Linklater asserted that ‘the transvestite male is usually satisfied by wearing female clothing, whilst maintaining a clear inner concept of his own male identity’. He diagnosed a ‘continuous spectrum of varying degrees of deviation’ encompassing transvestism, from dressing in women’s clothes for amusement, to those for whom cross dressing ‘is necessary in order to achieve sexual satisfaction’.
He regarded such behaviour, although deviant, as being relatively harmless since no permanent physical damage is caused. However, this was not the case for those at the extreme end of the spectrum where the transvestite undergoes ‘surgical metamorphosis by having his external genitalia removed, becoming a eunuch and permanently adopting a female role’.
Linklater outlined how the sex of each individual is fixed irrevocably at the moment of conception, at the fusion of the first cell. So all females have XX chromosomes and all males have XY chromosomes. As every cell of the new individual’s body is derived from the first cell, it follows that the differences between the two sexes operate at a fundamental level. He concluded that all surgery and hormone treatment can achieve for the transvestite male is to ‘alter the superficial appearance’ of an individual, resulting in a deformed outcome that is no longer recognisably male, and which is a travesty of the female.
Linklater claimed that ‘transvestism is the product of a psychological hang-up’ which is not directly related to an individual’s ‘physical condition’. He dismissed the views of those who promoted the acceptance and validity of sex change operations ‘as an end product which is known full well to be a hoax’, that has been performed on ‘anatomically normal males suffering from a sad emotional fixation’.
Some of today’s activists agitating for the normalisation and acceptance of transgender identity would do well to face up to the reality that Linklater exposes, namely that an individual’s birth sex identity cannot be altered, and that those who declare otherwise are fostering a delusion. This becomes dangerous if it involves the physical mutilation or hormone treatment of vulnerable individuals who are mentally confused about which sex they belong to, and is still more pernicious when it ensnares young people who are reaching puberty.
