Janice Raymond | |
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| Born | Janice G. Raymond (1943-01-24)January 24, 1943 (age 82) |
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| Employer | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| Notable work | The Transsexual Empire (1979) |
| Website | janiceraymond |
Janice G. Raymond (born January 24, 1943)[citation needed] is an Americanradical feminist activist and professoremerita ofwomen's studies andmedical ethics at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. She is known for her work against violence, sexual exploitation, and medical abuse of women, and for her controversial work denouncingtranssexuality.
Raymond is the author of five books, includingThe Transsexual Empire (1979). She has published numerous articles onprostitution and lectures internationally on many of these topics via theCoalition Against Trafficking in Women.[1] Her opposition torights for trans women and calls for theirdisenfranchisement have been criticized by many (from mainstream media to theLGBT and feminist communities) astransphobic.[2][3][4][5][6]
Raymond received a BA in English literature fromSalve Regina College in 1965, a master's degree in religious studies fromAndover Newton Theological School in 1971, and her PhD in ethics and society fromBoston College in 1977.[citation needed]
Raymond is professor emerita of women's studies and medical ethics at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. She was a faculty member at theUniversity of Massachusetts inAmherst from 1978 on. When she retired from the university in 2002,the Boston Globe included her among the several "marquee talents" lost to the campus.[7]
Since 2000, Raymond has also served as an adjunct professor of international health atBoston University School of Public Health.[8] She has been a faculty member of the Five Colleges (Amherst College,Hampshire College,Mount Holyoke College,Smith College and theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst) Professor ofWomen's Studies andMedical Ethics (1975–78), visiting research scholar at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (1990–91), visiting professor at theUniversity of Linkoping in Sweden (1995), and lecturer at theSunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Center for Women Studies, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2002).[citation needed]
From 1994 to 2007, Raymond was the co-executive director of theCoalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW).[1] She is currently on the board of directors of CATW.[1]
During her tenure, CATW expanded its international work, especially in theBaltics and in Eastern Europe.[1]
In January 2004, Raymond testified before theEuropean Parliament on "The Impact of the Sex Industry in the EU." In 2003, Raymond testified before a subcommittee of theUnited States Congress on "The Ongoing Tragedy of International Slavery and Human Trafficking." She was an NGO member of the U.S. Delegation to the Asian Regional Initiative Against the Trafficking of Women and Children (ARIAT), Manila, the Philippines, hosted by the governments of the Philippines and the United States. In 1999–2000, as an NGO representative to the UN Transnational Crime Committee, in Vienna, she helped define the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.[1]
Raymond is a former member of theSisters of Mercy.[9] She left the convent[10] and became open about her lesbianism.[11][12] As of 2016, she and her partner, Pat Hynes, an alumna ofChestnut Hill College, had been together for 42 years.[13]
In 2007, Raymond received the "International Woman Award, 2007" from the Zero Tolerance Trust, in Glasgow, Scotland.[14]
In 1986, Raymond's bookA Passion for Friends: a Philosophy of Female Friendship was named the best non-fiction book of the year by the UK magazine, City Limits.[15]
Raymond has been the recipient of grants from theU.S. Department of State, the U.S.National Institute of Justice, theFord Foundation, theUnited States Information Agency, theNational Science Foundation, the Norwegian Organization for Research and Development (NORAD), andUNESCO.[1]
In her 1993 book,Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women's Freedom, Raymond examined how reducing infertility to a disease in the West has helped to promote the use of new reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy. At the same time, women's fertility is rejected in the East promoting technologies of forced sterilization, sex predetermination and female feticide. The book was one of the first to look at the international reproductive trafficking of women and children as organized by the adoption, organ and surrogacy trade.[16]
Women as Wombs, as K. Kaufman wrote in theSan Francisco Chronicle, "is a strongly written, carefully reasoned critique of ...'reproductive liberalism'."[16] Beverly Miller ofLibrary Journal stated that "...it is hard to resist her conclusion that many reproductive experiments can represent another form of violence against women."[17]
Raymond's 1986 book,A Passion for Friends: a Philosophy of Female Affection, deviates from her work on medical technologies into the realm of feminist friendship as a basis for a broader feminist theory and politics.Carolyn Heilbrun inThe Women's Review of Books wrote: "Hers is a brave undertaking, and she begins by facing the central issue of women's friendships: the necessary relation of these friendships to power and the public sphere...Raymond's is the most probing and honorable discussion of female friendships we have..."[18] Published also in a UK edition,A Passion for Friends received the City Limits award for the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1986.[15] NovelistJeanette Winterson wrote that "It's a complex, food-for thought book that rewards the time and concentration that it needs."[19]
In 1979, Raymond published a book ontranssexualism calledThe Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male.[20] Controversial even today, it looked at the role of transsexualism – particularly psychological and surgical approaches to it – in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes, the ways in which the medical-psychiatric complex is medicalizing "gender identity" and the social and political context that has helped spawn transsexual treatment and surgery as normal and therapeutic medicine.
Raymond maintains that transsexualism is based on the "patriarchal myths" of "male mothering," and "making of woman according to man's image." She claims this is done in order "to colonizefeminist identification, culture, politics andsexuality," adding: "All transsexualsrape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves… Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive."[21] In 2014, Raymond expressed regret for having made this comparison, stating that "rape was not a proper metaphor because it minimized the distinct meaning of rape."[22]
These views ontranssexuality have been criticized by many in theLGBT and feminist communities as extremelytransphobic and as constituting hate-speech against transsexual men and women.[2][3][4][5]
InThe Transsexual Empire, Raymond includes sections onSandy Stone, a trans woman who had worked as a sound engineer forOlivia Records, and Christy Barsky, accusing both of creating divisiveness in women's spaces.[23] These writings have been heavily criticized as personal attacks on these individuals.[24] In response, Stone wrote her 1987 essay, "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto".
In 2021, Raymond'sDoublethink: A Feminist Challenge to Transgenderism was published. A positive review by Claire Heuchan was published in thegender critical publicationLesbian and Gay News. Heuchan wrote, "With a directness that is characteristic of her work, Raymond cuts through the culture of fear and intellectual dishonesty that defines many discussions around gender identity.[25]
In 2000, Raymond co-published one of the first studies on trafficking in the United States entitledSex Trafficking in the United States: Links Between International and Domestic Sex Industries.[26] In 2002, she directed and co-authored a multi-country project in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States, entitledWomen in the International Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation.[27]
Among the many articles she has published, her work entitled "Ten Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution and a Legal Response to the Demand for Prostitution"[28] has been translated into over 10 languages. This essay looks at the legislative models that have legalized or decriminalized the prostitution industry and the rationales supporting them, and argues that legitimating the sex trade has made its harm to women invisible. Raymond supports the alternative legal model of rejecting legalization and decriminalization of the sex industry, and penalizing buyers of sex while not arresting prostitutes.[28]
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