Janice Raymond
Encyclopedia
Janice G. Raymond is a longtime feminist activist against violence, sexual exploitation and the "medical abuse" of cissexual
Cissexual
Cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned"...

 women, as well as for her writings and activism against transsexualism
Transsexualism
Transsexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...

. She is also the author of five books and multiple articles, translated into several languages, on issues ranging among transsexualism
Transsexualism
Transsexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...

, violence against women
Violence against women
Violence against women is a technical term used to collectively refer to violent acts that are primarily or exclusively committed against women...

, women’s health, feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...

 and bio-medicine. She has published numerous articles on prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 and sex trafficking. She lectures internationally on many of these topics via Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women is an international non-governmental organization opposing human trafficking, prostitution, and other forms of commercial sex.-Views:...

.

Academic career

Janice G. Raymond is professor emerita
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...

 of women's studies
Women's studies
Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...

 and medical ethics
Medical ethics
Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...

 at the University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...

 in Amherst
Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,819, making it the largest community in Hampshire County . The town is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts...

. She was a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...

 in Amherst
Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,819, making it the largest community in Hampshire County . The town is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts...

 from 1978 on. When she retired from the University in 2002, the Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...

 included her among the several “marquee talents” lost to the campus.

Since 2000, Raymond has also served as an Adjunct Professor of International Health at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

’s School of Public Health. She has been the Five College (Amherst
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, Mt. Holyoke, Smith and the University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts
This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...

) Professor of Women’s Studies and Medical Ethics
Medical ethics
Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...

 (1975–78), Visiting Research Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 (1990–91), Visiting Professor at the University of Linkoping in Sweden (1995), and Lecturer at the State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN Sunan Kalijaga), Center for Women Studies, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2002).

Advocacy work

From 1994–2007, Raymond was the Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women is an international non-governmental organization opposing human trafficking, prostitution, and other forms of commercial sex.-Views:...

 (CATW). She is currently on the Board of Directors of CATW.

Through her work with CATW, Janice Raymond has been a leader in the campaign to recognize prostitution as violence against women and one of the worst forms of gender inequality
Gender inequality
Gender inequality refers to disparity between individuals due to gender. Gender is constructed both socially through social interactions as well as biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences. Gender systems are often dichotomous and hierarchical; binary gender...

. This has included testifying internationally to oppose the legalization of the sex industry, to advocate for governments to provide services and alternatives for women in prostitution and to legislate against the purchase of women and children for sexual activities.

During her tenure, CATW expanded its international work, especially in the Baltics and in eastern and southern European countries including Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

, Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

, Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

 and Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

. Especially, she supported innovative prevention projects that discourage the demand for prostitution – a root cause of sex trafficking, challenging young men to a different standard of masculinity, and enlisting them in the campaign against sexual exploitation. Janice Raymond has also served as an expert witness to legal challenges promoting decriminalization of the sex industry.

In January 2004, Dr. Raymond testified before the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...

 on “The Impact of the Sex Industry in the EU.” In 2003, Raymond testified before a subcommittee of the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 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.

Personal life

Janice Raymond is a former member of the Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy
The Religious Order of the Sisters of Mercy is an order of Catholic women founded by Catherine McAuley in Dublin, Ireland, in 1831. , the order has about 10,000 members worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations....

. She later left the convent and is now an open lesbian.

Education

Janice Raymond received a Ph.D. in Ethics and Society from Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

 in 1977, her Masters in Religious Studies from Andover Newton Theological School
Andover Newton Theological School
Andover Newton Theological School is a graduate school and seminary located in Newton, Massachusetts. It is America's oldest graduate seminary and the nation's first graduate institution of any kind...

 in 1971, and her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Salve Regina College in 1965.

Awards and honors

In 2007, Dr. Raymond received the “International Woman Award, 2007” from the Zero Tolerance Trust, in Glasgow, Scotland.

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.

Raymond has been the recipient of grants from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. National Institute of Justice
National Institute of Justice
The National Institute of Justice is the research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. NIJ, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics , Bureau of Justice Assistance , Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention , Office for Victims of Crime ,...

, the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

, the United States Information Agency
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency , which existed from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to "public diplomacy". In 1999, USIA's broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors, and its exchange and non-broadcasting information functions were...

, the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

, the Norwegian Organization for Research and Development (NORAD), and UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

.

Publications

In her 1993 book, Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom, Dr. 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.

Women as Wombs, as the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer wrote, “is a strongly written, carefully reasoned critique of ...’reproductive liberalism’.” The Library Journal reviewer stated that “...it is hard to resist her conclusion that many reproductive experiments can represent another form of violence against women.”

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...” 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.”

Writings on transsexualism and accusations of transphobia

In 1979, Raymond published a book on transsexualism
Transsexualism
Transsexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...

 called The Transsexual Empire: the making of the she-male. 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 colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...

," adding: "All transsexuals rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

 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."

These views on transsexuality have been criticized by many in the LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 and feminist communities as extremely transphobic, and indeed constituting hate-speech against transsexual men and women.

In The Transsexual Empire Janice Raymond includes sections on Sandy Stone, a transwoman who had worked as a sound engineer for Olivia Records
Olivia Records
Olivia Records was a collective founded in 1973 to record and market women's music. Olivia, named after the heroine of a pulp novel by Dorothy Bussy who fell in love with her headmistress at French boarding school, was the brainchild of ten lesbian-feminists living in Washington, DC who wanted to...

, and Christy Barsky, accusing both of creating divisiveness in women's spaces. These writings have been heavily criticized as personal attacks on these individuals.

Writings on prostitution and sex trafficking

In 2000, Raymond co-published one of the first studies on trafficking in the United States entitled Sex Trafficking in the United States: Links Between International and Domestic Sex Industries. In 2002, she directed and co-authored a multi-country project in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States, entitled Women in the International Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation.

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 an 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 the male demand for buying women and children for sexual exploitation.

Books

  • Raymond J. The Transsexual Empire (1979 and 1994; reprinted by Teachers College, Columbia University, New York; Editions du Seuil, Paris)
  • Raymond J. A Passion for Friends (1986 and 2001: Beacon Press, Boston; the Women's Press, London; Frauenoffensive, Munich; reprinted by Spinifex Press, Melbourne)
  • Raymond J. RU 486: Misconceptions, Myths and Morals (1991: Spinifex Press, Melbourne; Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg; Narigrantha Prabartan, Dhaka, Bangladesh)
  • Raymond J. Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women's Freedom (1993: HarperSanFrancisco; Spinifex Press, Melbourne; Frauenoffensive, Munich)
  • The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism by Dorchen Leidholdt
    Dorchen Leidholdt
    Dorchen A. Leidholdt is an activist and leader in the feminist movement against violence against women. Since the mid-1970s, she has counseled and advocated for rape victims, organized against "the media’s promotion of violence against women", served on the legal team for the plaintiff in a...

     and Janice Raymond, published 1990 by Pergammon Press ISBN 0-08-037457-3

Articles

  • Raymond J. Report to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women: Prostitution and Trafficking (1995: Coalition Against Trafficking in Women).
  • “Prostitution on Demand.” Violence Against Women, 10 (10) October 2004: 1156-1186.
  • “Ten Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution and a Legal Response to the Demand for Prostitution.” In Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress. Ed. by Melissa Farley. Binghamton: Haworth Press, 2004: 315-332. Translated into many languages including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Estonian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Romanian, Russian and Hindi.
  • “The New UN Trafficking Protocol.” Women’s Studies International Forum, 25 (5) 2002: 491-502.
  • Hynes, H. Patricia and Janice G. Raymond. “Put in Harm’s Way: The Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking in the United States.” In Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization. Ed. by Jael Silliman and Anannya Bhattacharjee. Boston: South End Press
    South End Press
    South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...

    . 2002: 197-229.
  • “Class Matters: Yes It Does.” In Women and Social Class- International Feminist Perspectives.” Ed. by Christine Zmroczek and Pat Mahony. University College Press, London (Taylor and Francis Group), 1999: 105-113.
  • Los Angeles Times. “Perspective on Human Rights: Prostitution is Rape That’s Paid For,” December 11, 1995, p. B6.
  • Los Angeles Times. "RU 486: Miracle Drug Turns Nasty." April 11, 1993, p.M5.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK