Marc Breedlove is an American psychologist and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Stephen Marc Breedlove was born in 1954 in Missouri. After graduating from Springfield High School in 1952, Breedlove aerned a bachelor’sdegree from Yale University, then attended University of California, Los Angelesm earning a master’s degree and doctorate.
Breedlove was a professor of psychology at the notoriuosly transphobic psychology department at University of California, Berkeley, from 1982 to ~2002. Â Breedlove then moved to Michigan State University.
Breedlove was featured on a show about homosexuality with Bailey and his usual suspects:
The Sex Files HOMOSEXUALITY IN THIS EPISODE
Why are some people gay? That’s the $64,000 question – at least in the scientific community. Is it something genetically predetermined? Or does environment have an impact on whether an individual turns out to be gay or lesbian? These questions are beginning to be probed in ways that might finally be leading to an answer, and the Sex Files has interviewed the foremost authorities on the topic to uncover some of those scientific clues:
Dr. Devendra Singh, University of Texas psychologist specializing in the evolutionary significance of human physical attractiveness
Dr. Ken Zucker, head of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at the University of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry
Dr. Marc Breedlove, professor* specialising in the sexual differentiation of the brain.
* The original episode guide described Dr. Breedlove as a “professor of psychology at UCLA.” Dr. Breedlove noted in 2008 “I am not, and have never been, a professor of psychology or of anything else at UCLA.” Breedlove earned his Ph.D. at UCLA but taught at UC Berkeley before taking an appointment at Michigan State.
Whatâs the fuss about? Read the book, think for yourself
Why this vehement response to this terrific book? Because Bailey describes male-to-female transsexuals who report an experience that is quite different from the familiar “a woman trapped in a man’s body”. Bailey never casts doubt that there are such people, in fact he interviews and describes several. But he finds that not all M2F transsexuals fit that mold. So the fuss you’re reading in these reviews are from M2F transsexuals who refuse to acknowledge that other M2F transsexuals might have a different experience than their own. There’s no reason to think the women Bailey interviewed would have been lying to him, and why isn’t their experience as valid as yours, mine or that of other transsexuals?
So get past all the landmines the critics are trying to use to deflect you from reading a thought-provoking, honest and entirely sympathetic view of the fascinating phenomenon of transsexuality.
By the way, it’s a great read, not at all stodgy. I promise you the pages will fly by.
Whom You Love (2014)
In 2012 Breedlove launched a failed crowdfunding campaign for a film called Whom You Love: the biology of sexual orientation. The project was then relaunched and reached half its original funding goal.
In 2014, Breedlove released a series of YouTube videos on a channel with that name, featuring many key anti-trans activists in academia.
Seth Douglass Roberts was born on August 17, 1953. Roberts earned a bachelor’s degree from Reed College in 1974 and a doctorate from Brown University in 1979.
Roberts taught in the notably conservative psychology department at University of California, Berkeley from 1978 until retiring in 2008. Roberts joined the faculty of Tsinghua University in Beijing from 2008 until 2014.
In late March 1998, Bailey and Roberts both presented at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics. Bailey promoted âgay geneâ work, and Roberts presented on âneuroticism and self-esteem as indices of the vulnerability to major depression in women.â
“Autogynephilia”
Roberts gave Baileyâs book one of many 5-star Amazon shill reviews after Bailey solicited them. This is the only book review Roberts ever made on Amazon.com under that account:
a masterpiece, May 6, 2003 Seth Roberts (Berkeley, California USA)
This is the best book about psychology for a general audience I have ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of them. When I taught introductory psychology, I used to assign several books of this sort, so I was always keeping an eye out.
It is extremely well written; it is based on excellent research; and its subject is complex, powerful, and poignant. That’s why it is so good. If How The Mind Works deserves to be a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize then Bailey deserves a Nobel Prize in Literature.
Roberts also had a correspondence with Deirdre McCloskey after Alice Dreger and Benedict Carey teamed up to present Bailey as a “scientist under siege.” McCloskey had previously published the review “Queer Science” in Reason in 2003.
Death
Roberts was a kind of quack that appeals to techno-utopianists and self-styled “rationalists” by claiming to succeed at “lifehacking” via self-experimentation. Roberts was a regular contributor at Quantified Self and other lifehack platforms. Roberts claimed to have personally cured acne, insomnia, poor mood, and weight gain, among other things, through self-experimentation.
Roberts was a self-proclaimed diet guru who sold a popular 2006 book called The Shangri-La Diet. Despite having no good peer-reviewed evidence that it worked, Roberts recommended drinking oil and personally ate unhealthy amounts of butter, claiming it had health benefits. On January 4, 2014 Roberts boasted:
I eat a half stick (60 g) of butter daily. It improves my brain speed. After I gave a talk about this, a cardiologist in the audience said I was killing myself. I said I thought my experimental data was more persuasive than epidemiology, with its many questionable assumptions. The new data suggests I was right â butter does not increase heart attacks. It also supports my belief that by learning what makes my brain work best, I will improve my health in other ways (such as reduce heart attack risk).
Roberts collapsed and died a few months later, on April 26, 2014. The cause of death was ruled “occlusive coronary artery diseaseâ and âcardiomegaly.â Roberts’s final column was published posthumously “with a heavy heart” and titled “Butter Makes Me Smarter.”
References
Staff report (September 2014) Seth Douglass Roberts â74.Reed https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/in-memoriam/obituaries/september2014/seth-roberts-1974.html
Dubner, Stephen J. (May 12, 2014). Seth Roberts R.I.P.Freakonomics https://freakonomics.com/2014/05/seth-roberts-r-i-p/
Obituary (May 8, 2014). Seth Douglass Roberts.San Francisco Chronicle https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/seth-roberts-obituary?id=17645317
Slack, Gordy (March 2007). The self-experimenter.The Scientist vol. 21, issue 3, p. 24. https://www.the-scientist.com/the-self-experimenter-46756
Dubner, Stephen J. (September 16, 2005). Seth Roberts, Guest Blogger: Finale?Freakonomics https://freakonomics.com/2005/09/seth-roberts-guest-blogger-finale/
Dubner, Stephen J.; Levitt Steven D. (September 11, 2005). Freakonomics: Does the Truth Lie Within?New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/does-the-truth-lie-within.html
Roberts Seth (August 13, 2007). Can Professors Say the Truth? https://sethroberts.net/2007/08/13/can-professors-say-the-truth-part-1/ [archive] also on HuffPost: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/can-professors-say-the-tr_b_60781
Roberts S (2006). Dealing with scientific fraud: A proposal. Public Health Nutrition, vol. 9, pp. 664-665. https://doi.org/10.1079/PHN2006963
Roberts S, Gharib A (2006). Variation of bar-press duration: Where do new responses come from? Behavioural Processes, vol. 72, pp. 215-223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2006.03.003
Sternberg S, Roberts S (2006). Nutritional supplements and infection in the elderly: Why do the findings conflict? Nutrition Journal, vol. 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-5-30
Roberts S (2005). Guest-blogs at www.freakonomics.com: Pleased to Meet You, Dietary Non-Advice, Freakonomics and Me, Acne, The Elephant Speaks, Thank You.
Roberts S (2004). Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 27, pp. 227-262. replications. Excerpt in Harper’s. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x04000068
Gharib A, Gade C, Roberts S (2004). Control of variation by reward probability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 30, pp. 271-282. https://doi.org/10.1037/0097-7403.30.4.271
Carpenter KJ, Roberts S, Sternberg S (2003). Nutrition and immune function: Problems with a 1992 report. The Lancet, vol. 361, p. 2247. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(03)13755-5
Gharib A, Derby S, Roberts S (2001). Timing and the control of variation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 27, pp. 165-178. https://doi.org/10.1037/0097-7403.27.2.165
Roberts S, Pashler H (2000). How persuasive is a good fit? A comment on theory testing. Psychological Review, vol. 107, pp. 358-367. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.107.2.358
Roberts S, Neuringer, A (1998). Self-experimentation. In K. A. Lattal and M. Perrone (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in human operant behavior (pp. 619-655). New York: Plenum. ISBN 9781489919472 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1947-2
Roberts S, Sternberg S (1993). The meaning of additive reaction-time effects: Tests of three alternatives. In D. E. Meyer and S. Kornblum (Eds.) Attention and Performance XIV: Synergies in Experimental Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Neuroscience. MIT Press. pp. 611-653. ISBN 9780262290906 https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/1477.001.0001
Roberts S (1987). Less-than-expected variability in evidence for three stages in memory formation. Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 101, pp. 120-125. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7044.101.1.120
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Robert Carson is a psychologist at Duke University who wrote a book on Abnormal Psychology which was influenced by bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence thinking on gender variance.
Dr. Sharon Valente, PhD, coauthored a book with Simon LeVay which Bailey uses in his human sexuality course.
Valente is assistant professor and RN-BSN coordinator, is internationally known for publications and scholarship in mental health, particularly suicide. Her research on suicide, life threatening illness, and professionals’ attitudes toward suicide/assisted suicide, and media presentations have helped set suicide prevention postvention standards. Her appointments include the National Youth Suicide Council, Death with Dignity, American Academy of Nursing Expert Panel on Culture, and she was elected to membership of American Academy of Nursing, Phi Kappa Phi and Chi Eta Phi, Int. She conducts writing workshops and serves as consultant at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her research has been funded by Oncology Nursing Society, Glaxo, Bristol Myers, Zumberge, and American Cancer Society.
She’s taught at USC, won some accolades, began in nursing, has some “obsessive / compulsive disorder” presentations to her credit. Interestingly she was, however, one of the additional editors to the book “Before Stonewall” by Vern Bullough, and apparently published a paper on suicide risk in the Gay & Lesbian community. Also involved with the Death with Dignity folks (assisted suicide on terminal illness).
There’s nothing else really tying her to the G&L community per se. Just with this cursory look, I’m going to go out on a limb and say she’s not really the prime culprit here. Rather, I think she was brought in more as the emotional pathology expert from a risks sensibility, rather than a LeVay who appears more inclined toward questioning the ulterior mental motivations. Valente probably is the input of anything dealing with “risks of depression / suicide among those who feel they made a mistake” and the prevalence data relating to that, if I had to venture a guess.
On this LaVey/Valente book, Dartmouth noted this as one of their new texts, as well as Michigan State’s Psych 492 Syllabus, Univ. of Nottingham (UK), Univ. of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio, and presumably one would think USC as well.
Yula Ponticas, Ph.D.
Ponticas is one of several people at Johns Hopkins involved in the repression of trans people through psychiatry.
Yula Ponticas graduated in 1979 from McDaniel College in Maryland and received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Florida State University in 1987. Her advisor was Jon Bailey (to my knowledge, no relation to our friend at Northwestern). Ponticas is a somewhat unusual surname that brings up several people, all from Chile.
She has written about in-vitro fertilization (with Fagan), care for the developmentally disabled, and paraphilia. Note that the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, where her first paper on crossdressing appeared, is where “autogynephilia” first appeared in print two years prior. Her only solo paper appeared in the same issue as the “five factors” paper co-authored with Wise et al.
The five-factor model goes like this:
Surgency (introvert/extrovert)
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Emotional Stability
Intellect/ Openness to Experience
My take on all these personality assessment tests is that they are about as useful and scientific as horoscopes. A lot of this is coming out of Northwestern ia Revelle and friends, though:
http://www.personality-project.org
—–
Relevant papers by Ponticas include abstracts.
Wohl MK, Finney JW, Riordan MM, Iwata BA, Ponticas Y, Page TJ. (1981). Behavioral assessment and treatment of complete food refusal in a developmentally disabled child. Association for Behavior Analysis, Milwaukee.
Ponticas Y, Fagan PJ. Issues in the Psychological Evaluation and Care of In Vitro Fertilization Couples Appl Res Ment Retard. 1986;7(1):21-35.
Richman GS, Ponticas Y, Page TJ, Epps S. Simulation procedures for teaching independent menstrual care to mentally retarded persons.
Wise TN, Fagan PJ, Schmidt CW, Ponticas Y, Costa PT. Personality and sexual functioning of transvestitic fetishists and other paraphilics. J Nerv Ment Dis. 1991 Nov;179(11):694-8.
Utilizing the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and the Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory (DSFI), 24 transvestitic fetishists (TVs) were compared with a similar clinic-evaluated group of 26 other paraphilics (OPs). The data replicated previous results and extended them by showing that TVs did not differ from OPs on most dimensions of the NEO-PI and the DSFI. Both groups were significantly higher on neuroticism and significantly lower on agreeableness than the NEO-PI male normative population. The other paraphilic group tended to score lower on conscientiousness than the TVs and the normative comparison group. For nine of the 10 DSFI variables, there were no significant differences between the TVs and the OPs. The TVs were significantly higher than the OPs on role identity, indicating a more feminine identification. Both the TVs and OPs reported elevated levels of fantasy. The implications of these findings suggest that, in general, TVs and OPs are more similar than they are different, with a common personality profile and a similar pattern of sexual functioning.
Fagan PJ, Wise TN, Schmidt CW Jr, Ponticas Y, Marshall RD, Costa PT Jr. A comparison of five-factor personality dimensions in males with sexual dysfunction and males with paraphilia. J Pers Assess. 1991 Dec;57(3):434-48.
We compared personality profiles of men with sexual dysfunction (n = 51) to those of age-matched men with a primary diagnosis of paraphilia (n = 51) employing the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI), a measure of the five-factor model. Preliminary analyses in a large sample of patients in a sexual behaviors consultation unit supported the reliability and factorial validity of the NEO-PI for this population. Analysis of variance showed significant differences between the dysfunctional and the paraphilic groups on two of the five NEO-PI domains, Neuroticism (N) and Agreeableness (A). The group personality profile of the sexually dysfunctional men was comparable to the normative sample of the NEO-PI, except for a slight elevation in N. By contrast, men with paraphilia had a personality profile marked by high N, low A, and low Conscientiousness (C). Treatment implications of the average personality profile of the sexual dysfunction group and the distinctive personality profile of paraphilic men are discussed.
Ponticas Y. Sexual aversion versus hypoactive sexual desire: a diagnostic challenge. Psychiatr Med. 1992;10(2):273-81.
Our work with women with sexual aversion documents the presence of marked sexual avoidance behaviors as specified in the DSM-III-R1 diagnostic criteria for this disorder. At the same time, we demonstrate the presence of normal sexual desire and capacity for orgasm in these women. These two findings offer support for a valid diagnostic differentiation between sexual aversion disorder and hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Inherent in the diagnosis and treatment of sexual aversion disorder is an appreciation by the clinician of the tremendous approach-avoidance conflict that exists in these patients. The behavioral and cognitive avoidance features, therefore, need to be elicited actively by the clinician during all phases of assessment and treatment. These features are not always offered readily by the patients for fear of having to relinquish these strategies and their related sense of control over the overwhelming anxiety that sexual intimacy can produce. Consequently, treatment is not always straightforward and successful.
Costa PT Jr, Fagan PJ, Piedmont RL, Ponticas Y, Wise TN. The five-factor model of personality and sexual functioning in outpatient men and women. Psychiatr Med. 1992;10(2):199-215.
454 adults seeking evaluation at a sexual behaviors consultation clinic were evaluated for the major dimensions of personality as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory and various aspects of sexual attitudes and experiences via the Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory. The results showed that elevated Neuroticism was correlated with dysphoric symptoms, negative body image and lowered satisfaction. More extraverted individuals reported increased drive, more sexual experience, positive body image, and more positive affects. Agreeableness was unrelated to sexual drive and satisfaction but was negatively related to symptomatology. Openness was positively associated with amount of Information, range of sexual experiences, liberal attitudes toward sex, sexual drive and fantasy and appears to broadly impact upon sexual functioning. The more conscientious subjects had lowered sexual drive, but fewer dysphoric symptoms and a better body image. Women showed a similar pattern of personality correlates with the exception that personality was unrelated to females’ sexual experiences and sexual satisfaction. The present findings support and expand previous research and contribute to our understanding of how personality dispositions influence the experience and expression of sexual functioning in male and female clinical samples.
Christopher Richard Brand was born June 1, 1943 in Preston, England.
Brand taught at Edinburgh University from 1970â1997. In 1996 Brand published the book The g Factor, claiming that general intelligence correlates with life outcomes. Brand claimed people of African descent had lower general intelligence as a group, which affected their success.
Brand was fired following an investigation into his 1996 comments about age of consent following child molestation charges brought against medical researcher Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. Brand’s firing became a rallying cry for “academic freedom” extremists.
Brand had three children and married spouse number three in 2001. Brand died May 28, 2017.
Comments on trans issues
Here’s what Brand had to say in 2003 when trans people began criticizing J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen:
Dr Sexâ VERSUS ANTI-HOMOPHOBISTS AND ASSORTED FAGGOTS
A book-burning witch-hunt began against psychologist J. Michael Bailey, of Northwestern University, near Chicago, who claimed from his research that some transsexuals are homosexuals, thus apparently managing to annoy representativesâ of both these hyper-sensitive groups at the same time. Fortunately, Chronicles of Higher Education (20 vi) gave Bailey, a Texan nerdâ, a friendly write up, saying he had plenty of transsexual/friends, did a good job on the dance floor and bought a round of drinks, so there was a possibility that he and his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, might survive.
See also the Chris Brand information on Lynn Conway’s site, which Brand responded to thus:
HUMAN BIODIVERSITY GROUP (HBDG) âNAMED AND SHAMEDâ Opponents of J. Michael Bailey, the Texan sexologist (who has âcontroversiallyâ suggested that some transsexuals are actually homosexuals), managed to discover the names on Steve Sailerâs private list of experts (and gifted amateursâŠ.) on the subject of âhuman biodiversityâ i.e. racial differences. They set up a website to denounce selected and possible HBDG members:
Andrews, Lewis R. (âpromotes an array of neoconservative (mostly racist) theoriesâ) {Normally called Louis Andrews}
Bailey, Michael (âunder investigation here {i.e. by transsexuals} regarding his HBDG affiliationsâ)
Brand, Chris (âinfamous âscientific racistââ)
Brimelow, Peter (âprominent and active member and contributor to {anti-immigration} VDARE)
Burr, Chandler (believes âbiological cause of male homosexuality as a “defect in development”â)
Buss, David M.(has ânotions of rigidly bi-polar genders in humansâ)
Cochran, Gregory M. (actually environmentalistic but âhighly extolled for his racial-genetic-profiling science and homosexual-causation-science by various neoconservative and far-right groups, such as the British National Partyâ)
Derbyshire, John (âvirulently homophobicâ)
Entine, Jon (âcondescending toward Asians, like a comical stereotype, and believe[s] blacks are uncivilized animals who are mentally inferior and only suitable for athleticsâ)
Hausman, Patricia (âpart of a neoconservative organization that makes a special point of trashing trans womenâ)
Miller, Edward M. (âmade strongly racist “scientific” statements in 1996 about the intelligence of black peopleâ)
Murray, Charles (âwidely perceived as racist by most moderate peopleâ)
Pinker, Steven (âbiology-is-destiny theoryââŠ.âactive participant in the Baileyan defamation of transsexual womenââŠ.âCould he be a Fourattist-type gay man?…â)
Pitchford, Ian (actually a keen leftist but called âanother of the HBDG’ers known to have supported Baileyâ)
Rushton, J.P. (âmisrepresented the entire evolutionary theory simply for the shock valueâ)
Sailer, Steve (âhas long exploited the works of racial-profiling scientists and pundits such as Brand, Cochran, Entine, Miller, Murray, Rushton, etc., to justify his positionsââŠ.”one of a handful of extreme “scientific racists”, affiliated with and often paid by extreme right-wing groups like VDare”)
Seligman, Dan (âpromoting HBDG’s vain hope that Bailey could somehow be anointed as the national expert on homosexuality and transsexualismâ)
What a wonderful display of leftistsâ willingness to caricature scholarly opponents! And such hypersensitive leftists have the temerity to complain I jest about them as ANTI-HOMOPHOBISTS AND ASSORTED FAGGOTS! (Of course, it was a pity that members of the HBDG list did not all plainly announce their scientific racism / race realism seven years ago when they might collectively have made a mark and defended me in Edinburgh. Sadly, still in 2003, the worldâs only declared academic race realists (Glayde Whitney having sadly died) were Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn and myself. The unwillingness of race realists to pull together reflected the non-emergence of national neoliberealism or any comparable liberty-respecting realism with which academics could be happy.
Egan V, Brand N, Brand T (2018). Obituary of Chris Brand (1st June 1943â28th May, 2017). Personality and Individual Differences Volume 122, 1 February 2018, Pages 206-207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.011
Wotjas, Olga (27 March 1998). ‘Racist’ Brand loses dismissal appeal. Times Higher Education http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=106530§ioncode=26
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David Buss is an American evolutionary psychologist whose life’s work is dedicated to maintaining and reinforcing a sex binary.
Buss is a frequent supporter of anti-trans psychologist J. Michael Bailey. Of all the people in the investigation to date, Buss has the most overlapping interests and experiences with Bailey:
Buss earned a doctorate in the notoriously anti-trans psychology department at University of California, Berkeley in 1981.
Buss was married to Cynthia Louise “Cindy” Refhues (1958-2012) in 1981.
The Man Who Would Be Queen
He was cited in promotional materials for Bailey’s book.
âBailey is one of a rare breed of writers who manages to combine first-rate science with deep
psychological understanding, resulting in great breadth of vision. He takes us on an unforgettable
journey into the minds and lives of feminine men. Bailey skillfully interweaves vivid case studies
with cutting-edge scientific findings, placing both in a deep historical context from the sexual
playground of ancient Greece to the dilemmas of gender in the modern world. Refreshingly
candid, remarkably free of ideology, this book is destined to become a modern classic in the field.
But readers should be prepared to have some cherished assumptions about human nature
shattered.â
â David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating and Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind
Sexuality and Its Disorders
College textbooks on psychology and human sexuality are consistently among the most transphobic knowledge produced in academia. A 2017 textbook by Mike Abrams lays out Buss’s views.
Teachings
A reader reports:
“Every Spring semester since 2016, Dr. Buss has co-taught PSY 306: Introduction to Human Sexuality, a seminar class, with Dr. Cindy Meston. The class is taught in a live-streaming, online format. There’s a little studio on-campus. The professors show up 15 minutes before class time, then sit in the studio to give their lecture in front of some cameras and a small live studio audience of 20 of their students. That lecture gets broadcast live to a much larger number of students – typically between 250 – 700 students each semester. So, 1000s of students have seen this class. Each semester, there is a lecture on Gender Dysphoria. I’ve attached a .txt file of the transcript. Here’s a particularly concerning section from that class (as spoken by Dr. Meston):
I think what’s happening is that people are more aware of the disorder. Absolutely, people like Jazz Jennings. This is the little girl that was on the 20/20 video you watched. She is now a huge voice for the transgendered community. She’s set up a foundation. She’s done a lot of good will for the transgender community. She has put out many videos giving advice and education. She’s had a reality show.
There was actually the first transgendered doll launched a few years ago in her image. So people like this, people like, and a few years ago, the very first transgendered Playmate appeared.
So what’s happening is there’s a lot more talk about transgender, a lot of famous people have come forward to talk about their struggle with gender dysphoria, and so this has been, has had a remarkable good impact, I believe, in the sense that, when it’s so much more visible and so much more talked about, people become educated.
They learn about the disorder, and when you learn about a disorder then you’re less afraid of it. And not always, sadly, but a lot of the time, people become more accepting, and you know, we see now, compared to even a decade ago, that there are policy changes made with regard to transgendered individuals in, for example, washrooms.
So that’s something that never would have occurred even, you know, a decade ago. So this awareness has clearly made many people more comfortable in coming forward and talking about their problem, and seeking help, which is a good thing.
Now, I want to mention, just on the other hand, why sometimes social media may not be in one’s best interest. So what is happening is that, among young people, teenagers, early 20s, there’s this rise in the prevalence rates of gender dysphoric individuals. That’s really unusual and it doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of what we know clinically, and have known for many, many years about individuals who have gender dysphoria.
So, for example, adults, who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, they almost always have been either diagnosed as having childhood gender identity dysphoria, or gender dysphoria I should say, and if not diagnosed as a child, they showed signs as a child. Their tales are that they have struggled with this most of their lives, or there has been some pattern very early on that there were signs of gender dysphoria. This group that has emerged in young people presents a very different picture.
They present, often, as suddenly realizing they’re gender dysphoric, and so some researchers are concerned by this, and clinicians, and have talked about this disorder, which has been given the name rapid-onset gender dysphoria. And rapid-onset gender dysphoria is exactly as it sounds, the development of gender dysphoria begins suddenly, during or after puberty, in adolescents or a young adult, who would not have met the criteria in childhood.
So this is not a typical etiology because, as I just described, the typical etiology is that they would’ve met the criteria in childhood. And so this has led to a debate or a discussion in the research and clinical community as to the possible role of social media and online content in possibly leading a group of young adults to self-diagnosing themselves incorrectly as having gender dysphoria.
Now, we know that, oftentimes, depression, or anxiety, or autism, individuals along the autism spectrum, some of you may have heard the term, Asperger’s. This term is no longer used in the DSM, it’s now just considered part of the autism spectrum, but it refers to individuals who struggle somewhat with social aspects of their lives.
And sometimes, what may be happening is individuals who are experiencing some type of mental disorder, they google on the internet, or they do some research online to figure out what’s wrong with them, and there’s so much information out there now on transgendered individuals, that they may be incorrectly identifying as a transgendered individual as opposed to some other underlying mental disorder.
$325,000+ in salaries for Zucker & Blanchard to pathologize trans people
Transgender taxpayers in Canada help foot the bill for their own pathologization, helping to pay nearly $328,000 in 2008 to two conservative Toronto psychologists working to turn back the clock on the rights of sex and gender minorities worldwide.Public disclosure documents show that Ray Blanchard was paid over $172,000 in 2008, and Kenneth Zucker was paid over $155,500. Both men work at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. This former “lunatic asylum” is home to the most notorious and regressive facility in the world dedicated to preventing and “curing” gender non-conforming behavior in children and adults.
Both Blanchard and Zucker are also heavily involved in the political push within psychology to continue labeling sex and gender minorities as disordered and diseased. Homosexuality was depathologized in 1973, but these men have an obvious and substantial financial interest in not just maintaining the status quo, but in expanding the definitions of sexual “disorders” that can be applied to all people. Their CAMH clinics are major recipients of taxpayer funds via the provincial and federal healthcare systems in Canada, so more “disordered” people mean more money for their clinics and themselves.
Motivations
Both men are not just driven by money. They are also driven by a desire to promote their own reactionary beliefs about sex and gender minorities.
Zucker is the world’s foremost proponent of reparative therapy for gender-variant youth. The few clinics that do this reparative therapy treat up to 30 times more children assigned as boys at birth. This remarkable statistic reflects the deeper hatred of boys who are “too feminine.”
Zucker’s therapy for these children includes forcing them to stop wearing pink or purple, or creating art with those colors. He also prohibits playing with or drawing pictures of girls. Parents are expected to enforce this behavior through withholding attention and affection until the children conform.
Blanchard seeks a broad expansion of the definition of “paraphilia” to include anyone attracted to someone who is not “phenotypically normal.” Under such a definition, being attracted to people who are obese, disabled, or even taller or shorter than “normal” could be reduced to a paraphilic disorder. Blanchard reserves special contempt for transsexual women, for whom he has created a rigid taxonomy in which they are either a type of gay man or a sexually obsessed fetishist. He once declared to the Toronto Globe and Mail that a transsexual woman who has transitioned is merely “a man without a penis,” echoing his fixation on “phallometrics,” the measurement of penile length, width, and tumescence when subjects are exposed to erotic stimuli. The field of “phallometrics” was developed by Blanchard’s mentor at CAMH to determine if army recruits were gay or not. Blanchard, who has not disclosed his own sexual orientation publicly, is considered an expert in determining the size and tumescence of male genitalia.
Decades of self-preservation and self-promotion
American citizens Blanchard and Zucker left the United States for Canada in the midst of the Vietnam War, then stayed in Canada after President Ford declared amnesty for draft evaders. This instinct for self-preservation is echoed in their efforts to keep taxpayer money flowing into their clinics. They frequently claim in their defense that they support medical procedures for trans people, but that is because any tax money allotted for that went directly to their clinics. Their support of these procedures meant more money for them. When they did control all acccess to trans health services in Ontario, they rejected more than 90% of applicants at their clinics and were known for long wait lists and regressive requirements. This led most trans people in Canada to seek health services from other sources. CAMH’s own Diversity Program Office published a report critical of their approach and attitudes toward the trans people they are paid to serve. They have responded to criticisms from outside their organization by using CAMH lawyers to threaten SLAPP suits. In one instance, they threatened Professor Lynn Conway with a libel suit for simply posting a link to another website.
Both men have methodically worked to shore up their job security over the years by politicking their way into key positions at organizations that set policy around sex and gender minorities. Zucker and Blanchard are hoping to codify their ideologies in the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Both are on the committee dealing with sex and gender “disorders” along with several like-minded associates. They seek deeper entrenchment of existing “diseases” and a broad expansion of concepts like “paraphilia” to include attraction to anyone who is not “phenotypically normal.” By most accounts, their efforts will likely be rewarded, and their worldview will be codified for more than a decade. The next edition of the DSM would not be published until after both men are retirement age in the 2020s.
Any funding secured for trans health directly benefits them
Though many in the Ontario transgender community have been critical of these men for years, activists have had limited success. That’s because most funding for trans health services goes directly to CAMH, who’ve had a controlling monopoly over the lives of trans people. Until the tax dollars that keep these bigots in business are diverted to better options, any funding victory for trans people in Ontario will be an even bigger victory for CAMH and its employees.
Effectively, the Ontario Ministry of Health is subsidizing the pathologization and stigmatization of transgender people worldwide by funding these CAMH “experts.” It’s time to let Ontario legislators know the harm they are doing to trans people worldwide. Once CAMH is out of the picture, trans people will be able to move toward true equality and access to health services for all.
Zucker was listed on a show about homosexuality with J. Michael Bailey and his usual suspects. Bailey replaced Zucker as an officer at the International Academy of Sex Research, publishers of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. This publication is the source for nearly all problematic “science” produced on gender variance in the English language.
The Sex Files HOMOSEXUALITY IN THIS EPISODE
Why are some people gay? That’s the $64,000 question – at least in the scientific community. Is it something genetically predetermined? Or does environment have an impact on whether an individual turns out to be gay or lesbian? These questions are beginning to be probed in ways that might finally be leading to an answer, and the Sex Files has interviewed the foremost authorities on the topic to uncover some of those scientific clues:
Dr. Devendra Singh, University of Texas psychologist specializing in the evolutionary significance of human physical attractiveness
Dr. Ken Zucker, head of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at the University of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry
Dr. Ray Blanchard, head of the Clinical Sexology program at the University of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry
Dr. Michael Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois and specialist in the genetics and environment of sexual orientation
Dr. Marc Breedlove, professor of psychology* specialising in the sexual differentiation of the brain.
* The original episode guide described Dr. Breedlove as a “professor of psychology at UCLA.” Dr. Breedlove noted in 2008 “I am not, and have never been, a professor of psychology or of anything else at UCLA.” Breedlove earned his Ph.D. at UCLA but taught at UC Berkeley before taking an appointment at Michigan State.
Petition: “To the Honourable George Smitherman, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care for Ontario – Against human rights violations of apparently gender variant children and adults” http://www.petitiononline.com/hrights/petition.html
The trans community was galvanized in opposition following reports of Bailey’s lurid book tour lectures. In the lecture witnessed by Stanford evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden, Bailey was misusing images and video of very young gender diverse children without their knowledge or consent.
Bailey’s crass presentation of these children was punctuated with laughter from assembled psychology professors and future clinicians. It reminded many trans people of the abuse and reparative therapy they had endured as children from similar academics.
Bailey and his colleagues featured in his book are the main proponents of reparative therapy on small children to change their gender identity and expression. This practice is outlawed in many places and has been described as child abuse.
Historians consider the international transgender response to this book to be one of the most significant moments in the history of the global transgender rights movement.
The parts in bold led to our community’s unprecedented efforts to ban unethical practices that harm our children.
Stanford Daily report (2003)
Stanford Daily, April 25, 2003 CAMPUS VIEWPOINT
Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation
By JOAN ROUGHGARDEN, GUEST COLUMNIST
On April 23, Psychology Prof. Michael Bailey from Northwestern University presented a lecture entitled “Gender Nonconformity and Sexual Orientation” to the Stanford University Psychology Department as part of its regularly scheduled departmental lecture series.
The audience, including about 10 faculty and 100 students, enjoyed laughing at pictures, quotations and voice recordings of gay, lesbian and transgendered people. The material consisted mostly of film clips and animated cartoons. At no point was the audience admonished to assume a professional decorum. No faculty challenged the scholarship, and criticism of the evidently limited sampling was left to several graduate students.
Bailey was introduced as “controversial,” someone whose work has important implications for law, medicine and social policy and as a successful teacher whose courses feature “Transsexuals stripping after class.” (First big laugh.) The initial photographs included a male-bodied child wearing her mother’s shoes, when the second round of laughter erupted. A female-bodied child was then shown in male clothes and quoted as saying she “wanted a penis,” 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, “1 hate my hair,” greatly amusing the audience.
Bailey’s main claim is that 75 percent of gender-variant male-bodied children grow up to be gay men. Furthermore, gay men questioned about their childhood report more feminine identification on the average than straight-identified men. A similar claim is made for gender-variant female-bodied children growing up to become lesbians, though with less certainty. Therefore, Bailey’s thesis is that gay men are more feminine than straight men, lesbians more masculine than straight women and that transgendered people do not exist as a distinct category but as an extreme gender-variant “subtype” of homosexuality.
Bailey did not present, much less do justice, to the many alternative theories and supporting data that conceptualize gender identity and sexual orientation as distinct axes of description.
Bailey followed this claim with more photographs and film clips. Two gay men were interviewed and the audience was invited to sharpen their ability to discern a gay male from a straight male â to train their “gaydar” (his word) and “pick up the vibes.” An animated cartoon showing effeminate gestures for a gay man was contrasted with one depicting a macho manner for a straight man, again sending the audience into peals of laughter. He then proceeded to show clips of a drag queen and a transgendered woman.
The transgendered woman was described as “an extremely feminine gay man who decided to become a woman.” Bailey would show bar graphs (without error bars) purporting to show that gay men and straight men prefer “casual sex” more than straight women, and straight women also prefer this type of sexual behavior more than lesbian women. The transgendered woman was claimed (though no data given) to be as sexually active in casual sex as a straight man or gay man, and for this reason had to be considered a gay man “himself.”
The lecture continued with a catalogue of diagnostic criteria to include in one’s “gaydar” for accurately discerning gay people from straight people, a project that drew an approving wisecrack from one faculty member. Using Northwestern undergraduates as subjects (“Northwestern has a good theater department”) he developed a rating for gay presentation, leading to the phrase, “the gayest-rated gay man.”
Then voices of two gay men and two straight men were played and the audience was asked to guess who was gay and who was straight. Those who guessed correctly grinned with joy and were applauded by their neighbors, leading to the conclusion that if a gay sounds really gay, then he probably is. If Bailey had presented a scholarly account of his theory in comparison with alternative theories of gender expression and sexuality, he would not have had to rely on a comical and vulgar performance to garner audience support.
Finally, Bailey presented the book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen,” in which he identifies the other “subtype” of transsexual as someone motivated by fetishistic body morphing, a largely obsolete idea that originated with Ray Blanchard. Bailey said his seminar had avoided the “really controversial” material that was available in his book. The official publicity for the book distributed at the Denver American Association for the Advancement of Science Convention in February, leads with the phrase “Gay, Straight, or Lying? Science Has the Answer” and ends with the claim that Bailey’s conclusions “may not always be politically correct, but they are scientifically accurate, thoroughly researched and occasionally startling.” Instead, many are now offering the book as the latest example of junk science and are appalled at the National Academy’s complicity in the sensationalizing of lesbian, gay and especially, transgendered people.
Bailey’s book is fulfilling the prophesy of being “controversial.” Gay, lesbian and transgendered people are organizing protests at bookstores around the country and are writing critiques in every media outlet possible.
To many observers, Bailey appears to be a rather dumb, stubborn, dense and possibly deceptive regular guy with some experience in locker-room humor. Meanwhile, the day before, on April 22, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the California State Assembly passed a bill extending California’s housing and employment nondiscrimination laws to cover gender-variant people, including transvestites and transsexuals. The bill will soon move to the state senate and will proceed to the governor. The political progress being made by gay, lesbian and now transgendered people greatly exceeds that in academia, if the homophobic and transphobic welcome to Bailey given by the Stanford Department of Psychology is any indication.
Joan Roughgarden is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford. She can be reached at [email protected].
Psychology grad students respond to controversial lecture
This letter is in response to Joan Roughgarden’s guest column, “Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation” (April 25). We regret that there were any misunderstandings on the part of Roughgarden regarding the Psychology Department’s colloquium. However, we feel that her recounting of the event was inaccurate, and we would like to offer our opinion from the perspective of graduate students in the Psychology Department.
Roughgarden makes two claims in her column. One, that the talk given by Northwestern University Michael Bailey was poorly presented and without merit. We have no dispute with this claim. The speaker’s data were poor, and his conclusions based on those data were severely lacking in merit and validity. No one we spoke with following the talk found his conclusions to be persuasive or scientifically valid, and that was made clear in the questions and critique he received from graduate students and faculty members following the talk. The second point Roughgarden makes is that the audience response was homophobic and supportive of Bailey’s view. She cites “peals of laughter” of the audience at several points within the talk, as well as a lack of criticism by those present as evidence of this support. There was, in fact, criticism by both professors and students regarding the scientific validity of the evidence presented. While the criticism was limited to the merit of the research, it was in no way supportive, and, in our view, was a clear indication of the critical and dismissive view of the audience toward this research. In addition, Roughgarden made the inaccurate assumption that the audience was laughing because it was reveling in some communal homophobic expression. The audience’s laughter was partially a reaction to the absurdity of some of Bailey’s claims, a reflection of embarrassed discomfort with the glib comments made by Bailey and unease about being asked to participate in Bailey’s guess-who’s-gay experiments.
The Psychology Department is committed to examining scholarly work documenting the true experience of different peoples and, in particular, of studying the processes that have heretofore been in large part omitted from psychological study, including the study of gender, race, social class and sexual orientation. We have a particularly strong research program in questioning stereotypes about marginalized groups. Bailey was included as a speaker in our colloquium series to further our understanding of the psychology of individuals in the gay, lesbian and transgendered communities. That his talk did nothing to elucidate our knowledge of those processes was extremely unfortunate, but we fully support the process that brought him to our campus.
KELLY MCGONIGAL Doctoral candidate, Psychology JULIE MCGUIRE Doctoral candidate, Psychology TECETA THOMAS Doctoral candidate, Psychology
