Aaron Julian Sibarium was born January 9, 1996. Sibarium’s parents are Michael Sibarium, a lawyer, and Laura Govoni-Sibarium, a nursing consultant and synagogue volunteer. Sibarium and sibling Ely (born January 24, 1999) both attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and Yale. Ely Sibarium has published work about gender diversity and neurodiversity with John Strang and Scott Leibowitz.
Sibarium earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 2018. Sibarium interned at the center-right American Enterprise Institute and was an editor at The American Interest prior to its closure. Sibarium is an associate editor at the Washington Free Beacon.
In 2023, Sibarium reported on instances of plagiarism by Harvard President Claudine Gay, which contributed to Gay’s resignation.
Anti-transgender activism
While working as an opinion columnist at the Yale Daily News in 2017, Sibarium was triggered by Yale’s move to the term first-years vs. freshmen.
Reason / Just Asking Questions with Zach Weissmueller, Liz Wolfe, and Aaron Sibarium (February 13, 2025). Aaron Sibarium: Is DEI over? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9W_YwEBCdo
Do No Harm podcast (September 17, 2024). S3E1b: Navigating the Voter Pulse on Pediatric Gender Medicine and DEI (Part 2/2) with Aaron Sibarium & Leor Sapir
Do No Harm podcast (September 10, 2024). S3E1: What Do Voters Think About on Identity Politics? (Part 1/2) with Aaron Sibarium & Leor Sapir
Wisdom of Crowds with Damir Marusic, Shadi Hamid, and Aaron Sibarium (January 8, 2024). Claudine Gay and the Culture Wars. https://wisdomofcrowds.live/p/claudine-gay-and-the-culture-wars
Subversive Podcast with Alex Kaschuta and Aaron Sibarium (May 31, 2021). Aaron Sibarium: Liberalism’s time to sober up. https://www.alexkaschuta.com/p/subversive-podcast-aaron-sibarium
Know Your Enemy with Matt Sitman, Sam Adler-Bell, and Aaron Sibarium (Dec 5, 2020). A Working Class GOP? (w/ Aaron Sibarium). https://www.patreon.com/posts/working-class-w-44702097
Richard Hanania is an American political scientist, right-wing eugenicist, and anti-transgender extremist.
In 2021 Hanania began hosting a podcast via Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI). It was called The Richard Hanania Show through 2023. and later renamed CSPI Podcast.
Part of the panel âThe Bailey brouhaha: Community members speak out on resisting transphobia and sexism in academia and beyondâ
Joelle Ruby Ryan, moderator
National Womenâs Studies Association conference Cincinnati, Ohio June 21, 2008
—
As is frequently the case in discussions that are conducted with a great show of emotion, the down-to-earth interests of certain groups, whose excitement is entirely concerned with factual matters and who therefore try to distort the facts, become quickly and inextricably involved with the untrammeled inspirations of intellectuals who, on the contrary, are not in the least interested in facts but treat them merely as a springboard for âideas.â
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
The âcontroversyâ about J. Michael Baileyâs book is a marketing ploy by academic opportunists whose careers involve exploiting oppressed minorities. Bailey claims his bookâs third section on transsexual taxonomy triggered the response, but he had published that material years earlier as âTranssexualism: Women trapped in menâs bodies or men who would be women?â (Bailey 2000). His eventual title echoes that: The Man Who Would Be Queen (Bailey 2003a).
Nobody went after Bailey when his work was first published. I myself sent a critical but civil note in May 2000 (James 2000). No one went after Baileyâs âsex scienceâ colleagues for their âscienceâ on trans women in previous decades. While those writings epitomize institutionalized transphobia (such as labeling trans women attracted to men âhomosexual transsexualsâ (Bagemihl 1997)), the authors generally remain academically responsible. Their true colors appear when popularizing their ideas, such as Ray Blanchardâs interview claiming a transsexual woman is merely âa man without a penisâ (Armstrong 2004).
The populist response to Baileyâs book in 2003 happened because
it was fraudulently marketed as science by the National Academies of Science
it became a cure narrative about gender-variant children
Why the populist response?
National Academies member Lynn Conway helped coordinate the populist response, titling her work âAn investigation into the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s book on transsexualism by the National Academiesâ (Conway 2003). It wasnât about Baileyâs third section, or Baileyâs ideas, or Bailey himself. It was about how this salacious bigotry got published by the National Academies of Science. It expanded because National Academies employees Stephen Mautner and Barbara Kline Pope never answered that question. Mautner even defended it as a âresponsible workâ (Mautner 2003).
Letâs examine Mautnerâs outrageous claim. Letâs say your academic field comprises a pervasive stereotype about an oppressed minority; letâs say greediness in Jewish people. You and your colleagues have access to Jews through state-run programs which compel them to submit to your experiments. Historical examples abound, like the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (Heller 1972), or Robert Ritterâs work classifying the two types of âgypsiesâ for the Nazis (Willems 1997). For trans people the historical example is Torontoâs Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (formerly the Clarke Institute), the source of much of the âscienceâ Bailey alludes to in his book.
Via state-funded experiments, your colleagues assert all Jews exhibit one of two types of greed: innate greed, or greed driven by fantasies of wealth and power. You write a book about it, including memorable anecdotes about greedy Jews youâve met at pawn shops and brothels. You frame your book with a Jewish child you saw cured through therapy. You devise a test to tell the two types of greedy Jews apart. You claim a hallmark of Jewish greed is denial, so any greedy Jew who objects to your taxonomy âprovesâ its validity. You quote eccentric Jewish people validated by your attention, who agree âmost greedy Jews lie.â
Stephen Mautner at the National Academies of Science arranges a secret âpeer reviewâ and youâre set. You title it The Jew in Jewelry: The Science of Judaism. Mautnerâs team creates a cover depicting a hook-nosed figure clutching a wad of money. Barbara Kline Pope sends out press releases and puts the book online, and you get tenure.
While that kind of foul play was certainly outrageous, what radicalized me was Baileyâs new framing device exploiting trans children (James 2003b). He compared his own children as the benchmark of normalcy (p. 52, p. 69). He also used his own children as evidence of his own normalcy: he calls himself a âsingle heterosexual manâ (p. 141). He even dedicated his book to his children (p. v) and later trotted them out as evidence in the press (Wilson 2003).
Reparative therapy of gender-variant youth
Baileyâs book is first and foremost a cure narrative framed by the story of âDanny Ryan,â a pseudonymous child displaying âgender nonconformity.â Bailey writes of Danny’s mother, who has been frustrated by other therapists she has consulted about her sonâs âfeminineâ behavior: âIn spring of 1996 Leslie Ryan came to my Northwestern University office to seek yet another opinionâ (p. 16).
Bailey describes the âcuringâ of âDanny Ryanâ after he explains to Dannyâs mother about reparative therapy developed by his Toronto cronies (p. 3, p. 214). Bailey warns that a world tolerant of feminine boys might âcome with the cost of more transsexual adultsâ (p. 30), noting Ken Zucker thinks reparative therapy helps âreduce this riskâ (p. 30). Bailey claims that Zucker considers transsexualism a âbad outcomeâ for children like Danny (p. 31). Zuckerâs reparative therapy involves taking away anything âfeminineâ from the child (p. 31). Bailey notes, âlearning more about the origins of transsexualism will not get us much closer to curing itâ (p. 207).
Dannyâs âcuringâ is complete when Bailey runs into Danny on the last page of the book: âThis was not a girl in boyâs clothingâ (p. 214). Baileyâs last paragraph claims Danny asks to use the men’s room. Bailey observes, âI am certain that as he said that, he emphasized âmenâsâ and looked my wayâ (p. 214).
Clinicians compare Zuckerâs efforts to âreparative therapy for homosexualsâ (Pickstone-Taylor 2003), noting that reparative therapy âseeks to reverse sexual orientation or gender identificationâ (Dean 2000) [emphasis mine]. Zucker claims his âtherapeutic interventionâ is OK â he only cures âgender identity disorder,â not homosexuality. Zuckerâs âproblematic and harshâ (Lostracco 2008) reparative therapy is detailed in a 2008 NPR report: Zucker ordered a mother to take away her childâs âfeminineâ toys and ordered the child not to play with or even draw pictures of girls (Spiegel 2008).
The populist response to Zuckerâs reparative therapy has been largely driven by the internet, the most significant advance for trans people that will happen in my lifetime. Our collected wisdom, once an oral tradition of drag mothers and pageant culture, a mish-mash of mimeographed pamphlets and clippings, mail-order newsletters, and answering machine recordings now has a permanent online home. Parents who once fought alone (Evelyn 1998) share alternatives to reparative therapy and refer families to supportive providers. Families are stepping forward as the public faces of gender-variant youth (TYFA 2008), organizing support groups and publicizing alternatives to Zuckerâs reparative therapy (Brill 2008). We are in the midst of a paradigm shift as progressive providers really listen to the voice of the people and consider the true welfare of trans children.
Academia as a tool of trans oppression
Our populist uprising targets high-end academic research, which has become a corrupt, bloated money grab with almost no consequence if employees generate grant money and publicity. Bailey and colleagues like Alice Dreger exploit master narratives (Dreger 2008), consensus statements (ISNA 2006), college texts (LeVay 2003), and selective peer review (Mautner 2003) to reinforce their views and dismiss differing views, especially from their objects of study. They turned the Archives of Sexual Behavior into the house organ and bully pulpit for knowledge produced by Torontoâs Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Theyâve also developed a highly effective strategy of using personal validation to exploit vulnerable individuals in oppressed communities. Following his exploitation of Anjelica Kieltyka (p. xii), Bailey continued with validation-craving eccentrics like Anne Lawrence (p. xii), Maxine Petersen (p. xii), and Alice Dreger (Dreger 2008), and in turn Dreger exploited Cheryl Chase (ISNA 2006) and Anjelica Kieltyka again (Dreger 2008). This tactic strengthens their credentialist positions as outsider experts, a feedback cycle of reciprocal validation from these grateful individuals.
âTrollingâ is internet slang for baiting people into a response. Online trolling is a highly developed subculture; academia and mainstream media have forms of trolling. Ann Coulter and Michael Moore turned trolling into entertainment. Trolls get money and publicity, and Bailey is a professional academic troll. His trolling template was the 1994 best-seller The Bell Curve, the âscienceâ of racial differences in intelligence (Herrnstein 1994). Janice Raymondâs transphobic troll The Transsexual Empire (Raymond 1979) epitomizes an unanswered troll that took decades to undo. Academic trolls canât lose. No response implies approval; any objection (however mild) becomes evidence theyâre right.
In 2003, Bailey called a mild rebuke from biologist Joan Roughgarden (Roughgarden 2003) âinsulting and scathingâ and characterized it as a âscreedâ (Bailey 2003b). By framing my non-academic response as a counter-troll, I deliberately shifted the âextremeâ edge of the debate, moving formerly âradicalâ views to the moderate position. I have no interest whatsoever in having a âscientificâ or âcivilâ debate about this book; thatâs one way academic trolls try to control the debate. Academics tend to be very thin-skinned and self-important, so theyâre easy to troll. The key to good trolling is getting them to do what you want while thinking it was their idea. Bailey and I are public figures, so pretty much anything said about us is fair comment. I wanted to echo Baileyâs disrespect, to bring consequence to his actions, since no academic consequence could be expected. I made it very clear this was the tipping point: a defining moment in our history (James 2004).
Populist uprisings always use new media to great effect. The means of production and distribution of knowledge are no longer controlled by elites. Lynn Conwayâs online investigation (Conway 2003) and my clearinghouse (James 2003a) had hundreds of contributors submitting thousands of items. In 2003 and 2004, it was everything we could do just to catalogue it all. The incident united the trans community as never before; a historically significant event (Surkan 2007). Academics attempting a feeble backlash against the Bailey backlash (Dreger 2008) are simply on the wrong side of history.
Reproduction and eugenics
Freudian psychology is being supplanted by a âbio-psych mergeâ (Ordover 2003). Sociobiology, behavior genetics, and evolutionary psychology all try to graft science onto social constructions, like âsocial Darwinismâ and eugenics before them.
In Baileyâs evolutionary psychology, âhomosexuality might be the most striking unresolved paradox of human evolution.â Because he believes âthe number of healthy offspring one leaves is perhaps the best indicator of evolutionary successâ (p. 116), Bailey frames his book within this essentialist discourse, where homosexuality is âmaladaptiveâ (p. 116) in terms of evolution. Most people see ârace scienceâ as hopelessly biased pseudoscience, but most donât see similarities between âsex scienceâ and ârace scienceâ yet. In fact, many LGBT people have faith that their political salvation lies in âsex scienceâ (Ordover 2003). Being labeled distinct, disordered, and diseased may rescue them from the âsinâ and âlifestyle choiceâ arguments, but at what cost?
This controversy boils down to reproduction, specifically natural selection. Essentially (in every sense of that word), the controversy is about the eugenic ideology of the âunfit.â âGender identity disorderâ and âdisorders of sex developmentâ are eugenic heterosexism. Bailey thinks homosexuality may represent a âdevelopmental errorâ (Bailey 1999). Blanchard thinks ânonhomosexualâ transsexualism is a paraphilic âdefect in a manâs sexual learningâ (Blanchard 1991), echoing his mentor Kurt Freundâs âcourtship disordersâ (Freund 1983). The order to which eugenicists ascribe asserts that the purpose or function of life is to make more life, or more specifically, âbetterâ life.
Conservatives hate the populist phrase âit takes a village to raise a child.â It takes a family to raise a child, they counter. Zucker blames childhood gender identity disorder on poor family dynamics and âmaternal psychopathologyâ (Zucker 2002). Bailey, Lawrence, and Dreger obliquely assert their worth or fitness is evidenced by being breeding organisms. Bailey talks about screening for and aborting gay fetuses as a âparental rightâ (Greenberg 2001), hinting that the next wave of eugenics will occur in utero. The âparental rightsâ movement can be better thought of as distributed eugenics. One way to stop distributed eugenics is through populism, by helping regular people understand that individual choices affect the whole population and vice versa.
Conclusion
Baileyâs book is a self-aggrandizing exercise in identity politics, where heâs a heroic scientist who is âcuringâ gender-variant children and speaking âscientific truthâ despite âhystericalâ activists whose âidentity politicsâ and ânarcissisticâ rage drive their efforts to âruinâ him (Bailey 2003c). Bailey outlines transsexualsâ âcommon lies and deceptivenessâ (p. 232) and explains away those who take issue with his claims as inept (p. 176), mentally disordered (Dreier 2003), or lying (Krasny 2007).
But thatâs not the real story. Essentially, Baileyâs book argues that he is a âsingle heterosexual manâ (p. 141). He throws around the phrase âgay, straight, or lyingâ (p. 96, p. 133) because he hates sexologist John Moneyâs book Gay, Straight, and In-Between (Money 1990). By replacing âin-betweenâ with âlying,â Bailey erases his bisexual and trans critics and extols his âopen and honestâ supporters of the âmale essenceâ narrative. (Wyndzen 2008). Yet Bailey isnât open and honest about his own sexual interests: âEverything that Iâm willing to say about my personal life, Iâve already saidâ (Krasny 2007). For more on this hypocrisy, see my essay âGay, Straight, or Baileyâ (James 2003c). Bailey is only attracted to âhomosexual transsexualsâ who are ânaturally feminineâ (p. 168): âIf a gay man wants to attract straight men, he should imitate a womanâ (p. 138). Blanchard appeals to Bailey because transfans like Bailey âare not gay but are more like âscrambled up heterosexual menââ (p. 187). Blanchardâs taxonomy (and thus Baileyâs book) also affirms Anne Lawrenceâs self-identity as a ârealâ transsexual (Lawrence 1998) rather than a non-transsexual under other taxonomies (Lawrence 2001). Bailey, Blanchard, and Lawrence are locked a feedback loop of personal and professional validation with like-minded supporters.
In my opinion, Baileyâs fraud extends beyond marketing this âcontroversyâ as science. Baileyâs âRyanâ family is too perfect, embodying every element needed for Bailey to refute opponents, all in one convenient family. âDanny Ryanâ would be an adult now, so I imagine a disinterested party will soon independently determine if âDannyâ exists.
Baileyâs âcontroversyâ was countered by a populist response that exposed his indefensible actions. He unwittingly started an unstoppable populist movement which still amazes me daily. It evokes a passage from Maya Angelou (Angelou 1978) that I first read in Les Feinbergâs Transgender Warriors (Feinberg 1996):
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Angelou, Maya (1978). Still I Rise. And Still I Rise. Random House.
Arendt, Hannah (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Reprint 1992, Penguin Classics.
Armstrong, Jane (2004). The body within: The body without. The Globe and Mail, June 12.
Toronto psychologist Ray Blanchard, one of Canada’s leading — and most controversial — gender experts, argues the transgendered movement is rife with delusion. “This is not waving a magic wand and a man becomes a woman and vice versa,” he says. “It’s something that has to be taken very seriously. A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you’re creating.”
Bagemihl, Bruce (1997). Surrogate phonology and transsexual faggotry: A linguistic analogy for uncoupling sexual orientation from gender identity. In Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Anna Livia, Kira Hall (eds.) pp. 380 ff. Oxford University Press.
A particularly revealing example of the heterosexist and generally biased reasoning of medical professionals can be found in the language used to categorize and pathologize transsexuality. Clinical studies and definitions have traditionally employed a confusing terminology in which, for example, a female-to-male transsexual who is attracted to women is labeled a “homosexual transsexual,” while a female-to-male transsexual who is attracted to men is labeled a “heterosexual transsexual.” In other words, the point of reference for “heterosexual” or “homosexual” orientation in this nomenclature is solely the individual’s genetic sex prior to reassignment (see for example, Blanchard et al. 1987, Coleman and Bockting, 1988, Blanchard, 1989). These labels thereby ignore the individualâs personal sense of gender identity taking precedence over biological sex, rather than the other way around. With this clinical terminology, people can be conveniently described as “escaping” a stigmatized homosexual identity when they become involved with members of the opposite sex following reassignment (erroneously assumed to be âthe normâ). The myth of the heterosexual imperative and the primacy of biology is thereby reasserted and rebuttressed, while the transgressive status of all transsexuals is trivialized.
Bailey, J. Michael (1999). Commentary: Homosexuality and mental illness, Archives of General Psychiatry, October, vol. 56, no. 10, 876-880.
Bailey, J. Michael (2000). Transsexualism: Women trapped in menâs bodies or men who would be women? http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.psych.nwu.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/transsexualism.html
Bailey, J. Michael (2003a). The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. National Academies/Joseph Henry Press.
Bailey, J. Michael (2003b). Book controversy question & answer. http://www.psych.northwestern.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/controversy.htm
Bailey, J. Michael (2003c). Identity politics as a hindrance to scientific truth. Paper presented at International Academy of Sex Research conference, July 19.
Blanchard, Ray (1991). Clinical observations and systematic studies of autogynephilia. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 17(4), 235-251.
Brill, Stephanie and Rachel Pepper (2008). The Transgender Child. Cleis Press.
Conway, Lynn (2003). An investigation into the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s book on transsexualism by the National Academies. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/LynnsReviewOfBaileysBook.html
Dean, Laura, et al. (2000). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender health: Findings and concerns. Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, 2000.
Dreger, Alice (2008). The controversy surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A case history of the politics of science, identity, and sex in the internet age. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 37:3, pp. 366-421.
Dreier, Sarah and Kevin Anderson (2003). Prof’s book challenges opinions of human sexuality. Daily Northwestern, April 21.
âA lot of people think there is something weird about (being an autogynepheliac) and it is a narcissistic blow,” Bailey said. “I am very sympathetic to transsexuals. I like these people, except for the people who hate me — they scare me. [âŠ] I am not rejecting the claims (of transsexuals) for no reason,” he said. “There is good scientific research that says you should believe me and not them.”
Evelyn, Just (1998). Mom, I need to be a girl. Walter Trook Publishing.
Feinberg, Leslie (1996). Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Beacon Press.
Freund, Kurt, et al. (1983). The courtship disorders. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 12:369-79.
Greenberg, Aaron, and J. Michael Bailey (2001). Parental selection of children’s sexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior. Aug;30(4):423-37; discussion 439-41.
Heller, Jean (1972). “Syphilis Victims in the U.S. Study Went Untreated for 40 Years” (Associated Press), New York Times, July 26, 1972: 1, 8.
Herrnstein, Richard, and Charles Murray (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Free Press.
Hill, Darryl B., et al. (2006). Gender Identity Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence: A Critical Inquiry. pp. 7-34. In Dan Karasic and Jack Drescher (Eds.) Sexual and Gender Diagnoses of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM): A Reevaluation. Haworth Press.
Zucker and Bradley believe that reparative treatments (encouraging the child to accept their natal sex and associated gender) can be therapeutic for several reasons. They believe that treatment can reduce social ostracism by helping gender non-conforming children mix more readily with same sex peers and prevent long-term psychopathological development (1.e., it is easier to change a child than a society intolerant of gender diversity). Reparative therapy is believed to reduce the chances of adult GID (i.e., transsexualism) which Zucker and Bradley characterize as undesirable. Thus, ânippingâ gender disorder âin the budâ holds a promise of an easier life for the child in adulthood, something that resonates with some parents.
Intersex Society of North America (2006). Consortium on Disorders of Sex Development. http://www.dsdguidelines.org/
James, Andrea (2000). Internet article on transsexualism. Personal email to J. Michael Bailey, May 3.
James, Andrea (2003a). Categorically wrong? A Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence clearinghouse. Transsexual Road Map. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/bailey-blanchard-lawrence.html
James, Andrea (2003b). Need your number. Personal email to Anne Lawrence, April 18.
When criticized for a deliberately offensive satire including Baileyâs kids, I replied, âIt’s how he’s treating my kids.â
James Andrea (2003c). Gay, straight, or Bailey: J. Michael Baileyâs very personal crusade against bisexuality. Transsexual Road Map. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/bailey-bisexual.html
James, Andrea (2004). A defining moment in our history: Examining disease models of gender variance. Transsexual Road Map. Reprinted in Transgender Tapestry issue 110, 2006. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/gender-identity.html
Krasny, Stuart (2007). “Transgender Theories.” Forum with host Michael Krasny, KQED 22 August. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/alice-dreger/bailey-kqed.html
Bailey: âI⊠Not only does âDannyâ exist, but I am⊠I have several informants who keep me apprised of his development, and now heâs a happy, out gay man, as I predicted in the book. And I would say that both the critics in the studio there, either have not read my book, or they are lying about it.
Bailey: You know, I donât see how this campaign of defamation requires me to open up my entire personal life to everybody, soâ
Bailey: Everything that Iâm willing to say about my personal life Iâve already said, and you should probably be asking Alice Dreger”
Lawrence, Anne (1998). âMen trapped in menâs bodies:â An introduction to the concept of autogynephilia. http://home.swipnet.se/~w-13968/autogynephilia.html
Among transsexuals, autogynephilia is not quite respectable as a topic for discussion. For one thing, many transsexuals have a passionate dislike for the Clarke Institute, and tend to dismiss out of hand any findings that have come from it. Therefore Blanchard’s ideas are not often talked about; and when they are raised, they tend to get shouted down. Shame is undoubtedly another deterrent. It is probably just too threatening for many transsexuals to admit that they have had autogynephilic fantasies, and especially to admit that autogynephilic sexual desire may have been one of their motivations for seeking sex reassignment surgery. People are understandably reluctant to admit to having a paraphilia — more popularly known as a perversion. Most transsexual women want to be seen as a âreal women,â and it is widely understood that paraphilic arousal is almost exclusively confined to men. Transsexuals who admit to autogynephilic arousal may not be seen as âreal womenâ — and may not even be seen as ârealâ transsexuals!
Lawrence, Anne, and Sember R (2001). Not to cure: A conversation about health, gender and sexuality. Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, Volume 5, Number 1, March 2001, pp. 27-29(3).
âWhen I deliberately reach for a sexually exciting image, I often think back to myself as a gender dysphoric adolescent, and the most sexually exciting thing I can imagine is the possibility of transforming my body at that young age.â
[authorâs comment: That doesnât sound like Blanchardâs âmisdirected heterosexuality,â it sounds like redirected pedophilia.]
LeVay, Simon, and Sharon Valente (2003). Human Sexuality. Sinauer Associates.
Lostracco, Marc (2008). But for today I am a boy. Torontoist, May 9. http://torontoist.com/2008/05/but_for_today_i_am_a_boy.php
Mautner, Stephen (2003). [Untitled open letter], June 24. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/stephen-mautner.pdf
The Joseph Henry Press (JHP), publisher of Baileyâs book, is an imprint of the National Academies Press engaged in publishing books on science, engineering, and medicine for popular audiences. JHP books are individually authored works, each carrying a notice that the opinions expressed are solely the authorâs and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academies. JHP follows clear decision rules for selecting books for publication and for scientific review of manuscripts. The work in question was reviewed as a well-crafted and responsible work on a difficult topic, reflecting one approach to a legitimate avenue of scholarship and research.
Money, John (1990). Gay, Straight and In-Between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation. Oxford University Press.
Ordover, Nancy (2003). American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism. University of Minnesota Press.
Pickstone-Taylor, S.D. (2003). Children with gender nonconformity. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 42, 266.
Raymond, Janice (1979, reprint 1994). The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York; Editions du Seuil, Paris.
Roughgarden, Joan (2003). Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation. The Stanford Daily, April 25. http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2003/4/25/psychologyLectureLacksSensitivityToSexualOrientation
Bailey was introduced as âcontroversial,â someone whose work has important implications for law, medicine and social policy and as a successful teacher whose courses feature âTranssexuals stripping after class.â (First big laugh.) The initial photographs included a male-bodied child wearing her motherâs shoes, when the second round of laughter erupted. A female-bodied child was then shown in male clothes and quoted as saying she âwanted a penis,â again producing laughter. In another example, an older child in a clinical setting was given the choice of toys and chose a doll and a wig. She was quoted as saying, âI hate my hair,â greatly amusing the audience.
Roughgarden, Joan (2004). The Bailey affair: Psychology perverted. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Reviews/Psychology%20Perverted%20%20by%20Joan%20Roughgarden.htm
Spiegel, Alix (2008). Two families grapple with sonsâ gender preferences. All Things Considered, NPR, May 7. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90247842
Surkan, K (2007). Transsexuals Protest Academic Exploitation. In Lillian Faderman, Yolanda Retter, Horacio Roque RamĂrez, eds. ”Great Events From History: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Events, 1848-2006.” pages 111-114. Salem Press
TransYouth Family Allies [TYFA] (2008). Education through understanding: A guide for supporting transyouth and their families.
Willems, Wim (1997) [Don Bloch translation]. In Search of the True Gypsy: From Enlightenment to Final Solution. Routledge. See chapter 5, Robert Ritter (1901-51): eugenist and criminological biologist, pp. 196 ff, and Annex 5 and 6 summarizing Ritterâs work in defining âgypsiesâ into two types.
Wilson, Robin (2003). âDr. Sex.â Chronicles of Higher Education. June 20, 2003. http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i41/41a00801.htm
Wyndzen, Madeline H. (2008). A social psychology of a history of a snippet in the psychology of transgenderism. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 37:3, pp. 498-502.
Zucker, Kenneth J. et al. (2002). Gender-dysphoric children and adolescents: A comparative analysis of demographic characteristics and behavioral problems. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 7, No. 3, 398-411.
Appendix 1: Cited passages from The Man Who Would Be Queen
v For Drew/Kate [author comment: Bailey renders his childrenâs names as if dedicating this to one (trans) person who uses both a male and a female name]
3 After Danny Ryan became a proficient walker, not much more than a year old, he ventured into his momâs closet. He came out with a pair of strappy heels and struggled to put them on.
16 In the spring of 1996 Leslie Ryan came to my Northwestern University office to seek yet another opinion. Jennifer, Dannyâs sitter, was a student in my human sexuality class and was working in my laboratory on studies of sexual orientation.
30 [Kenneth] Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual. His experience has convinced him that if a boy with GID becomes an adolescent with GID, the chances that he will become an adult with GID and seek a sex change are much higher. And he thinks that the kind of therapy he practices helps reduce this risk.
31 The central difference between Zucker and his critics on the left is that Zucker believes that most boys who play with girlsâ things often enough to earn a diagnosis of GID would become girls if they could. Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome.
52 I think of my own daughter and cannot imagine her deciding to be a boy, even if I lied to her and told her that she was born one.
69 My son was 10 years old when we began our dance study. One day I explained what we were studying, and I asked him why I might expect to find a high rate of gay male dancers. He immediately answered, âBecause dancing is feminine, and gay men tend to be feminine.â I was pleased by his answer, which was also mine.
69 Another anecdote involving my son: 70 When he was 10 years old, we were sitting in a theater waiting for the movie to start. A man behind us was speaking, and my son leaned over and said, âDad, thereâs someone for you to study.â My son knows that I study sexual orientation, and this was his way of suggesting that the man sounded gay.
75 Although their data are less scientific, gay men share [Kurt] Freundâs skepticism. They have a saying: 76 âYouâre either gay, straight, or lying.â In contrast, many women are bisexual; perhaps most are, at least in their sexual arousal patterns.
116 Heterosexuality is a paradigmatic evolutionary adaptation. The desire to have sex with members of the opposite sex helps people have sex that might result in offspring. The number of healthy offspring one leaves is perhaps the best indicator of evolutionary success. Homosexuality is evolutionarily maladaptive. I think this is an undeniable fact, although gay-positive people (and I am one) tend to cringe when they hear words like these. âEvolutionarily maladaptiveâ sounds like an insult, but it isnât one.
133 Recall gay menâs skepticism about men who claim to be bisexual. (âYouâre either gay, straight, or lying.â) My lab has been trying to find bisexual men by studying menâs erections to male versus female sexual stimuli.
138 If a gay man wants to attract straight men, he should imitate a woman. If he wants to attract gay men, he must stay a man.
141 I see Kim for the first time, on the stairs, dancing, posing. She is spectacular, exotic (I find out later that she is from Belize), and sexy. [âŠ] It is difficult to avoid viewing Kim from two perspectives: as a researcher but also as a single, heterosexual man.
168 Autogynephiles are not âwomen trapped in menâs bodies.â (Anne Lawrence, a physician and sex researcher who is herself a postoperative transsexual, has called them âmen trapped in menâs bodies.â) Homosexual transsexuals, so naturally feminine from early on, can make this claim more accurately, but as we shall see, it is not completely true even of them.
176 [Ray] Blanchardâs ideas have not yet received the widespread attention they deserve, in large part because sex researchers are not as scholarly as they should be and so donât read the current scientific journals.
187 Blanchard thinks that a significant number of men who want she-males are âpartial autogynephilesââthey are primarily aroused to the image of themselves as she- male. Blanchard says that the men are not gay but are more like âscrambled up heterosexual men.â The transsexuals I know who worked as she-male prostitutes confirmed this. âThere was nothing gay about those men,â said one, who knows plenty about gay men.
207 One problem with [Paul] McHughâs analysis is that we simply have no idea how to make gender dysphoria go away. I suspect that both autogynephilic and homosexual gender dysphoria result from early and irreversible developmental processes in the brain. If so, learning more about the origins of transsexualism will not get us much closer to curing it.
214 Looking at Danny, it was difficult to imagine him wearing high heels and a dress. He looked good as a boyâif an unusually formally dressed one. When the family friendâs daughter showed up, she told him how handsome he looked, and he beamed. This was not a girl in boyâs clothing. As we congregated in the hallway, I watched Danny interact. Shy at first, he whispered quietly to his sister. Then someone asked him about Convocation. He cocked his head back dramatically, threw his forearm across his eyes and said, âI thought it was entirely too long. Must they read every single name?â His word choice was obviously unusual, for an eight-year-old boy, and his speech style was precise and somewhat prissy. This was not a typical boy, either. A few moments later, Danny said: âMummy, I need to go to the menâs room.â I am certain that as he said that, he emphasized âmenâsâ and looked my way. And off he went, by himself. At that moment, I became as certain as I can be of Dannyâs future.
232 [from the Index] Transsexuals Common lies and deceptiveness of, 172-176
PDF version of this paper
Abigail Shrier is an American author and anti-transgender extremist. Shrier is a key historical figure in the oppression of trans and gender diverse youth.
Shrier is author of the 2020 book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters and testified against the Equality Act before Congress in 2021. Shrier has contributed to numerous anti-trans publications, including The Wall Street Journal and group blogs Quillette and The Free Press. Shrier was affiliated with PragerU and is a fellow of Manhattan Institute, an anti-trans think tank.
Background
Abigail Brett Krauser Shrier was born June 21, 1978 and grew up in College Park, Maryland. Shrier’s parents are Sherrie L. Krauser, a judge of the Circuit Court of Maryland, and Peter B. Krauser, a judge of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals and former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party.
Shrier attended Sheridan School and Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. After earning a bachelorâs degree from Columbia University in 2000, Shrier earned a bachelor’s degree from Oxford in 2002. Shrier then earned a law degree from Yale University in 2005. After clerking for Judith W. Rogers and Chief Justice Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel, Shrier was admitted to the New York Bar in 2006 and the California Bar in 2007. Shrier was an associate attorney at Irell & Manella from 2006 to 2008 before becoming a full-time writer in 2009. Shrier’s California license became inactive in 2009.
Shrier is a registered Republican and married wealth manager Zachary Loren Shrier in 2007.
claiming libraries and companies like Amazon and Target were censoring or banning the book
implying that the ACLU wanted to ban the book because of a tweet by ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio
Selected articles by Shrier:
(August 29, 2018) The Transgender Language War: California threatens to jail health workers who refuse to use âpreferredâ pronouns.
(January 6, 2019) When Your Daughter Defies Biology: The burden of mothers whose children suffer from ârapid onset gender dysphoria.â
(March 26, 2019) The Transgender War on Women: The Equality Act sacrifices female safety in restrooms, locker rooms and even domestic-violence shelters.
(May 3, 2019) Standing Against Psychiatryâs Crazes: In 1979 Dr. Paul McHugh closed the sex-change clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the â80s he testified against phony ârecovered memories.â He hasnât given up the fight.
(November 15, 2020) Does the ACLU Want to Ban My Book? Target stopped selling it in response to two Twitter complaints. A professor even wants to burn it.
(May 14, 2021) To Be Young and Pessimistic in America: Generation Z is lonelier than millennials and more reluctant to embrace the responsibilities and joys of adulthood. Life online seems to be a reason.
(May 31, 2021) Male Inmates in Womenâs Prisons: If Congress passes the Equality Act, Californiaâs dangerous policy would go nationwide.
In January 2019, Shrier published a opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal promoting “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” Titled “When Your Daughter Defies Biology: The burden of mothers whose children suffer from ârapid onset gender dysphoria,” that article claims that increase in trans visibility is part of a “social contagion.” The piece received so much response that Shrier turned it into a book for conservative publisher Regnery. The op-ed was first promoted by Shrier’s PragerU colleague Candace Owens, followed by Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire and Benjamin A. Boyce at Calmversations.
The book’s cover depicts a young girl with a void where her reproductive organs would be. One historian linked it to Nazi propaganda. The book was blurbed by other key anti-trans extremists, including:
Following the book’s release on June 30, 2020, Shrier appeared on BlazeTV with Steve Deace and on the podcast Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy. Amazon declined to run ads for the book on their site, which led to claims of censorship.
Shrier and the book got an enormous boost on July 16 after Shrier appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience. Philip Ellis noted in Men’s Health:
“Shrier invalidated the lived experience of trans and nonbinary kids and teens, and made numerous dangerous, entirely unsound false equivalencies. She compared transitioning among teenagers to historic adolescent phenomena such as eating disorders, self-harm, and (bafflingly) the occult, calling this age group ‘the same population that gets involved in cutting, demonic possession, witchcraft, anorexia, bulimia.’ She even described wanting to transition as a ‘contagion’ with the potential to infect other children with the same ideas, drawing yet more scientifically baseless parallels with eating disorders.”
Target briefly pulled the book in response to concerns, which led to more claims of censorship. Several book launches were canceled, leading to more claims of censorship. Several local libraries faced backlash after including it. After lawyer Chase Strangio posted support for banning the book, conservatives claimed this was the view of Strangio’s employer, the ACLU. Some translators refused to translate the book into other languages. In July 2021, the American Booksellers Association apologized after including the book in a monthly mailing.
The book is notable for how a network of anti-trans academics and media figures worked together to present Shrier as a free speech martyr being “candeled” by the “trans mob,” similar to how the 2003 anti-trans book The Man Who Woould Be Queen was promoted.
Quillette (2020âpresent)
Around the time Irreversible Damage was released, Shrier began posting self-promotional pieces on anti-trans group blog Quillette, including:
Shrier’s friend Bari Weiss hired Shrier to write for anti-trans group blog The Free Press in 2021. On October 5 of that year, Shrier published a piece featuring Erica Anderson and Marci Bowers where they “sound off on puberty blockers, ‘affirmative’ care, the inhibition of sexual pleasure, and the suppression of dissent in their field.” Many of Bowers’ peers were stunned by the report, and both WPATH and USPATH released a statement in the wake of negative community response.
Hsu, V. J. (2022). Irreducible Damage: The Affective Drift of Race, Gender, and Disability in Anti-Trans Rhetorics. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 52(1), 62â77. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2021.1990381
Novella, Steven (June 30, 2021). The Science of Transgender Treatment.Science-Based Medicine https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-transgender-treatment/
Gil, Vincent E. (January 2023). Review: Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. On Knowing Humanity Journal 7(1), January 2023 https://doi.org/10.18251/okh.v7i1.182
Beattie, Tina (March 10, 2021). No Turning Back.The Tablet https://www.thetablet.co.uk/books/10/19579/no-turning-back-polemicist-abigail-shrier-on-transgenderism
Riley, Naomi Schaefer (June 16, 2020). The Trans Cult.Commentary https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/naomi-schaefer-riley/transgender-children-craze/
Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University (February 15, 2021). C-SPAN Book TV: Irreversible Damage. https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/irreversible-damage/589785
Gender identity and expression take on different meanings within different systems of thought. Because medical technologies are available to assist in the somatic expression of these identities, several medicalized disease models of the phenomena have developed. This article examines three disease models as typically applied to those who seek feminization:
The GID model is currently considered legitimate within psychological literature and is a required diagnosis to receive access to trans health services in many places. The author reviews several problems with mental illness models, including âchildhood gender nonconformityâ and âtransvestic fetishism,â two other âmental disordersâ currently considered legitimate diagnoses. The article makes several analogies, asking readers to consider whether âracial nonconformityâ or âreligious identity disorderâ seem legitimate as well.
Pathology (âbirth defectâ model)
This third metaphor of impairment describes a physical disorder rather than a mental one. The âorderâ implied by positioning these traits and behaviors as diseases reinforces heteronormative hierarchies. These models use scientific-sounding terminology to reinforce the social belief that the âpurposeâ or âfunctionâ of sex and sexuality is procreation. This leads to an examination of historic problems with anatomical thresholds for determining sex. The author then draws parallels with other bioethical debates about technologies that disrupt the ânaturalâ order of procreative sexuality. Interest in feminization is stigmatized in many cultures, and the article concludes with some suggestions for ways to consider it independently from models of sin or disease.
Authorâs note: This personal viewpoint is not intended to be representative of any side or group participating in these discussions.
Download a printer-friendly version: A defining moment in our history (PDF)
Introduction Interest in feminization, historically revered or feared, has benefited from advances in science that expand possibilities for its physical expression. These advances led to scientific models of gender variance, which were positioned as objective alternatives to the judgmental âsinâ models promoted by some religions. Unfortunately, some allegedly scientific models being used merely replace metaphors of sin with metaphors of disease and impairment, rather than using objective scientific language. The time has come to examine these judgmental models: the assumptions behind their definitions, how they masquerade as science, their roots in eugenics, their impact on our access to health services, and their political implications.Â
The most insidious disease model appears at first glance to be progressive, even liberal, but on closer examination, it views gender variant behavior in children and adults as a psychosexual pathology (a fancy way of saying itâs a sex-fueled mental illness). Though the idea has been around since the 19th century, new language for this âdisorderâ was proposed by Ray Blanchard (1989) and restated by Anne Lawrence (1997) and J. Michael Bailey (2003). Though the Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence (BBL) model claims to be non-judgmental in a moral sense, it is undeniably judgmental in suggesting gender variance is a disease.Â
These old school sexologists still use terminology based on century-old ideas about gender-variant behavior as a sex-fueled disease. Their definitions tangle up several distinct threads about sex and sexuality in our community. Inflammatory language about transwomen like âman who would be queen,â 1 âman without a penis,â 2 or âmen trapped in menâs bodiesâ 3 has led to responses in kind about BBL and their apologists, but thankfully, such polemics are now limited to shrill but secluded fringes of discussions about untangling the mess theyâve made.
Definitions and thresholds
Scientific language evolves with understanding, and scientific discussions require that words be used with scientific precision. In short, definitions matter. A definition simultaneously includes and excludes. It affects how people view our community, especially those who expose problems with existing definitions. BBL and their apologists mock the evolution of definitions and ideas as âpolitically correct,â 4, 5, 6, 7 a term used by guardians of convention that signals a lack of intellect and contempt for scientific progress. For instance, Lawrenceâs opening salvo brags of being one of the âtroublesome people who are inclined to doubt the conventional wisdomâ about transgender eroticism, then just ten sentences later defends Blanchardâs use of the inaccurate and offensive term âhomosexual transsexualâ because it is âconventional usage in the psychiatric literature.â 8 [emphasis mine]
Specialized definitions for many words in this debate evolved within separate institutional realms. Though used differently, a term as defined in one field influences another field, especially as we see attempts to merge biology, psychology, law, and medicine into biopolitics. 9 Within the current medico-juridical system, clinical thresholds affect legal thresholds and vice versa.
Imprecise and idiosyncratic definitions plague this debate. The BBL model declares transsexual women are men with one of two sexual desires: âhomosexualâ (males aroused by males) and âautogynephilicâ (males aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women). Both categories efface our identities as women, but âautogynephiliaâ is more problematic in many ways. One major problem is the tendency for some who embrace the term to look at the etymology and think it denotes an innocent and happy form of feminist self-esteem: âI love myself as a woman!â theyâll say. I do too, but thatâs not what this word denotes. When I say, ââAutogynephiliaâ is defined by its creator as a type of paraphilia,â some say, âWell, thatâs not how I use it.â Thatâs like saying someone is a pedophile because she loves children, or that someone is a zoophile because he loves his pets. Those terms are clinical and legal descriptors. Yes, âpedophileâ literally means âlove of childrenâ in Greek, and âautogynephileâ means âlove of self as woman,â but both terms are inexorably linked to their clinical origins as psychosexual pathologies.Â
Calling oneself or others âautogynephilicâ is participating in oneâs own pathologization, and it legitimizes this fake disease when people claim they donât have it. BBL are engaging in scientific McCarthyism, where they claim a hallmark of âautogynephiliaâ is that those afflicted will deny it. Any refutation becomes proof they are right, a no-win situation like asking âwhen did you stop beating your wife?â
When we say âautogynephiliaâ is a made-up disease, some mistakenly think we are claiming erotic interest in feminization is made-up, too. Obviously, this exists. Many women in our community have been very open and honest about their erotic interest, 10 yet still take issue with labeling it a disease. 11
Sex and sexuality
My response to âsexologyâ is similar to how a person of color might respond to âraceology.â I question anyone who seeks to draw bright lines between nuanced possibilities of sex and sexuality, especially when they claim their attempt is science instead of something arbitrary and subjective. Trying to map a scientific schema onto complex traits and behaviors is like turning an impressionist painting into a paint-by-numbers. Those who fear miscegenation of the sexes or sexualities are just like those racists who use âscienceâ to reinforce socially constructed categories of ethnicity. As Anne Fausto-Sterling notes, âLabeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about genderânot scienceâcan define our sex. Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place.â 12
What kinds of knowledge about sex are BBL producing? They claim variously that homosexuality appears to be an evolutionary mistake 13 and a âdevelopmental errorâ 14, and gender variance is a âdefect in a manâs sexual learning,â 15 and a âsexual problem.â 16 It makes sense that a doctor would choose a disease metaphor and psychologists would use a mental disorder model to describe their observations and impressions. If we have a disorder, then what is the âorderâ to which they adhere? They imply the âpurposeâ and âfunctionâ of sex and sex organs is procreation. Why, itâs so obviously true that the belief shouldnât even be examined, right? According to people who believe this overly simplified idea, males have evolved (or were designed) to be attracted to females, and vice versa. In their worldviews, anything that deviates from that is, well, deviant.
Well, to borrow a phrase, a few troublesome people are inclined to doubt this conventional wisdom. 17 Many of us question Lawrenceâs claim that sexual desire is âthat which moves us most.â 18 We point to our experiences and feel our identities are what drive us; Wyndzen shows psychology supports our recognition of how powerful a force âidentityâ can be. 19 We even question some passages of Darwin and the Bible (at the same time, no less!). BBL get very upset when highly respected evolutionary biologists like Roughgarden 20 or Gould 21 question their most deeply-held beliefs about sexual selection and human behavior.
Eugenics, genetics, degenerates, gender
The words âeugenics,â âgenetics,â âdegenerates,â and âgenderâ all derive from the same Greek root meaning âto produce or bring forth life.â Some sciences and some religions seek to explain our genesis and control our reproduction of subsequent generations. New reproductive technologies are ushering in a host of bioethical issues and raising the specter of a new wave of eugenics, where the genocide (another related word) will happen before or shortly after conception, after genetic material is screened for âundesirableâ traits. Should people with Down Syndrome or dwarfism be eliminated from the gene pool? How about intersexed people? If Baileyâs colleagues find the âgay gene,â 22 should we wipe out sexual minorities, too? What about gender minorities? Will we see a âtransgenocideâ? Who decides whatâs a disease or a degeneracy?
As evidenced by BBLâs metaphors of disorder and disease, people can only express ideas in the language they have available. Their models of sex and sexuality originated with doctors and criminologists in the late 19th century eugenics movement, and BBLâs ideas havenât evolved much from the influential works that shape their thinking. After Darwinâs Origin of the Species (1859) came Francis Galtonâs Hereditary Genius (1869). Following ideas in that book, Galton coined the term âeugenicsâ in 1883, which melded with the emerging fields of criminology and sexology. Though the term âeugenicsâ is now rightfully associated with Nazism, a few modern adherents hope to usher in an âAge of Galton.â Bailey and Blanchard are charter members of a conservative-run eugenics discussion group devoted to this pursuit. 23
Three physicians who were Galton contemporaries are central to the BBL worldview: Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, who wrote Psychopathia Sexualis (1886); Havelock Ellis, who wrote The Criminal (1889) and Sexual Inversion (1897); and Magnus Hirschfeld (coiner of both âtransvestiteâ and âtranssexualâ), who in 1897 founded Germanyâs Scientific Humanitarian Committee, whose motto was âjustice through science.â Like BBL, these doctors genuinely believed that social ostracism of sexual minorities would be eliminated through science, but we all know what happened next in Germany. These doctorsâ âscientificâ models were imbued with eugenic paternalism (they believed homosexuals had a pathology and were unfit for procreation), and they claimed those who engaged in non-procreative sex were biologically different. By mid-century, Hirschfeldâs institute had been destroyed, and persecuted minorities had been rounded up and murdered based on âscientificâ models that claimed groups like Jews, gays, and other persecuted minorities were âdegenerate,â biologically distinct, and a threat to âsocial hygiene.â
Lest we think this is an isolated phenomenon that only happened in Nazi Germany, in America, disability and race took center stage in the eugenics movement, 24 which focused on sterilization and birth control for the âunfit.â 25 In Canada during the same period, the focus was immigrants, and the method of control was psychiatry. A physician named Charles Kirk Clarke oversaw the two largest Canadian asylums before accepting Canadaâs top mental-health post. Clarke advocated eugenic policies to limit the immigration and marriage of the âdefective.â He also used psychiatric diagnoses to incarcerate new citizens. Foreign-born patients were 50% of his institutionalized population, including political activists, homosexuals, and other âdefectives.â 26
Clarkeâs sociobiological leanings are still alive and well at the institution named after him, The Clarke Institute in Toronto, where Ray Blanchard works. 27 There, Kurt Freund and Blanchard used Freundâs controversial plethysmograph to delineate deviance. 28 Though the quack device is just a lie detector for the penis (open to manipulation and interpretation by both subject and observer), they used it extensively to separate homosexual from ânon-homosexual,â and later to do sex experiments on âmale gender dysphorics, paedophiles , and fetishists,â which they lumped together, yet divided into homosexual and ânon-homosexual.â 29
In historic diagnoses for sex problems, homosexuality and masturbation were âdiseasesâ that could strike either sex, but other problems were gendered degeneracy: women who had âtoo muchâ interest in straight sex had the now-discredited disease ânymphomania,â while men who had âtoo littleâ interest in it were inverts or perverts, a still legitimate disease category called âparaphilia.â
Dysphoria, disease, disorder, disability, defect
According to my medical records, I am mentally ill. The psychiatry industryâs Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) alleges that I am afflicted with âgender identity disorderâ (GID). Before that, I had âchildhood gender nonconformity,â from their special âkidsâ menuâ of mental disorders. Others with an interest in feminization get diagnosed with the âdisorderâ of âtransvestic fetishism.â 30 For many years, some in our community have relied on mental illness models as a form of validation. I ascribe to the view that âpsychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels, phrased to resemble medical diagnoses and applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others. âMental illnessâ is not something a person has, but is something [a person] does or is.â 31
I suppose I had a âdis-ease,â an uneasiness, a dysphoria about the sorts of social and sexual expression I was allowed in the gender roles assigned to me at birth. I did not conform until it became clear in 7th grade that the other option was ever-increasing ostracism and violence, but since when is non-conformity a disease? Imagine a mental illness diagnosis for âracial nonconformityâ or âreligious identity disorder.â
Disease models affect the kinds of knowledge produced by those who use them. Bem called sex researchersâ preoccupation with the causes of homosexuality âscientifically misconceived and politically suspectâ because embedded in their preoccupation with causality is the idea that something went wrong that needs to be diagnosed and fixed. 32 The situation is no different when we look at how sex researchers study transgender persons. BBL are what Ordover calls âbiological apologistsâ who look to the body for absolute truths. A major medicalization of homosexuality occurred in the 1990s, in response to AIDS (a disease which led to renewed interest in a âgay geneâ and later a âgay germâ disease model of homosexuality). 33 While Bailey was drawing federal funds to isolate homosexuality the way others looked for HIV, nobody was looking for the âstraight geneâ or âstraight germ.â Like a good eugenicist who believes biology is destiny and genetics dictate human behavior, Bailey started linking gender roles to genetic discussions: âchildhood gender nonconformity does not appear to be an indicator of genetic loading for homosexuality.â 34 Is gender genetic?
Despite these problems, many in our community embrace a disease metaphor. Lawrence intones about âsymptomsâ of transsexualism, its âclinical course,â the benefits of âpalliative treatment.â 35 Lawrence then magnanimously claims that âeveryone has a right to self-define,â yet asserts that those who disagree with Lawrenceâs diagnosis arenât being very honest with themselves or others. A âpalliative treatmentâ helps symptoms while leaving the disease uncured, and the uncured disease can be a personal and political identity. In her important series of scientific criticisms of Blanchard, Wyndzen cites studies on self-verification where people âassimilated their illnesses into their identities.â 36 Almost everyone who is attracted to the concept of âautogynephiliaâ identifies through metaphors of impairment. Many participants in the main ââautogynephiliaâ supportâ newsgroup are on public assistance, which seems related to their fears about removal of gender variance from the DSM. They fear subsidized medical services will be denied if there is no mental illness classification. But what do they think will happen if there is differential diagnosis that claims their subgroup does all this to indulge an autoerotic interest? Should insurance companies give out high heels as âpalliative treatmentâ for shoe fetishists?
As Lawrence notes, âThere are many human behaviors that look like the same thing, but really aren’t.â 37 Previous medical attempts to catalogue behavior like Lawrenceâs were not only pathologizing, but insulting: People like Lawrence were âtransvestitic applicants for sex reassignmentâ 38 who are âagingâ 39 and âdistressed,â 40 suffering from âpseudotranssexualismâ 41 a ânon-transsexualâ variant of âgender identity disorderâ (GIDAANT), 42 and âiatrogenic artifact.â 43 Many notable âborderlineâ cases are doctors: Renee Richards, Anne Lawrence, Gregory/Gloria Hemingway. They may epitomize these published observations. They all self-treated, vacillated, and âdetransitionedâ to varying degrees, and all three challenge existing diagnostic categories. 44 If interest in feminization is an iatrogenic artifact (a disease made up by doctors), wouldnât doctors be the best evidence of that? Further, why would Dr. Marci Bowers transition without incident in the same hospital group that forced Anne Lawrence to resign? Do they really have the same âdiseaseâ? I have never heard Dr. Bowers have to assert sheâs a ârealâ transsexual, as Dr. Lawrence has.Â
I do not defer to people just because they are clinicians. My work fighting quacks and consumer fraud has put me in touch with countless âexpertsâ who have no business in science or medicine. Some âexpertâ will probably diagnose my questioning âexpertsâ as âauthority nonconformityâ or some other made-up disease to undermine my credibility. After all, my questioning the legitimacy of âautogynephiliaâ is evidence Iâm afflicted with it. To refute that kind of argument, we need to contextualize the term. âParaphiliaâ and âautogynephiliaâ
The term âparaphiliaâ first appeared in 1923, in a book prepared for doctors and criminologists by physician Wilhelm Stekel. 45 Over eighty years later, BBL collaborator Simon LeVay still calls paraphilias âillnesses that need treatment.â 46 âParaphiliaâ is the psychiatric term for problematic sexual desire or behavior. The current name for this alleged mental disorder first appeared in the DSM in 1980. 47 It describes âparaphiliaâ as ârecurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving (1) nonhuman objects (2) the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner, or (3) children or other non-consenting personsâŠ. The behavior, sexual urges or fantasies cause clinically significant distress in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioningâ 48
Some people who identify with the diagnosis of âautogynephiliaâ chime in at this point and say, âWell, then I donât have a paraphilia, because I donât think I have a problem.â The most recent version of DSM was revised just for themâit says this illness can be diagnosed even if the person does not experience any subjective distress or impaired functioning. 49 LeVay notes: âThis is quite a significant shift; it emphasizes that psychiatrists may go beyond responding to clients’ complaints and may use their expertise for other purposes, such as protecting society from sex crimes.â 50
âAutogynephiliaâ is not a behavioral model, it describes a sex-fueled mental illness that lumps gender variance in with sex crimes. BBL believe that paraphilias cluster, meaning that they believe that âautogynephilesâ are more likely to be aroused by children, corpses, excrement and other illegal and socially unacceptable things. This diagnosis was widely ignored after Blanchard first suggested it in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in 1989. 51 By the end of his series of papers, Blanchard was shoehorning other behaviors into his model with crackpot variants like âpartial autogynephilia.â 52 However, Blanchard and his colleagues had enough influence in this rarely-studied subspecialty to get âautogynephiliaâ mentioned in the DSM. 53 The work would have remained an obscure intradisciplinary skirmish until Lawrence found Blanchardâs articles in 1997, during a time of great need. A year earlier, Lawrenceâs erotic interest in ritualized genital modification led to indulging that interest. 54 Lawrence had taken âphysician, heal thyselfâ to heart previously, and after yet another failed âcureâ in the form of vaginoplasty, Lawrenceâs fascination did not wane. In 1997, a lack of social acceptance at work (described in one account as âbizarre behaviorâ) 55 and an incident where Lawrence examined an unconscious patient for signs of ritualized genital modification ended a respected career. 56 Discovering Blanchard was clearly revelatory for Lawrence, who now had a diagnosis to explain what happened. Suddenly, this forgotten diagnosis had a vocal and influential champion. I dismantle the pseudoscience behind âautogynephiliaâ in a longer essay elsewhere. 57
A scientific or reasonable discussion of âautogynephiliaâ is like a scientific discussion of horoscopes: thereâs no science to discuss, only pseudoscience. Yes, both concepts exist, but that does not mean either are legitimate science. Some people have a need to create an identity based on a worldview where people are predictable based on vague, unproven categories that arbitrarily assign traits to everyone, imposing order onto an unpredictable and incomprehensibly complex world.
âTranssexualâ defined
BBL have proposed several definitions for âtranssexualâ that include people not previously considered within that definition. Their definitions view gender variance through the lens of disordered sexual desire. Bailey defines âtranssexualâ as anyone who has âthe desire to become a member of the opposite sex.â 58 They do not have to act on this desireââonly serious thoughtsâ are enough to qualify. 59 This model reflects Baileyâs definitions of sexual orientation: someone is a homosexual whether they act on their desire or not. Lawrence believes transsexuality is âfundamentally about changing one’s anatomy, or sex; and that sometimes it may have little to do with gender identity, or with gender role.â 60 Some do this ânot primarily because they have a gender problem, but because they have a sex problem, and indeed a sexual problem⊠the expression of a paraphiliaâ 61Blanchard says heâs reluctant to label children as âtranssexual,â 62 which is reminiscent of the âpre-homosexualâ language used by his homophobic counterparts in âgay cureâ groups like NARTH. 63 Blanchardâs colleague Ken Zucker is a vocal advocate of reparative therapy for gender-variant children, and he considers transsexuality âa bad outcome.â64 In fact, Bailey has noted that unchecked, this disease could spread: a world tolerant of gender-variant children âmight well come with the cost of more transsexual adults.â 65
Echoing Lawrenceâs strict anatomical construction of âtranssexual,â a quaint aphorism claims, âIf you arenât a transsexual before surgery, you are after.â Really? What about David Reimer or others surgically altered as children who do not identify as transsexual? 66 Conflicting definitions occur within any demographic grouping. Extremist separatists from both sides of any constructed binary often create unlikely alliances: for instance, âpeople of colorâ and âAfrican-Americanâ are terms debated by both ethnic separatists and conservatives. 67 In our community, pluralist concepts like âqueerâ or âtransgenderâ are debated in circles where distinctions between gay men and transwomen, or between crossdressing and transsexualism, are very important.
Lawrence insists the few who embrace this diagnosis âdo not declare ourselves sick.â 68 Not morally sick, anyway, but physically sick. Lawrenceâs self-descriptions have remarkable parallels with descriptions of binge-and-purge cycles among crossdressers who hate their behavior, or those âafflictedâ with âunwanted homosexualityâ: âThe loneliness and disconnection from others that typically accompany autogynephilia [sic] are a large part of what makes this condition feel like genuine paraphilia (i.e., a âdisorderâ) to many of us who experience it (and I’m including myself here) and not merely a âbenign variantâ form of human sexuality.â 69 Swap âautogynephiliaâ with the word âhomosexuality,â and Lawrenceâs comment would feel right at home in a NARTH publication. Lawrenceâs âproblemâ is not self-love, but self-hate.
For those of us who view âgenderâ and âsexâ as socially constructed, transsexualism canât be separated from its social component. Phenotype can trump genotype; gender expression can trump anatomy. Those who need to use anatomy as evidence of their identity have failed in gaining acceptance within a social or institutional framework. Everyone has a right to self-identify, but if others donât accept that proclaimed identity, we must either accept their lack of acceptance, or work to change their minds. People can legislate rights, but not acceptance. That has to be earned.
Audre Lorde said âYour silence will not protect you.â 70 I say your anatomy will not protect you, either. Legal and medical models based on anatomical benchmarks for âmaleâ and âfemaleâ will inevitably conflict and fail. Sexists who wish to efface the identities of women like me can always find a physiological or behavioral reason to say I am ââreallyâ a man,â and some of the worst offenders are âhelping professionalsâ and people in our community. They echo the racists who came up with âscientificâ schemes to determine who was ââreallyâ black,â or heterosexists like BBL who create ways to determine who is ââreallyâ gay.â
Gatekeeping versus services on demand
Much of my early activism was informed by sex-positive, pro-choice feminism. We passed out condoms and âJust Say Yesâ sex-ed books at Chicago Public Schools, and we defended clinics from Operation Rescue. One of our major initiatives was family planning services (including abortion) that were âsafe, free and on demand.â I have always seen parallels between family planning and transition-related medical services, both of which were once only available through back alley clinics and black market sources. Women in our community died from this, and still die from illegal and unregulated products and procedures because of our legal status. I believe controlling our bodies is a fundamental human right. If someone wishes to undergo a vasectomy, vaginal rejuvenation, abortion, facial tattoo, piercings, tongue splittings, facial feminization, breast implants, mastectomy etc., I believe these procedures should be available to anyone who is willing to sign a release. I find it quite telling that our surgical procedures and abortion both face similar challenges, since both involve altering oneâs capacity to reproduce.
Psychiatric gatekeeping only works for those who are unwilling or unable to find easier and faster ways. Before the internet, most young people got what they needed through extralegal networks (many poor people still do), and anyone who had the means would skip gatekeeping altogether and jet off to an exotic locale, as it had been done for many years before the gender clinics began imposing controls. At the apex of the gender clinic system, only those willing to endure a process akin to criminals at a parole hearing took that routeâpeople who would say whatever the gatekeeper wanted to hear in order to get what they desired. 71 Ironically, many who tried to get around gatekeeping during their own involvement now insist it remain in place. 72 Lawrence, who is fond of quoting Audre Lorde, 73 must have missed âThe masterâs tools will never dismantle the masterâs house.â 74 Gatekeeping also appeals to those who donât get much validation except from gatekeepers. The acceptance letter becomes about the only acceptance they get. Not only is getting a vagina a status symbol and evidence of identity for this tiny group, but âbeating the systemâ is a status symbol, too (which might also explain the correlation between online ââautogynephiliaâ supportâ and welfare support).
I should note that I had a great therapist who helped me immensely. I probably would have gone even without being required. Therapy and support should be encouraged, but voluntary, and without the stigma of disease, in the way that someone questioning their spiritual beliefs might find therapy helpful without needing their spiritual journey labeled as a âreligious identity disorder.â With gatekeeping, we end up with people like BBL controlling access to services in exchange for money or sex. âSexologyâ is an unregulated activity in most states, meaning anyone could set up shop as a sexologist or sex therapist. Bailey, Lawrence, and others have all used their âsexologistâ credentials to gain easier access to sex partners. Some dismiss this as OK because they sign our little permission slips so we can get medical services. Call me old-fashioned, but I donât feel itâs ethical or scientific for gatekeepers and sex researchers to have sex with clients and research subjects. I also donât want my tax dollars federally subsidizing the sex life of a self-hating [trans]-chaser like Bailey, so he can meet women like me and later claim we âhave the brains of men but the genitals of womenâ 75 or are prone to criminal activity and sexual promiscuity.
Hereâs my question: why not cut out these middlemen and simply request and receive services? If people go to their physician and say they are depressed or anxious, the doctor believes their self-report and suggests options. Why canât it be that simple for us?
Replacing GID as the principal diagnostic means for obtaining medical service is considered a top health priority in our community. Citing a progressive San Francisco program, the National Coalition for LGBT Health states: âThere is a great need for more such programs that avoid GID as a requirement for access⊠this [requirement] results in many transgender people avoiding the psychiatric diagnosis process altogether, and not accessing medically regulated Trans Health Services.â 76 The interest itself isnât the problem, itâs the anxiety and depression caused by depriving its expression. 77 If in some cases hormones and surgery help relieve anxiety and depression, they should be available as an effective, time-tested option.
Roughgarden notes: âTheir bogus categories and made-up diseases are intended to subordinate, not to describe.â 78 Until we get away from this childlike dependence and deference to so-called âexpertsâ simply because they take our money or donât kick us out of their offices, our accommodation in healthcare and law will not be fully realized.
Beyond BBL
People like BBL rarely admit they are wrong, because they are very concerned about their academic legacy (which mirrors their beliefs about offspring). They will spend the rest of their lives fighting tooth and nail to defend their words and actions, but in the end BBL will be regarded as an interesting curiosity from the waning years when our community was considered disordered and diseased because of our interest in feminization, in whatever form that interest might take. Luckily, we donât have to convince them they are wrong; we just have to convince everyone else.
We need to embrace judgment-free models to describe these phenomena. I hereby suggest the phrase that leads off this article: interest in feminization (IF) and the subset erotic interest in feminization (EIF) as umbrella terms without the stigma of disease. It encompasses not only our community, but anyone regardless of motivation, affectional orientation, or gender assigned at birth. Change âFâ to âMâ in the acronym for the F to M folks. I can think of a laundry list of problems with this proposed terminology, but this article is part of an ongoing evolution of ideas. Iâll leave the definitive statements to those who fancy themselves âexpertsâ who claim they know âthe truth.â My thoughts here wonât be the end of old ways of thinking, but with luck, it will spark some new ones, where we describe ourselves and our identities without the stigma of sin and disease.
From the day in April 2003 when Professor Lynn Conway began an investigation into Baileyâs book, 79 it was clear that this was a defining moment for our community. We mobilized all around the world as never before. 80 We made sure this book did not become another Transsexual Empire. 81 BBL underestimated everything about us, from our numbers, 82 to our intelligence, 83 to our ever-strengthening network, to the direct contact we have with our youngest and most vulnerable, to our influential positions in every career and profession, to our ability to effect positive change. 84 This isnât just evolution, itâs revolution. Weâre replacing sin and disease with pride and strength, and this is only the beginning.
Los Angeles September 2004
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Drs. Madeline Wyndzen and Nancy Ordover for key insights and research that informed this article.
References and notes
Please note: Anne Lawrence is notorious for removing website materials as soon as comments in them become difficult to defend. While every effort has been made to keep up-to-date links, some materials may no longer be available online.
4. Lawrence AA (2000). Sexuality and transsexuality: A new introduction to autogynephilia [sic] http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia.html
5. Pinnel R (2003). Gay, straight, or lying? Science has the answer. Joseph Henry Press sales materials for The Man Who Would Be Queen. http://www.jhpress.org/press_release/10530.pdf [archive]
6. Petersen M (2003). Resignation letter to HBIGDA, 4 November 2003. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/maxine-petersen.html
16 Lawrence AA (1999). Lessons from autogynephiles [sic]: eroticism, motivation, and the Standards of Care. http://www.annelawrence.com/1999hbigda1.html
23 Bierich H, Moser B (2003). Queer science: An âeliteâ cadre of scientists and journalists tries to turn back the clock on sex, gender and race. SPLC Intelligence Report, Winter 2003. http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=96 Sailer founded the group on 3 March 1999; Bailey and Blanchard both joined on 4 March. Like early eugenicists, this group advocates what they believe is a âbenignâ form of eugenics called positive eugenics, where âgoodâ traits are encouraged, but this inevitably leads to negative eugenics, where âbadâ traits are eliminated. For a Whoâs Who of the modern eugenics movement, see the full list at: http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/human-biodiversity.html
25 Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S., 200, 207 [1927]: Associate Justice Holmes: âIt is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.â http://www.dnalc.org/resources/buckvbell.html (click “Court’s decision” and see page 3 for full text)
45 Stekel W (1923). Der Fetischismus dargestellt fĂŒr Ărzte und Kriminalogen. Störungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens (die parapathischen Erkrankungen) 7. [Volume 7: The fetishes, prepared for doctors and criminologists. Disorders of the Instincts and the Emotions (the parapathic illnesses)] Berlin/Wien: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1923. First English translation by S. Parker as Sexual Aberrations. 1930 Liveright Publishing, New York. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871400499/qid=1094416834/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-8778638-7938457?v=glance&s=books
62 Federoff JP, Blanchard R (2000). The case for and against publicly funded transsexual surgery. Psychiatry Rounds, April 2000. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/psychiatry_rounds.pdf
63 Byrd AD (2004). Book review: The Man Who Would Be Queen. via NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) e.g. âBailey’s focus on femininity among pre-homosexual boys and homosexual men…â http://www.narth.com/docs/queen.html
64 Bailey JM (2003). The Man Who Would Be Queen, p. 31. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/31.html
65 Ibid. p. 33. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/33.html
66 Colapinto J (2001). As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. Perennial. As I discuss in my essay âWannabes?â, transsexual women seek medical options to confirm their identities as women; others seek them to confirm their identities as transsexuals. Differential diagnosis appeals to some people who wish to be distinguished from or included with a group of people. Some people who seek bodily feminization base their evidence of inclusion on these procedures and use the disparaging term âjust a crossdresser,â as if that is a less legitimate interest or identity. http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/wannabes.html
67 Swarns RL (2004). âAfrican-Americanâ becomes a term for debate. New York Times, 29 August 2004. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60614FA345A0C7A8EDDA10894DC404482
68 Lawrence AA (2000). Sexuality and transsexuality: A new introduction to autogynephilia [sic]. http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia.html
69 Lawrence AA (2004). Posted as âautogynephile1,â 25 August 2004. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/autogynephiliasupport/message/3682
70 Lorde A (1984). The transformation of silence into language and action. Sister Outsider. The Crossing Press. p. 41. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895941414/qid=1094418917/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-8778638-7938457?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
71 Bornstein K (1995). Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Vintage Books. e.g.: âTranssexuality is the only condition in Western culture for which the therapy is to lie.â http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679757015/qid=1094418971/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-8778638-7938457
72 Lawrence AA (1998). Absence of regrets after a âshort real-life test.â http://www.annelawrence.com/shortrlt.html
73 Lawrence AA (1999). Autogynephilia [sic]: Frequently-asked questions. http://www.annelawrence.com/agfaqs.html
74 Lorde A (1984). The masterâs tools will never dismantle the masterâs house. Sister Outsider. The Crossing Press. p. 110. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895941414/qid=1094418917/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-8778638-7938457?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
75 Tremmel PV (2003). Study suggests difference between female and male sexuality. Northwestern University press release, 12 June 2003. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/nu-ssd061203.php
76 National Coalition for LGBT Health (2004). An overview of U.S. Trans Health Priorities. August 2004 update. http://www.lgbthealth.net/TransHealthPriorities.pdf (requires reader)
77 Vitale A (1997). Gender dysphoria: Treatment limits and options. http://www.avitale.com/treatmentoptions.htm
78 Roughgarden J (2004). The Bailey affair: Psychology perverted. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Reviews/Psychology%20Perverted%20-%20by%20Joan%20Roughgarden.htm
79 Conway L (2003-2004). An investigation into the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s book on transsexualism by the National Academies. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/LynnsReviewOfBaileysBook.html
80 Burns C and 1,460 signatories (2004). J. Michael Bailey book petition. http://www.petitiononline.com/bailey/petition.html
81 Allison R (1998). Janice Raymond and autogynephilia [sic]. http://www.drbecky.com/raymond.html Reviewing Raymond JG. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Beacon Press, 1979. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0807021644/qid=1094430439/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i4_xgl14/002-8778638-7938457?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
82 Conway L (2002). How frequently does transsexualism occur? http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html
83. Bailey JM (2003). The Man Who Would Be Queen, p. 179. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/179.html
84 Letellier P (2004). Group rescinds honor for disputed book. PlanetOut.com Network, 16 March 2004. http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2004/03/16/3
Please send all correspondence and reprint requests via feedback.
This independent research was funded by reader donations. If you found this useful or interesting and would like to see more articles of this sort in the future, please consider supporting transgender scholarship.
Roberto C. Granato, Sr. (April 10, 1926 – October 26, 2014) was an Argentine-American urologist and surgeon.
Gloria Steinem is an American author and activist. Steinem is a key historic figure in second-wave feminism.
After publishing anti-transgender writings in the 1970s, Steinem revised some of those views and now supports trans-inclusive feminism.
Background
Gloria Marie Steinem was born March 25, 1934 in Toledo to Leo Steinem, a Jewish traveling antiques dealer, and Ruth Nuneviller Steinem, a Presbyterian homemaker. Steinem’s parents split in 1944.
Ruth Steinem grew increasingly unstable, leading Steinem to move in with older sibling Susanne Steinem Patch in Washington DC. After graduating from high school there, Steinem earned a bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1956.
In 1957, Steinem had an abortion in London while traveling to India. After two years in India, Steinem returned to the United States and began researching and writing, publishing work in Help! Show, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and New York.
In 1972, Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine. In July 1974, the magazine published an excerpt from trans travel writer Jan Morris, which led to backlash.
Throughout the 1970s, Steinem played a central role in the women’s rights movement and became a favored author and source on the subject.
In 2013, Steinem addressed “words circulated out of time and context” from those previous writings:
So now I want to be unequivocal in my words: I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of “masculine” or “feminine” and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.
In 2021, Steinem signed an open letter supporting trans women and girls, saying, “I am proud to sign this letter because we all must fight against the unnecessary barriers placed on trans women and girls by lawmakers and those who co-opt the feminist label in the name of division and hatred.”
Steinem, Gloria (October 2, 2013). Op-ed: On Working Together Over Time.The Advocate https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/10/02/op-ed-working-together-over-time
Steinem, Gloria (1983). Transsexualism. in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. pp. 224â226. Henry Holt & Co, ISBN 978-0030632365
Steinem, Gloria (February 1977). If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit, Change the Foot. Ms. p. 76ff.
Martina Navratilova is a Czech-American tennis player and anti-transgender activist.
Navratilova is a sex segregationist whose primary concern is maintaining segregationism that keeps women and girls in inferior roles in society. Of particular interest is maintaining womenâs subordinate place via sex-segregated competitive sport, primarily by attacking transgender athletes.
Martina Ć ubertovĂĄ was born October 18, 1956 in Prague, Czechoslovakia to an athletic family. Martina’s stepparent Miroslav NavrĂĄtil coached Martina in tennis. Martina took that surname and went pro in 1975. Navratilova dominated professional tennis for the next three decades and is considered one of the greatest players of all time.
Michael Powell is an American writer and anti-transgender activist involved in the New York Times anti-transgender coverage crisis of the 2020s. In 2024, Powell moved to anti-trans publication The Atlantic.
Background
Michael Henry Powell was born on January 20, 1957. Powell earned a bachelor’s degree from The State University of New York at Purchase in 1978 and then attended Columbia University.
In 1982 Powell married Evelyn M. Intondi (born March 14, 1956), a midwife and reproductive health specialist. They have two adult children.
Powell worked at New York Newsday from 1988 to 1995. Powell next moved to The Washington Postin 1996. Powell was with The New York Observer before joining the New York Times in 2007. After writing on the “Gotham” column, Powell moved to Sports in 2014.
âWe needed somebody who was deeply experienced at covering controversies in a panoramic way, who was experienced enough that they wouldnât get intimidated or really shaken by some of the criticisms on Twitter and elsewhere.â
In June, Powell ended work on the “Sports of The Times” column and began writing about “free speech and thought, identity, campuses and so on.”
In 2023 Powell moved to the even more transphobic Atlantic, which has not had a trans journalist on their masthead since their founding in 1857.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2014 Powell boasted about interviewing “transvestite prostitutes from Ecuador.” No reputable journalist was using the term transvestite in 2014.
Lia Thomas non-interview
In a 2022 story on transgender athletes, Powell wrote one of thousands of articles that used Lia Thomas as outrage bait, even though Powell failed to interview Thomas for the piece. Where an earlier piece in the Times by Billy Witz adhered to objective reporting, Powell chose to frame transgender people as debates to be solved. Powell claims the debates center on “science, fairness and inclusiveness, and cut to the core of distinctions between gender identity and biological sex.”
Many people across the political spectrum are deeply invested in maintaining sex segregation and shoring up the study of “sex differences,” and Powell uncritically presents their pettifogging about rules and measurements and what-not.
To Powell’s credit, the story briefly mentions Anna Posbergh among the usual suspects fixated on minutiae within a fatally flawed and fundamentally unfair institution. Posbergh is one of many who believe that there is no ethical future for sex-segregated competitive sport, which largely exists to further the belief that one half of the human population is “inferior” to the other half.
Powell polishes the classic “science vs. activism” chestnut, suggesting only “activists” believe biology is socially constructed:
Even nomenclature is contentious. Descriptive phrases such as âbiological womanâ and âbiological manâ might be seen as central to discussing differences in performance. Many trans rights activists say such expressions are transphobic and insist biology and gender identity are largely social constructs.
Powell concludes, “The solution, a balance of gender and biology, looks distant.” While the solution is distant, it is not a balance of gender and biology. It is a recognition that sex-segregated sport, just like any sex-segregated institution, has no place in an ethical society.
Background on the Thomas non-interview
Powell contacted GLAAD in the course of the story, and after they told Powell that Martina Navratilova holds views they consider objectionable, Powell naturally included Navratilova because it violates some sort of perceived taboo.
Press room (July 18, 2023). The Atlantic Hires Michael Powell and Zoë Schlanger as Staff Writers. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2023/07/atlantic-hires-michael-powell-and-zoe-schlanger/674739/
Sheila C. Kirk (April 5, 1930 â July 2019) is an American gynecologist and an important figure in the history of trans health services. Kirk authored several books on medical transition and served on many nonprofit boards.
Kirk was board certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology, and was a member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (now WPATH). Kirk earned a medical degree from the Boston University School of Medicine in 1957 and was licensed in Pennsylvania in 1963. Kirk’s internship and main residency were at the University Hospitals in Buffalo, New York. Kirk completed her training in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, then set up a private practice there.
In 1992 Kirk retired from active practice and as Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Pittsburgh to work with the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) as a medical consultant to the trans and gender diverse community. Kirk was the first trans surgeon elected to the board of HBIGDA. Kirk also served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Transgender Health (then International Journal of Transgenderism) and was a member of TransPitt and the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA).
Kirk’s medical information books were important pre-internet resources. Following decades of service to the community, Kirk retired from activism and moved to South Carolina.
Hormonal Therapy for the Male-to-Female Transgendered Individual (1994)
Medical, Legal, and Workplace Issues for the Transsexual (1995) [with Martine Rothblatt]
Feminizing Hormonal Therapy for the Transgendered (1996)
Transgender and HIV: Risks, Prevention, and Care, with Walter O. Bockting (2001)
“The Whole Person: A Paradigm for Integrating the Mental and Physical Health of Trans Clients,” with Claudette Kulkarni, in The Handbook of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Public Health: A Practitioner’s Guide to Service Michael Shankle (2013)
