Carol S. Riddell is a British feminist and socialist sociologist and transgender lesbian who was active in the UK Women's liberation movement in the 1970s.
[3] The same year, she published an early transfeminist text and first feminist critique of the book, A Divided Sisterhood: A Critical Review of Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire as a pamphlet with the radical Liverpool bookshop News from Nowhere.
[1][2][3] The response expanded upon her earlier work and characterized the book as supporting "the methods of patriarchy" and "dangerous to transsexuals because it does not treat us as human beings at all, merely as the tools of a theory".
In it, she criticized the characterization of gender identity clinics as an "empire", suggesting that they were viewed with suspicion by the medical patriarchy and forced transsexuals to go through gender-conformity training.
[3] In 1978, Riddell retired from academic life to devote herself to the New Age movement as well as radical feminism, and at that time she intended to make a study of the Findhorn Foundation.