The Transsexual Empire

“Raymond investigates the role of transsexualism in society – particularly psychological and surgical approaches to it – and argues that transsexualism reinforces traditional gender stereotypes. Raymond also writes about the ways in which the medical-psychiatric complex is medicalizing gender identity and the social and political context that has helped spawn transsexual treatment and surgery as normal and therapeutic medicine. Raymond maintains that transsexualism is based on the “patriarchal myths” of “male mothering”, and “making of woman according to man’s image”. She claims this is done in order “to colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and sexuality”, adding: “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves …. Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive.”