For a lot of persons in academia these days, the proper response to an unorthodox idea is to utterly destroy the career of the person who suggested it. Case in Point: one J. Michael Bailey. Benedict Carey has the story in the New York Times.
Dr. Bailey is a psychologist at Northwestern University. Here is his sin against the true faith:
In his book [The Man Who Would Be Queen], he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. This idea runs counter to the belief, held by many men who decide to live as women, that they are the victims of a biological mistake — in essence, women trapped in men’s bodies. Dr. Bailey described the alternate theory, which is based on Canadian studies done in the 1980s and 1990s.
Note that Dr. Bailey was not suggesting that there was anything wrong with persons who want to cross genders; he merely suggested an alternative theory about the psychology behind the desire. Here was the response:
[D]ays after the book appeared, Lynn Conway, a prominent computer scientist at the University of Michigan, sent out an e-mail message comparing Dr. Bailey’s views to Nazi propaganda. She and other transgender women found the tone of the book abusive, and the theory of motivation it presented to be a recipe for further discrimination...
Dr. Ben Barres, a neurobiologist at Stanford, said in reference to Dr. Bailey’s thesis in the book, “Bailey seems to make a living by claiming that the things people hold most deeply true are not true.”...
Bailey interviewed four transgendered persons and referred to them in his book under pseudonyms. He was accused of using them as research subjects without consent. One person wrote that "she" was one of his interview subjects, and that he had had sex with her. But wait, it gets better.
Andrea James, a Los Angeles-based transgender advocate and consultant, ... downloaded images from Dr. Bailey’s Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided. (Dr. Bailey is a divorced father of two.) Ms. James said in an e-mail message that Dr. Bailey’s work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect.
Now I should state at this point that I can take no position on the merits of Dr. Bailey's book. I do not know whether cross-gender personalities are the result of biologically male desires focused on atypical objects, as I gather he argues, or whether they are the result of a genuinely female personalty, or perhaps a third sexual persona, that naturally develops within some male bodies (and likewise for crossing in the other direction). Given that sex is grounded in genetics, whereas gender is not, either hypothesis seems plausible. But the reaction described above is utterly hysterical.
Fortunately for Dr. Bailey, Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar, is about to release her findings on the case.
Dr. Dreger... is a longtime advocate for people born with ambiguous sexuality and has been strongly critical of sex researchers in the past. She said she had presumed that Dr. Bailey was guilty and, after meeting him through a mutual friend, had decided to investigate for herself.
But in her just-completed account, due to be published next year in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, the field’s premier journal, she concluded that the accusations against the psychologist were essentially groundless.
For example, Dr. Dreger found that two of the four women who complained to Northwestern of research violations were not portrayed in the book at all. The two others did know their stories would be used, as they themselves said in their letters to Northwestern.
The accusation of sexual misconduct came five years after the fact, and was not possible to refute or confirm, Dr. Dreger said. It specified a date in 1998 when Dr. Bailey was at his ex-wife’s house, looking after their children, according to dated e-mail messages between the psychologist and his ex-wife, Dr. Dreger found.
I should note, finally, that the viciousness of Dr. Bailey's enemies has nothing to do with their gender assignment or sexual orientation. It is purely a political phenomena, but it is illiberal and fanatical. It is radically dangerous to scientific inquiry and freedom of thought. Anyone who is liberal in any sense out to strenuously denounce it.
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