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 […]

This article argues that the emerging practice of transgendering children should be seen as a form of gender eugenics which has similarities with the practice of sexual surgeries carried out as a result of eugenics ideas in the early twentieth century. In the earlier period those suffering severe poverty, homosexuals, criminals, people with mental health […]

MM: What is your perspective on transgenderism? SJ: I understand transgenderism to be a diagnosis of the medical profession constructed in the late 20th century … it seems to have come from work that was being done by sexologists in the mid 20th century when the sexological profession – endocrinologists and so on – invented […]

“The practice of eugenics is returning to contemporary Australia in the treatment of transgendered children. With the cooperation of the Family Court, children as young as ten are being put on puberty delaying drugs after being diagnosed with “gender identity disorder” or “gender dysphoria”. There is the expectation that they will be moved onto cross-sex hormones at […]

Comment by Sheila Jeffreys addressed to Chairperson of CEDAW and Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, May 2011. “The practice of transgendering children is on the rise in Australia and internationally and should be understood as an “emerging” harmful cultural practice. In this practice children are diagnosed by psychiatrists as suffering […]

A brief excerpt from Sheila Jeffreys addressing the McCarthyism of Transgender and the Sterilization of Transgender Children is transcribed below. Podcast available here.    “Radical feminist theory was and is particularly revolutionary because it means a total transformation of male domination. So it means the removal of it at its most basic level. It means […]

This article is a critical feminist analysis of the UK Gender Recognition Act of 2004. This Act is radical in enabling transgenders to gain certificates recognising their new ‘acquired gender’ without undergoing hormonal or surgical treatment. The Act has considerable implications for marriage, for motherhood and fatherhood, for women who are the partners of men […]

In April 2004, the Family Court of Australia made the decision that a 13-year-old girl, said to be suffering from gender identity disorder (GID), should be treated as a boy and embark upon a course of female hormone treatment to suppress menstruation. The treatment is expected to change to the administration of male hormones at […]

Feminist analysis of transsexualism such as that of Janice Raymond has seen it as a deeply conservative phenomenon in which surgical mutilation is employed to maintain the genders of male dominance and female subordination. Transsexualism has a new face in the nineties in “transgenderism” which employs queer and postmodern theory to render transsexualism progressive. This […]

This article suggests that the developing field of lesbian and gay studies shows a likelihood to discriminate against the interests of lesbians and certainly against lesbian feminist theory, through the incorporation of a ‘queer’ perspective. Recent writings in the field suggest that ‘queer’ theory and politics are and should be based on the celebration of […]