Transgender Activism

Abstract

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 paper argues that “transgenderism” is also deeply problematic from a feminist perspective and that transsexualism should be seen as a violation of human rights.