Sex Roles (2017) 76:633–634
DOI 10.1007/s11199-016-0714-y
BOOK REVIEW
Looking at Each Other: Writers on Feminism,
Psychology/Psychiatry, and Transgender Issues
Psychology and Gender Dysphoria: Feminist and Transgender Perspectives.
By Jemma Toth, New York, Routledge, 2016. 138 pp. £95/$160 (Cloth).
ISBN-10: 1138013927, ISBN-13: 978-1138013926
Nancy S. Erickson 1
Published online: 13 December 2016
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
I approached this book as a cisgender woman who trained in
history, then law, and most recently, in psychology. For many
years, as a professor of law, I taught family law, sex discrim-
ination, and constitutional law, as well as other topics. As a
practicing attorney, I represented battered women in divorce
and other family law matters. In the 1960s and 1970s I was
heavily involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement, and I
continue to be involved in feminist struggles within and out-
side my professional life.
This is a very timely book. The United States Supreme
Court has accepted a case involving a transgender boy who
seeks to use a boys’ bathroom in a Virginia high school
(Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. 2016).
Transgender issues are in the media now almost on a daily
basis. When transgender issues began to surface in the media
and came to the attention of academics, I paid attention and
did some reading. I concluded that if someone felt so strongly
about their identity that they were willing to take hormones,
even undergo radical surgery, and face prejudice and possible
rejection by loved ones, then it was my place to be supportive,
not judgmental. I knew little about transgender issues, and
nothing about transgender theory. Neither family law nor psy-
chology provided significant insights into transgender theory.
I hoped that reviewing Jemma Tosh’s book would educate me
about transgender theory. It has done so.
In Chapter 1, Tosh states that the aim of this book is to
Bnavigate [the] complex terrain [of gender dysphoria], to ex-
* Nancy S. Erickson
nancyserickson@earthlink.net
1
Law Offices of Nancy S. Erickson, 172 Fifth Avenue #31,
Brooklyn, NY 11217, USA
amine the tensions between and within [the psychiatric, fem-
inist, and transgender studies] discourses, and consider how
these relate to lived experiences of an embodied gender-
related distress^ (p. 2). In my view, she was most successful
in achieving her goal of Bexamining the role psychology and
psychiatry have played in defining gender ‘normality’ and
‘abnormality’….^ (p. 2). Her treatment of the perspectives
of those involved in transgender studies is fair and thorough,
at least to my non-expert eyes. In contrast, I do not think she
was as successful in dealing with feminist perspectives. One
basic problem with the book is that the language is often
inaccessible to readers other than academics. Sentences are
frequently longer and more convoluted than they need to be,
and some errors that were not caught in the publication pro-
cess can cause confusion for the reader.
The most successful part of the book is Chapter 3,
BPsychiatric Constructions of Transgender Identities and
Gender Nonconformity.^ Tosh’s history of the treatment of
gender dysphoria in the successive editions of the American
Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM) (2013) is well written and easy
to follow. I studied the DSM as a forensic psychology student,
so I was familiar with the topic, but Chapter 3 put all the pieces
together very well. This chapter will be a very valuable edu-
cational tool not only for mental health professionals, but also
students and professionals in other fields, including law.
The contents of Chapter 2, BPsychiatric Constructions of
Women and Femininity,^ are familiar to me, especially the
controversies over the diagnoses of hysteria/histrionic person-
ality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and masochism
(see Erickson 2005). Battered women are still often branded
with these labels. People continue to make assertions such as
Bshe stayed with him so long, she must have liked it.^
Ultimately, primarily because of opposition from feminist
634
psychologists and psychiatrists, masochistic personality disor-
der did not make it into the DSM. However, as Tosh indicates,
the concept Bremains in the DSM-5 as ‘sexual masochism
disorder’^ (p. 38), so it still can be used to justify blaming
the victim. Tosh correctly concludes that all these diag-
noses can discredit women’s voices by labeling women
as mentally ill (p. 39).
Chapter 4, BFeminist Constructions of Gender Dysphoria
and Transgender People,^ is the least accessible chapter. Tosh
begins by correctly pointing out that feminism is a Bwide-
ranging, contradictory and ever-changing movement for so-
cial justice [that] includes a vast array of feminisms...^ (p. 77).
Yet, she concludes, Bfeminism added to [the] hostile environ-
ment [for transgender people] by drawing on psychological
discourse and supporting it through similar feminist theories
of transsexualism^ (p. 104). This may be true of some feminist
theories, but Tosh has not presented a comprehensive view of
the multiple feminist theories about transgender people.
Indeed, there are many feminists who support trans women,
both from the second and the third wave of feminism.
Tosh mentions some of them, but still leaves the reader
with the impression that she sees feminism as a threat
to transgender people.
Chapter 5, BTransgender Constructions of Psychiatry and
Feminism,^ was the chapter of most interest to me. I hoped
that I could hear some of the voices of transgender people and,
to a certain extent, Tosh does present their voices, but I wanted
to hear more. In this chapter Tosh also discusses two feminists
whom she and other transgender theorists criticize as harmful
to transgender people: Janice Raymond (Raymond 1979) and
Mary Daly (Daly 1978). (She also finds Btraces^ of feminism
in Virginia Prince; Prince 1978.) It seems strange that in a
book published in 2016 Tosh discusses transgender views of
only two feminists who wrote more than 25 years earlier.
In the final chapter, Tosh declares that the professions
of psychology and psychiatry must be dismantled, which
Sex Roles (2017) 76:633–634
is an unrealistic goal. A more attainable goal is to
change those professions from within. In fact, there are
groups within both professions working for change, such
as the American Psychological Association’s Division 44
(Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Issues) and The Association
of LGBTQ Psychiatrists.
Tosh concludes that feminism Bhas a long history of repli-
cating oppressive hierarchies^ (p. 131) of race, class, and dis/
ability and of perpetuating Bnegative discourses^ of Black
trans women (p.132). That has not been my experience in
feminist legal circles. Although some people within feminist
movements have made these errors either intentionally or un-
intentionally, others have attempted to avoid them. To the
extent that Tosh’s criticisms are valid, it would seem to me
that both feminists and people who view feminists with sus-
picion on transgender issues should meet and plan how to join
their forces for the betterment of all.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American
Psychiatric Association.
Daly, M. (1978). Gyn/ecology: The metaethics of radical feminism.
Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Erickson, N. (2005). Use of the MMPI-2 in child custody evaluations
involving battered women: What does psychological research tell
us? Family Law Quarterly, 39, 87–108. Retrieved from http://www.
jstor.org/stable/25758278 .
Gloucester County School Board v. G.G (2016) U.S. Supreme Court No.
16–273.
Prince, V. (2006 [1978]). Transsexuals and pseudotranssexuals. In R.
Ekins & D. King (Eds), Virginia Prince: Pioneer of transgendering
(pp. 33–38). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Medical Press.
Raymond, J. (1979). The transsexual empire. Boston: Beacon Press.