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By Root 1871 0

bias, her book is itself anchored in ideology, the ideology of lesbian separatism. Reading the book today, one is struck not only by the vitriol of Raymond’s argument, but also by its profound paranoia. One senses that under Raymond’s rage lies a deep fear of men and an unwillingness to believe that any person born (and socialized) as a male can ever be “cured” of the desire to impose his will on women. As Tom Kennard notes, describing his years as a lesbian-feminist separatist, “Women, good. Men, bad.”

A generation after the publication of The Transsexual Empire, that view seems comically simplistic, as does another of Raymond’s core arguments—that transsexuals are, as a group, “more royal than the king” in adhering to stereotypical gender roles. Transgendered and transsexual people today (particularly young people) express a sometimes bewildering range of gender identities and roles. For example, around the time I began working on this project a friend sent me an e-mail survey he had received from a Washington, D.C., area support group, which inquired:

Do you identify as transgendered, transsexual, transvestite, cross-dresser, trangenderist, genderqueer, FTM/F2M, MTF, M2F, trans-man, transwoman, transperson, third-gendered, gendertrash, gender outlaw, gender warrior, trans, transfag, transdyke, tranny, passing woman/girl, drag king, drag queen, male lesbian, girl boy, boychick, boy girl, boy dyke, gender-bender, gender blender, transqueer, androgynous, transfolk, butch dyke, nelly fag, gender-different, gender subversive, man/boy with a vagina, chick with a dick, shape-shifter, he-she, she-male, transboy, transgirl, androgyne, gender variant, genderfucker, trannyfag, trannyqueer, trannydyke, Two Spirit, new man, new woman, she-bear, Tomboy, intersexual/female guy, tranz, bearded female, herm, hermaphrodite, MTM/M2M, FTF/F2F, un-gendered, agendered, genderfree, bigendered, midgendered, polygen-dered, pangendered, omnigendered, crossgendered, byke, boi, pre-op, post-op, non-op, no-ho, epicene, othergendered, transkid, female impersonator, gender-atypical, ambigendered … or any other related term not on this list?

As this list illustrates, if gender-variant people agree about anything these days, it is about their right to express their identitities and to label themselves (or not label themselves) in any way they choose. But even as Raymond was writing about the tendency of transsexual people to adopt highly conservative views of gender to placate their medical masters, individuals and groups were beginning to challenge that perspective. During the late sixties and early seventies, transsexual people, like almost everyone else, began questioning traditional gender norms—and were consequently liberated from the view that doctors and researchers were the primary authority on transsexuals and transsexualism. The Transsexual Action Organization—founded in Los Angeles in 1970 by Angela Douglas—for example, was a radical group that, like the Gay Liberation Front, stood shoulder to shoulder with other revolutionaries working to change American society and that viewed the system, and not the (transsexual or transgendered) individual, as the problem. “I have a newspaper article in my files by Angela Douglas from ‘70 or ‘71 that calls for ‘transgender liberation now’ and provides a whole political critique of the gender system,” says Susan Stryker. “She was fairly self-aware in saying ‘the things that are fucked up about me are the result of oppression, and I have a critique of the conditions that have produced me as I am.’”

Douglas was not the only transsexual or transgendered person connecting her own oppression to a broader social critique, says Stryker. “There are some interesting connections between the antiwar movement and the transgender movement,” she says. “I think it’s not coincidental that these were the height of the war years, and that there is a relationship, particularly in what male-to-female transsexual people were able to accomplish, and a larger cultural imperative to fuck with masculinity, at least from the