Are sex change operations justified?

News.BBC.co.uk – By Innes Bowen – Producer, Hecklers, BBC Radio 4

Many people who have been through sex change operations say it was the only solution to a distressing condition.

But a leading feminist campaigner claims that sex reassignment surgery is based on unscientific ideas – and could be doing more harm than good.

“I should never have had sex change surgery,” Claudia MacLean, a transsexual woman told the audience at a recent debate organised by the BBC Radio 4 programme Hecklers and the Royal Society of Medicine in London.

“As a result of the surgery, I am incapable of sex and I have lived a life apart.”

Claudia was speaking out in support of Julie Bindel, a radical feminist and journalist, who was trying to persuade medics and trans people that sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation.