1997: TERF Academia Asserts Transition = Political Psychiatry in the Soviet Union

In a published peer-reviewed paper, Dr. Sheila Jeffreys asserts:

[Transsexual surgery] could be likened to political psychiatry in the Soviet Union. I suggest that transsexualism should best be seen in this light, as directly political, medical abuse of human rights. The mutilation of healthy bodies and the subjection of such bodies to dangerous and life-threatening continuing treatment violates such people’s rights to live with dignity in the body into which they were born, what Janice Raymond refers to as their “native” bodies. It represents an attack on the body to rectify a political condition, “gender” dissatisfaction in a male supremacist society based upon a false and politically constructed notion of gender difference… Recent literature on transsexualism in the lesbian community draws connections with the practices of sadomasochism.

– Sheila Jeffreys, Australian TERF opinion leader, author and speaker

It should be noted that it was Jeffreys’ own lesbian community – not some nefarious conspiracy of men  – who pioneered trans surgery in her country.