Janice Raymond:Transsexual Empire 4

Chapter III

This chapter packs a lot in so I will devote an entire post to it. Raymond covers the way mothers are blamed for their “transsexual” son and daughters. She then unpicks the way stereotypical sex (ist) role expectations shape the “trans” narrative. The “fathers” of this ideology are steeped in sexist assumptions about women and normative expectations for their male subjects. The “mothers” are to blame and the male architects of this ideology are blameless or, even worse, heroes for rescuing these “defective” males (according to their ideology, not mine) and providing a role for them.

The “transsexual” subject is expected to perform woman face effectively, to access medical treatment; they must “pass” as women to be allowed the feminising treatments. It is worth noting that this “passing” includes using women’s spaces thus pressing women into service as, unwitting /unwilling validation aids.

Robert Stoller is one of the male figures behind this ideology. He also “blames the mother”.

Apparently we are afflicted with penis envy, we are dominant and assertive and we project our envy onto our sons.

The fathers are absent and the marriages are failing. Not because of the absent father but because of the dominant, assertive or depressed mother. We are also to blame if this afflicts the daughter.

Richard Green puts more emphasis on the role of peers in the making of the “transsexual” child.

We don’t escape criticism entirely. Now we are too prone to providing our child with a surfeit of emotional support, co-sleeping etc. Every generation the rules about what makes a good mother change which serves to make every generation “wrong” and severs contact with the previous generation of mothers; who have their advice dismissed as old-fashioned. The absent father is a repetitive theme but he seems to escape the opprobrium dished out to the mothers, quelle surprise!

Green also espouses biological causes for the condition which, I imagine, is also the mothers fault for having an inhospitable womb. He also considers that societal acceptance of a “deviant sexuality” plays a role; by which he means homosexuality.

It is the lack of acceptance for the homosexual male that is also a driver for the wish to be “female” and Green speculates that increasing societal acceptance may lessen this desire.

It’s a tragedy that, rather than fighting for real acceptance of homosexuals, organisations like Stonewall pivoted to “trans activism” thereby introducing a new homophobia into the purported “gay rights” struggle.

This point and Raymond’s note are tragic in the consequences for our gay boys, now on the Turing Treatment rather than embraced as the gay men they are.

“Transsexual” voices.

Raymond quotes extensively from a study by Thomas Kando on “transsexuals”. As a group they show the greatest respect for males and express highly regressive perspectives on women. Below is an interesting footnote on the laws surrounding prostitution in 1970’s Louisiana. 😳

The “transsexuals” in Kando’s study aspire to roles they equate with femininity. Here is a sample: 👇

They tend to embody sex stereotypes and express hostility and competition with women; a competition in which they can present themselves as the likely victor, as if man made women are the superior kind.

Their need to be validated involves an adherence to sexist stereotypes in order to sharply differentiate themselves from men.

Take Jan Morris who was a married father and successful journalist before embracing his “inner” woman. The concept of autogynephilia doesn’t appear in Transsexual Empire but may make an appearance in Raymond’s new book “Doublethink”. Morris seemed to meet a lot of the diagnostic criteria. Here he is talking out his new life and celebrating the sexual objectification at the hands of a man.

There were a lot of fawning interviews with Morris by women who regard themselves as feminists. I was astonished how blatant his sexism was in his book Conundrum, but to be fair, to his female interviewers, many of us were late to understand autogynephilia.

One of the participants, without a trace of awareness, expressed their views about child rearing again emphasising how deeply they adhere to sex stereotypes.

Still another expressed blatant homophobia. Something I have seen expressed a lot in this context. It seems having the “trans” label allows a man to say he is only attracted to “straight” men and get a free pass, despite what this betrays about their attitude to homosexuals. The men have to be men who are attracted to women to validate the male to female constructed “transsexual”.

Such attitudes are not uncommon as exemplified by Juno Dawson who described his fiancé as “straight” and once argued being a gay man was a consolation prize for those not “transitioned”.

Kando concludes that “transsexuals” are reactionary in their views. The “Uncle Toms” of the gender wars.

Raymond writes that Kando does not seem to appreciate the significance of his findings. His subjects have just swapped one set of stereotypes for another leaving society wholly unchanged. In part the gender industrial complex shares the blame because adopting a stereotypical performance “as a woman” was part of the process of being accepted for surgery. If it is the stereotypes that give rise to the condition of “transsexualism” propping them up will perpetuate “gender dysphoria”. It is, sadly, far easier to blame the mother than to tackle the deep rooted sex sterotypes that burden women and even men.

A Lesbian speaks.

Even in 1973 there had were Lesbians opposing the infiltration of “feminised” males into Lesbian spaces. Here is Robin Morgan speaking out. 👇

Raymond makes it clear, in this chapter, that the “transsexual” project is antithetical to women’s rights. It shores up the patriarchal norms used to limit women’s lives. Men who choose this role and claim it is the only way to be an authentic “woman” are men’s rights activists.

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