Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism
Sheila Jeffreys
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0415539404
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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 increasing acceptance by governments and many other organisations and actors of the legitimacy of these rights.
This provocative and controversial book explores the consequences of these changes and offers a feminist perspective on the ideology and practice of transgenderism, which the author sees as harmful. It explores the effects of transgenderism on the lesbian and gay community, the partners of people who transgender, children who are identified as transgender and the people who transgender themselves, and argues that these are negative. In doing so the book contends that the phenomenon is based upon sex stereotyping, referred to as 'gender' – a conservative ideology that forms the foundation for women's subordination. Gender Hurts argues for the abolition of ‘gender’, which would remove the rationale for transgenderism.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, feminism and feminist theory and gender studies.
World, Not your Body (Dirt from Dirt, n.d.), and many other critical voices. An indication of the campaign being waged against feminist critics by transgender activists is the way that I have been prohibited from speaking not just on this issue, but on any issue at all. I was disinvited from a major feminist conference, ‘Feminism in London’ in November 2011, which, subsequently, did not take place because of concerns about offending transgenders. I was banned from speaking at a feminist
may engage in cutting and piercing as other young people involved in body modification do (Jeffreys, 2000; 2008). Body modifiers have high suicidality and exhibit similar mental health problems to those who transgender (Jeffreys, 2008). Once body modifiers become involved with the medical profession, their self-harm becomes official and is directed by doctors licensed by the state. Doctors may be unlikely to recognise the legitimacy of a man’s desire to be a nullo (i.e. a body modification
using hormones. She thinks that the absence of ‘lesbian role models’ and a ‘proud woman loving culture’ made her susceptible to the idea that she should transgender. It was only when she came across Internet resources created by proud lesbian women, who sought to halt the movement of young lesbians towards transgenderism, that she gradually began to change her mind about the steps she was taking. She gained the confidence to be a lesbian who eschewed femininity, rather than thinking she must
that time, lesbians explain that there was no option to identifying as butch or femme, and lesbians who were not identifiable were derided (Jennings, 2006: 218). Historian, Rebecca Jennings, explains that in role playing etiquette ‘strict codes of behaviour structured who might dance with whom’ and ‘established boundaries, defining who was sexually available to whom’. This paralleled the rules of heterosexuality, ‘a similar organizational function to that provided by notions of gender in
transgender Transgenderism can act as a safety valve for women’s indignation. Instead of working collectively to create social change, they can choose to change only themselves, though with considerable consequences for others, and can seek to escape one by one. Meanwhile, the attraction of this form of escape depends upon women’s status remaining low, otherwise there would be no incentive for social climbing. It is important that feminists and lesbians oppose the normalisation of the