/relationship partners knowing little to nothing about gay male culture or how gay male culture functions within gay malecentric spaces."

(The Magazine Project also, a week earlier, posted, removed and re-posted an anti trans women article by Bev Jo.)


* Not Dirty White Boy=Clayton Littlewood, nor the song by Foreigner, nor the wrestler.

• dirtywhiteboi. The New Radical Lesbian Feminist front. 11/29/2008 www.scribd.com/doc/8526396/The-New-Radical-Lesbian-Feminist-front. Also at: wwww.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=85012 .
• http://dirtywhiteboi.wordpress.com.
• www.myspace.com/16990309.
• http://dirtywhiteboi67.blogspot.com.
• http://dirtywhiteboi.livejournal.com.
• http://dirtywhiteboi.insanejournal.com.

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Dirt certainly protests too much that she is not trans.  Butch is certainly a valid and ancient gender variant, and long one that is often confused with being trans.  I think that most of us respect her choice, but are somewhat perplexed about why she does not respect the choices of others.

Her diatribe is against the taking of testosterone and surgery.  I am not clear how her concept of butch differs from being a non-op trans man.  I could not find any comments on her blog about e.g. Leslie Fineberg.  In reading Dirt I kept being reminded of Virginia Prince who also, having personally decided not to seek surgery, then became dogmatic in telling others that they should not either.

Note the objection to gender theory and to being included in the LGBT umbrella.  It is very similar to the sentiments expressed by the HBS people.

Ruth Rhiannan Barrett (1954–) priestess, folksinger.

Ruth Barrett was raised in Los Angeles by Reconstructionist Jewish parents. She read Robert Graves' The White Goddess while still at school, and later became a folk musician. She studied folklore at the University of California, Santa Cruz, 1975-6, and joined a goddess spirituality group. 

In 1976 she met Zsuzsanna Budapest and was initiated into the Susan B. Anthony #1 Coven the next St Bridget's Day. She and her husband had a daughter the next year. She founded the feminist newspaper, Themis (later Thesmophoria). When Budapest moved to San Francisco, Barrett became the High priestess of the Susan B. Anthony #1 Coven, but later moved to the Moon Birch Coven. 

By 1985 she was lesbian, and divorced her husband. In 1988 she left Moon Birch and founded the Circle of Aradia, which became the first consecrated circle of the Reformed Congregation of the Goddess in 1993. In 1997 Ruth was honored for her contributions in the area of spirituality from the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. Ruth met her wife at an RCG conference and in 2000 they moved to Wisconsin, where they founded the Temple of Diana which continues the Dianic Wicca tradition articulated by Zsuzsanna Budapest. Ruth is still a singer and plays the dulcimer. 

The Dianic tradition is deviant within Wicca in rejecting trans women as members. As Ruth says in her description of the Dianic Traditions:

"Dianics support all people in finding their path to the Goddess. However, we do not recognize hormonally or surgically altered men as women, and therefore exclude these men, or men who self-define as women, from our tradition. Women's Mysteries cannot be understood nor experienced through chemical or surgical alterations to our human bodies(2008)."

• Ruth Rhiannan Barrett. Women's Rites, Women's Mysteries. Llewellyn Publications. 2007: 308.
• Ruth Rhiannan Barrett. "Dianic Tradition". Moondancer Drake. Feb 3, 2008. http://moondancerdrake.livejournal.com/31794.html.
• "Ruth Barrett". Religious Archives Network. www.lgbtran.org/Profile.aspx?ID=227.
• "Ruth Barrett". Temple of Diana. www.templeofdiana.org/ruth.htm.
• "Ruth Barrett". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Barrett. 

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Barrett presumably named her paper, Thesmophoria, in that the ancient Greek festival was for women only, actually married women only.  However there is an extant play by Aristophanes called Thesmophoriazusae (= women celebrating the Thesmophoria) which is a play of gender reversals where men dress as women and the women appear to be the equal of men.  This makes Barrett’s position ironic at best.

There were demonstrations when Julie Bindel was honoured by Stonewall despite her transphobia.  Were there similar demonstrations at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in 1997?

Two of the comments on my article about Janice Raymond nominate Zsuzsanna Budapest as equally transphobic.  Budapest would appear to be one of those movement leaders who are careful about their public negativities and leave it to their followers to take the flak.  At least I cannot find any comments about trans women using the Amazon Look Inside feature on Budapest’s books.

The RCG has added International to its name, but all its circles seem to be in one country only.

Janice Raymond (1943 - ) feminist professor.

++ Name of Raymond's 1980 paper corrected.

Raymond did a BA in English Literature at Salve Regina College, 1965, and an MA in Religious Studies at Andover Newton Theological School, 1971. She was then for a short time a member of the Sisters of Mercy, but left and did a PhD in Ethics and Society at Boston College, 1977. Raymond’s PhD thesis supervisor was Mary Daly of Boston College. Daly was writing Gyn/Ecology at the same time. Raymond’s dissertation became The Transsexual Empire, 1979, and it and Gyn/Ecology cite each other, and both were published by Beacon Press which is associated with the Unitarian Church. In 1978, Raymond became Professor of Women’s Studies and Medical Ethics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Raymond’s position is that transsexual women are not women, and she uses male pronouns for trans women throughout. The Transsexual Empire enthusiastically draws on Thomas Kando’s Sex Change; The Achievement of Gender Identity Among Feminized Transsexuals, 1972, and on Jan Morris’ Conundrum, 1974. Kando restricted his sample to recently-transitioned transsexuals, and Morris wrote within two years of surgery, and so Raymond was easily able to find examples of the gender enthusiasm of new women which she insisted was typical of transsexual women of whatever duration. Raymond says that she supplemented these with 13 direct interviews and found highly stereotypical notions of gender roles, and without the “role strain of normal women”. However Angela Douglas claimed that all the quotes from these 13 are in fact from a letter that Douglas wrote to Raymond. Raymond retells several of the transsexual tales that were in the US press in the 1970s: Angela Douglas’ notorious polemical letter that was a reaction to lesbian separatism; the fuss that some lesbians made about Sandy Stone being the sound engineer at the feminist Olivia Records; Paula Grossman being fired.

She takes the position that sex is determined by the chromosomes and that if XY one is always male, and if XX always female, and secondly that the historical experience of being raised as a girl and menstruating determines a woman. A constructed-woman has only a history of wishing to be a woman. The primary cause of transsexualism is the sex stereotyping of patriarchal society (no biological, psychological or existential causation is considered), and the secondary cause is the professionals, the surgeons, psychiatrists, counselors, electrologists etc who provide services and persuade foolish persons to change (the opposition of the vast majority of male doctors to the first transsexuals is not considered). She never considers that transsexuals themselves regarded the gender-stereotyped requirements of the gender clinics as a problem. Transsexual men are “the tokens that save face for the transsexual empire”, and are barely considered. The patriarchy has introduced sex changes as a means of controlling gender stereotypes, which act in the interests of men. Once extra-natal conception is introduced, biological women will become redundant.

“All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact, and appropriating this body for themselves. [...] Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive”.

In various places she compares gender surgery to foot-binding, clitoridectomy and infibulation, corset mutilation, unnecessary hysterectomies and radical mastectomies. Several times she suggests but just stops short of saying that transsexuality was associated with the Nazis, and the death camps.

Whilst Raymond maintains that male-to-constructed-females are more gender stereotyped than biological woman, worse still are those who attempt to be lesbian-feminists:

"Transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists show yet another face of patriarchy. As the male-to-constructed-female transsexual exhibits the attempt to possess women in a bodily sense while acting out the images into which men have molded women, the male-to-constructed-female who claims to be a lesbian-feminist attempts to possess women at a deeper level, this time under the guise of challenging rather than conforming to the role and behavior of stereotyped femininity”.

Raymond’s call to action:

“I contend that the problem with transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence” .

The book was endorsed in a review by Thomas Szasz which is quoted on both its front and back covers (“Raymond’s development and documentation is flawless”).

Raymond also wrote a paper, Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery, for the US Government. This paper, which is less contentious and inflammatory in its language and thus more superficially plausible, resulted in the removal of US federal and some state aid for indigent and imprisoned transsexuals, and provided an example for insurance companies who were pleased to have a feminist telling them that transsexuality should not be covered. This non-coverage included breast or genital cancer where it could be deemed to be a consequence of transsexual activity.

Carol Riddell wrote the first detailed and critical review of Raymond’s book, and it has been frequently reprinted, which I have drawn upon above.

Through the 1980s gay academics endorsed Raymond’s book. It was admired by Wayne Dynes (“Impassioned radical-feminist critique”) and Jonathan Katz (“The most profound, extended critique of the medical concept of ‘transsexualism’ ”).   Liz Hodgkinson’s Bodyshock: The Truth About Changing Sex, 1987, while being pro-transsexuals, repeatedly returns to Raymond’s book for explanation.

Along with Peter Ackroyd’s Dressing Up, also 1979, Raymond’s book became a de rigueur entry in the bibliography of any 1980s book on trans topics, even though many authors did not actually seem to understand what she was saying.

In 1988, Sandy Stone wrote a manifesto defiantly responding to Raymond.

Unlike the concept of autogynephilia, very few actual transsexuals identified with Raymond’s position, the one exception being Rachael Webb, a lorry driver cum London Councillor who regarded herself as a radical feminist and as a constructed woman.

Raymond’s books in the early 1990s attacked sexual liberalism, contraception in the form of RU486, and the new reproductive technologies.

In 1996, The Transsexual Empire was reissued by Teacher College Press, without any changes although by that time the excessive gender conformity required by gender clinics that she had initially criticized was largely a thing of the past. She expands her criticism in the new Introduction using the new word, ‘transgenderism’, she dismisses gender transgression as a new type of gender conformity, and has specific criticisms of RuPaul, Leslie Feinberg and k.d. lang. So non-surgical gender solutions are not acceptable either as some might have assumed from her book.

In the late 1990s and 2000s there have been a number of trans writers who have used Raymond’s book as if it referred to other transsexuals whom they don’t seem to like, often referred to as ‘autogynephiles’ or ‘transgender’ or ‘men’, although there is no basis for this in Raymond’s writings: she is as critical of the lesbian-feminist constructed female as she is of the gender-stereotyped constructed female. Notable examples are by Margaret O’Hartigan and Cathryn Platine.

From 1994-2007 Raymond was the Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and is still on the Board. She retired as a professor in 2002, and is Professor Emerita. In CATW she is strongly against decriminalization of prostitution which has led several sex worker activists to take issue with her. She talks about prostitution as if trans women and men are never sex workers.

*Not Janice Raymond, Playmate of the Month for December 1974.

• • James M. Johnson. “Catholics Argue Ordination of Women”. The Milwaukee Sentinel. Mar 24, 1973. Online at: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19730324&id=4c0VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=chEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7417,2234260
  • Janice G. Raymond. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. Boston: Beacon Press. 1979. Teachers College Press. 1994.
  • Thomas Szasz, “Male and Female He Created Them: review of The Transsexual Empire: The Making Of The She-Male by Janice G. Raymond”, New York Times Book Review, June 10, 1979: 11, 39. Reprinted in Thomas Szasz. The Therapeutic State. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.. 1984: 327-9.
  • Carol Riddell. “Divided Sisterhood : A Critical Review of Janice Raymond's 'The Transsexual Empire' “. Liverpool: News from Nowhere 1980. Parts 2,3,5 reprinted in Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending genders: social aspects of cross-dressing and sex-changing. London and New York: Routledge. 257 pp. 2002; reprinted in Stephen Whittle & Susan Stryker (eds). The Transgender Studies Reader. Routledge. 752 pp. 2006.
  • Janice G. Raymond. Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery. Paper Prepared for the National Center for Health Care Technology. 1980. Online at: www.susans.org/reference/usts1-9.html, and http://endablog.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/for-those-who-think-a-dressed-up-toned-down-academic-y-touchy-feely-paper-from-a-crackpot-trans-eliminationist-should-just-be-ignored.
  • Jonathan Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac. Harper & Row. 1983: 662n2.
  • Liz Hodgkinson. Bodyshock: The Truth About Changing Sex. London: Columbus Books 1987.
  • Wayne Dynes. Homosexuality: A Research Guide. New York & London: Garland Publishing. xviii, 854 pp. 1987: 620#4049.
  • Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy )Stone. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-transsexual Manifesto”. First presented at Other Voices, Other Worlds: Questioning Gender and Ethnicity, Santa Cruz, CA, 1988. In. Straub, K. and Epstein, J. (eds), Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity. Routledge. 1991. Second version, revised and updated, published in Camera Obscura, Spring 1994. Also online at http://sandystone.com/empire-strikes-back.
  • Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G. Raymond. The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism. The Athene series. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990.
  • Janice Raymond, Renate Klein, and Lynette J. Dumble. RU 486: Misconceptions, Myths, and Morals. Cambridge, Mass: Institute on Women and Technology, 1991.
  • Janice Raymond. Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women's Freedom. HarperSanFrancisco 1993.
  • Terri Webb. “Autobiographical Fragments From a Transsexual Activist”. In Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. London & New York: Routledge 1996.
  • Janice Raymond. “The Politics of Transgenderism”. Introduction to the 1994 edition of The Transsexual Empire. Also in Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. London & New York: Routledge 1996.
  • Pat Califia. Sex changes : the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 92-108.
  • Kay Brown. “Janice G. Raymond, Ph.D.” 1998. Transsexual, Transgender, and Intersex History. Online at: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Rogue%20Theories/Raymond/Transsexual,%20Transgender,%20and%20Intersex%20History__Janice%20Raymond_files/TH_Janice_Raymond.htm .
  • Becky Allison. “Janice Raymond and Autogynephilia”. Dec 16, 1998. www.drbecky.com/raymond.html.
  • Margaret Deirdre O’Hartigan. “Post-modernism marches on: Women's space under continued attack”. Off Our Backs. Aug-Sept 1999. Online at: www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/issues/postmod.html.
  • Dallas Denny. Review of The Transsexual Empire. Amazon.com. April 13, 2002. www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3W2SMQQE3E8OW/ref=cm_cr_dp_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview.
  • Janice Raymond. “10 Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution”. Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International. March 25, 2003. On line at: www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/issues/prostitution_legalizing.html.
  • Dallas Denny. Untitled. Transgender Tapestry. Winter 2004. www.ifge.org/Article244.phtml.
  • Interview with Janice Raymond. Media Watch. 5/5/04. www.mediawatch.com/files/JANICERA.MP3.
  • Cathryn Platine. “Was Janice Raymond Right? Why trans people are often their own worst enemies”. 2007. http://gallae.com/cathy/essay22.html.
  • Helen J. Self. “A response to Janice Raymond’s : ‘10 reasons for ‘Not Legalizing Prostitution”. Rape Relief Shelter. June 2007. http://web.birl.org:3128/resources/content/a-response-to-janice-raymonds-10-reasons-for-not-legalizing-prostitution/at_download/file.
  • Arvan. “Janice Raymond’s Anti-Prostitution Screed Debunked in 2-part Video”. Sexgenderbody. 28 March 2010. http://sexgenderbody.com/content/janice-raymonds-anti-prostitution-screed-debunked-2-part-video.
  • Susan Stryker. Transgender History. Seal Press. 190 pp 2008: 105-113.
  • “Janice Raymond”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janice_Raymond.

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Raymond has kept her personal life quiet.   Her Wikipedia page has a ‘personal life’ section which says that she is a former Catholic and an open lesbian.  There is no mention of her having a wife.  There are two rumours relating to her private life.  I did not include them above because I could not confirm them, but they are very germane to her writings:  that she had a passion for a trans woman but was rebuffed (Denny, 2002);  and that she and Daly were lovers.  Both suggestions partially explain the intensity of her transphobia.

My husband was raised a Catholic and is a graduate of the Jesuit Boston College.  On reading this, his major comment was to explain that many ex-Catholics and lapsed Catholics emphasize the one issue that affects them personally – with Raymond it is the non-ordination of women ( Johnson, 1973) – but continue to agree with the Church on other issues.  Raymond’s position is remarkably congruent with the Church of Rome:  trans woman are not women; abortion is wrong; the new reproductive technologies are wrong.

For all her concern with the “role strain of normal women”, Raymond is indifferent to the role strain of those born male.  Other than feminist  consciousness raising, she rules out – this is made clear in the introduction to the 1994 reprint - any solution that such male-born persons may wish to try: in addition to her proscription of surgical gender change, she also condemns androgynous gender mixing for both men and women.  She denies that women wearing trousers is transvestity  and at the same time denies men any clothing freedom at all.    Like Virginia Prince and some of the HBS people she is insistent that other persons should follow her prescription only and is not interested in what they might think, or in allowing them to be themselves.

I am a woman, therefore I am a feminist.  This is so obvious to  me.  The great expansion of opportunities and freedoms for all women, trans and cis, over the last 50 years is one of the great achievements of the 20th century.  Raymond attempts to present her flavour of feminism as Feminism, as if there were no others.  But of course there are many feminisms.  One of the best statements of how Raymond is an embarrassment to feminism is found in Califia’s book.   As a feminist I also find Raymond embarrassing.  But there are also trans women who say things that I do not like.