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psychology . . function as secular religions in the area of trans- sexualism," she demonstrates that this "condition" is now ac- cepted as a disease because advances in the technology of sex- conversion surgery have made certain alterations in the human genitals possible and because such operations reiterate and rein- force traditional patriarchal sex-role expectations and stereotypes. Ostensibly, the "transsexers" (from psychologists to urologists) are curing a disease; actualy, they engage in the religious and poli- tical shaping and controlling of "masculine" and "feminine" behavior. Miss Raymond's development and documentation of this thesis is flawless. Her book is an important achievement.

The claim that males can be transformed, by means of hor- mones and surgery, into females, and vice versa, is, of course, a lie. ("She-males" are fabricated in much greater numbers than "he-females.") Chromosomal sex is fixed. And so are one's histori- cal experiences of growing up and living as boy or girl, man or woman. What, then, can be achieved by means of "transsexual therapy"? The language in which the reply is framed is crucial and can never be neutral. The transsexual propagandists claim to transform "women trapped in men's bodies” into “real” women and want them to be accepted socially as females (say, in profes- sional tennis). Critics of transsexualism contend that such a per- son is a "male-to-constructed-female" (Miss Raymond's term), or a fake female, or a castrated male transvestite who wears not only feminine clothing but also feminine-looking body parts. Miss Ray- mond quotes a Casablanca surgeon, who has operated on more than 700 American men, characterizing the transsexual transfor- mation as follows: "I don't change men into women. I transform male genitals into genitals that have a female aspect. All the rest is in the patient's mind."

Not quite. Some of the rest is in society's "mind.” For the fact is that Renee Richards was endorsed by Billie Jean King as a real woman and was accepted by the authorities monitoring

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