Sheila Jeffreys (born 13 May 1948)
is a former professor of
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and ...
at the
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb ...
, born in England. A
lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of
human sexuality
Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied ...
.
Jeffreys' argument that the "
sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1 ...
" on men's terms contributed less to women's freedom than to their continued oppression has both commanded respect and attracted intense criticism.
She argues that women suffering pain in pursuit of beauty is a form of submission to
patriarchal
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males ...
sadism, that
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...
people reproduce oppressive
gender role
A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cen ...
s and mutilate their bodies through
sex reassignment surgery
Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a transgender or transsexual person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their identified gender, and a ...
, and that
lesbian culture has been negatively affected by emulating the
sexist
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primaril ...
influence of the
gay male subculture of
dominant/submissive sexuality.
She is the author of several books about
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
and
feminist history, including ''The Spinster and Her Enemies'' (1985), ''The Sexuality Debates'' (1987), ''Anticlimax'' (1990), ''Unpacking Queer Politics'' (2003), ''Beauty and Misogyny'' (2005), and ''Gender Hurts'' (2014).
Early life
Jeffreys was born to a working-class army family from London's
East End
The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...
. After attending an all-girls
grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...
, she studied at
Manchester University, then taught at a girls' boarding school. In 1973,
Julie Bindel writes, Jeffreys decided "to abandon both heterosexuality and her feminine appearance". Jeffreys wrote in ''Beauty and Misogyny'' (2005):
Works
In 1979, Jeffreys helped write ''Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism'', along with other members of the
Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group
The Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group was a feminist organisation active in the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s. While there were a number of contemporary revolutionary feminist organisations in the UK, the Leeds group was 'internationa ...
. Its authors stated, "We do think ... that all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a
political lesbian is a
woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women."
[
Jeffreys was one of several contributors to ''The Sexual Dynamics of History: Men's Power, Women's Resistance'', an anthology of feminist writings about gender relations published in 1983 by the London Feminist History Group. Jeffreys wrote the chapter on "Sex reform and anti-feminism in the 1920s".
In ''The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880–1930'', published in 1985, Jeffreys examines feminist involvement in the Social Purity movement at the turn of the century. In her 1990 work ''Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution'', Jeffreys offered a critique of the ]sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1 ...
of the 1960s.
''The Lesbian Heresy'' was published in 1993. In it Jeffreys criticises sadomasochistic
Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...
practices involving women. One author involved in sadomasochism cites Jeffreys' views in this book as an example of the "simplistic and dualistic thinking" among anti-sadomasochism campaigners. Jeffreys describes sadomasochism as "male supremacist
Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to all others. The supposed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nation, c ...
", a reenactment of heterosexual male dominance and women's oppression that glorifies violence and uses women's bodies as a sex aid, and as anti-lesbian and fascistic. The author claims that Jeffreys ignores that some heterosexual women may enjoy sadomasochistic activity, and that " tops" may be women who work hard to give their " bottoms" pleasure, rather than the passive recipients of sex in the way she describes.[Preview]
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'' The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade'' was published in 2009. In it, Jeffreys describes the globalisation of the sex market, and calls marriage a form of prostitution. Jeffreys writes, "the right of men to women's bodies for sexual use has not gone, but remains an assumption at the basis of heterosexual relationships", and draws links between marriage and prostitution, such as mail-order brides, which she sees as a form of trafficking.
Views on gender
The University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb ...
, Jeffreys' employer until her retirement in May 2015, listed her areas of expertise as:
In an interview, the writer Julie Bindel explains that Jeffreys believes sex reassignment surgery
Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a transgender or transsexual person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their identified gender, and a ...
"is an extension of the beauty industry offering cosmetic solutions to deeper rooted problems" and that in a society without gender this would be unnecessary. Jeffreys has presented these views in various forums. In a 1997 article in the ''Journal of Lesbian Studies'', for example, Jeffreys contended that "transsexualism should be seen as a violation of human rights." Jeffreys also argued that "the vast majority of transsexuals still subscribe to the traditional stereotype of women" and that by transitioning medically and socially, trans women
A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and s ...
are "constructing a conservative fantasy of what women should be. They are inventing an essence of womanhood which is deeply insulting and restrictive."[Pdf.]
/ref>
Jeffreys' opinions on these topics have been challenged by transgender activists. Roz Kaveney
Roz Kaveney (born 9 July 1949) is a British writer, critic, and poet, best known for her critical works about pop culture and for being a core member of the Midnight Rose collective. Kaveney's works include fiction and non-fiction, poetry, rev ...
, a trans woman and critic of Jeffreys, wrote in ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' that Jeffreys and radical feminists who share her views are "acting like a cult
In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. Thi ...
." Kaveney compared Jeffreys' desire to ban sex reassignment surgery to the Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...
's desire to ban abortion, arguing that both proposals bear negative "implications for all women." Kaveney also criticised Jeffreys and her supporters for alleged "anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically ...
, emphasis on innate knowledge, fetishisation of tiny ideological differences, heresy
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important relig ...
hunting, conspiracy theories, rhetorical use of images of disgust, talk of stabs in the back and romantic apocalypticism."
''Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism'', a book cowritten by Jeffreys and Lorene Gottschalk, was published in April 2014. Timothy Laurie argued that the formalisation of social dynamics between men and women in ''Gender Hurts'' in terms of "strategies' and dividends" risks "confusing the continued existence of unequal economic exchanges (well documented by R.W. Connell) with the less predictable, but equally important, struggles over what gets labelled 'masculine' and 'feminine' and for what collective purposes".
In May 2014, the philosopher Judith Butler
Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In 1993, Butler b ...
commented on Jeffreys' view that sex reassignment surgery is directly political. To Jeffreys' notion that reassignment surgery is a component of patriarchal control, Butler responded that "One problem with that view of social construction is that it suggests that what trans people feel about what their gender is, and should be, is itself 'constructed' and, therefore, not real. And then the feminist police comes along".
Jeffreys stated in a 2014 ABC Radio " Sunday Night Safran" program that transsexual women are either "homosexual men who don’t feel they can be homosexual in the bodies of men" or "heterosexual men who have a sexual interest in wearing women’s clothes and having the appearance of women", provoking criticism from members of the trans community for transphobia
Transphobia is a collection of ideas and phenomena that encompass a range of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger to ...
. Julia Serano
Julia Michelle Serano (; born 1967) is an American writer, musician, spoken-word performer, trans– bi activist, and biologist. She is known for her transfeminist books ''Whipping Girl'' (2007), ''Excluded'' (2013), and ''Outspoken'' (2016). ...
has written that Sheila Jeffreys was an early feminist adopter of Ray Blanchard's autogynephilia theory. The concept of autogynephilia is used by trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or "gender critical
Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely. Third-wave feminists and fourth-wave feminists tend to view the struggle for trans rights as an integral part of intersectional feminism. Former president of the American National Organization ...
" feminists, to imply that trans women are sexually deviant men.
In March 2018, addressing an audience at the House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
in a presentation titled “Transgenderism and the Assault on Feminism.”, she said "When men claim to be women…and parasitically occupy the bodies of the oppressed, they speak for the oppressed...". Her comments were referred to as a “fascist tactic to dehumanize” trans women by the journalist Shon Faye.
Jeffreys co-founded the Women's Human Rights Campaign, which has been described as an anti-trans group.
Selected works
Books
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Book chapters
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Essays and pamphlets
* A pamphlet by Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group
The Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group was a feminist organisation active in the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s. While there were a number of contemporary revolutionary feminist organisations in the UK, the Leeds group was 'internationa ...
Pdf version.
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jeffreys, Sheila
1948 births
Living people
20th-century atheists
21st-century atheists
Anti-pornography feminists
Anti-prostitution feminists
Atheist feminists
Australian atheists
Australian women academics
Australian women writers
Australian women's rights activists
Australian feminist writers
Australian political scientists
British women academics
British women's rights activists
English atheists
English feminist writers
English political scientists
English women non-fiction writers
Feminism and transgender
Historians of LGBT topics
Lesbian academics
Lesbian feminists
Australian lesbian writers
Political lesbians
Radical feminists
Women political scientists
English emigrants to Australia
LGBT rights activists from Australia
LGBT rights activists from England
LGBT writers from England
Anti-prostitution activists in the United States
University of Melbourne faculty
University of Melbourne women
British lesbian writers