Book Review: The Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male

By Al Preston

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            Warnings: the topics of transphobia, body parts will be discussed.

            Sometimes, as you research a topic, you’ll run across an important source that you do not and cannot agree with morally. A source that’s so against your own morals and ethics that you’re horrified and angry all at once. You can’t believe that people actually thought that way.

            Despite that, you have to realize that different points of time are vastly different from the time in which you currently live. In the past, they both knew better and didn’t care. They had convinced themselves that they were morally right through a variety of mental gymnastics. We as ‘modern’ people have different morals and beliefs. That does not excuse the horrible things of the past, but it can teach us about the times and how we have progressed and where we are trying to go.

            On a semi-rare occasion, you’ll find a source that you can simultaneously agree with and be absolutely disgusted by. Where the author was just so close to hitting the nail on the head and glances off of it instead. This book is one of those sources.

            Published in 1979, The Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male by Janice Raymond is a piece of second wave feminist work specifically from radical lesbian feminists. It is a record of the opinions of radical lesbian feminists had about transgender people. Specifically transgender women.

            They were not good opinions.

            Second wave feminists had a number of goals when they started gathering in the 1960s. Since acquiring the right to vote, women had been increasingly entering the workforce at all levels, not just those at poor economic standing. Lower class folks always found a way for every member of the family to make money. Women had always been a part of the workforce, it was especially true after both of the World Wars.

            Suddenly, women were getting higher educations and higher positions as World War Two approached its end. Those women tried to ensure that they could keep those positions when the men returned from war. When the soldiers did return, women didn’t lose their jobs, but they were systematically disadvantaged in other ways.

            They were relegated to jobs that suited their ‘womanly’ natures more. Middle class women were told to want to seek being homemakers rather than breadwinners. Paid less and given terrible treatment, women were doing the same work as men with a lot less security. Sexual harassment and empty promises were prevalent.

            What started as a fight for equality quickly picked up radical momentum as women realized just how marginalized they were. How little they were allowed to do; how much men could do.

            From equal opportunity to equal treatment, women began to demand their rights as citizens of the United States and as people. Some rather radical theories about how society should function started to come along as well.

            One of those theories was that gender holds no meaning. It is a socially constructed thing designed to benefit only men. Men and women had only one difference between them, and it was their genitals. Women were just as capable as men at everything. Gender didn’t dictate what someone would like or want to do with their life. Therefore, gender should not exist at all.

            In our modern eyes, one might think second wave feminists would see transgender people as proof of concept. If people could feel and transition between the genders, then the role of genders in their society really shouldn’t impact how capable people were at different tasks. Sadly, that’s not what happened. Raymond’s work is a good show of that.

            Raymond wrote The Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male to prove why transgender women were an evil creation of society designed to line doctor’s pockets with gold and plant spies into women’s ranks. To quote Raymond;

“Loss of a penis, however, does not mean the loss of an ability to penetrate women—women’s identities, women’s spirits, women’s sexuality. As Mary Daly has noted, their whole presence becomes a ‘member’ invading women’s presence to each other and once more producing horizontal violence. Thus the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist not only colonizes female bodies but appropriates a feminist ‘soul.’”

            Raymond’s argument completely ignored why transgender people are transgender. However, this is where we have to critically consider the time and place Raymond was writing. For starters, Raymond and many other feminists had been a part of labor parties or gay activist groups which had literal spies from the government planted within their ranks.

            Secondly, the concept of gender dysphoria was brand new at this time. Doctors were trying to understand why transgender people felt the way that they did and found that they felt a great amount of distress at their bodies not matching their mental gender. Since this was so new, it was rather hard to believe that anyone would feel that sort of discomfort with their bodies.

            Raymond’s main argument was that the medical field was doing no one any favors, encouraging people to think they were anything other than their biological gender. Instead, all doctors wanted was to make money off of those people and experiment with replacing women entirely. She constantly called transgender women “man-made” or “manufactured” women. The men of the world were making transgender women to push ‘natural’ women into their stereotypical roles and replace the radical feminists trying to break the mold. Giving transgender women vaginas was just one step towards destroying the one unique thing women had.

            This all sounds a bit…hypocritical, doesn’t it? Weren’t feminists at this time arguing that other than biology, men and women weren’t any different and therefore should be equal? Why would it matter, then, if transgender women were given vaginas or made themselves comfortable in their bodies?

            Here’s another thing we have to be aware of, we of the future had time to really understand these theories and ideas. We can really conceptualize that gender is meaningless. For these feminists, it was a very new idea and that they were coming to grips with. Additionally, they also had to acknowledge that a genderless world was not the one in which they lived, therefore transgender women served a purpose in the gendered society.

            All that said, it still sounds rather paranoid, doesn’t it? Like any other conspiracy theory, it was looking for answers in all the wrong places and ignoring the fundamental truths. It marginalized an entire people and demonized them.

            Still, it’s a rather horrific and cruel theory to have. So, I would never agree with anything Raymond was saying, right?

            Well, there’s a nugget of truth in this work. There’s a moment where I can see Raymond almost hitting the nail on the head. Gender is, after all, a social construct. Raymond and other feminists were so against transgender people for another reason and that reason was that if we, as a society, were to be truly genderless, transgender people wouldn’t exist.

            Fundamentally…that’s true. If society was genderless, there would be no reason to transition through genders because there wouldn’t be any genders. People would be identified by their identity rather than their body shapes and clothes. It’s hard to think about, right? A society where gender does not matter? How would they address each other? How would they identify themselves? Refer to themselves?

            The difference between myself and Raymond is that I see transgender people as proof of that theory. Gender is meaningless beyond preferred aesthetic. Our minds and identities make us who we are, not our genitals. As we currently are, the only way I see us achieving a genderless society is to allow free movement between what we conceive as gendered appearances.

            This is the hard part of historical research and work. You will read some wild and crazy opinions and have to acknowledge how wrong it is while also trying to understand where the belief came from. Even the most vile opinion has some worth to historical context, allowing us to understand where bigotry has come from so we can more easily fight against it.

            People are inherently confusing and complicated. They can be both wrong and right at the same time. Nothing in this world is totally black or white. People grow and change and learn and experience. Many of the feminists who used to believe these theories have realized how wrong and cruel they were.

            The Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male is a show of how sources and authors are biased and are influenced by the time in which they live. Raymond was wrong about a lot, but also had some good ideas buried under it all.

            If we only read and engage with things we agree with, then we will be unable to truly learn and understand the world. We will not be able to understand each other and make real, good progress for the better. Eventually, if we only read what we agree with, we become just as bad as the people we disagree with.

            As unpleasant as it is to engage with horrific and cruel beliefs, ignoring them is to ignore the fact that people do actually believe them. If you want to have a chance at changing people’s minds, you have to understand where their beliefs come from and meet them at their level. If we’re all screaming our beliefs at each other without once listening, then no one is able to learn or do anything.

            That said, I would not recommend The Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male to folks who are triggered by transphobic language and concepts. If you are not, I would recommend it alongside a book like Gender Queer or Transgender History to offset Raymond’s theories.

             As always, critical reading is necessary to apply to everything you see and read. Maybe you’ll have a different take on Raymond’s work than me. I’m always happy to hear it!