Penile Imperialism: The Male Sex Right and Women’s Subordination | From a Sexual Fetish to a Human Right: The Extraordinary Trajectory of Transvestism (PDF Chapter 7)
In this chapter, Sheila Jeffreys examines another movement to normalise a paraphilia, that which is focussed on men’s cross-dressing behaviour, or transvestism. What is now generally called the ‘transgender rights movement’ began in the 1990s. Before that time transvestism was understood by the medical profession to constitute a form of sexual fetishism and seen as a mental health problem. This understanding was transformed in the 1990s and in the following two decades to the point at which men with this sexual fetish were recognised by much of the medical profession, in popular culture and, most importantly, by governments and legislatures as having female ‘gender identities’ which rendered them, for all rights purposes, members of the category women. This was an extraordinary transformation, which will be explained here.
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