Janice G. Raymond (born January 24, 1943) is an American lesbian radical feminist and professor emerita 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 and the transgender rights movement.
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 transphobic.
Education
Raymond received a BA in English literature from Salve Regina College in 1965, a master's degree in religious studies from Andover Newton Theological School in 1971, and her PhD in ethics and society from Boston College in 1977.
Academic career
Raymond is professor emerita of women's studies and medical ethics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She was a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst from 1978 on. When she retired from the university in 2002, the Boston Globe 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 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).
Advocacy work
From 1994 to 2007, Raymond was the co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW). She is currently on the board of directors of CATW.
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.
Personal life
Raymond is a former member of the Sisters of Mercy. She left the convent and became open about her lesbianism. As of 2016, she and her partner, Pat Hynes, an alumna of Chestnut Hill College, had been together for 42 years.
Awards and honors
In 2007, 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, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Norwegian Organization for Research and Development (NORAD), and UNESCO.
Publications
In her 1993 book, Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women's Freedom, 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.
