Magdalen Berns was a British anti-transgender activist.
Background
Berns was born May 8, 1983 in London to parents who were involved in communist activism. They split up soon after Berns was born.
Berns attended Hampstead School in Camden, London. After working as a sound engineer and computer programmer as a young adult, Berns returned to college, making early forays into anti-drag and anti-trans activism. Berns earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Edinburgh in 2016.
Berns died from brain cancer on September 13, 2019 at age 36 in Edinburgh.
Anti-transgender activism
Berns was a sex segregationist and a trans-exclusionary lesbian. Berns was opposed to the idea that a lesbian can date a trans woman who had not had bottom surgery, saying “There is no such thing as a lesbian with a penis.” Berns also opposed gender self-identification and worked to change Scotland’s laws around it. Berns also opposed value neutral terms like sex assigned at birth:
“You don’t get ‘assigned’ reproductive organs … males are defined by their biological sex organs. Likewise, homosexuals are people who are attracted to the same biological sex.”
Berns compared trans women to “blackface actors.” Berns often said, “Trans women are men” and described trans activism as a “men’s rights movement.”
Berns attacked a number of trans inclusive organizations, including LGBT charity Stonewall.
Berns co-founded the non-profit organization For Women Scotland in 2018. Their goal was to advocate for sex-based rights, maintaining the remaining sex-segregated institutions like bathrooms, sports, children’s organizations, and prisons.
In 2019, British author and anti-trans activist J.K. Rowling helped raise Berns’ profile. After Berns died, Rowling revealed that they had spoken directly. Rowling called Berns “an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian” and “a great believer in the importance of biological sex [who] didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises.”
Mos-Shogbamimu, Shola (2021). This is Why I Resist: Don’t Define My Black Identity. Headline Publishing Group. pp. 140–141. ISBN 978-1-4722-8079-4.
Joaquina (2 January 2021). Transphobia and Antisemitism. The Social Review https://www.thesocialreview.co.uk/2021/01/02/transphobia-and-antisemitism/
Andrews, Penny (20 November 2020). Choose your fighter: Loyalty and fandom in the free speech culture wars. Manchester University Press. p. 259. ISBN 978-1-5261-5255-8 –
Linehan, Graham (13 September 2019). Magdalen Berns 1983–2019. Women Are Important. https://glinner.co.uk/stunning-and-brave-magdalen-berns-1983-2019/
Kearns, Madeleine (4 September 2019). Magdalen Berns, a ‘shero’ among women. National Review. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/magdalen-berns-a-shero-among-women/
Singleton, Mary Lou (25 July 2016). Thinking Differently conference. Women’s Liberation Front http://womensliberationfront.org/thinking-differently-conference/
Berns, Magdalen (9 January 2016). Let them call me whorephobic. Butterflies and Wheels. [archive] http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/guest-post-let-them-call-me-whorephobic/
Benson, Ophelia (12 October 2015). How to know what is “whorephobic”. Butterflies and Wheels. [archive] http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2015/how-to-know-what-is-whorephobic/
Patrick Kyran Hunter was born in May 1966. Hunter served in the US Army. Hunter earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University, a master’s degree from the University of Mary, and a medical degree from University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Hunter has served as a general pediatrician with Pensacola Pediatrics and a Clinical Professor at Florida State University’s College of Medicine.
Anti-transgender activism
2022 HHS meeting
On April 25, 2022 Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine arranged a meeting with US government officials on healthcare for trans and gender diverse youth. Hunter was listed as an attendee.
AAP Resolution 27 (2022)
In 2022, Hunter was a signatory on American Academy of Pediatrics Resolution 27, that year’s attempt to protest consensus on care for gender diverse youth. Hunter and four other pediatricians drafted Resolution 27 critical of AAP’s consensus on best practices for gender diverse youth. The authors are:
Jones, Zinnia (Jul 21, 2022). IDENTIFIED: The 5 redacted-signature pediatricians who signed the Genspect-promoted Resolution #27 to the American Academy of Pediatrics Julia W. Mason (SEGM) Sarah B. Palmer Paula Brinkley (Stanford Children’s Health) Debra Hendrickson Patrick Hunter (Florida Board of Medicine) https://x.com/ZJemptv/status/1550042000246067201
US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) (April 25, 2022). EO 12866 Meeting 0945-AA17. Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities https://mobile.reginfo.gov/public/do/viewEO12866Meeting?viewRule=true&rin=0945-AA17&meetingId=131923&acronym=0945-HHS/OCR
If you are the parent or guardian of a gender diverse young person, do not take your family member to Mason for care. If you are a minor being forced to see Mason by unsupportive adults, do what you can to end treatment with Mason and seek out supportive local resources instead.
Background
Julia Robin Winter was born on March 19, 1966. Mason married Eliot C. Mason (born 1967).
Mason attended University of Illinois, earning a master’s degree and a medical degree in 1994. Mason did residency training in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles from 1994 to 1997. Mason is licensed in Oregon, California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Mason is a board-certified pediatrician, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and currently practices at Calcagno Pediatrics in Gresham, Oregon.
Anti-transgender activism
Mason is involved with anti-trans organization Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). According to Mason, most gender diverse youth seen at Mason’s practice have “neurodevelopmental challenges or psychiatric comorbidities.”
AAP Resolution 33 (2021)
Introduced at the AAP Annual Leadership Forum 2021, this resolution “registered concern about the low quality of evidence underpinning treatment of minors with hormones and surgeries.”
AAP booth cancellation (2021)
SEGM tried to register a booth at the AAP conference in 2021, but it was rejected. Mason wrote the letter protesting the decision.
AAP Resolution 27 (2022)
Mason and four other pediatricians drafted Resolution 27 critical of AAP’s consensus on best practices for gender diverse youth. The authors are:
Mason again attempted to draft a resolution in 2023, which Mason claims is sponsored by 23 FAAP coauthors.
Wall Street Journal opinion and AAP response
Mason joined fellow anti-trans activist Leor Sapir in attacking mainstream pediatric organization American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for supporting gender affirming care for youth. In response, AAP President Moira Szilagyi stated:
Gender-affirming care can be lifesaving. It doesn’t push medical treatments or surgery; for the vast majority of children, it recommends the opposite.
This isn’t the story that is being told by anti-transgender activists. No European country has categorically banned gender-affirming care when medically appropriate. Contrary to what Dr. Mason and Mr. Sapir claim, the U.K. isn’t moving away from gender-affirming care. It is moving toward a more regional, multidisciplinary approach, similar to what is practiced in the U.S.
Mason frequently appears with other conservative and anti-trans activists, including:
Malone WJ, Hruz PW, Mason JW, Beck S (2021). Letter to the Editor from William J. Malone et al: “Proper Care of Transgender and Gender-diverse Persons in the Setting of Proposed Discrimination: A Policy Perspective.” The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Volume 106, Issue 8, August 2021, Pages e3287–e3288 https://doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgab205
Many people (including me) have come forward with observations and first-hand reports where Lawrence performed inappropriately sexual “medical” exams. Following a 1997 resignation for examining an unconscious patient for signs of ritualized genital modification, the bulk of Lawrence’s personal and professional life has been dedicated to promoting the “autogynephilia” diagnosis. Lawrence has since worked closely with Ray Blanchard, the Toronto psychologist who invented this disease in 1989.
Background
Anne Alexandra Lawrence was born on November 17, 1950. Lawrence earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Chicago in 1971, then a medical degree from University of Minnesota in 1974, with a specialty in anesthesia. Lawrence began taking hormones in medical school but stopped at some point. Lawrence took an anesthesiologist position at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, Washington.
In 1987 Lawrence married speech therapist Marian Sheehan (born 1950), and they had two children, David (born 1988) and Katherine (born 1990). Lawrence began making a gender transition again in 1992, ending the marriage in 1995 and transitioning at work soon after.
In July 1996, Lawrence created Transsexual Women’s Resources, one of the most important early online resources for trans medical information, later housed at annelawrence.com. Much of it was first-hand reports, such as Lawrence’s 1996 essay about vaginoplasty with Toby Meltzer titled “Taking Portlandia’s Hand.” It also had the largest collection of vaginoplasty information and results from around the world, captioned with Lawrence’s personal opinions about the results. Many of the images of results were taken by Lawrence, often at community gatherings or at Lawrence’s home. Lawrence has since removed most of the material and excluded it from archival sites.
“Autogynephilia” activism
Lawrence discovered the disease “autogynephilia” in 1994 after reading Blanchard’s journal articles published between 1989 and 1993. Lawrence then began proselytizing for “autogynephilic transsexual” as an identity at gender conventions, finding few community supporters.
It soon emerged from her papers, that Lawrence, after periods of personal confusion, ‘found herself’ with reference to Blanchard’s concept, in much the same way that so many transgendered people speak of ‘finding themselves’ when first becoming acquainted and adopting the medical terms ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’.
Via Ekins and King (2012):
Lawrence says that on reading Blanchard’s journal articles that she experienced the ‘kind of epiphany that trans people often feel when first coming across words and formulations that fit and work for them’ (Lawrence 1999a). Not only do they feel empowered to make sense of their predicament, but the formulations are proof to them that they are not alone.
In 1996, Lawrence began promoting the disease online, which brought Lawrence to the attention of other “autogynephilia” activists promoting it. They began to shower Lawrence with attention and validation.
1997 hospital resignation
In 1997, Lawrence was administering anesthesia to an Ethiopian patient during a surgical procedure. When the gynecologist left the room, Lawrence moved from the anesthesia position to between the patient’s raised legs and examined the unconscious patient for signs of ritualized genital modification, despite being told several times by the surgeon that the patient had not had it. Co-worker reports triggered a state investigation, and Lawrence resigned prior to the full investigation.
The incident was not widely publicized until trans activist Roberta Angela Dee published a 2002 exposé that included excerpts from the case file from the State of Washington.
Following these failures in marriage and in anesthesiology, Lawrence began focusing more on online resources. As Lawrence became more and more focused on “autogynephilia” activism, the trans community opinion began to turn as well.
Lawrence and I both ran prominent websites on gender transition, and we began discussing collaboration on a book, to the point that we met in person at Lawrence’s home in 1999. Lawrence’s website at the time contained photographic examples of vaginoplasty results, and I agreed to let Lawrence photograph my results provided they were not connected to my name. At the end of the photography session, Lawrence came on to me while I was still getting dressed, which I considered inappropriate. In a 2003 exposé, Dallas Denny published a similar account of Lawrence doing the same thing to journalist Donna Cartwright.
Eventually, Lawrence’s primary source of attention and validation was from “experts” who promoted disease models of gender identity and expression. Soon Lawrence was invited to speak at their conventions and publish in journals supportive of disease models.
Lawrence returned to school to study sexology at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, an unaccredited school in San Francisco. That school gave Lawrence a doctorate in 2001 shortly before closing permanently. Lawrence later studied clinical psychology at Argosy University, Seattle, which gave Lawrence a master’s degree in 2006. That school has also ceased operations.
In 2008, prominent “autogynephilia” activist Paul Vasey brought Lawrence on as an adjunct professor in the psychology department at the University of Lethbridge.
Lawrence on Bailey (2003)
Lawrence has also worked closely with another Blanchard supporter, psychologist J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University. Bailey had self-published a 2000 article online called “Transsexualism: Women trapped in men’s bodies or men who would be women?” That work was incorporated into Bailey’s 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen. Lawrence is quoted on the cover, calling it “a wonderful book on an important subject,” despite the fact that nearly everyone else who read it found it to be one of the most defamatory and inaccurate books on gender diversity since 1979.
When readers started posting negative Amazon reviews, Bailey enlisted friends and colleagues to write shill reviews. Lawrence published the anonymous review below:
Outstanding scholarship, April 18, 2003 Reviewer: A reader from USA
Michael Bailey’s new book offers an entertaining, informative, and provocative discussion of gender variance in biologic males. The author is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University, and is one of the world’s foremost authorities on gender and sexual orientation. Fortunately for readers, he is a superb writer as well as a gifted scholar.
The author’s detailed discussion of femininity and masculinity in gay men is outstanding, and his treatment of male-to-female transsexuality is remarkable for its insight and compassion. Bailey is not afraid to be politically incorrect, and some of his conclusions are bound to upset the handful of transsexuals who still cling to the “I was a woman trapped in a man’s body” fantasy. But many more transsexuals will be grateful for the author’s willingness to go beyond the stereotypes and clichés and reveal the complicated truths about their lives.
If you want comfortable homilies, read Mildred Brown or Randi Ettner. If you want the truth, read Bailey.
Below may be the most succinct expression of Lawrence’s position. It is a rigid medical model of “sex” combined with Lawrence’s fluid foray into identity politics by claiming to be “transsexual” that is the issue here (emphasis mine).
I should explain that I will be using the term “transsexual” in its most literal sense, to mean one who desires to approximate as closely as possible the anatomic characteristics of the opposite sex. Note that the word “gender” does not appear in my definition. This reflects my belief that transsexuality is fundamentally about changing one’s anatomy, or sex; and that sometimes it may have little to do with gender identity, or with gender role.
My message today is that some biologic males who pursue sex reassignment do so, not primarily because they have a gender problem, but because they have a sex problem, and indeed a sexual problem. I will explain why I have come to believe that male-to-female transsexualism is sometimes the expression of a paraphilia — an unusual or variant pattern of sexual arousal.
http://www.annelawrence. com/1999hbigda1.html
References
Ekins R, King D (2001). Transgendering, Migrating and Love of Oneself as a Woman: A Contribution to a Sociology of Autogynephilia. International Journal of Transgenderism 5;3, http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtvo05no03_01.htm [archive]
Arora earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Irvine in 2010, followed by a master’s degrees from New York University in 2014 and Columbia University in 2016.
Arora worked as an editor at India.com, Brown Girl Magazine, and Floor Covering Weekly before taking a role as frontpage editor at Yahoo in 2017, then HuffPost in 2018.
New York Times
From 2018 to 2022 Arora worked at the New York Times. Arora was interviewed by Carolyn Ryan and got a contractor role reviewing headlines for the website. In 2019 Arora raised concerns about bias in pieces about chest binding that cited anti-trans site 4thWaveNow and had biased headlines.
Arora was offered a full-time role in London on the global news desk, returning to New York in 2020 and soon being named a senior staff editor. After the Times published a troubling op-ed by Tom Cotton urging a crackdown on George Floyd protestors, Dean Baquet agreed to a meeting with staffers. That led to formalizing of employee affinity groups, including Times Out, where Arora became a leader. These groups soon felt like extensions of management, though, and they were unable to implement things like bringing Trans Journalists Association in for a presentation. After some Times Out members protested an editorial board piece critical of New York Pride for requesting police not to wear uniforms, Carolyn Ryan sided with management. Tensions reached a head when anti-trans activist Pamela Paul of the New York Times book section hired anti-trans activist Jesse Singal to review anti-trans activist Helen Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality. Arora decided to send an email to Baquet:
I’m reaching out today as a trans non-binary NYT employee who has been deeply hurt by this week, by the actions of my own employer. I want to preface this by saying never before have I walked into a workplace on day one and felt like I belonged. For me, that’s been the magic of this place. Of this institution, of the journalism we do and the values we uphold.
Reviewing this book was absolutely the right call. Picking a cisgender, transphobic person who has a history of denying gender identity is real and who has hurt and defamed transgender journalists was not the right call. As much as transgender issues have come to the forefront in the last few years as people, we’ve always been here. I’m heartened by the progress the Times has made this past year and the renewed efforts towards DEI goals that are backed by action.
It becomes hard to be so invested in our journalism and our coverage when internally our members share the feeling that the Times is not only not as inclusive as it could be, but is actively doing harm to trans, to trans and queer folks inside the building. I don’t know how to defend this place that I love, the people and reporters and editors I love working with when my existence as a trans person feels like it’s up for debate. I’m writing to you because I respect you a lot. I want to make a difference here. I want to know that the Times hears me and sees me as a queer and trans person of color, and is taking my lived experience seriously. There’s a lot more work to be done, but healing the pain that has been caused would require starting with an acknowledgement of our wrongs with a true desire to understand where we’ve made mistakes. Thank you for taking the time to hear me out, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Baquet replied:
I do want the Times to be an inclusive place. It is important to me personally and professionally, but I have to tell you, I disagree with you in this instance. I know Pamela worked hard to find someone to review the book. There was not a long line of people who were willing to do so, to be honest. And for all the criticism of the choice in the building and on social media, I have not seen much criticism of the actual review. There is another very large principle at play here. The editor of the book review has to have tremendous freedom to make choices. Each of us has political views, personal views, and friends who write books. I think she worked tremendously hard to manage all of those issues. Harper I do hope this disagreement doesn’t make you less proud of the place, the place hasn’t changed.
Arora was assigned an audience development role in California. During an interview for a possible role under deputy managing editor Sam Dolnick, publisher A.G. Sulzberger’s cousin, Dolnick said Baquet shared Arora’s email about Singal with the entire masthead.
Arora felt that was the cue to leave, and in 2022, Arora took an editor role at Apple News.
The editorial board (May 18, 2021). A Misstep by the Organizers of Pride.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/opinion/nyc-pride-police-parade.html
Pinker is frequently involved in academic controversies, particularly around race, gender, and eugenics. Pinker is a key connector in the so-called intellectual dark web, a gateway to the far right.
Background
Steven Arthur Pinker was born in 1954.
Pinker moved to Harvard in 2003 after 20 years at MIT working in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department. Pinker is the author of many books on mind and language, including:
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
How the Mind Works
Pinker is a hereditarian, believing that genes are far more important than environment in shaping who we are. Pinker falsely claims that ideological opponents believe in a blank slate, where everyone begins the same until social forces change us.
“With a mixture science, humanity, and fine writing, J. Michael Bailey illuminates the mysteries of sexual orientation and identity in the best book yet written on the subject. The Man Who Would Be Queen may upset the guardians of political correctness on both the left and the right, but it will be welcomed by intellectually curious people of all sexes and sexual orientations. A truly fascinating book.” — Steven Pinker, Peter de Florez Professor, MIT, and author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”
Joseph Henry Press marketing materials (unattributed):
J Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen is an engaging book on the science of sexual orientation. …highly sympathetic to gay and transsexual men…” — The Guardian (London), June 28, 2003
Below is the full review:
J Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen (Joseph Henry) is an engaging book on the science of sexual orientation. Though highly sympathetic to gay and transsexual men, it has ignited a firestorm by claiming that transsexuals are not women trapped in men’s bodies but have either homosexual or autoerotic motives.
Pinker’s writing was also used in Bailey’s since-canceled Human Sexuality class.
Anti-trans logrolling
Anti-trans activists and extremists frequently defend Pinker with the same zeal seen in defenses of other celebrity transphobes like J.K. Rowling.
Jesse Singal defended Pinker in the New York Times, writing: “The idea that Mr. Pinker, a liberal, Jewish psychology professor, is a fan of a racist, anti-Semitic online movement is absurd on its face, so it might be tempting to roll your eyes and dismiss this blowup as just another instance of social media doing what it does best: generating outrage.”
Karen Davis is an American musician and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Davis earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University. In college, Davis became aware of radical feminism an got involved in feminist activism.
From 1992 to 1997 Davis worked as a kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn. Davis has been a working musician and music teacher since 1997. In 2005, Davis teamed up with singer/guitarist Joe Pla to perform classic rock and blues locally.
Davis was raised Catholic and has a sibling who identifies as gay.
Anti-trans activism
Davis is reportedly “fascinated and appalled by the Gender Wars.” Davis was radicalized on reddit via suspended gender critical subreddits.
In 2020 Davis started a YouTube series called “You’re Kiddin’, Right?” The account was later suspended for hate speech.
Julia Malott is a Canadian software manager and conservative activist. Malott has published opinion pieces in conservative publications and has attended anti-trans rallies and conferences.
Background
Malott was born in 1990 and grew up in a conservative Christian family in Hanover, Ontario, a rural community west of Toronto:
Throughout my teens and twenties, I was plagued with two mental health issues—the first was the gender dysphoria I knew I had but the second was the baggage of intense shame I internalized by NOT dealing with my dysphoria from childhood. That second one is such an important part and has huge implications on how my teenage years and adulthood played out. I think it’s easy for us to ignore the latter and focus only on the dysphoria.
When I was 14 years old, before even meeting my future wife, I made the decision that I was not going to transition. I knew I was beyond the age where puberty blockers would have prevented the masculinization of aspects of my body such as height, bone density, and my voice lowering, so my chances of passing as female were slim.
Nothing in the realm of hormones and surgeries were financially subsidized and I knew just how huge of an expense this would be throughout my late teens and twenties.
[…] The biggest deterrent of them all—I would have had to face telling my Christian parents how I felt about my gender. I knew they would never support me in pursuing a transition, and I knew that doing so would devastate them and humiliate me.
Malott and future spouse met when Malott was 16 years old. Two years later, Malott came out but claimed not to want to make a gender transition. They got married and did not have any children together.
Malott earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Waterloo in 2015, then did database management and software development for Open Text, Manulife Financial, Desire2Learn, and Brock Solutions. Malott handled web accessibility for the City of Woodstock from 2015 to 2019, then held product management roles at eSolutionsGroup, OCAS, and Bonfire Interactive.
Malott had a change of heart about transition after a few years. After they separated in 2018, Malott made a gender transition soon after and now lives in Kitchener.
Activism
Malott quickly found a conservative and anti-trans audience eager to uplift someone whose views reflected theirs, including
In 2023, Mallot began the podcast Alotta Thoughts. Guests include:
April 10 & 20: Catherine Kronas and Chanel Pfahl
May 12: Catherine Kronas, Eva Kurilova, Neil Dorin, and Lois Cardinal
June 7: Audra Facinelli
In 2023 Malott attended an anti-trans conference held by Genspect and seemed surprised that many attendees and online observers made cruel comments about Malott’s presence, appearance, and sexuality. Both Malott and “autogynephilia” activist “Phil Illy” were called “autogynephiles” and told they should not be parading their sexual fetish in front of attendees. Some attendees said they had a trauma response from being exposed to Malott without consent, as they felt they were being forced to participate in Malott’s sexual script. Some of Malott’s critics identify as “trans widows” whose oath-breaking spouses left them to transition, exactly as Malott did. The presence of Malott and “Phil Illy” was dubbed “AGPgate” and discussed widely in transphobic circles.
John Derbyshire is a British-American author, eugenicist, and anti-transgender activist. Derbyshire is a member of the Human Biodiversity Institute, a conservative-run eugenics think tank closely associated with promoting harmful views about trans people, particularly the group’s promotion of the transphobic 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen by HBI member J. Michael Bailey.
Background
John Derbyshire was born on June 3, 1945. Derbyshire attended the Northampton School for Boys and earned a degree from University College London. Derbyshire was a computer programmer for stock market speculators before becoming a full-time writer. Derbyshire’s work has appeared in National Review, The New Criterion, The American Conservative , Unz Review, Taki’s Magazine, VDARE, and The Washington Times.
“Lost in the Male”: review by John Derbyshire [excerpt]
Part Three is the book’s most difficult section, because it deals with the rarest and most puzzling aspect of male effeminacy: According to Bailey, less than one man in 12,000 is transsexual, a condition defined simply by “the desire to become a member of the opposite sex,” whether or not that desire has led to actual surgery. The striking finding here is that there are two quite distinct types of men who wish they were women, distinguished by the choice of erotic object. On the one hand there are “homosexual transsexuals,” who desire masculine men—heterosexual men, for preference—and who dress and behave like women to attract them. And then there is the “autogynephilic transsexual,” a man whose erotic attention is fixed on the idea of himself as a woman.
The strangeness of this latter type is captured nicely in the title of Bailey’s chapter on them: “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies.” An autogynephile is essentially a heterosexual man whose object of desire is an imaginary feminine creature which happens to be himself… or herself, depending on how you look at it. Such a person was usually not effeminate as a child, has likely been married, and does not show typically homosexual preferences in career or entertainment choices. The historian and travel writer Jan (formerly James) Morris, to judge from her autobiographical book Conundrum, belongs to this category. The consummation of sexual desire presents obvious difficulties for the autogynephile. Indeed, it is occasionally fatal: Around 100 American men die every year from “autoerotic asphyxia,” which seems to arise from a conjunction of masochism and autogynephilia—the two conditions are related in some way not well understood.
All of these types—girlish boys, male homosexuals, transsexuals of both types—are of course human beings, who, like the rest of us, must play the best game they can with the cards Nature has dealt them. No decent person would wish to inflict on them any more unhappiness than their mismatched bodies and psyches have already burdened them with. At the same time, there is circumstantial evidence that complete acceptance and equality for all sexual orientations may have antisocial consequences, so that the obloquy aimed at sexual variance by every society prior to our own may have had some stronger foundation than mere blind prejudice. Male homosexuality, in particular, seems to possess some quality of being intrinsically subversive when let loose in long-established institutions, especially male dominated ones. The courts of at least two English kings offer support to this thesis, as does the postwar British Secret Service, and more recently the Roman Catholic priesthood. I should like to see some adventurous sociologist research these outward aspects with as much diligence and humanity as Michael Bailey has applied to his study of the inward ones.
Derbyshire’s positive review (as with Dan Seligman in Forbes) shows why this book will be embraced by conservatives as part of the new “calculated compassion” movement in the face of significant and unstoppable LGBT political advances in the last 30 years. Seems they hope to slow things down at least.
As expected, uber-conservative Derbyshire loves Bailey. In discussing the first two sections, he brings up Bailey’s cloacal extrophy story, his woefully uninformed “homosexual voice” thinking and clueless conjectures on why certain jobs in the gender ghettoes go to gay men.
Then he gets to the part on trans people, which Derbyshire sums up perfectly and exposes the book for what it is. Bailey has been claiming he never called us men, but that’s not how anyone else sees it, whether they’re Derbyshire, yours truly, or other psychologists. Derbyshire also picks up on how Bailey claims there’s a connection between transsexual women and 25 men a year who die from self-strangulation while masturbatingin panties.
The 1 in 12,000 number cited is way off, as Bailey is about to find out. I would estimate several thousand assimilated trans women in the Chicago area alone, and probably five times that many who would fit in Bailey’s definition of anyone seriously thinking about transition. Bailey should be very pleased to see that conservatives like Tammy Bruce and John Derbyshire are taking up Anne Lawrence’s “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies”cliche, which dovetails perfectly with the Man Who Would Be Queen title.
Subsequent commentary (2003)
Derbyshire sees gay people as “intrinsically subversive” when allowed in positions of power (see the Califia-Rice quotation on my “illegal immigrants” page for how those of us who pass get painted as moles and traitors).
Derbyshire’s review came about the same way as Bailey’s Amazon shill reviews, it turns out. A little logrolling. Both were published by National Academies Press: Derbyshire’s Prime Obsession:and Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen both came out in 2003.
The Derb is well-known for anti-gay commentary, and he’s taking us to task for being those “‘transgender’ extremists,” miserable ingrates who just aren’t satisfied with the crumbs from the table.
The homosexual-rights activists are in a period of overshoot. They have banished the old regime of illegality, persecution and blackmail, and a good thing too. Now, however, they are trying to effect radical changes in society, changes which huge numbers of people will not stomach. As I have said before: “Homosexuals would, I believe, be wise to lower the volume, cherish their private lives, withdraw the more contentious litigation, and stop ‘pushing the envelope.’ Envelopes can break.”
There’s also this gem (interesting in light of my business partner Calpernia’s boyfriend Barry, who was gay-bashed on base for months before he was literally beaten to death with a baseball bat):
The extremist-homosexualist lobbies are extremely skilled at this. Just look at the word “gay-bashing.” It ought to mean whacking someone over the head with a baseball bat. What it actually means–is taken to mean by ordinary Americans–is the utterance of anything opposed to the extremist-homosexualist cause. (It was used against me just five minutes ago in an e-mail, because I wondered aloud about diseases specific to male homosexuals.)
And last, before we get to the review, an anecdote about his wacky adventures with Bailey (emphasis mine):
June 12, 2003 blog post
The Man Who Would Be Late
Yes, it’s true: NRODT [archive link] really did assign me to review Michael Bailey’s book about effeminate men. I urge you to do one, or better yet both, of the following: (a) get a subscription to NRODT so you can read my review, or (b) buy Michael’s book. As well as the obvious reasons to buy it (it’s a good book, full of fascinating observations and, so far as I could discern, agenda-free), there is also the fact that Michael, the nicest guy you could ever wish to meet, and a very conscientious researcher, is being vilified by militant trans-gender extremists. Here is an anecdote about the book. It happens that Michael and I share the same publisher. We had adjoining tables at Book Expo America in Los Angeles the other day. The drill is, you get half an hour at a table in a huge hall, where people line up in front of the tables to get a free book (this is a trade show) signed by the author. It’s all timed very precisely by the organizers, as they have a LOT of authors to get through. Well, I was waiting in the green room with my publisher’s publicity lady, to do my signing at 12:30. Michael was scheduled to sign at the same time, but he was late. It got to be 12:15, 12:20, and the publicity lady was getting worried. Derb: “I sure hope he gets here on time. A long line of angry transsexuals doesn’t bear thinking about…” Fortunately Michael showed up with a minute to spare.
More fun with The Derb
From his blog work on the National Review’s The Corner. Links in text added by me.
Derbyshire, John (November 16, 2003). Culture wars: Report from Derb bunker. National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_11_16_corner-archive.asp [archive]
November 16, 2003
CULTURE WARS: REPORT FROM DERB BUNKER [John Derbyshire]
Following the “Derbophobe” link at the end of today’s column, a number of readers have e-mailed in to ask what on earth I have done to tick off this Lynn Conway person so very comprehensively.
It’s a long story but here is the gist of it.
There is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, Michael Bailey. Michael’s research specialty is the psychology of “gender identity.” He studies–in a formal, peer-reviewed academic sense–things like homosexuality, transsexualism, and so on. Earlier this year he published a book about his research, titled The Man Who Would Be Queen. I am slightly acquainted with Michael and his work–we are both members of a certain invitation-only e-list dealing with matters of human variation from biological, psychological and sociological perspectives. I therefore volunteered to review his book for National Review. My review duly appeared in the June 30 issue of NRODT this year. Here it is.
Now, the last part of Michael’s book deals with male transsexuals–men who wish to become women. In it, he subscribes to the theory (which did not originate with him) that there are two quite distinct types of male transsexual. The first type is pretty straightforward, just a particularly effeminate kind of homosexual, who wants to be a woman in order to attract male sex partners–heterosexual ones for preference. The second type, however, is much stranger. This is the “autogynephile”–a masculine, basically heterosexual man, whose erotic attention is fixated on the image of himself as a woman. In the studies Michael (and others) have done, this type appears quite distinct from the other. Autogynephiles, for example, are likely to have been married to normal women and to have fathered children by them. They differ from the other type–the “homosexual transsexual”–in all sorts of other ways, too, that show up clearly in life histories and psychological tests.
Now, this is all psychological theory. It may be wrong–though on the evidence Michael presents, in his book and elsewhere, it seems to this non-specialist that he has a pretty good case. This theory, however, is pure poison to those autogynephiles who, like Lynn Conway, have hadsex-reassignment surgery. They take very strong exception to the implication that they are fundamentally males–and heterosexual males at that! WE ARE WOMEN! They scream. FULLY FEMININE WOMEN! To say that they take strong exception to Michael’s work is, in fact, to understate the situation. They are spitting furious with Bailey, and have launched a huge campaign against him and anyone associated with him.
The scale of their campaign is tremendous. Anyone who ever shook hands with Michael Bailey is being tracked down and “exposed” via materials like those I linked to. This campaign is very well financed and has pulled in some big guns–the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, is carrying out a “hate crimes” investigation. Our publisher has been lobbied ferociously to withdraw Michael’s book (Michael’s publicist, who is also mine, has been a target of their campaign) and Northwestern has also been threatened with various kinds of action if they do not shut Michael’s mouth.
What’s this got to do with me? Well, I gave Michael’s book a friendly review, see, so I must be part of the Axis of Evil. In fact, these lunatics have erected a huge conspiracy theory about myself and Michael, based on the fact that, wait for it, we have the same publisher!!! It follows, you see, that Michael and I meet secretly in a basement somewhere every Friday to plot further insults and outrages against these autogynephiles. I’m not kidding. This stuff is bizarre.
In fact, other than belonging to the same e-list, Michael and I are not acquainted. I have met him just once: his book came out at the same time as mine, and our publisher sent us both to BookExpo in Los Angeles this summer, along with all their other authors whose books had just appeared. Michael does not, in fact, altogether approve of me. He is–as his book clearly shows–sympathetic to people with “gender identity” problems, and regards me as a primitive homophobe. (Imagine! Me!!)
A great many other facts on Lynn Conway’s website are wrong, too. I have never, for example, written a book about yachting, and I have never heard of half the people she names as being part of the great Bailey-Derbyshire conspiracy to present autogynephiles as essentially male.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Lynn Conway is nuts. She and her pals have money, though, and energy, and a big cheering section in the “gay rights” crowd, so I shall probably end up in jail for some kind of “hate crime” before they are through with me.
OK, it’s all a bit of a storm in a teacup. It does illustrate, though, the savagery of the “gender issues” and “gay rights” campaigners. These people are pure totalitarians, intent on shutting up and destroying anyone who goes against their party line–even someone as generally sympathetic as Bailey. They are absolutely unscrupulous, very well funded, and have powerful friends in Congress and the judiciary–it is they who are driving this new “hate crimes” legislation.
As an opinion journalist, I am fair game, and I can take care of myself. Michael, though, is a scientist, a “retired and uncourtly scholar,” quite unused to this kind of vituperation and misrepresentation. His work ought to be validated, or disproved, via the usual processes of discussion and peer review.
Lynn Conway and her gang couldn’t care less about any of that. Like the rest of the “gay rights” and “gender issues” crowd, they want to shut down all discussion and debate. Fundamentally they are extreme narcissists, who react with blind unreasoning fury when their precious self-esteem is pricked. They don’t want peer review; they don’t want science; they don’t want discussion; they want blood. This is real culture war here, and if we lose it, we shall lose our freedoms.
November 17, 2003
TRANSSEXUALS VS. BAILEY-DERB AXIS OF EVIL [John Derbyshire]
Many readers have expressed great interest in the flap ove Michael Bailey’s book, which I sketched out in a long Corner post yesterday. Michael Bailey himself has set up a site to give his account of the affair. You can, by the way, read Michael’s book free on the web–there is a link somewhere in that site.
TRANSSEXUALS VS. DERB [John Derbyshire]
A reader (one of several expressing the same sentiment): “Why do you play along with this person’s [i.e. Lynn Conway’s, the male-to-female transsexual who put up that ‘Derbophobe’ web site] pathology by calling him a “she”? As a woman, I can tell you one thing for sure: He is not a woman, just a poor, deluded amputee.”
In my opinion, this is not an easy call. You can make a polemical point–and, if the offending theory is true, be technically correct–by referring to Lynn Conway as “he.” I think my own preference for “she” just derives from a strong, old-fashioned attachment to good manners.
Now, you could argue that, given the vituperation heaped on my head by Lynn Conway, she has forfeited any right to good manners on my part. I just don’t agree. If she considers herself a woman, and has gone to all the pain and expense of having an operation to make her feel more like a woman, I think common courtesy dictates that we call her what she wishes to be called, however deluded we may think she is. To start referring to her as “he” just seems a bit spiteful and nyah-nyah-ish, even if technically correct. Perhaps I’m not making a good case here; perhaps I’m not sure about this; but that is kind of the point. When in doubt, stick with good manners.
This is related, in some way I can’t be bothered to figure out, to the question of whether to pronounce your enemy’s name properly. I used to work with a woman who was perfectly detestable–everyone detested her, she was a sneak and a suck-up, incompetent and lazy, but highly skilled at ingratiating herself with management. Her name was “Diane,” which in England is pronounced “die-AN.” Well, she had this big thing about how she wanted everyone to say “DEE-an.” Naturally we all referred to her as “die-AN.” Now, twenty years on, with the sage maturity of my years, I think I would have said “DEE-an,” while working very hard indeed to get her fired.
[By the way, “Derbyshire” is pronounced “DAH-bi-shuh.” That’s “DAH-bi-shuh”–everybody got that?] Posted at 02:31 PM
Eugenics
Derbyshire has been reading the work of his eugenicist friends like J. Michael Bailey:
Now, the trend in current research on homosexuality, if I have understood it correctly, suggests that the homosexual orientation is indeed mostly congenital — the result of events in the mother’s womb, or in early infancy, with perhaps some slight genetic predisposition. The thing is, in short, mainly biochemical — part of a person’s physical make-up.
Supposing this is true, let us conduct a wee thought experiment — admittedly a fanciful one. A young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, or carrying a small infant, shows up at her doctor’s office. “Doctor,” she asks, “is there some kind of test you can do to tell me if my child is likely to become a homosexual adult?” The doctor says yes, there is. “And,” the woman continues, “suppose the test is positive — would that be something we can fix? I mean, is there some sort of medical, or genetic, or biochemical intervention we can do at this stage, to prevent that happening?” The doctor says yes, there is. “How much does the test cost? And supposing it’s positive, how much does the fix cost?” The doctor says $50, and $500. The woman takes out her checkbook.
Of course this is not happening anywhere in the U.S.A. right now. If my understanding of the state of current research is correct, however, it might very well be happening on a daily basis ten years from now.
Byers, Dylan (April 7, 2012). National Review fires John Derbyshire.Politico https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/04/national-review-fires-john-derbyshire-119887
Derbyshire, John (April 05, 2012). The Talk: Nonblack Version http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire/ [archive]
Derbyshire, John (November 16, 2003). Culture wars: Report from Derb bunker. National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_11_16_corner-archive.asp [archive]
Derbyshire, John (June 12, 2003). The Man Who Would Be Late. National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_06_08_corner-archive.asp [archive]
Derbyshire, John June 30, 2003. Lost in the Male. National Review, pp. 51-52. https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/lost-in-the-male/
Conway, Lynn (2003). Who is John Derbyshire? by Lynn Conway http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Derbyshire/Who-is-JD.html
Conway, Lynn (2003). Full text and commentary by Lynn Conway http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Derbyshire/DerbyshireReview.html
Sonia John is a translator and activist who helped translate large parts of this site. John also wrote some interesting essays during the J. Michael Bailey book scandal.
Bailey is an evolutionary psychologist, a controversial ideology that believes “counting number of descendants one leaves” is the ultimate measure of human “fitness.” In evolutionary psychology, LGBT people are among those who are “a big mistake” in terms of evolution.
Transgenderism: Fertility and the Ancient Texts
by Sonia John, 2003
For a number of years I had a friend from Germany living in my city while she was pursuing a degree in International Relations. A philosophical type from an early age, when she was about ten she asked her grandfather, who raised and butchered pigs for a living, what was the purpose of life. He answered, “reproduction.”
I think that one of the reasons GLBT people threaten the world view of the conservative sectors of societies is because of low GLBT reproductive rates. The imperative to reproduce, to assure the survival of the ego, family, clan, tribe, nation, etc., is so firmly ingrained in our biology and culture that most people scarcely think about it. This is scarcely surprising, because through most of human history survival was often in doubt, but this is not a threat that has obtained in most of the world in modern times. Nonetheless, lowered fertility is one tangible and emotionally-felt answer some would give to the question, “what harm do GLBT people really cause society?”
Although ZPG (zero population growth) as a political movement has always been very marginal, invisible almost everywhere, its goal has nonetheless been met–and very alarmingly to some, exceeded–in a few European countries, and that goal is close at hand in some other Eruopean countries as well. If it weren’t for the influx of immigrants, who have higher fertility rates than the native-born, the US and Canada would probably also be at or on the verge of ZPG. All of this fertility reduction has occurred by voluntary action, without the assistance of plagues or war, and unlike most previous fertility declines, it has occurred in an environment of peaceful prosperity.
As usual, a trend such as this has first been manifested in the “advanced” societies. Many people assume that a decline in fertility will also eventually occur in the less-advanced societies but that strong population growth will still be the norm there for at least a number of decades. This situation is tailor-made for xenophobes, whether grounded in fears of racial, cultural, military or economic eclipse. Up to this point, it has mainly been conservative religious groups, abetted at times by ultra-nationalistic political elements, that have labored in vain to limit the use of fertility-reducing technology, finding their justifications in ancient religious texts. But a wider variety of conservative groups are also pro-natalist because they–and a great many others who would not necessarily identify themselves as conservative–view perpetual population growth as a fundamental requirement for the financial well-being of businesses, governments, and eventually, according to the rosy scenario, individuals.
Although the bulk of the decline in population growth in the developed countries can be attributed to popular birth control practices, a certain amount of it is also likely the consequence of greater acceptance of gay and lesbian people–and now, the transgender. Given the more relaxed contemporary attitudes toward homosexuality, marriages of convenience (and whatever children are thereby produced) occur much less frequently. The same is increasingly true for transgender people, especially as they are now coming to understand their own nature at earlier stages of their lives.
It is perhaps understandable that the emergence and acceptance of transgender individuals, above all the others in the GLBT grouping, would most viscerally alarm fertility advocates because the chemical and surgical interventions transpeople typically undertake significantly impair or destroy their procreative capabilities. If it were possible to change one’s genitalia and body chemistry and not lose the natural ability to procreate–as in some distant imagined future–transpeople might be much less alarming to the overall pro-natalist society.
The concern about fertility also is important in understanding resistance to liberalizing marriage laws. The purpose of the institution of marriage is seen by many people as primarily a framework and an incentive for reproduction. For many, a childless marriage is still seen as an unfulfilled and pointless one, just as is sexual intercourse with no immediate procreative purpose. Childlessness after a certain age–regardless of marital status–is still often seen as tragic and as an affront to established norms of masculinity and femininity. These attitudes easily find their way into legislation, such as that which narrowly restricts the definition of marriage and which furnishes significant tax incentives to child-bearing.
It’s also understandable that some biologists would become involved in the debates about GLBT people. The persistence in the population of GLBT individuals–long viewed as a relatively inconsequential minority–has been a puzzle for biology because it seems to contradict Darwinian tenets. But now, with growing awareness of the true number of GLBT people and the “problem” they represent for fertility, the concerns of biologists with conservative leanings have acquired an additional urgency.
The controversy over the causes of GLBTism, which is likely to continue apace over the next decades, informs the attitudes of various interest groups that are concerned with public policy on GLBT issues. There is some tantalizing but as yet no conclusive evidence that the presence or expression of GLBTism is caused principally by genetic or biochemical factors, but some features of the gender-variant landscape are well-established:
1. GLBT individuals are generally the offspring of non-GLBT parents;
2. GLBT parents are likely to give birth to non-GLBT children;
3. GLBT individuals exist in all societies and represent approximately the same proportion of populations everywhere;
4. GLBT individuals, in their majority, can be induced by the forceful application of social, legal, etc. pressures to conform to societal norms, including procreation.
Point #4 above is crucial because it has almost always been the means by which societies, absent until recently any knowledge of modern genetics, have handled their “undesirable” GLBT members. It is a major point of agreement by all who object to GLBT expression, whether they view it as an innate characteristic or as a sinful choice inspired by some devil figure.
It is likely that some dream of having the potential to intervene in genetic processes to reduce the number of GLBT individuals who are born, and this capability may emerge during our lifetimes; whether its application would ever become accepted as ethical is an open question. It may also be that there are extremists plotting organized genocidal strategies against GLBT people, but such plans stand, in my opinion, little chance of success in the constitutional democracies that govern in most developed countries today. This is not to say that these eventualities are impossible, and so it is worthwhile to have alert sentinels who are willing monitor the activities of fringe groups as well as the progress and application of potentially unethical scientific research.
In a political environment that forecloses options of being able to directly control the number and specific types of people who are to be born, traditional and conservative elements are limited to advocating general pro-natalist policies that reward those who express a preferred behavior, along with repressive and stigmatizing policies to deal with those whose behavior they do not sanction. The struggle over these policies represents the working out of social and cultural evolution rather than of biological evolution, which requires many millennia.
It may be true that the majority of people everywhere resist change in their lives, particularly when they believe that change will degrade any advantaged position they may hold. In the early days of NASA, during a congressional hearing on the possible benefits of including women in the astronaut corps, John Glenn stated, “The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.” Note that he did not say that this was a happy or unhappy fact, nor did he justify the status quo by appealing to any authority to rationalize it; he was like many complacent advantaged people who simply say “what is, is.” However, it would not technically be correct to say that conservatives always resist change, because many desire to change back to the way things were in the past (one may pick from a wide variety of defunct utopian eras). Also, conservatives heartily endorse evolution in the labor market of capitalist economic systems. What conservatives rarely ever do want is a forward movement of social evolution, even though it is in social evolution that the human race excels as a means of confronting the unpredictable challenges of life on this planet. The main reason for this is that social evolution has the greatest potential for altering the existing power structure, which continues to involve men holding most of the power and women performing most of the duties of reproduction and child-rearing.
It has never been enough for conservatives who are attempting to influence social policy to state, as John Glenn did, that a particular status quo merely exists and therefore should be preserved; with all of the urgent attacks on the contemporary social order, an appeal to a higher authority is necessary. For the religious side of the conservative house, the ancient scriptural texts suffice as unassailable authority, but belief in religious authority is not what it once was–for many people it has been supplanted to a significant degree by a belief in science. The challenge thus for conservatives is to find scientific authority for their wish to preserve the social status quo, and certain biologists have heeded their call by appealing, in a very biased way, to the most ancient text of them all–the human genome. But what does the human genome really say about how human beings should evolve? Does the genome have an intelligence, does it have preferences? Is this much different from asking if the earth “cares” about whether its atmospheric composition is X or Y, or whether it is the home to a greater or lesser number of plant and animal species? These are, in the end, unresolvable theological debates that obscure the reality that imputed evolutionary preferences are nothing more than the preferences of individuals living today. The important debate is about the kind of people and society we want to have in the future, and this debate can’t be limited to self-appointed scientific or theological Brahmins–everyone, especially the members of the GLBT communities, must participate in it.
We do know that the human genome is an extraordinarily complex system and that we have only just begun to grasp a few of the mechanics of its functioning. We also know that it is intricately connected by an ecological web to the genomes of other organisms and also to the physical environment, all of which also change over time. Then, we know that it is the nature of the genome to produce an enormous diversity of individuals and that this contributes greatly to its stability and capacity to adjust to changing circumstances–the vulnerabilities of monocultures are well-known. Finally, we take as a given that the genome ought to be allowed to continue to evolve, but the main question here has become, “under whose guidance, if under anyone’s?”
With the advance of technology, our species’ potential to effect change in the biosphere–which includes the human genome–is increasing more and more rapidly. Decisions about whether and how to employ this potential have typically been made by those who possess the technology, for the primary benefit of their own groups and in view of their own short moment of time. Long-term considerations have frequently been neglected, as have been considerations of impacts on human outsider groups, non-human groups, and the physical environment.
There has been a genetic experiment of significant scale–an intervention in the human genome–proceeding for a number of years now in several Asian countries. Using simple technology, many families have been selectively aborting female fetuses to the extent that in some areas of India, for example, 55% or more of the children being born are male. This means that for every thousand children born in these areas, there is an excess of one hundred males who will not be able to find mates, assuming the continuation of the prevalent social norms of monogamy and heterosexuality. Though the government in these areas opposes this sex-selection, the majority of the populace does not, and so it continues, albeit in the shadows. Does anyone have a clear idea of the full ramifications of such an unbalanced ratio between the sexes? To a greater or lesser degree, a preference for male children characterizes most human societies in the world today, and far more advanced (as well as less brutal) technology for sex-selection of children is available in the developed countries, though at a price most in India cannot afford. Even granting that preferences for male children are less pronounced here than in India and the technology less-often utilized, what justification is there for allowing (or alternatively, banning) this technology which contravenes the genome’s natural output of an approximate parity between males and females?
I would suggest that society has a serious and legitimate interest in limiting or even prohibiting the use of technology in this way. Furthermore, I would view this technology as “a solution in search of a problem,” whose application is driven mainly by the profit motive. Maintaining parity in the sex ratio of newborns is viewed by most as beneficial for societies, but individuals desire exceptions for themselves because of social and cultural beliefs that can also have financial implications; this is where individuals’ rights must be weighed against the collective long-term well-being of societies. This situation also illustrates the folly of necessarily equating a beneficial collective genetic outcome with the sum of the genetic outcomes preferred by the individuals within that society. A much more satisfactory solution to the “problem” of those who desire to avoid having female children (and one far less fraught with unforeseen consequences) involves addressing the societal reasons that male children are so inordinately preferred, even if the required adjustments to the social status quo might be temporarily wrenching.
In a similar way, many of the thoughts and theories emanating from confederations such as the Human Biodiversity Group seem to be “solutions in search of a problem,” appealing to popular prejudices and dislikes such as the Indian parent’s dislike of having “too many” daughters. With respect to GLBT people, once more the question has to be asked, “what harm do they really do to society?” Clearly, on the positive side, they have made innumerable brilliant contributions to society. On the negative side, is there evidence that they are particularly given to destructive or criminal behavior? This is a case that cannot be made, especially with the understanding that the HIV pandemic is not solely a GLBT phenomenon.
Consider, then, a research or position paper outlining the present scientific understanding of the etiology of disease (regardless of whether the focus is on genetic or microbial causation, or both), continues with speculation about what this might mean for ameliorating an additional disease or social problem, and then selects the existence of GLBT people as that single important problem (disease). Given the lack of any creditable evidence that GLBT people constitute a societal problem, this selection is tantamount to simply saying “we don’t like them.”
Ordinarily in the modern world problems come to light and are assessed for their severity by considering the cumulative costs associated with them–costs borne by individuals and society as a whole. In some respects an analysis of dollars-and-cents costs may be a crude way to measure a problem, but it is a tool that most people can agree on as a starting point. Preliminary conclusions can thus be reached about the relative importance of any number of social or medical problems–obesity, drug addiction, or violent behavior, for instance. These three are fine examples to contrast with the alleged “problem” of GLBT people, because they too are all considered to have at least some roots in genetic predisposition. In the case of violent behavior, which psychologists are apt to categorize under headings such as “anti-social personality disorder” or “explosive anger syndrome,” enormous costs result, including physical damage to individuals and property, psychological damage to individuals, lost employment productivity, and the expense of treatment, law enforcement and incarceration.
What are we to make of those who pursue an interest in ridding the world of GLBT people when there are so many more serious problems that might be confronted? Is it a simple phobia based essentially on a primeval antipathy toward non-procreative individuals? I believe this to be true, but there is also a related and highly emotional secondary issue in play–the extreme malleability of human sexual and gender behavior. Humans have, in common with other primates, far more sexual energy than is required merely for reproduction, and this energy is often expressed in non-procreative–including same-sex–activity depending on the individual and the social situation. Likewise with gender, given the notoriously arbitrary and shifting precepts of gender normality, variance in this dimension occurs in all shadings depending in part on the time and place. In effect, it’s entirely likely that the majority of the human population is “queer” to some extent. If this is true and it becomes common knowledge, both the technical and political feasibility of a genetic intervention fades to nothing. This is the principal reason that anti-GLBT eugenics advocates place such great emphasis on minimizing the count of GLBT people and on denying the existence of bisexuality: their program requires a small and very clearly definable minority.
Despite their different belief systems, in the end what the restless conservative scientists object to is the same as what religious conservatives object to: not wayward genetic evolution, but “undesirable” social evolution. Both groups abhor the idea that society could change so as to include and accommodate GLBT people. For them, this means the end of the world as they know it.
I received the following response from Kristina-Maia DeMott:
Reproduction rates cycle up and down regardless of popular, political, socially conscious, and religious movements to manipulate them. Julian Huxley predicted in the 1930s (“What Dare I Think” was the book) that the reproductive rates of the UK and Western Europe would hit a low in the 1970-80s. Many things were factored into Huxley’s work, along with all known earlier reproductive data curves. Indeed, we are now at the bottom of this predicted curve, if a bit beyond the date horizon. Still, pretty good work for 70-odd years ago.
Social factors and cycles have much to do with declining birthrates in the general populace as technology succeeds, including the Veblenian concept of conspicuous consumption by the upwardly mobile (the ‘me’ generation DINKS, for instance) leading to a disapproval of large families, since urban-dwelling children cannot lend functional support to the family in leaner times as a pig-farmer’s children would, with their ability to take on crucial farming chores at an early age. Having large families decreases the financial ability to amass physical tokens that emulate the trappings of a higher-class lifestyle (these days it’s imported autos, technical toys, expensive pets, vacation properties, designer clothing, etc.). Still, the drive to reproduce emerges later, leading to things like the current upsurge in 50-something parents with only-children in 1st grade. These longer generations of well-off children will function as a gene-preservation vehicle, something unforeseen, but also create social consequences in a decade or so when children reared under “Me Generation” home attitudes find themselves in college with the children of Generation Xers. Hmm … I feel a movie script coming on: “Escape from the Gated Community”? In any case, mid-20th Century ponderers could not have foreseen GLBT people as a factor in any population trend, although it had been noted that ‘dandyism’ (covert homosexuality) and other factors such as inbreeding did lead to low birthrates among the Euro nobility, and even in much earlier times, as in the population decline in upper classes of the Roman Empire.
What we ARE in the midst of, during this “population bust,” is a swing upward of the fundamentalist religious and nationalist pendulum worldwide. Fundamentalists of nearly all religions, along with zealots for national and racial supremacies, will support a strong mandate for reproduction of their OWN kind. This always seems to happen around the time reproductive rates hit a low, like a spark plug starting a motor. These groups will push, in competition with others, for having as many children as they can, in order to increase the influence of their own “correct” offspring — this was the gist of the National Socialist “Bund Maedel” agenda, it also appears to be a component of the “family values”-fixation being promoted in the US.
While it may be handy propaganda to stigmatize GLBT individuals in general for not following “God’s laws,” for not being reproductively active, still, as a whole the socially ultraconservative are not in favor of reproduction by the “godless” or the “inferior.” Whether they believe in Darwinian evolution or not, most fundamentalists do accept the gene theory of inherited traits. GLBTs represent for them the kind of people that they — and here add the social Darwinist eugenicists, devolutionists, etc. — would rather see thinned out of the gene pool. It follows that what upsets them is not GLBT individuals’ low birthrates, rather it is the potential of sperm-donor babies and surrogate births to married gay, lesbian, and transgender couples that will pass the “nonconformist gene” (of whatever kind) down the generations, compounding the “problem” as they see it.
What they don’t want to accept is the fact that the human race is slowly becoming gender-depolarized, on a grand evolutionary and genetic scale, despite attempts to continue the increasing sexual polarization of society in media. Why do the conservative-owned media (don’t whimper, they really are … conservative-owned that is) care so much about, put so much money into, establishing cookie-cutter supergendered figures like Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears, Brad Pitt and George Clooney? Because they preserve remnants of an image that is passing away. Schwarzenegger as Saviour. To take another small example of the kneejerk reaction: to see the hand of the would-be social engineer at work, one has only to look at the public-relations hoopla surrounding the resurgence of the “man’s man image” in the supposed rebirth of the conservative Brooks Brothers clothing stores. What was different? They make more women’s suits now. Wish I could afford one.
But it won’t last. This is the tide they cannot hold back, and cross-gendering will become so much more common in the future that today’s anti-GLBT bigots will seem as silly as the farmer yelling at the automobilist, “Get a Horse!”
References
1. Bailey interview on KOOP-FM, Austin, TX May 2003.
