FTM Transsexualism and Grief
In “Pornography and Grief” Andrea Dworkin writes very powerfully about the impact upon her of having to look at so much pornography in order to write about it. The horror of the pain, destruction, and just pure run of the mill hatred towards women inspired grief in her (Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, 1988). […]
The politics of the toilet: A feminist response to the campaign to ‘degender’ a women’s space
“This article is a feminist response to the campaigning activism and queer and transgender theory which promotes the ‘degendering’ of public toilets. This campaign originates in the demands of men who transgender to access women’s toilets. Activists argue that sex segregation of toilets is the result of nineteenth century moralism and is a discriminatory practice. […]
Enforcing Men’s Sexual Rights in International Human Rights Law – June 2018
Why International? Talk given at We Need to Talk, June 2018 “I am going to talk today about why it is important to think internationally when dealing with the threat posed by men’s crossdressing activism (commonly called the transgender rights movement) to women’s human rights. In the UK the feminist resistance has been growing exponentially […]
The Politics of the Toilet: A feminist response to the ‘degendering’ of a women’s space
This article is a feminist response to the campaigning activism and queer and transgender theory which promotes the ‘degendering’ of public toilets. This campaign originates in the demands of men who transgender to access women’s toilets. Activists argue that sex segregation of toilets is the result of nineteenth century moralism and is a discriminatory practice. […]
The Transgendering of Children: Gender Eugenics
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 […]
Comment on harmful practices: the transgendering of children as a harmful emerging practice in Australia –
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 […]
The McCarthyism of Transgender and the Sterilization of Transgender Children – April 2011
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 […]
They Know it When They See It: The UK Gender Recognition Act 2004.
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 […]
Judicial child abuse: The family court of Australia, gender identity disorder, and the ‘Alex’ case
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 […]
Transgender Activism: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective
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 […]