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Janice G. Raymond (born January 24, 1943) is an American lesbian Radical feminism and professor Emeritus of women's studies and medical ethics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is known for her work against violence, sexual exploitation, and medical abuse of women, and for her controversial work denouncing transsexuality.
Raymond is the author of five books, including The Transsexual Empire (1979). She has published numerous articles on prostitution and lectures internationally on many of these topics via the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Her opposition to rights for trans women and calls for their disenfranchisement have been criticized by many (from mainstream media to the LGBT and feminist communities) as Transphobia.
Since 2000, Raymond has also served as an adjunct professor of international health at Boston University School of Public Health. She has been a faculty member of the Five Colleges (Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst) Professor of Women's Studies and Medical Ethics (1975–78), visiting research scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1990–91), visiting professor at the University of Linkoping in Sweden (1995), and lecturer at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Center for Women Studies, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2002).
During her tenure, CATW expanded its international work, especially in the Baltics and in Eastern Europe.
In January 2004, Raymond testified before the European Parliament on "The Impact of the Sex Industry in the EU." In 2003, Raymond testified before a subcommittee of the United 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.
In 1986, Raymond's book A Passion for Friends: a Philosophy of Female Friendship was named the best non-fiction book of the year by the UK magazine, City Limits.City Limits, October 16–23, 1986, p. 93.
Raymond has been the recipient of grants from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. National Institute of Justice, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Norwegian Organization for Research and Development (NORAD), and UNESCO.
Women as Wombs, as K. Kaufman wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, "is a strongly written, carefully reasoned critique of ...'reproductive liberalism'." Beverly Miller of Library Journal stated that "...it is hard to resist her conclusion that many reproductive experiments can represent another form of violence against women."Beverly Miller, Book Review of Women as Wombs, Library Review, November 1, 1993.
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 in The 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..."Carolyn Heilbrun, "The Future of Friendship," The Women's Review of Books, June 1986. Published also in a UK edition, A Passion for Friends received the City Limits award for the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1986. Novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote that "It's a complex, food-for thought book that rewards the time and concentration that it needs."Jeanette Winterson, Short Review of A Passion for Friends, Time Out, June 4–10, 1986.
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 colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and human sexuality," adding: "All transsexuals rape 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."Raymond, Janice. (1994). The Transsexual Empire, p. 104 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."
These views on transsexuality have been criticized by many in the LGBT and feminist communities as extremely transphobic and as constituting hate-speech against transsexual men and women.Julia Serano (2007) Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, pp. 233–234
In The Transsexual Empire, Raymond includes sections on Sandy Stone, a trans woman who had worked as a sound engineer for Olivia Records, and Christy Barsky, accusing both of creating divisiveness in women's spaces.Raymond, Janice. (1994). The Transsexual Empire, pp. 101–102. These writings have been heavily criticized as personal attacks on these individuals.Hubbard, Ruth, 1996, "Gender and Genitals: Constructs of Sex and Gender," in Social Text 46/47, p. 163. In response, Stone wrote her 1987 essay, "".
In 2021, Raymond's Doublethink: A Feminist Challenge to Transgenderism was published. A positive review by Claire Heuchan was published in the gender critical publication Lesbian 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.
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" 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.
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