The following is the transcript of an interview with J. Michael Bailey, author of the controversial book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen”. It aired on KOOP-FM, Austin, TX in May 2003. I provide no personal opinion or slant, instead choosing to print the words exactly as they were spoken in the hopes that the reader will make their own decisions regarding what is said. Whether you agree with him or not, I think you will find his thoughts very interesting.
http://www.donnarose.com/JMBInterview.html
I’ve marked some noteworthy comments in bold.
Transcript
Interviewer: In your book you state that most gay men are feminine, or at least they’re feminine in certain ways. I was wondering, what does “feminine” mean to you?
JMB: Well, umm, I think that in general, “feminine” is a murky term. But to say that it’s murky doesn’t mean that it’s meaningless. I think “feminine,” in general, means “female-like” but there are different ways that one can be female-like. There are ways in which gay men, on average, are somewhat female-like and there are ways in which, on average, gay men are not at all female-like. And the ways in which they are include superficial aspects of behavior such as movement and voice, and then interests, occupational and recreational interests, you know… often in their childhoods many gay men have… will recall, umm, having feminine behaviors such as a preference for female activities and games and female playmates and a dislike of stereotypic male activities such as rough play and competitive sports. So those are the ways in which, on average, and… I’m going to stop saying that “on average” because it’s annoying to have to keep saying it. It’s probably annoying for you to hear it over and over. While I do, let me just say that all of these things that I’m saying don’t apply to all gay men and there are some gay men who are as masculine in any way as the typical straight man and there are some straight men who are feminine, ahh but on average, there are these significant differences between the two groups, so when I say gay men and straight men differ, that’s that way in which I mean it.
I: Do you think that the post-modern disapproval of stereotyping has actually impeded the scientific process?
JMB: Yeah, I do. I… well… I think that there are a number of, or at least a couple of main issues that have impeded scientific progress in this area. One of them is the disapproval of stereotyping but, you know, the other is discomfort with this particular stereotype by, uh, not only let’s say the “politically correct” but also by gay men themselves. Many gay men, uhh, have extreme discomfort with the idea that they might be feminine. And, ahh, I think that stems from two different sources. First of all, um, I think that gay men who were feminine boys had a hard time being feminine boys. Our society is not kind to feminine boys and I think that some gay men internalize the shame that they were made to feel, um, and actually have come to feel, even if they wouldn’t explicitly acknowledge this, that there is something wrong with male femininity.
I: You have this phrase, “femophobia.” Is that a phrase that you coined or is that–
JMB: Femophobia is a phrase that I coined, although, uhh, independently another writer named Tim Bergling wrote a book called Sissyphobia about the same phenomenon. And the other thing relates to a finding that we got in a scientific study, and that’s the finding that, uh, gay men, in seeking romantic partners, tend to be really prejudiced against feminine guys. And so to say that a gay man might be feminine, in a way is to say that he might be unattractive.
I: Do you think that all men display feminine characteristics?
JMB: You know, I don’t think that every action any man does his whole life is classifiable as masculine. But, you know, all of these things are relative traits. It’s not that you either are masculine or feminine. It’s how are you compared with other people.
I: You know, your book actually winds up discussing mostly feminine men and then, um, transgender… what I would call transgender people.
JMB: Uh-huh.
I: And so, I was wondering, to you, what’s the difference between transsexual and transgender? Since the modern movement is really pushing towards the word “transgender,” why bring “sexual” back into the lexicon?
JMB: I think that… I don’t really care what word we use as long as we’re speaking in way that leads to correct understanding and, uh, I believe that a subgroup of the transgendered have a very different understanding of motivations than I do and I frankly think that my understanding is more accurate.
I: Your book actually introduces the concept of the homosexual and then the autogynephilic transsexual. Do you care to elaborate a little bit for our audience?
JMB: Sure. By the way, this terminology is not mine. That particular part of the book, the third section on transsexualism, is based upon the work of a psychologist named Ray Blanchard, and Blanchard proved, I think, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there are two very distinct types which he calls “homosexual transsexualism” and the other kind he called “non-homosexual transsexualism.” A homosexual male-to-female transsexual is a transsexual who is unambiguously attracted to males. Um, and I believe that this type of transsexual is essentially a type of gay man who is very feminine and very gender dysphoric. That is, they really don’t like, for example, having a penis. One thing that I write about in the book, uh, is that one element of some of their motivation, of this type anyway, is because some of them are far more attractive as women than they are as men – particularly because they tend to be extremely feminine men – and as I say, most gay men don’t want to be romantically involved with very feminine men. So, that’s the first type.
Uh, the other, the second type – the one that invented the word “transgenderism” is more likely to be in identity politics and so on. These include primarily transsexuals that Blanchard classified as non-homosexual and basically that means that any natal male that is naturally born male who wants to become a woman or who has become a woman, and they’re not unambiguously attracted only to men. What Blanchard’s, um, discovery, and this is the most brilliant aspect of it, is that they are motivated by something called “autogynephilia.” Autogynephilia is, um, the sexual arousal and attraction to the idea of oneself as a woman. That is, these individuals… and their primary sexual object is not some person on the outside, but it’s some person on the inside. And that is, the idea or the image of themselves as a woman.
I: What do you think about the, um, common saying that, you know, “I am just a woman trapped in a man’s body” or “I’m a lesbian woman trapped in a man’s body.”
JMB: Well, you know, it depends upon what one means by being a woman trapped in a man’s body. You might mean two things. If all you mean is that it’s a person who was born a man who really wants to become a woman then sure, I agree. But I don’t think that’s what they mostly mean. I think that they mean that they are “like” a woman, in the sense of having the same psychology and feelings that a woman has. And I don’t think that autogynephilic transsexuals do. I think that autogynephilic transsexuals are much more like heterosexual men than they are like women. Ah, in contrast I think homosexual transsexuals, uh, do have a strong flavor of being a woman trapped in a man’s body although even they have some atypical traits for a female.
I: One of the things that was mentioned in the book about the autogynephillic transsexual was the fact that they’re interested in themselves as sexual objects as a woman, and proof for this was things like wearing women’s undergarments and masturbating.
JMB: Right.
I: And that made me wonder if, perhaps, they were not just attracted to women and the idea of a woman was sexually arousing in the same way that a gay man might wear a jockstrap and masturbate.
JMB: Well, I don’t think so. Um, and it’s not just wearing female undergarments, uh, you know, I have somebody I write about in my book, Cher, uh, is an autogynephilic transsexual who is also a friend of mine. She used to wear, um, fake breasts and fake vaginas when she was a man, and film herself, uh, simulating intercourse with a… with a basically a robot, and that was extremely erotic to her. Uh… You know, I just don’t think straight men really find the idea of wearing frilly undergarments to be sexy, uh, and this has actually been studied. Autogynephilic males will become sexually aroused in the lab if they listen to a narrative about cross-dressing whereas men without any history of erotic cross-dressing do not become aroused. Regardless, some of them insist that, you know, that it’s not about autogynephilia, it’s just they feel like women so they dress like women and any male who wore frilly lacy panties would become sexually aroused. I don’t think so.
I: Do you think that there is any consensus at all, amongst the psychological community, that the homosexual transsexual is, I don’t know, somehow acceptable versus the autogynephillic somehow being a disorder?
JMB: There is not, uh, widespread discussion of this distinction. Uh, I think that my book, uh, breaks ground that way. I mean, these ideas have been around for a decade, but the fact that non-homosexual transsexuals are motivated by autogynephilia is not known and I think that that relates to your question. I think that those types of transsexuals tend to dislike discussion of autogynephilia; many of them deny that it applies to them. However, Blanchard showed the ones who deny it also show evidence for it. So, for example, males who denied ever cross-dressing fetishistically, if you bring them to the lab and you measure their erections while they listen to a narrative saying, “Well, you’re getting ready… you’re putting on your panties… you’re putting on your stockings…” they get erections! Now, why would they deny it? Well, I think it’s because, in part, people in our society are very judgmental about sexual motivation. Some people are able to accept the “woman trapped in the man’s body” justification for getting a sex change but they have much more of a problem accepting the idea that somebody has some sort of sexual “attachment” to this image of themselves as a woman. Personally, I don’t think either is a superior justification. To me, they’re both good excuses. All I want to know is, is somebody going to be happier if they get a sex change than they were before? If so, good for them.
I: One of the researchers that you mentioned was Ken Zucker, who is the head of the child and adult gender identity clinic in Toronto. He was representing the view that Transsexualism was wrong and that he would suggest treating the gender identity disorder in childhood while he was kind of, uh, value-neutral concerning homosexuality. How can one make a distinction between a feminine gay man and someone who’s going to become a transsexual?
JMB: You actually raised two issues, and let me address both of them. First off, is kind of a value issue of, you know, does he say that transsexualism is “bad” and I think many people who are sympathetic to transsexuals still think that transsexualism would be good to avoid if one could. Because this involves major surgery, it involves, often, an adjustment in one’s social life that requires a level of acceptance in society that we just don’t have yet. I know transsexuals who say that they think that it should be considered a disorder because it would have been good if they had been cured of it.
Another question is, how do you distinguish feminine gay men from homosexual transsexuals? Do you mean in childhood, how do you know who is going to become what?
I: You seem to suggest that you needed to treat this condition during childhood…
JMB: Right.
I: What if you make a mistake? How can you tell the difference between someone who’s just feminine and someone who wants to become a woman later in life?
JMB: Let me start by telling the listeners an important fact. There are boys who, ah, I think it’s reasonable to think of them as transsexual children. These are boys like, in the file “Ma Vie en Rose” who want to be girls, and they are pervasively and persistently feminine in a number of ways, and they would be happy to be girls. Now, those boys who have been followed-up – boys who start out that way – usually become… not transsexuals but gay men. A few of them are transsexuals but not nearly as many as are gay men. There is a number of questions, like “How does that happen?” “How do you know which ones are going to be gay men and which ones are going to be transsexuals?” and so on. Now, nobody really knows, you know, because we can’t do controlled scientific studies on kids like that. Zucker thinks that these kids who become gay men, he thinks that that’s the more desirable outcome than being transsexual because transsexualism is a hard life.
I: It sounds like people have been saying that about, uh, just being a gay person, in general.
JMB: Yeah. Well, that’s… but I… Zucker also thinks that what distinguishes those who become gay men versus those who remain transsexual is, in part, how they’re reared, and if they do not have systematic pressure to masculinize, he believes, then they may not. So, a parent who never puts their foot down and takes away the Barbie dolls and so on, Zucker believes, ahh, risks having a transsexual child more than those who do make a persistent effort to masculinize the child. I’m very torn. I know mothers in this situation..
I: Well, should we encourage of should we be discouraging that behavior?
JMB: I don’t… I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know. I see both sides. Because we really don’t know… I mean, let’s assume that Zucker is right, and he might be, then should we enable these kids to become women as soon as they can? Maybe we should! Maybe we should keep our minds open and… and say that these boys will have a better life if they’re allowed to become girls as adolescents. That’ll keep them from masculinizing, and they’ll be prettier, and so on… ahh, if we can… ahh facilitate their sex change earlier. I mean, what are the chances that people are going to do that?
I: It seems such a murky situation cause, I mean, on the one hand I definitely did display some feminine characteristics as a child and was told I was “wrong,” but then I have a straight friend who was allowed to play with Barbie dolls. And then you have the autogynephilic transsexuals who are, by all means, masculine during their childhood and…
JMB: Okay. Let’s not get the situation overly murky. There is a clear, strong correlation between these very strong feminine traits and a homosexual outcome. Now, I personally don’t see a homosexual outcome as any kind of problem. A transsexual outcome is a harder case for me because, you know, I have transsexual friends. I quite like them, but I think that they’ve had a very hard time and they’ve had to undergo some very risky medical procedures, too. I think we’ve got to be honest about the potential tradeoffs here, and that is if we’re gonna struggle for a more gender “kind” world that there might be more transsexualism and if so, is that okay with us? Are we willing to accept that? And maybe we are… maybe we should be.
I: Speaking of feminine characteristics, in your book you were talking about the high number of gay men who have dancing careers…
JMB: Uh-huh.
I: …and you seem to indicate that there is some latent cause. You have your son saying, you know, why do you think that gay men are more likely to be dancers and he says, “because dancing is feminine and gay men tend to be feminine.”
JMB: Right.
I: Is it possible that there are social factors, rather than biological factors at play? Cause you seem to be building a case that there are feminine career tracks that gay men are interested in. It seems possible that masculine men are just discouraged from being dancers.
JMB: Well, I think it’s both ways. As masculine men are discouraged by…I mean… ALL men are discouraged from being dancers in a certain way, you know? In our dance study we, uh, asked how people got interested in dance and we found that, actually, straight men – on average – got into it a couple of years earlier than they gay men. You know how they got into it? They got into it because their parents made them. The gay men got into it on their own. Something happened… they saw something on tv… they went to a dance performance… they said, “Oh, I love that! I want to do that!” And, you know, what is it about dancing… I mean, I do think that dancing, uh, is a feminine activity, but what is it about dancing that’s feminine? I don’t really know, but I think that that is the cause of the relation between male sexual orientation and interest in dancing careers.
I: There is some data that was in the book that, I have to admit, I got upset about. I guess it’s that most of it was pre-AIDS data…
JMB: Uh-huh
I: …and one was saying that a typical gay male has 500 sex partners…
JMB: Well, I didn’t say “has.” I… I think I said that was a study in San Francisco before the AIDS epidemic. And it also… it gets a little more complicated with gay men, because what does one mean by sex partner? We should be clear that gay men are not just counting anal sex when they are listing their sex partners. They are counting oral sex, they’re probably counting manual sex… So, I think if heterosexual people counted those they would have more than they think of when they think of their “sex” partners. Nevertheless, I’ve done several studies and gay men always have substantially more partners than straight men.
I: Well, you also talk about monogamous relationships between homosexual men usually become open relationships within five years. You know, speaking as a gay man whose adolescence happened after AIDS, I think the entire atmosphere for dating, and for monogamy, and casual sex, has really changed. And I’m surprised that this book is still quoting those older datas.
JMB: The study I… that we have been talking about is one by David McWhirter which is well over a decade old. However, I have lots of gay friends and they all conform to that generalization. That is, the ones who have been together for five years are not monogamous.
I: When you’re comparing, um, gay people to straight people are you looking at gay club-going men and straight club-going men?
JMB: Well, I think that, for many of our studies we’ve advertised in urban publications. Gay Chicago is a bar magazine, and TheChicago Reader is a very alternative publication. Ah, and so… yeah… I think actually, they tend to be comparable in their lifestyle and I would say that actually, that’s a bias against my hypothesis. I think it minimizes differences in partner numbers between gay and straight guys. Because the fact is, gay men who read Gay Chicago and respond to our ads are probably more typical gay men than the straight people who read The Chicago Reader.
I: How do you think that gay and straight men are alike?
JMB: Uh, well, I think that the whole thing with sex partners is… and the fact that gay men have more… is a function of the ways in which gay and straight men are exactly alike. And that is the fact that they both find casual sex to be gratifying and, uh, exciting. Much more so than women do, on average. The difference is that gay men can get it because their partners are also into casual sex. So, um, I don’t think that gay men are psychologically promiscuous. I think they’re just like straight men. They just are able to realize their desires more easily than straight men.
Another way is that gay men are like straight men in being shallow and focused on physical looks as partner. It’s not that woman are necessarily deep. They’re more concerned with, like, resources and dishin’ and that kind of thing whereas men are focused on how the face and the body looks.
Ah, another way in which they’re alike… their interest in looking at naked people, erotica – that is a male sort of thing. Men pay money to watch videos of people having sex with each other. Well, the big markets for that are straight men and gay men.
I: You mention findings that, uh, being gay has biological background and one of them was the INAH 3. Could you elaborate?
JMB: In 1991 Simon LeVay published a study in The journal Science that made the front pages across the nation and got him on Oprah. This was the study showing that, in a region of the brain called the hypothalamus, which has long been known to be important for sexual behavior, there was a small group of cells called the nucleus, that was larger in straight men than in gay men. And gay men’s INAH3 looked like that of women. This was a very exciting finding because it was in the right region of the brain and it was the way, you know, people thought it might turn out that since women and gay men are both interested in men, that they should have similar sexual orientation centers. Now, this was an autopsy study and it depended upon people of known sexual orientation having died and it was made possible by the tragic AIDS epidemic. This study hasn’t been followed up until recently when a guy named Bill Byne repeated the study, didn’t have quite as many subjects as LeVay had, and my sense of his replication is it looks similar to what LeVay found. That he was, in fact, on to something. So, I think that there is likely something there, and I think that type of research is potentially quite valuable.
I: Do you think the finding that there is a gay gene will lead to gays being treated as handicapped?
JMB: Well, let me give a little context to this. Uh… Greenberg and I have collaborated on papers and neither he nor I thinks that there is anything wrong with being gay. The issue, though, is I have had people say, “You know, you’ve got to stop doing your research because we’re gonna find something that allows people to manipulate sexual orientation or test for it, and then they’re going to do terrible things like, abort fetuses with the gay gene, and so on. First of all, I would say that those scenarios are scientifically very impossible. But secondly, I think that they’re hysterical because the people making these claims are not thinking through the ethics of it. And these are the same people who think that abortion on demand for any reason is no business except for the woman who wants to have the abortion, and then they’re at the same time raising the spectre of murdering gay babies when they would never countenance the word “murder” in any other discussion of abortion. So anyway, I think that, uh, Greenberg’s analysis which I talk about in the book is, uh, actually very cogent. And it is that changing the sexual orientation of a baby from gay to straight, or for that matter, from straight to gay, really doesn’t have any ethical import, first of all, and to get to your question if we find a gene or if we find a brain region or any kind of biological factor influencing sexual orientation will it lead to gay people being thought of as handicapped, I don’t see how that would happen. For any people who differ in their behavior there must be, at some level, biological differences between them because at some level of explanation everything is biological. And, that doesn’t mean that people who behave differently than the norm are handicapped.
I: Recently there has been some discussion about the evolutionary advantages to being gay. Um, specifically, the idea of the pack mentality. The idea that if you’re in a family of three, let’s say, and all of your brothers and sisters have children and you don’t then you can use your resources to help those children rather than spread it out amongst more children. Then also the issue of zero population growth. How do you feel about some of these evolutionary arguments?
JMB: Well, the evolutionary hypotheses about homosexuality, and I have reviewed these very carefully… I’m writing a paper on them… they have all been, in my opinion, quite lame, um, and this is another place where sensitivity has impeded careful thought. I mean, one thing to realize is that evolutionarily, homosexuality is a big mistake. And, I don’t mean anything bad by saying that because lots of good things, that we would like to have more of, would be evolutionary mistakes. People being extremely kind to strangers and giving poor strangers lots of their money, that would be a great thing. But evolutionarily, it would be a terrible mistake. And when I say something would be a big mistake I just mean I don’t see how it would ever evolve. And I don’t see how homosexuality has ever evolved and remained in our population at relatively high rates: 1, 2, 3, 4 percent?! That’s very high for something that has vastly reduced fertility related to it. And I should…uhh… the flip side of when I say it’s an evolutionary mistake certain things that are evolutionarily clearly adaptive include jealousy, selfishness, the uh willingness to commit infidelity, all those things. Those are very evolutionarily adaptive. But, they’re not good, right? So by saying something is an evolutionary mistake or evolutionarily adaptive that’s not a value judgement. That’s just counting number of descendents one leaves. So the hypotheses that people have raised to explain homosexuality have included all kinds of things like population control. That’s a non-starter because nothing can ever be explained at such a group level because you could always have selfish people who would thwart population control and they would, um, they would win the evolutionary race.
The other hypothesis which we’ve actually investigated empirically, uh, is what I call the “kind gay uncle” hypothesis. That instead of, uh, investing in his own offspring, uh, a gay man invests a lot in his, uh, nieces and nephews. Well, first of all, empirically we don’t find much evidence that gay men do that. But secondly, the amount by which they would have to do that in order to make up for not having children or having, you know, half the number of children… actually we… the best estimates are that gay men have about one fifth the number of children than straight men… the amount of investment that they would have to do would be tremendous. They would have to devote their lives to helping their nieces and nephews and of course they don’t do that.
I: I was wondering, can we expect a book about masculine women and transsexuals in that community?
JMB: We certainly should have one. Uh… and… there are such books, you know, about the individual topics… there are books about tomboys, there are books about female to male transsexuals, and there are certainly books about lesbians, including butch lesbians. But it would be good to have them all in one book, I think. And if you’re asking me am I going to write a book…such a book? I don’t know. No time soon. I’m still involved in the controversies and discussions about my current book and I have a lot of work to do in that domain. So…
I: Well, I really want to thank you for your time and this interview. I think it’s been really informative.
JMB: Well, I think you have asked very thoughtful questions, and I hope I said some things you can use.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
One of our investigators retrieved this from three attached files mentioned by Pinnel and sent the following analysis:
What’s really important about these documents is one was written by Bailey, on his outdated little Mac, on December 3, 2002.
I decoded all three and was able to open them directly in Microsoft Word and see all three authors stats and electronic signatures, as well as see their thinking in their own words before the book went to press.
These docs are very damning, and really show some of the backroom thinking that was going on. JHP and Bailey won’t be able to back away from their own words on what they “meant” and what they “intended” when it’s all right here in black and white!
[controversial ideas.doc]
The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey
This book is controversial. It is about feminine men, from before birth to adulthood, to the rebirth experienced by those who decide to become women. Its three sections include one on very feminine boys, one on gay men, and one on transsexuals. These meld scientific studies with stories about real people.
Male femininity is a phenomenon that most people find interesting but which has been ignored by science due to concerns ranging from social conservatism to sensitivity (or less charitably, political correctness). For example, despite widespread stereotypes that gay men tend to be feminine, research related to the stereotype has only recently been conducted.
Here are some of the topics and questions the book addresses:
FEMININE BOYS
Do very feminine boys become gay men?
Yes they usually do. As adults, nearly all are attracted to men.
Are feminine boys born or made?
Scientific studies of rare conditions in which boys are changed into girls soon after birth show that even the most extreme social manipulation can’t make a feminine boy. They seem to emerge that way from the womb.
How often do feminine boys become transsexual adults?
Although most feminine boys become gay men rather than transsexuals, a significant minority—perhaps 10%—of very feminine boys will choose to become women.
Do feminine boys need therapy to make them happy and well-adjusted adults?
This is controversial, and participants in the controversy tend to ignore the best points of the other side. On the one hand, treatment that focuses on extinguishing feminine behavior may make the boys masculine at the expense of shame and self-hatred. On the other hand, if we could make society completely accept feminine boys, more of them might choose to change into women.
GAY MEN
Are gay men feminine, like stereotypes suggest, or are they masculine, like social scientists have asserted for thirty years?
Yes. That is, gay men are a mixture of masculine and feminine traits. In some respects, they are remarkably feminine, but in some others, they are as masculine as straight men.
Gay men do in fact have feminine occupational and recreational interests, and this affects the jobs they choose and the ways they spend their time.
Gay men are also feminine in their speech patterns—there is a “gay voice”—and in their movement.
In some other ways, gay men are just like straight men. These include many aspects of sexual behavior. For example, gay men and straight men both enjoy casual sex—but gay men are able to have much more casual sex, because their partners also enjoy it.
Do some gay men act feminine in order to be accepted by other gay men? Do feminine and masculine gay men pair up as “husband and wife?”
No. Actually, gay men dislike feminine attributes in their romantic partners. Virtually all gay men prefer masculine rather than feminine partners.
Are gay men born or made?
Born. The best evidence for this is the feminine boys who will become gay men. These boys act that way despite, not because of, the social influences that surround them.
Aren’t we all really bisexual, like the ancient Greeks?
No. Men tend to be attracted to either men or women, but not both. Furthermore, the existence of feminine gay men transcends cultures and time.
TRANSSEXUALS
Are transsexuals women trapped in men’s bodies?
No. First of all, there are two very distinct types of males who become females. (Few scientists, much less laypeople, have understood the difference between them.) One of them—the type that likes only men—is naturally feminine in many respects, but not in all. The other is not at all feminine except as the result of effort.
What about men who become women only to be lesbians?
This is the second type of transsexual. They are primarily sexually attracted to the image of themselves as women, but they also are attracted to women.
Are transsexuals born or made?
The feminine transsexual is born feminine. However, whether he elects to become a woman depends on lots of social feedback. For example, will he be more attractive as a man or as a woman? The other, non-feminine, type of transsexual seems to develop his unusual sexual preference (for himself as a woman) without any social input.
Are transsexuals happy once they become women?
For the most part, they are happier than they were as men. However, they still do not lead conventional lives.
See the main page on Robin Pinnel for more materials put out by Joseph Henry Press.
J. Michael Bailey is Chair of the Department of Psychology and Professor at Chicago’s prestigious Northwestern University. A Ph.D. graduate of Louisiana’s Baylor University [sic – Bailey’s PhD was at University of Texas at Austin], he is trained in clinical psychology and known as a sexologist. The bulk of his research has concerned the behavioral and vocal mannerisms of gay men.
This year, Bailey made a play for the big time–if one considers the talk show and lecture circuit the big time–via a book published under the imprint of the prestigious National Academies of Science. The title is The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism.
This choice of title is unfortunate in any number of ways. First, despite Bailey’s claims otherwise, it is deliberately sensationalistic, misleading, and demeaning to the purported subject population. It seems designed to sell books rather than describe what Bailey’s book is about. There is, in fact, no man “who would be queen.” Second, most of the book is devoted to male homosexuality rather than transsexualism; why does the subtitle not reflect this? Third, and far worse, both the author and publisher have touted the book as being based on science and research. It is not science. Fortunately, most reviewers have recognized this. Finally, both the subtitle and NAS imprint imply that Bailey has widespread knowledge of transsexualism. This is not true; Bailey met his (few) transsexual subjects in Chicago’s gay and trans bar scene at two in the morning.
Moreover, according to at least five transsexual women who have filed complaints at Northwestern in regard to Bailey’s behavior, he misled them by not telling them that they were research subjects. Bailey is now under investigation by Northwestern’a most serious matter.
Bailey’s book is important because it has brought to the forefront two issues; gay femininity and autogynephilia. Gay men have been slow to react to the exaggerated and stereotypic pictures Bailey paints of them in his books and at his lectures, but transsexuals, outraged by Bailey’s blanket statements that he “knows” their intimate psychologies and his intimations that if transsexuals disagree with his assessments of them, they’re lying, have been quick on the uptake. Reactions have been critical and in some cases personal.
The real importance of Bailey’s book is not that it paints a sloppy and inaccurate picture of transsexuals (it does), but that it hoists the petard of autogynephilia, a theory that depicts transsexuals as sexual fetishists and denies the existence of gender dysphoria–and that he has done so with the tacit approval of the National Academies of Science.
Here are the highlights of the controversy to date.
MarchTMWWBQ is released, with claims by the author and publisher that it is based on science. A cover blurb by Dr. Anne Lawrence calls the book “… a wonderful book on an important subject.”
April University of Michigan Professor Emerita Lynn Conway fires the opening salvo to a group of trans friends via e-mail, expressing her “extreme concern about the publication of Bailey’s book by the National Academy Press–and her fears that the Academy imprimatur would mislead people into thinking the book was sound science, when in fact it was very one-sided and very defamatory of transsexual women.” Conway continues to document happenings on her website, updating it frequently.
25 April On Conway’s website, Stanford Professor of Biological Science Joan Roughgarden reviews a presentation by Bailey on 23 April at Stanford University; she describes Bailey as mocking and stereotyping gay men and transsexuals.
4 May Saralyn Chesnut, Ph.D., Director of the Office of GLBT Life at Emory University, describes a lecture by Bailey at Emory on 8 April. Chestnut writes, “I found him to be arrogant, unprofessional (he smelled of alcohol at 4:00 in the afternoon) and absolutely boastful about how ‘scandalous’ and ‘outrageous’ his book is, as if that were more important than academic rigor. I’ve never heard an academic proudly use words like that to describe his/her work.” (from Conway’s website).
5 May The National Academies of Science begin to get letters of complaint about TMWWBQ. The Academies eventually receives letters from, among others, Christine Burns of Press for Change, Joan Roughgarden, Karen Guerney of the Australian W-O-M-A-N Network, Dallas Denny, editor of Transgender Tapestry, Monica Casper, Executive Director of the Intersex Society of North America, and faculty members of leading universities.
9 MayAnjelica Kieltyka, “Cher” in Bailey’s book, sends e-mail pleas to Andrea James and Lynn Conway, explaining what had happened to her and seeking their help.
20 June “Dr. Sex,” an article on the TMWWBQ controversy, appears in The Chronicle of Higher Education; this is the first mention of the controversy in the mainstream press. “Mr. Bailey’s work on transsexuals, unlike his scientific research on gay men, is anecdotal and his book doesn’t cite any figures to back up his claims. In his defense, he says he ‘went every place I could think of that I’d find a decent chance of finding transsexuals’ to talk to and observe. That often meant gay bars near his home…”
23 June Conway sends an open letter to the administration of Northwestern University, alerting them to the NTAC press release.
23 June Andrea James, who has been tracking the Bailey brouhaha on her website, posts a blistering critique of Anne Lawrence, in which she describes Lawrence’s 1997 resignation from her position as an anesthesiologist after conducting an unauthorized and clearly unethical genital examination of an unconscious patient. This resulted in an investigation by the State of Washington Department of Health. James’ website includes images of the Adverse Action Report generated by the investigation.
23 June James also alleges that Lawrence made unwanted sexual overtures to her while photographing James’ genitalia.
3 July Kieltyka files a formal complaint with Northwestern University. Kieltyka had previously revealed that she was the subject called “Cher” in TMWWBQ. She states that she was misled by Bailey, who she had contacted years ago after seeing him on television, and who she says did not reveal to her or other transsexuals that he was doing research. By mid-July, four more subject-complainants have come forward.
17 July Articles in The Daily Northwestern and The Chronicle of Higher Education report that the university has begun investigatory proceedings in response to complaints about unauthorized use of human subjects.
17 July An article on Conway’s website, posted on 29 July, reports that Kieltyka, who attended the annual meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research at Indiana State University to call attention to Bailey’s behavior, reports that she was prevented from handing out information there and was asked to leave by the police.
19 July According to an account from an attendee of the conference, posted on 28 July on Conway’s website, Kinsey Institute Director John Bancroft rises from the audience at the Q&A session after a presentation by Bailey at the national meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research and tells Bailey, “Michael, I would caution you against calling this book ‘science’ because I have read it … and I can tell you it is NOT science.”
19 July Bailey “vacates his position” as IASR Secretary-Treasurer.
29 July Lynn Conway and Dierdre McCloskey file a formal complaint with Northwestern about Bailey’s research behavior.
31 July Bailey tells The Daily Northwestern that he told IASR in February about his decision to resign. The article also reports that Bancroft would not confirm that he made the statement reported on Conway’s website. The Daily Northwestern article reports that two more transwomen have filed complaints against Bailey, bringing the total to five.
20 Oct. HBIGDA President Walter J. Meyer III, M.D. and HBIGDA Executive Director Bean Robinson, Ph.D. respond on behalf of the HBIGDA Board of Directors to a letter sent on 14 June by Drs. Lynn Conway, Dierdre McCloskey, Ben Barres, Barbara Nash, and Joan Roughgarden, expressing their concerns about Bailey. HBIGDA declines to investigate Bailey on the grounds that he is not a member of the association, and calls for all parties in the controversy to exercise professionalism. Meyer and Robinson write that HBIGDA has plans to express its concerns about Bailey directly to Northwestern University.
4 Nov. The Clarke’s Ray Blanchard, who coined the term autogynephilia based on his empirical work in the late 1980s and early 1990s, writes Meyer & Robinson, resigning from HBIGDA on the grounds of HBIGDA’s “appalling decision… to intervene in Northwestern University’s investigation into the allegations… against Prof. J. Michael Bailey.”
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Background
Homosexuality may represent “a developmental error.”
Bailey JM (1999). Homosexuality and mental illness. Archives of General Psychiatry. 1999 Oct;56(10):883-4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10530627
“Prostitution is the single most common occupation that homosexual transsexuals in our study admitted to.”
Bailey JM (2003). The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. Joseph Henry Press. p. 184 http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/184.html
“To focus on this question, we have to assume that whatever means parents will use to do this are, in themselves, morally acceptable. So, if you have any problem at all with abortion, assume that pregnant women can guarantee a heterosexual child by, say, taking a pill, or avoiding certain foods, or even by reading their children certain bedtime stories. What would make avoiding gay children wrong?”
Bailey JM (2003). The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. Joseph Henry Press. p. 114 http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/114.html
Selected letters and comments from correspondentsI am very happy to announce that I’m getting inundated with email on this matter. All of it is very welcome, but I feel some of it is worth sharing with everyone. This page puts forth wisdom and insight from readers just like you, and my responses when applicable. Please note that I do not necessarily agree with all the comments below, but I felt they might be helpful or interesting for others who are working to deal with this issue. Excerpts from V__’s letter on “autogynephilia” and its flaws: But before I get too lengthy, I want to get to the heart of my purpose for this e-mail. And that is the concept of “Autogynephilia”. I’ve recently come to believe that this concept is the result of research that didn’t quite go far enough. A few months ago I attended a lecture about sexual addictions given by a prominent local Psychologist who specializes in addictions of all kinds. Additionally, in a brief follow-up, I attended a few group-therapy sessions of men with various sexual addictions. In this lecture he came to a point of describing his own sexual addiction throughout much of his adolescence and early adulthood – compulsive masturbation. In tying this anecdote to his patient-studies, he illustrated what to me was a very lucid observation and one which I feel could shed new light on the whole concept of Autogynephilia.
The observation is/was that, like many other addictions, sexual addictions can be born out of deep suppression and/or internal self-loathing, primarily as secondary to things such as trauma or over-controlling parents/spouses, for examples. The causes of suppression and self-loathing are, of course, virtually innumerable, so he didn’t go much into that except to describe his own awful upbringing and how, indirectly, compulsive masturbation became an escape? a way of self-medicating, if you will. Not that this was a conscious effort. Rather, he explains it as a subconscious process.
Without going into much more extensive detail, I feel that I cannot do this the justice it deserves, but I hope what I’ve described can offer you some idea of the conclusion I’d LIKE to draw – that perhaps erotic arousal associated with cross-dressing has much more to do with internal conflict and suppression than with some skewed sexual proclivity. I have to say that, as I sat in this lecture, the lights started coming on. Add to that the credible research found in more recent publications and I feel that the issue of autogynephilia is one which needs to be revisited and, hopefully revised. Excerpts from R__’s letter on Bailey, with my reply on “social canalization”: The transsexual portion of this book dwells on the path taken. Does this mean they started from different places? Maybe. But maybe it is based on the decisions we make at a young age. Those who decide to hide their differences at a young age to try and fit in and those who don’t. The crux of that decision can flavor the rest of someone’s life. Someone who doesn’t try to suppress it will have a rougher time socially, hence a rougher time in schoolwork and at home, and THAT causes the situation where they end up in the different job roles. One who suppresses and tries to fit in, may shut inside themselves a lot more. They apply themselves to schoolwork or some other safe activity. Being too social is opening the opportunity for the hidden information to slip out. To hide in a world of controllable logic (computers) is a natural reaction to a fear of socialization. Further attempts at suppression lead to military careers and/or marriage. Okay, its just a theory, but it covers the split.
My reply: This is an extremely important issue, and one I would love to hear more on. Here’s something I’ve been reading on the matter:
http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v2n2/dalli.html
According to Valsiner (Valsiner, 1985; Valsiner & Hill, 1989), children are socialized into culturally acceptable ways of acting in given situations through a process of social canalization. In Valsiner’s framework, children’s development of acting and of thinking is explained through the mutually related functioning of three zones. The first zone is called the “zone of freedom of movement” (ZFM) and refers to the structure of the environment that is functionally available to the developing child at a given time. The limits of this zone are negotiated with the caregivers and change as the child develops or moves into an area with a different physical structure. For example, the ZFM of a child may be the playpen or the front yard.
The second zone is the zone of promoted action (ZPA). This term refers to the set of objects and actions that the child’s social environment actively promotes to the child to use and perform. The ZPA may be observed in the parents’ and other people’s preference structure of the child’s different actions. This preference structure includes the actions and social expectancies that others promote as desirable for the child. As the child develops, he or she internalizes the social expectancies and gains knowledge about the acceptable and expected way of acting in a given situation. Once gained, this knowledge may be used in any way by the child. Valsiner and Hill (1989) give the example of an adolescent who in a social situation knows the rules of courtesy well but decides to not act appropriately and instead “cuts” another (p. 165). Valsiner (1985) calls the ZPA an important “selective canalizer of the child’s actions” but also says that the structure of the ZPA can undergo dynamic transformation because it is negotiated in adult-child interaction.
The third zone is the well-known Vygotskian zone of proximal development (ZPD) and refers to the subset of ZPA actions that could be actualized with the help of other people. According to Valsiner (1985), the difficulty with this zone is that often one cannot know which actions actually constitute the ZPD because the existing structure of the ZFM and ZPA may restrict the opportunities of testing the limits of the ZPD. For instance, if the act of holding a fork is not within the ZPA or ZFM of a 16-month-old, it may not be possible to see if the 16-month-old child is physically capable of holding the fork. Thus, the ZPD-ZPA relationship is seen to determine what can or cannot be performed next by the child.
Valsiner, Jaan. (1985). Parental organization of children’s cognitive development within the home environment. Psychologia, 28, 131-143. Valsiner, Jaan, & Hill, Paula E. (1989). Socialization of American toddlers for social courtesy. In Jaan Valsiner (Ed.), Child development in cultural context (pp. 163-179). Toronto: Hogrefe & Huber. An e-mail from a Jewish transgender woman concerning her reactions to Bailey’s lectures [ 4-30-03 ]: Frankly, the report of Bailey’s lecture disgusts me more than almost anything else I’ve read about him. As a Jew whose mother grew up in Nazi Germany, it reminds me of nothing more than one of those lectures by Nazi “experts” on “physiognomy” about how you tell someone’s a Jew — by their big hooked noses, naturally. Just like you tell gay people by how they talk. I’m sure such lectures were accompanied by similar gales of laughter.
I (and the wonderful woman who is my partner) had such strong personal reactions to the whole idea of trying to identify and single people out in that disgusting way, that I felt I had to say something. I still remember my mother’s story about how when she was a child in Germany, after Hitler came to power but before she was prohibited from attending school with non-Jewish children, a Nazi party official came to her school one day to lecture on the “Aryan” ideal — and, out of the whole class, actually selected my mother, who had light hair, green eyes, and “Aryan” features, as the perfect example of Aryan girlhood. As you can imagine, he wasn’t pleased when he found out she was Jewish. So, you can see, sometimes the “experts” are wrong. From www.greengourd.blogspot.com Is this what research about gay sexuality has come to? This is from a Chronicles of Higher Education piece on J. Michael Bailey, author of The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism:Gay men have more feminine traits than straight men, he writes, including their interests in fashion and show tunes and their choice of occupations, including florist, waiter, and hair stylist. If a man is feminine, says Mr. Bailey, it is a key sign that he is gay. And if a man is gay, Mr. Bailey says he can tell a lot about what that man’s childhood was like. He “played with dolls and loathed football” and “his best friends were girls,” he writes in the book.
Um, maybe the problem here is that Bailey refined his so-called theory “during his visits to gay bars near his home” in a gay neighborhood in Chicago. Would he have found men with different interests and experiences in a different neighborhood? At leather bars or biker bars? Mightn’t the gay men who “played football and loathed dolls” have been at a baseball game, or at home watching a Blackhawks game, or changing their transmission fluid? Maybe visiting bars at one time and place isn’t the best way to gather information about a phenomenon that has transcended particular times and places? From The Guardian Steven Pinker
J Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen (Joseph Henry) is an engaging book on the science of sexual orientation. Though highly sympathetic to gay and transsexual men, it has ignited a firestorm by claiming that transsexuals are not women trapped in men’s bodies but have either homosexual or autoerotic motives. http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,986174,00.html From K on 15 June 2003 I’m thinking that a point being missed in all of the discssion is that this isn’t just about transphobia.
Let’s say J. Michael is describing non-transsexual women. It might look like this:
“There are two types of women – the first are pretty, feminine love to please their man and are limited quite naturally to occupations such as hairdressers, entertainers and prostitutes.” One can imagine it not being far off for him to advise this group that to keep her man happy; she should meet him when he comes home from work everyday with a martini and wearing a neglegee’
“The other are “mannish looking”, work in fields like science, law enforcement and construction. They are attracted to other women and the defining point of their existence is this deviant compulsive sexual thought and behavior” Sound familiar?
Besides the horrible transphobia – the misogyny is appalling!!! Let’s remember this is a guy who states he doesn’t understand female sexuality at all. Not transwoman or non-transwoman – he certainly seems to feel a need to define and control it though; doesn’t he? Again – sounds familiar. Faculty members show off talents at DM fund-raiser “Hansen said DM[Dance Marathon] hopes to have more faculty performers at future talent shows. For example, if students raise $3,000, Fenrich and psychology Prof. Michael Bailey will dress in drag and sing a duet together during DM.” Daily Northwestern 3 March 2003 http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/03/3e636ad17fbdf
Letter from Sarah
I got the following letter in July 2003:
I don’t know if this is of interest to you, I wrote it at as an answer to a woman (with a TS history) who couldn’t understand our hate against B, B and L. If you find use of it, feel free to do so. The language has been slightly revised.
Kind regards
Hi T
Yes. There are a lot of hate in all this. If one hate, one expresses ones anguish and fears, but one do not necessarily communicate, that is trying to get the other person to understand. As many on this list I hate. But I will try to explain WHY to you (I am not trying to patronize you!):
Some of my ancestors lived in the ghetto. Outside Venice in Italy, In Prag and at the then German-Polish border. They didn’t want to live in the ghetto. They where forced to; by the Venetian merchant nobles, by the Habsburg monarch and the German Kaiser. The where forced to live there because they where considered as “untermenchen” (the term existed looong before Hitler). What my ancestors wanted was to leave the ghetto, live the life of “normal” people. When Hitler and his gang came to power they used the noble science of race biology to legitimize their ideology that Jews (and Gypsy’s) where “untermenchen”. They even turned the star of David to the sign of stigmatization of the Jews, to identify them as non-humans. And they reinforced the ghetto. Then came the final solution…
Many of us has felt since our infancy that we are women, but that we were born with an handicap that we had to correct. And we did. Now we only want to go on with our lives – be normal women. As my ancestors wanted to be normal people.
But no, there are people out there, who in the name of the noble science of psychology, want to give us a David’s star, to confine as in the pathologic ghetto of transgenderism. These people (it may the Protestant extreme right, the Catholic extreme right, the Islamic extreme right or the Orthodox Jewish extreme right) are happy to get science to legitimize their claims. And many scientists are profiteers of their need.
These scientists now tell us (and the world at large) that we are not women. We are perverted men. Either extremely feminine gay men, who like to live out our attraction to men, or fetishised heterosexual men, who want to live out our fantasy to inhabit a female body.
Some of these scientists just like us to accept (in a positive spirit) these desires and live with them. But that means that they want to force us to live in the transgender ghetto, as body-modified men. In the ghetto, because outside no-one accepts a body-modified man.
This seems to be the standpoint of Anne Lawrence (Some people have insulted Anne Lawrence by calling her Mr Lawrence. But in some respect this insult is logical because she cannot live out her fantasy of inhibiting a woman’s body, if she was forced to live the life of a woman. She can only live it out if she is recognized just for living out her fantasy. So she stays in the ghetto. By choice; an uncle Tom).
But others would like to treat us, give us therapy so that we could become “normal”. And it is perhaps not by hazard that electric chocks are gaining in popularity again among American psychiatrists.
Some, like Reker, even want to force a reverse srs on us.
Racial biology never recommended extermination of the “untermenchen”, they just studied the “objective” differences between them and real humans. The psychologists claim to do the same with us.
But then the “plan” (or rather plans) in the minds of their political patrons is bigger than us. Gays should get therapy also. And in the mind of some of them women are also “untermenchen”. The Talibans didn’t even give women passports or identity cards, as they where not considered as humans.
Farfetched? In the early 1930’s Germany was one of the most modern societies in the world. Hitler was VOTED to power in 1932.
Long ago? Not more than that when in school in the 1960’s I had a friend whose father woke up every night out of nightmares produced by the anguish that while in the resistance of the Warsaw ghetto he had killed German soldiers with piano wire.
It is evident from what I have written that I hate. I don’t necessarily expect you to share this hate, or even accept it. But I hope I have managed to communicate my motivations to hate.
“A Sex Difference in the Specificity of Sexual Arousal.” The study is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.
The study’s four authors include Bailey and three graduate students in Northwestern’s psychology department, Chivers, Gerulf Rieger and Elizabeth Latty.
To rule out the possibility that the differences between men’s and women’s genital sexual arousal patterns might be due to the different ways that genital arousal is measured in men and women, the Northwestern researchers identified a subset of subjects: postoperative transsexuals who began life as men but had surgery to construct artificial vaginas.
In a sense, those transsexuals have the brains of men but the genitals of women. Their psychological and genital arousal patterns matched those of men — those who like men were more aroused by male stimuli and those who like women were more aroused by the female stimuli — even though their genital arousal was measured in the same way women’s was.
“This shows that the sex difference that we found is real and almost certainly due to a sex difference in the brain,” said Bailey
Bailey’s systematic distortion of transsexualism
by Elizabeth
Editor’s note: Elizabeth has contributed several pieces for this section.
Andrea has stated, correctly, that a lot of the problems surrounding B-B-L involve their use of language. Bailey describes us in highly insulting terms throughout his book, Blanchard and the Clarke idiots insist on calling us men, Lawrence promoted that stupid “men trapped in men’s bodies” phrase that got so many people at each other’s throats, etc. Focusing solely on the insensitivity of the language and how insulting it is however has two unfortunate effects: it enables Bailey to claim we just can’t handle him being such a politically incorrect badass, and it overlooks the fact that their particular word choices can paint a very distorted picture of the facts simply by a slight alteration of the terminology.
Bailey’s KOOP-Fm interview is an excellent illustration of how supporters of Blanchard’s typology alter terminology to make extremely misleading statements without technically lying. When discussing the idea of “autogynephilic” transsexuals Bailey states:
Autogynephilic males will become sexually aroused in the lab if they listen to a narrative about cross-dressing whereas men without any history of erotic cross-dressing do not become aroused. Regardless, some of them insist that, you know, that it’s not about autogynephilia, it’s just they feel like women so they dress like women and any male who wore frilly lacy panties would become sexually aroused. I don’t think so.
Note that he didn’t actually use the word transsexuals. He just said “autogynephilic males.” This is a reference from page 173 of Bailey’s book, concerning heterosexual crossdressers, not transsexuals. However, since in Blanchard’s crazy little world transvestism and transsexuality are both subtypes of “autogynephilia,” Bailey can use “autogynephilic males” to make a true statement about crossdressers which, applied in this misleading context, will sound like a statement about transsexuals. He made an even more misleading statement in his next response in the interview, where he claimed:
I think that those types of transsexuals tend to dislike discussion of autogynephilia; many of them deny that it applies to them. However, Blanchard showed the ones who deny it also show evidence for it. So, for example, males who denied ever cross-dressing fetishistically, if you bring them to the lab and you measure their erections while they listen to a narrative saying, “Well, you’re getting ready…you’re putting on your panties…you’re putting on your stockings…” they get erections!
The “evidence” on “males who denied ever crossdressing fetishistically” is Blanchard’s 1986 paper “Phallometric detection of fetishistic arousal in heterosexual male cross-dressers.” Again, this is a study of crossdressers, not transsexuals, but since both are presumed “autogynephilic” Bailey can make statements about “autogynephilic males” and be presumed to be talking about transsexuals when he’s actually talking about crossdressers. This is a pretty standard tactic in pseudo-science: just redefine the terminology to make your thesis correct, e.g. Bailey redefines transsexual as anyone seriously considering a sex change, Blanchard redefined it as anyone who said they felt like a woman (even though crossdressers do both those things all the time). Bailey plays the same trick in his book, where chapter nine is supposed to tell us about “autogynephilic transsexuals” but then ends up discussing mostly heterosexual crossdressers and justifies lumping them together on the basis of research which itself confused the differences between the two groups. He plays the language trick again on the page on his website devoted to the book controversy, where under the heading about TSs who deny being autogynephilic he uses terms like “autogynephilic individuals” to hide the fact that he’s actually talking about crossdressers, not transsexuals. Even then, it’s a pretty tenuous leap.
He’s essentially arguing that:
1. Blanchard did a study showing that what he terms “non-homosexual” transsexuals at the Clarke showed a lot of social desirability bias, while what he terms “homosexual” transsexuals at the Clarke showed a little social desirability bias, and crossdressers at the Clarke showed none. (from Blanchard’s 1985 paper “Social desirability response set and systematic distortion in the self-report of adult male gender patients”)
2. Blanchard then did a study showing that heterosexual crossdressers who deny an erotic component to their crossdressing became aroused hearing crossdressing narratives.
3. Since the crossdressers lied about sexual arousal to crossdressing, “nonhomosexual” transsexuals probably lie about it too, because the ones at the Clarke showed social desirability bias.
Even if you take Blanchard’s interpretation of his data at face value, this is questionable at best. If you compared “non-homosexual” transsexuals to, say, people you suspect are pedophiles, both would probably deny molesting children, but that doesn’t mean both groups are lying. This argument falls completely flat when you consider that the transsexuals at the Clarke are desperately trying to convince the clinicians to let them access medical services while the crossdressers aren’t, and transsexuals the Clarke considers to be “homosexual” have a somewhat easier time doing so than those the Clarke considers to be “non-homosexual.” In other words, social desirability isn’t a personality feature of transsexuals per se, it’s just something brought on by the repressive treatment environment of the Clarke.
Of course, Maxine Petersen says we all lie, and Maxine Petersen is an “ace gender therapist.” (Is that statement supposed to make us laugh or cry?) Then again, Maxine Petersen is transsexual herself, so maybe she’s lying? Oh wait, that’s right, we only lie when we say anything the Clarke clinicians don’t want to hear.
Oh, there’s also something on Bailey’s webpage about how transsexuals probably lie about autogynephilia because of the way some people choose socks. Yeah, I didn’t get it either.
This page gives an overview of issues raised by J. Michael Bailey’s book on gender variance.
J. Michael Bailey is Chair of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University. In March 2003, he published a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. Many see this book as the most defamatory book written about gender variance since Janice Raymond wrote The Transsexual Empire in 1979.
Introduction to taxonomies and theory
• A Critique of the Autogynephilia Hypothesis (by Catherine Anderson, Ph.D.)
• A note on gender tests http://www.tsroadmap.com/mental/gendertests.html
• DSM-IV-TR on gender identity “disorder” by American Psychology Association /info/gender-identity-disorder.html
• LINK: The Empire Strikes Back: A posttranssexual manifesto (by Sandy Stone, Ph.D.) http://sandystone.com/empire-strikes-back
• LINK: Beyond gatekeeping: truth and trust in therapy with transsexuals (by Maureen Osborne, Ph.D.) http://www.antijen.org/psychol/osbo1.html
• LINK: Joan Roughgarden’s works
Dr. Roughgarden is a Stanford biologist whose new book Evolution’s Rainbow explores the “social selection” theory of gender variance and sexual orientation. She has just published two excellent articles highly critical of recent books by evolutionary psychologists Thornhill & Palmer and J. Michael Bailey.
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American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard is a key figure in anti-transgender extremism. This biographical page supplements the overview of the harm his biased and unscientific ideas have caused.
Background
While working at Toronto’s notorious Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Blanchard accused me of spreading “misinformation” (Blanchard 2009), so let’s get all of Blanchard’s biographical details out on the table in order to make my point more clearly.
As I mentioned in the earlier article (James 2009), Blanchard is widely reviled by trans people. Blanchard once declared that a trans woman who has transitioned is merely “a man without a penis,” and said of trans men, “They get a kind of lump that in the best, most expensive, $100,000 cases, kind of, maybe, look like a penis from across a room.” (Armstrong 2004). Blanchard’s comments on trans people’s genitalia reflect a 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 Kurt Freund at CAMH to determine if army recruits were lying about being gay to avoid military service where gay men were banned from serving. Blanchard, who obviously gay, is considered an expert in determining the size and tumescence of male genitalia.
Blanchard and since-fired sexologist Kenneth Zucker weaseled their way onto the committee rewriting the section on sex and gender minorities in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Zucker is the world’s foremost proponent of reparative therapy to “cure” gender-variant youth. Blanchard seeks a broad expansion of the definition of “paraphilia” to expand this mental illness to include anyone attracted to someone who is not “phenotypically normal.”
Blanchard took umbrage at my publication of publicly available 2008 taxpayer-funded salary info and my comment that Blanchard and Zucker both left America for Canada during the Vietnam War.
Why is Blanchard so touchy about military matters, and what personally motivates Blanchard’s life’s work? What drives this key figure in the oppression of sex and gender minorities? Since Blanchard feels entitled to ascribe labels and motivations to others, let’s turn the tables. Why is Ray so reticent about revealing his own sexual interests and behavior, when his career involves “catching” people not being open and honest about their sexual interests and behavior?
Early years
Blanchard’s full name is Ray Milton Blanchard III.
Blanchard’s parent Angelina Celi was born in 1917. Blanchard’s other parent was Aviation Metalsmith Second Class (AM2c) Ray Milton Blanchard Jr.
Ray III was conceived in early 1945, and Ray Jr. was lost at sea on 19 March of that year in the Japanese attack on the USS Franklin (USS Franklin 2008). Ray III was born 9 October 1945, according to a bio Ray III paid to place in Marquis Who’s Who (Marquis 1984), a questionable vanity publication for narcissistic strivers (Carlson 1999).
Ray III identifies as Ray Jr.’s “first, only, and posthumous child” (Blanchard 2009). That’s quite a burden to bear. Here’s the scenario: young closeted kid with strong Catholic roots spends formative years alone with a widowed parent, who is understandably depressed about Ray Jr.’s being killed in action. Ray III’s namesake made the ultimate sacrifice, and Ray III gets Catholic indoctrination about carrying on the family name, hereditary line, and what-not. Ray III is taught by priests about sin and is expected to produce Ray Milton Blanchard IV after settling down with a nice Catholic girl. Only problem: Ray III thinks girls are icky.
Then the day comes when it’s no longer just Ray III and widowed parent. Enter a stepparent, a Navy veteran and a volunteer firefighter (Inquirer 1992). In a nice Catholic ceremony, Angelina (Celi) Blanchard marries Anthony F. Ruggero (1917-1992). They start their family in Hammonton, New Jersey, where Angelina and Anthony are residents. By the time Ray III in grade school, there are two stepbrothers, Jim and Bill, about a decade younger than Ray III. Quite a shift in family dynamics. Angelina Ruggero has a new surname, so Ray III is the only remaining Blanchard in the household, in memory of Ray Jr.
Academia and “fitness” for military service
Blanchard is a pretty brilliant person who puts great energy into living up to the high expectations for a sole surviving namesake. Knowing deep down that the Catholic ideal of marrying and procreating is never going to happen, Blanchard focuses on other forms of getting approval, like school. With the likely help of the Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance Program, Blanchard goes to a great school, then on to grad school in Illinois in 1967.
Vietnam sidebar: Meanwhile, further south in Illinois, Blanchard’s future CAMH collaborator Kenneth Zucker is one of the key campus leaders in the Vietnam protest movement at Southern Illinois University, staging mock trials and declaring people war criminals in absentia (Lagow 1977). Zucker headed to Canada eventually just to be safe. Their future collaborator Richard Green had the same idea: “I left Los Angeles in 1964 to avoid the Vietnam War by going to NIMH [National Institutes of Mental Health]” (Green 2004). One interesting phenomenon with anti-Vietnam people: they were right once as young people in the 1960s, so they often think they are always right, even decades later. Green handed over the editorial control of Archives of Sexual Behavior to Zucker, to continue pushing their ideology about sex and gender minorities.
Hearing your whole life that your namesake you never knew got killed in war is pretty good incentive for self-preservation. As Blanchard asserts, avoiding the draft was a moot point, since Blanchard was classified 4-A, as the sole surviving offspring of a servicemember killed in action. As long as war was not officially declared, Blanchard was safe. Further, the draft was implemented for those ages 18 to 26, and Blanchard was at University of Illinois until 1973, the year he turned 28. That would have allowed for a student deferment even if war had been declared. As I said earlier, Ray moved to Canada in the midst of the Vietnam War (1973) and has remained, even after all the drama about the U.S. draft was resolved.
What Blanchard fails to address is the real misrepresentation here, the elephant in the room, and my original point: not the 4-A classification, but the 4-F classification. 4-F was the designation used to declare gay servicemembers “unfit” for military service (Dode 2004). In other words, 4-A was pretty much the best reason to be exempt; 4-F was pretty much the worst reason to be exempt. While Blanchard was never classified 4-F because of the superseding exemption, had Blanchard been drafted, there was a very real possibility of outright rejection at induction or dishonorable discharge for being gay, had he made it through the screening process. As of late 2009, the US military still has this as official policy. His father’s military service stands as the height of honor and the ultimate sacrifice, yet Ray might have been denied outright as “unfit,” or if he got in, he might have been discharged at the hands of military psychiatrists, the ultimate dishonor.
World War II sidebar: From when it was first implemented, the 4-F designation had become a badge of dishonor, using the eugenic terminology “unfit” for service. It included a broad range of physical and mental reasons. Even after the war, people labeled 4-F were subject to discrimination and were seen by many as less valuable than those who served. It created a significant rift and a social hierarchy that suggested all men were not created equal, a sentiment at the heart of eugenic ideology (Wake 2007).
The best way to understand Ray Blanchard as a human is to consider the mindset of gay priests. Good Catholics who thought girls were icky often saw the priesthood as the Catholic version of 4-A instead of the Catholic version of 4-F. Priesthood is the most honorable reason not to have a family. Being a sodomite was the most “unfit” reason.
Gay priests and gay psychologists serve the same purpose and hold the same position within an oppressive power dynamic. More on this in the following sections,
First published 2 November 2009. In this section:
Ray Blanchard motivations for oppressing sex and gender minorities https://web.archive.org/web/20130324133848/tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-motivations.html
Toronto: epicenter of pathologization of sex and gender minorities
Blanchard, Ray, Collins, Peter (1993). Men with sexual interest in transvestites, transsexuals, and she-males. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Volume 181 – Issue 9.
Blanchard, R., & Bogaert, A. F. (1996). Homosexuality in men and number of older brothers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 27–31.
Blanchard, Ray @ ASSTAR (2009). “DSM-IV Paraphilias Options: General Diagnostic Issues, Pedohebephilic Disorder, and Transvestic Disorder,” Annual Meeting of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, Alexandria VA, April 2009, http://individual.utoronto.ca/ray_blanchard/index_files/SSTAR.html
Blanchard, Ray (22 October 2009) [via Maxine Petersen]. Response to “$325,000+ in salaries for Zucker & Blanchard to pathologize trans people.” http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/zucker-blanchard-salary.html
Thank you for calling my attention to the misleading information posted on the Internet by Andrea James.
My 2008 salary included a one-time buyout for unused vacation time (I had about six months’ worth of it) and does not reflect my annual base income.
At the time of the Vietnam war, I had an unusual exemption. According to my draft card (which I still have) it was a 4-A. This exempted me from the draft, in peacetime, as the sole surviving male heir of a serviceman killed in a foreign war. The US Congress never declared war on Vietnam, so it was technically peace time for the purposes of this draft law (or policy, whatever it was). My father, Ray Milton Blanchard Jr, a sailor in the US Navy, was lost at sea on 19 March 1945, in the bombing of the aircraft carrier, the USS Franklin. My mother was a few months pregnant with me at the time. I was the first, only, and posthumous child of Ray Jr.
In brief, I did not come to Canada to escape the draft. I had no incentive to do so.
Regards, Ray
[editor’s note: this base salary is only one of Blanchard’s revenue streams.]
Carlson, Tucker (8 March 1999), “The Hall of Lame”, Forbes Magazine. http://www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/1999/0308/063.html
As most of those listed in the book know, entries in Who’s Who are mostly self-reported and largely unchecked, making it the ideal place to tidy up an uneven educational or work history… Indeed, the first clue that Who’s Who is a vanity publication is the “Thoughts on My Life” feature that appears beneath some entries.
Diamond, Milton and H. Keith Sigmundson (1997). Sex reassignment at birth: Long-term review and clinical implications. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1997;151(3):298-304.
Dode, Lee (2004). A History of Homosexuality. Trafford Publishing, ISBN 9781412015387, p. 87
The psychiatrists had several choices of phraseology if they considered homosexuality a personality disorder or the expression of another kind of personality disorder. They could term a person a “psychopath,” “schizophrenic,” “normally imbalanced,” “weak psychological origins,” “arrested aggressive,” “purposefully immoral,” “containing a neurosis” or maybe “another natural human trait” which psychiatrists knew would not be acceptable to military standards. All categories were considered by the military to classify the person as “4 F”, undesirable for military service. Habitual criminals were also considered “4 F”.
In WWII, there were 2400 Army doctors and 700 Navy doctors who served as psychiatrists, many inadequately trained with poorly trained back-up personnel. Their policy was to discharge, court-martial, or reassign suspected homosexuals.
Military intelligence officers interrogated suspected military men for the names of other gay military and places the homosexuals met. Many innocents were arrested and imprisoned. Congress passed the May Act in 1941 giving the military the power to arrest and close businesses, and it was used against gays and their meeting places. Imprisonment gave way to military discharges for “4 F”, unfit for military service.
Freund, K., J. Diamant, and V. Pinkava. 1958. “On the validity and reliability of the phalloplethysmographic (Php) diagnosis of some sexual deviations.” Rev Czech Med 4:145-51.
Freund, Kurt (1963). “A Laboratory Method For Diagnosing Predominance Of Homo- Or Hetero-Erotic Interest In Male.” Behav Res Ther 21:85-93.
Green, Richard (2004). In Memoriam: Judd Marmor, MD. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 33, Number 4 / August, 2004, pp. 327-328.
“I left Los Angeles in 1964 to avoid the Vietnam War by going to NIMH.”
Hill D.B., Rozanski C., Carfagnini J., Willoughby B. (2006). Gender Identity Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence: A Critical Inquiry. pp. 7-34. In Karasic D, Drescher J (Eds.) Sexual And Gender Diagnoses of the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual (DSM): A Re-evaluation . Haworth Press ISBN 0789032147
Inquirer staff report (December 29, 1992). South Jersey Deaths: Anthony Ruggero. Philadelphia Inquirer
ANTHONY RUGGERO, 75, of Hammonton, died Sunday at home.
Mr. Ruggero was a former lieutenant with Hammonton Volunteer Fire Co. 1 and a lifelong resident of Hammonton. He was a World War II Navy veteran and a member of American Legion Post 186, Hammonton.
Survivors: his wife, Angelina; three sons, Ray Blanchard of Toronto, Jim of Haddonfield and Bill of Monmouth Junction; two grandchildren, and a sister, Marie Stretch of Ocean City.
Services: friends may call, 11 to 11:45 a.m. today, Marinella Funeral Home, 102 N. Third St., Hammonton; Mass, noon today, St. Martin de Porres Church, South Egg Harbor Road, Hammonton; entombment, Greenmount Cemetery, Hammonton.
Lagow, Larry Dwane (1977). A history of the Center for Vietnamese Studies at Southern Illinois University. Ph.D. dissertation; typescript in Hoover Institution Archives.
Ken Zucker, a member of the SIPC*, was reported in the student newspaper the Daily Egyptian as conducting mock trials. At least one person was found “guilty” of “all the war crimes he committed against the Vietnamese,” according to Zucker. Student body Vice President Rich Wallace later introduced Zucker at a Board meeting, where Zucker read a list of demands which called for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam first and foremost. On Wednesday, January 21, 1970, the Student Senate passed what was reported by the Dally Egyptian as a “hastily drawn” resolution supporting the SIPC.
*Southern Illinois Peace Committee, founded by Bill Moffett in 1967 as an anti-war splinter group of Students for a Democratic Society.
Lalumière, M.L.; Blanchard, R.; Zucker, K.L. (2000): “Sexual orientation and handedness in Men and Women: a meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 126, 575-592.
Lawrence, Anne (1996). Taking Portlandia’s hand.
http://www.annelawrence. com/twr/portlandia.html [deleted by Lawrence]
Lawrence, Anne (2008). Shame and Narcissistic Rage in autogynephilic transsexualism. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 37, Number 3 / June, 2008.
“Bancroft’s remark was followed by utter silence in the room, as though no one could believe that anyone would say something so tactless. It was as though Bancroft had stood up and loudly farted — people looked at each other in embarrassment for him. “
Lawrence, Anne (August 23, 2004). Bancroft’s “not science” comment.
According to another attention-craving eccentric who defends Blanchard, Lawrence is the source of false rumors that the author of this profile declared bankruptcy. I’ll have additional examples of Lawrence’s rage in an upcoming profile.
Marquis Who’s Who, Inc. (1984) Blanchard, Ray. Who’s Who in Frontier Science & Technology , p. 66. ISBN 083795701X
BLANCHARD, RAY MILTON, psychiatry institute research psychologist; b. Hammonton, N.J., Oct. 9, 1945; s. Ray Milton and Angelina (Celi) Ruggero. A.B., U. Pa., 1967; M.A., h4U. Ill.-Urbana, 1970; Ph.D., 1973. Cert. psychologist Ont. Bd. Examiners. Psychologist Ont. Correctional Inst., Brampton, Can., 1976-80; research psychologist Gender Identity Clinic, Clarke Inst. Psychiatry, Toronto, Ont., 1980–. Killam fellow Dalhousie U., Halifax, N.S., Can., 1973. Mem. Internat. Acad. Sex Research, A, Psychol. Assn., Can. Psychol. Assn. Subspecialty: Gender identity disorders. Current work: Taxonomy of gender identity disorders; psychosocial adjustment of transsexuals; phallometric assessment of sexual anomalies. Home: 32 Shaftesbury Ave Toronto ON Canada M4T 1A1 Office: Gender Identity Clinic Clarke Inst Psychiatry 250 College St Toronto ON Canada M5T 1R8
Newbery, Lillian (November 27, 1984). Trans-sexuals happier after operation, MD says. Toronto Star.
Sullivan, Nikki (2008). Dis-orienting Paraphilias? Disability, Desire, and the Question of (Bio)Ethics. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Volume 5, Numbers 2-3 / June, 2008, 183-192. See also Moser, Charles (2008). A Different Perspective. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 37, Number 3 / June, 2008, 472-475.
Wake, Naoko (2007). The Military, Psychiatry, and “Unfit” Soldiers, 1939–1942 Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2007 62(4):461-494; doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrm002
Harry Stack Sullivan’s failure to protect homosexual men from medical and social stigmatization by screening them out of the armed forces.
Wise TN, Lucas J. (1981). Pseudotranssexualism: iatrogenic gender dysphoria. J Homosex. 1981 Spring;6(3):61-6. See also Prince, Virginia (1978). Transsexuals and pseudotranssexuals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 7, Number 4 / July, 1978, 263-272.
USS Franklin (CV-13) (21 February 2008). Ship’s Company Killed In Action.
http://www.ussfranklin.org/kia/sc.html Ray M. BLANCHARD, Jr. AM2C 19 March 1945
Previous: Toronto: epicenter of pathologization of sex and gender minorities
All of Ray Blanchard’s work is about to be eclipsed by what will be Blanchard’s most enduring legacy: the broad expansion of “paraphilia” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) to further oppress sex and gender minorities as mentally disordered. Blanchard plans to expand it to include attraction to anyone who is not “phenotypically normal” (ASTAR 2009). Blanchard now wants to expand this disorder to include attraction to people who are too fat, too skinny, too old, too young, too tall, too short, too disabled, or any other characteristic that makes people not “normal.”
His taxonomy of trans women has already reduced all our relationships to paraphilia. People who love trans women have a paraphilia he calls “gynandromorphophilia” (Blanchard 1993), and trans women who get in relationships are merely using their partner as a paraphilic prop in a narcissistic fantasy (Sullivan 2008). This echoes outdated assertions that gay people can’t have a “normal” relationship.
It’s amazing to me that someone whose sexuality was depathologized by psychiatry the very year he got his Ph.D. would be so hell-bent on imposing that very oppression on others. Yet here we are. The biggest step backwards in the history of sexology is about to happen, thanks to Ray Blanchard. He probably won’t live to see what a problematic figure he will become within his own field, becoming like John Money: someone where it’s hard to separate the good from the bad. The DSM-V will be Blanchard’s “John/Joan” case (Diamond 1997): the cringe-inducing career misstep that will define his life and career to the lay public.
What’s most interesting is how these “experts” feel entitled to define and label others, then get their panties in a bunch when labels and motivations are ascribed to their own actions. It’s as if they use “science” and self-mythologizing to assert a “truth” about themselves and their unassailable objectivity. I’m sure Ray thinks that being openly gay would bring his own objectivity into question. Good science stands up to that scrutiny, though. With good science, someone’s professional or personal information is irrelevant. The only place the identity of the scientist comes into play is with subjective stuff like plethysmography or proposed taxonomies and terminology. When a subjective claim about an object of study is made, it is scientifically imperative to examine the subjectivity of the person making the claim. Hence this analysis.
Perhaps Ray Blanchard’s peers will see what a remarkable psychological case study he is. Better yet, perhaps some day Ray Blanchard will be a little more open and honest about himself. All this might help explain why he believes other people can’t be trusted to be open and honest about their sexualities.
Good scientists make full disclosures so peers are aware of potential bias and conflicts of interest in their work. Perhaps Ray Blanchard will finally start making full disclosures. It would be far better if he let everyone know that his entire career has been undertaken for the most personal reasons imaginable. But as we’ve seen in his case, Ray Blanchard is more interested in applying labels to others than acknowledging labels that apply to him. It is his blind spot and his hubris; the flaw that sends him stumbling away from sound science and down the unlit paths of pathology and oppression.
Toronto: epicenter of pathologization of sex and gender minorities
Previous: Ray Blanchard motivations for oppressing sex and gender minorities
Ray Blanchard’s mentor Kurt Freund (1914-1996) was also an expert in psychiatric screening of military recruits based on sexual orientation (Freund 1963). Freund ended up significantly shaping public policy and public perception of sex and gender minorities in the second half of the 20th century. Freund is the developer of the penile plethysmograph (Freund 1958). He was commissioned by the government to use it in the psychiatric screening of military draftees in his home country (now called the Czech Republic). People there were attempting to avoid conscription by claiming to be gay. Freund’s device was developed to see if gay erotica turned them on, simplistically assuming that erection = gay, non-erection = nongay.
Kurt Freund sidebar: Freund continued this work after he fled to Toronto in 1968, while Blanchard was in graduate school. Blanchard met him in Canada while working with sex offenders, and he would later become Freund’s protégé at what is now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Freund, who was almost exactly the same age as Blanchard’s father, obviously became a father figure for Blanchard, right up until Freund’s suicide (AP 1996).
Though the plethysmograph is considered as scientifically questionable as the polygraph (lie detector) and is not admissible in most trials as evidence, that didn’t stop Freund and his protégés from promoting its use for a range of applications, usually centering around catching people “lying” about their sexual interests. The device is attached to the genitals and a change in blood flow is measured while subjects are exposed to visual and/or audio stimuli (James 2007).Like Freund, Blanchard has done direct work with sex offenders, a population that most people consider the absolute worst of the “unfit.” Blanchard has certainly seen and heard things first-hand that would give anyone nightmares. Sexual assaults on children by stepfathers and other family members. Catholic priest sex crimes, committed by the types of authority figures Ray probably looked to as father figures in his own early life, men who disproportionately targeted gay boys.
Blanchard is the only smart guy currently working on sex and gender at CAMH. The rest of them range from utterly mediocre to downright inept. It’s got to upset Blanchard that someone less intelligent but more political like Ken Zucker makes a better base salary despite being younger. Zucker has been a politician since his days as a Vietnam War protestor, so Blanchard will always take the back seat in the leadership department. Blanchard does share two things with his less talented colleagues: rigidity and unmitigated arrogance. As with most pathological science, they have insulated and isolated themselves from mainstream science through academic logrolling and nepotism, creating little organizations and journals where they can make sure their worldview prevails unchallenged.Blanchard’s bid for immortality
It’s the end of the genetic line for Ray, a bitter pill to swallow for a sociobiologist. They often have this quaint heterosexist notion that “evolutionary fitness” is based on one’s number of offspring. So what’s Ray’s bid for immortality? Barring sperm donation, it’s going to be discovering and coining things, an unfortunate obsession found in a certain kind of academic. This goes beyond the “significant contribution” scholars are supposed to make as they move through the lock-step management chain of academia. Blanchard’s ideas are his children.
I imagine a number of questions turn over in Ray’s mind a lot:
Why am I gay?
Was my birth father gay?
How can I connect myself to a man I never met?
Why do attention-craving eccentrics rally around me and my work?
Why are cross-dressing psychologists so enamored of my work?
What do Maxine Petersen, Steven Pinker, J. Michael Bailey, Anne Lawrence, and Seth Roberts all have in common (besides psychology)?
Ray’s bid for immortality has led to an enduring legacy. His work on male birth order and sexuality will probably stand up to further scientific scrutiny (Blanchard 1996). His work on handedness and sexuality seems to have promise as well (Lalumière 2000). This work makes even more sense when considered in context of his family dynamic.Blanchard and company will also be known for using CAMH to set up the world’s largest publicly-funded forced feminization sex dungeon and transgender reparative therapy clinic (Hill 2006). Applicants (supplicants, really) are carefully screened to include only the most indigent, low-functioning members of society, unable or unwilling to obtain services elsewhere. The regressive requirements at CAMH attract people who get off on humiliation, creating a convenience sample of the bottom 10%: the most eccentric and least successful segment of the transgender community (Newbery 1984).
Cross-dressing sidebar: Transgenderists like Anne Lawrence and Maxine Petersen serve as mini-Blanchards, reproducing the same desire for respect and control by seeking power over a community rather than for it. They are two key promoters of Blanchard and his work. Petersen is a rather dim person who seems genuinely baffled as to what the problem is; Lawrence, by far the smarter of the two, knows exactly what the problem is. Lawrence claims to be a community pariah because of the proselytizing for Blanchard. Both are in fact heroes in their own tiny community of what used to be called “pseudotranssexuals” (Wise 1981). They are, however, pariahs in the larger community. The conflict arises from their assertions that they are transsexual, citing Blanchard’s paraphilic model of gender variance as “proof” of their identities. The transsexual community has rejected both of them as respected authorities. In an apparently unintentional case of self-projection, Lawrence chalks up negative reaction to Blanchard’s ideology as “narcissistic rage” (Lawrence 2008). Petersen and Lawrence will continue to be Blanchard stooges because it’s the only place they get the attention and validation they seek. Lawrence has even written about being a “priestess” (Lawrence 1996), as if restrictive gatekeeping of trans health services is some sort of religious ritual controlled by nuns and priests.
Is there more to the story of how Ray’s life experiences shaped his ideology? You betcha. Can I tell you what else? Not just now.
While these issues have all made news over the years, they are about to take a back seat to the issue that will define Blanchard’s career: his planned expansion of paraphilia as a disease, as discussed in the next section.
Next: Ray Blanchard’s problematic place in history
Ray Blanchard motivations for oppressing sex and gender minorities
“Male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists:” How Ray Blanchard sees us
The quotation in the title above is from a 1993 paper by sexologist Ray Blanchard. [1] Blanchard is affiliated with Toronto’s Clarke Institute, long known as “Jurassic Clarke” among transsexual women for its outdated and draconian rules imposed upon women in our community seeking health services. In Blanchard’s worldview, transsexual women are males whose condition is on a continuum with the other groups he studies.
Background: The Clarke Institute
The Clarke Institute is named after Charles Kirk Clarke (1857-1924). Clarke oversaw the two largest Canadian mental hospitals before accepting a government mental-health post. In addition to his desire “to keep this young country sane,” he sought to advance the psychiatric profession’s influence in making medical and political decisions.
Typical of “professionals” who are unable to see (or worse) unconcerned about larger systems which influence their realm of expertise or narrow interests, Clarke was an early proponent of eugenics, emphasizing the importance of restrictive laws that would limit the immigration and marriage of the“ defective.” [2] During his tenure, foreign-born patients made up more than 50 percent of the institutionalized population in Canada. [3]
As Katherine Wilson notes:
Psychiatric diagnosis on the basis of social, cultural or political affiliation evokes the darkest memories of medical abuse in American history. For example, women suffragettes who demanded the right to vote in the early 1900s were diagnosed and institutionalized with a label of “hysteria” (Mayor, 1974). Immigrants, Bolsheviks and labor organizers of the same era were labeled as socially deviant and mentally defective by prominent psychiatric eugenicists, such as Dr. Charles Kirk Clarke. [4]
Christened with his name, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry opened for business in 1966. A young staff member recalls those early days:
My first impression of psychiatry in Toronto was that it was rather parochial in outlook and had a distinct British socio-biological emphasis and little interest and much scepticism about psychoanalysis. […] The Clarke, instead of being an ivory tower, seemed more like a cold cement fortress. [5]
Enter Ray Blanchard
Ray Blanchard came to “The Clarke” after studying sexual behavior in criminal men, pedophilia in particular. He began his work with Kurt Freund, who brought Blanchard into Clarke, and who himself is an expert in the area of “phallometric testing,” a “psychophysiological method for assessment of erotic preferences in males” — strap a “strain gauge” around a guy’s penis, show him pictures of whatever, and draw your own conclusions. Indeed, the Clarke Institute’s own literature states,
The Clarke Division Phallometric Laboratory was established by Kurt Freund, M.D., D.Sc., the first clinical sexologist to use penile plethysmography to assess erotic preferences in men. It is the oldest laboratory in North America for the phallometric assessment of sex offenders and paraphilics, and its instrumentation for the collection and processing of phallometric data is still the most sophisticated in North America, or indeed, in the world. [6]
The problem with penile plethysmographs (PPGs) is that they are like lie detectors (polygraphs): they measure a body response, but the data is open to interpretation. For this reason, they are often challenged as evidence in court, as with lie detectors. As the Skeptic’s Dictionary notes:
A man or woman may be aroused by the sight of animals copulating or be aroused by a film of a woman eating a banana and a man eating a fig in particularly provocative ways. Still, they may have no desire to engage in bestiality or have sex with a bowl of fruit. A heterosexual man or woman may be aroused by the sight of lesbians engaging in oral sex, but have no desire to have sex with lesbians or in the presence of lesbians.
Strong arousal need not imply strong desire for what causes the arousal; and weak arousal need not imply weak desire. Furthermore, no test can determine whether a person will act on his feelings and desires. [7]
This is the major controversy in Blanchard’s work: interpretation of data, and issues of his subjectivity, based on his assumption that transition is about erotic preference. While this may describe someone like Anne Lawrence, who considers her sex drive “that which moves us most,” many of us feel this is not an accurate or even correct description of our motivation for transition. Cause and effect may be difficult to distinguish.
Blanchard has headed both the department for sex offenders and the department for gender identity. In fact, patients have told me that in the past The Clarke was set up so sex offenders and transsexual women shared a hallway, offices, waiting room, and even staff, who would essentially just “change hats” whether they were seeing a transsexual woman or a sexual predator. Imagine the dynamic that created. It was under these conditions that Blanchard made many of his observations regarding people presenting with gender issues.
A reader writes:
Blanchard, like many researchers of his day (and sadly today as well) take their base assumptions from their formal training and experience. Homosexuality may be out of the DSM, but it was not that long ago that it was considered itself a psychopathology. The psychological community’s exposure to “things trans” was for many, many decades the paraphilia and festishism that spring from transvestism. Erotic preference is, I think, an important key to understanding all the “taxonomy” of Blanchard.
In his research approach (and many, many others’), their tacit assumption is the problem lies solely in the mind, be you a pedophile or paraphiliac or gender dysphoric (the “constructionist” approach versus “essentialist”). This naturally leads in the matter at hand to focusing on erotic preference as the “natural” dividing line.
Put yourself in Blanchard’s shoes (or Bailey’s for that matter). They genuinely and honestly do not believe the claims of people like ourselves that we are who we are. To them, we’re men, and it’s just that simple. They take that stance not even as a conscious effort — it’s just where they came from as psychologists. The fact they might use the pronouns we prefer is just a way of humoring the patient, but in no way implies or lends credulity in their minds to the legitimacy of their use.
Not only do they see us as men, but they also consider transsexual women to be liars, guilty of “systematic distortion.” Below is an abstract from a Blanchard paper (when Blanchard says “heterosexual” and uses male pronouns, he means transsexual women attracted to women):
The tendency for a heterosexual subject to describe himself in terms of moral excellence or admirable personal qualities was significantly correlated with scores in the ‘transsexual’ direction on all eight sexological measures; for the homosexual subjects, only one correlation was significant. [… It] is possible that the differences in the histories produced by transvestites and heterosexual transsexuals are exaggerated to an unknown degree by the motivation of the latter to obtain approval for this operation. The findings do not diminish the important distinction between these groups, but they do suggest caution in interpreting the self-report data that have been used in comparing them. [8]
We find ourselves in a no-win situation in changing their viewpoint. We are males to them, and when we try to explain why we feel this is not accurate, we are unreliable reporters who can’t be trusted.
Karen Gurney writes:
The problems I see, with the Blanchard position is that:
(a) it falls into the fundamental trap of trying to put overarching labels (either/or) on a group which is the epitome of diversity itself;
(b) it fails to recognise the physical intersexual nature of transsexualism – the incongruence between the phenotypical and neurological sexes;
(c) it seeks to attribute the psychological manifestations of neurological sex solely to “sexual desire” and does not reflect the John/Joan evidence which was so revealing of the shortcomings of psychological thought in regard to then accepted notions that gender is constructed;
(d) it is inherently disrespectful of the experiences of the majority of us who live with transsexualism, and especially those who pioneered the way by undergoing essentially primitive surgeries (as the transsexual men forgotten by Blanchard and Bailey still do) which did not produce wholly functional genitals, sacrificed all sexual sensation for the sake of harmonising “mind” and body, and were carried out in often ill-equipped clinics in faraway places (I have a friend who had her surgery in Casablanca in the early 1960’s);
(e) it is predicated on the notion that sex assignment at birth is immutable and hence is opposite the medical rationale applied to many thousands of intersex individuals each year that, where sex is atypical or ambiguous, a medical construction is a valid response, and the legal position that such a constructed sex is valid (I do not seek to justify the ethics of such assignments where they are carried out shortly after birth but point to the many XY females who are happy in their opposite gender role and are accepted as females for all purposes); and
(f) it fails to account for the experiences of a significant number of intersex individuals who do not fit into a theory which is based on the dichotomy of both sex and gender and whose gender, like their sex, is ambiguous.
In 1998, the Clarke merged with three other mental health and addiction facilities: the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, the Addiction Research Foundation, and the Donwood Institute. Collectively, they are now known as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) [9]
Perhaps we should think of The Clarke the way they think of transsexual women. They can change their name and act like a mental health facility, but deep down they are still the same fossilized institution that pathologized homosexuality and continues to pathologize those who do not fit society’s standards for male and female.
From Blanchard to Bailey
From Blanchard’s work comes Bailey’ popularization of Blanchard’s observations and theories, where we become exotic or pathetic males driven by sexual urges to drastic ends. As Katherine Wilson notes:
Much psychiatric literature about transgender people is shockingly similar to that published about homosexuality before it was depathologized. It is based on a presumption that cross-gender identity/expression is by definition pathological, is focused on unsubstantiated theories of psychodynamic (mother-blame) cause and anecdotal case studies of institutionalized subjects, denies the existence of healthy productive TG people in society, and ignores anthropological evidence of accepted cross-cultural TG roles. These tired old myths were debunked for sexual orientation 25 years ago and have been recycled to target transgender individuals. [4] (emphasis mine)
As we continue to see more work into the field of biologic and genetic investigations of sex and sexuality, it is very important to do what we can to help those undertaking this work to understand the larger systems in place, outside their realms of expertise. To ignore the historical context and the important ethical and political issues involved in this type of research has shown to be disastrous throughout history.
These people may consider themselves above criticism, especially critical comments by those from whom they make their livings, but they do so at their own peril, and at the peril of society.
It’s impossible to separate ideological commitment from the highly specific historical contingencies bearing upon psychology and medicine in this time and place. This can certainly be demonstrated in Clarke’s work on eugenics, which diffused through society and later accreted around fascism and Nazism. Those of us outside psychiatry, and those of us directly affected by the profession, must raise these important issues and maintain a rigorous critical viewpoint. In that way, we can hope to avoid having what appear to be “facts” misinterpreted, by both researchers and the public.
Bailey’s interest in biological and genetic causes of sexuality and transsexualism does not occur in a vacuum, and he is not as “objective” as he’d like to think. As occasional Bailey co-author Richard Pillard notes:
No scientific knowledge is risk-free, and this must surely include genetic investigations of sexual orientation. One might take a sort of perverse comfort in knowing that homophobia, like racism (and all the xenophobias), exists regardless of whatever might be considered “the facts” of the moment. Research on human sexuality will, by its nature, evoke resistance and fear, to some extent legitimately. [10]
Draft version. Many thanks to those who contributed materials. Please contact me with comments.
References
1. Erotic target location errors in male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists. Freund K, Blanchard R, Br J Psychiatry 1993 Apr;162:558-63
2. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940. Ian Robert Dowbiggin. Cornell University Press, 1997.
7. Social desirability response set and systematic distortion in the self-report of adult male gender patients. Blanchard R, Clemmensen LH, Steiner BW, Arch Sex Behav 1985 Dec;14(6):505-16
8. www.gicofcolo.org/gd/writings/faqpsy.html
9. http://www.camh.net/
10. “The Genetic Theory of Sexual Orientation” in the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Winter 1997, pp. 61-67.
My Experiences at the Clarke Institute
Editor’s note: Leslie has graciously honored my request for submissions from women who had dealings with the Clarke Institute in Toronto. Leslie’s story tells the sad tale of the Clarke’s faded glory. Now that they do not hold any purse strings, they have no power to speak of over local transgender populations. Leslie found them to be “a bunch of dirty old men, masquerading as clowns… stuck in the ‘ivory tower’ mentality of an old, fossilized institution which has grown arrogant and believes it is above questioning.”
“The Clarke” may have changed their name to Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), but they remain as out of touch as ever with the patients they purport to help.
Thanks to Leslie for sharing her important story with such thoughtfulness and detail!
My Experiences with the Clarke Institute’s Gender Identity Clinic
First let me say that I did not have a bad time during my 4 visits to “the Clarke”. On the first occasion they were helpful; the second, polite and mildly complimentary; the third depressing because it was the support group full of depressed people and the last, just plain irrelevant.
I have always been a woman, but was in denial until September 2000. Once I admitted that my condition was gender dysphoria I had to do something about it. Three friends had been to the Clarke Clinic and I knew of no other place where the condition was dealt with. After almost a year of trying out herbals, which did nothing, I had a check-up with my family doctor and broached the subject. He readily agreed to refer me to the Clarke. That was in August 2001 and the appointment came up in April 2002.
During the intervening months four things happened. A friend offered me a bottle of Premarin and I eagerly began taking it on October 9, 2001. From a Yahoo group I found out about a doctor in Toronto who would prescribe hormones. He in turn found me a caring psychiatrist. I was forced out of my home by my family. So when I went to the Clarke it had already passed the time when I needed them for anything.
The biggest crisis in my life came on Valentine’s Day 2002. I was forced out of my home by my adult son, with my spouse’s agreement. They were extremely unhappy that I was “crossdressing” – never in front of them and never to the extent of interfering with my family’s welfare. They refused to consider any information I gave them and wouldn’t talk about it. Being ejected without warning was a total shock to me, and I looked around for help and support. The Clarke’s information package said they could help in a crisis, so I e-mailed and got an appointment with their only TS employee one week after my ouster.
First Contact
I had female clothes, but since the issue with my family seemed to be the clothing I wore, albeit always outside of the house, I stayed in self imposed male clothing for the first month of my separation from my family. I went to the appointment, February 21, 2002, dressed as a man, but still on hormones and still knowing I was a woman. I was received courteously by Ms Maxine Petersen and given ample time to tell my story. Her reaction, and that of everyone else, was that it was plainly wrong for this to have been done to me. I explained that the combination of my spouse and adult son against me made continuing to live there impossible. I was not about to get into a fist fight, something I had never been good at.
I remember asking if it was possible to be a transsexual and live as a man all or most of the time for the rest of my life. She said she didn’t know… which was a wise answer. We discussed an appointment for my spouse, but she said it would be better for her to see the social workers. Maxine felt unable to deal with irate wives herself. She told me my spouse would be able to come to my April evaluation days as long as I signed a release. While I passed this information on, I found that she had no wish to be involved in either way.
I felt affirmed and relieved that my personal understanding of my enforced leaving home was a sound interpretation. Of course, nothing further could be done to help me get back home without at least minimal cooperation from my spouse. Sadly, that was not forthcoming.
Second Contact
By the time my official evaluation came up I had seen my psychiatrist a couple of times and found him professional, caring and very helpful. He had counseled about 65 Trans patients during his long career. By this time I had given up hope of ever being re-united with my family and had transitioned to full time living as a woman, on March 13, 2002.
April 15 and 16, 2002, were my days at the Clarke. I didn’t know what to expect, and was prepared to walk away if I didn’t like what I found. I was pleasantly surprised. They no longer put sensors on the genital organs and show dirty pictures to test for gender dysphoria. That would have been sufficient for me to walk out…
First, I saw Maxine and was greeted warmly. I felt a lot more confident than at my last visit, as I was reconciled to probably losing my marriage, though not by my choice. I gave her my two photos as requested, “crossdressed” (actually neither was that as they both showed me as a woman), my questionnaire and my biography. We chatted for almost an hour and she rather apologetically asked me what turned out to be the key question at the gender clinic: “What do you think about when you are masturbating?” I told her. I was rather amused that they considered masturbation habits to be relevant to the diagnosis of gender identity.
My next interview was with Dr. Choy. He was also friendly and apart from saying with a smile that I had jumped 2 or 3 steps ahead of where I should be it was a pleasant experience. He also asked about my masturbation fantasies and I told him the same story.
Finally I was seen my Dr. Dickey, chief psychiatrist of the gender clinic. He was accompanied by his nurse, an older woman. He was very relaxed and gave me his opinion that gender dysphoria was a condition from birth. He also asked about my masturbation fantasies and I gave him the same answer. That was the most significant question I was ever asked, but clearly shows confusion between gender and sex. Or, perhaps an attempt to prove the validity of the autogynephilia theory of Dr. Ray Blanchard.
He asked me what I did about facial hair removal and I said I shaved. He advised me to start my electrolysis now. It wasn’t bad advice, but I didn’t have the money and they of course pay for nothing. It amused me that he felt he had to tell me that women don’t have facial hair! I was offered a piece of paper that he proposed was a “pretend ticket” for sexual re-assignment surgery and asked if I would take it. Of course the answer was yes – a no-risk, no-brainer decision since they didn’t fund it any more anyway. I guess I passed the test.
He asked me for any comments on their service to me and I had to mention that it had taken 7 months to get an appointment. He pulled a sad face and I sympathized that they had budget and staff cutbacks. He seemed glad to have the understanding and support from me… say, who was the therapist here?
In response to his inquiry as to any final questions I might have I asked this: “I don’t mean to be impolite, but can you tell me why I might ever want to come here again?” He took it well, thought a minute and came up with three possible reasons. First, if my psychiatrist didn’t work out they could provide that for me. Second, if I needed a letter for surgery, after a full two years of full time experience of course, they could do that for me, or provide the supporting letter. Third, I could attend their support group.
I had not heard the last item mentioned yet that day, but now it had become the “Jewell in the Crown”. I knew about it, so I said, “But, I can’t go there yet.” He seemed taken aback and said, “Of course you can go. You can go as a man; you can go as a woman; you can go dressed as a bunny rabbit!” While I was amused, and I think it was just his wacky but well meaning way of telling me that there was no dress code, it did make me wonder about this man. I later characterized them all as a bunch of dirty old men, masquerading as clowns!
After the hour the nurse walked me out to the locked door – this is a high security facility. She asked me if it was my own hair (no, I’m bald) and complimented me on my good taste in clothes (white blouse and tan knee-length skirt). She spoke rather distastefully of the “crossdressers” they sometime saw who dressed too flamboyantly.
The next day I was scheduled to see Dr. Betty Chan, Endocrinologist and Internist, at her office away from the Clarke. I say scheduled because even though the printed copy I had with me said 10, they had me down for 11 am. So I went and had a coffee first.
I had brought a photocopy of my latest blood test results, which she seemed glad to have. I was interviewed briefly about general health, and my HRT regimen. Then I was asked to strip down, in private, put on a paper dress and lie down for a physical examination. She was very discreet and gave me the same courtesy she gave all her female patients. She checked my blood pressure and said it was too high so I should ask my doctor to double my spironolactone and halve my Premarin. (The first my doctor agreed with and did, but he laughed and dismissed the second as typical of the Clarke’s extreme conservatism.) When I was about to leave I asked for my blood test results back and she seemed a bit taken aback that I wanted them, but photocopied them and returned my copy. She told me I didn’t need to come back, which was good as I had no need or intent to return anyway! To be fair to her, I should mention that she had a cold and was probably not feeling well.
The months went by and I was busy moving and re-establishing myself as a woman, in my new community. I knew the support group didn’t meet in July and August, and I had nothing back from the evaluation days. I e-mailed Maxine on May 14, 2002, asking about both and received no answer until late July. She told me then that she had been very ill and off work, which I sympathized with in my return mail. The recommendations following from the evaluation had not been sent out during her time off to recuperate, but she said they were the standard ones: continue transition; be under medical supervision for HRT; wait full 2 years before surgery. She gave me the date of the first support group meeting, and I resolved to attend it.
Third Contact
Wednesday September 18th, 2002, at 6 pm I went up to the 4th floor of the CAMH building and found over a dozen people waiting to be let in behind the locked door for the first meeting of the season. All were male to female types. One of them I knew already and said hello to her. I wore women’s cargo pants and a top and most were similarly dressed. A couple wore skirts and blouses, conservative and tasteful. Many made no attempt to look like women. Some looked scared.
We were taken to a crowded room which had about 18 chairs, for 16 of us. There was no coffee or other refreshments. We were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. Nothing that took place in that room was ever to be revealed outside or we would be banned! Was I joining a secret society? I could understand that since this group was open to every variety of crossdresser, transgender and transsexual, privacy was important for some. Maxine was in attendance, but said little. She introduced a student who was really to be in charge, a nice young woman who was pleasant, but detached. I had the feeling that the prevailing atmosphere was, “We know you aren’t really women, and you know it too, but we will all pretend so you can feel good about yourselves.” I didn’t feel good. I knew I was a woman and found them condescending and oppressive.
We went around the circle introducing ourselves. There were 2 or 3 post-ops but most had not transitioned yet. Some were depressed, some hostile, some paranoid. I felt uncomfortable as I had none of these problems. My intro was brief and to the point: hormones begun October 9, 2001, transitioned March 13, 2002, surgery scheduled November 21, 2002. Most of the people told stories of doom and gloom. Problems in women’s washrooms, hair removal that hadn’t worked, rejection by families, severe depression not fully responding to treatment…
I told my little story about the two Pentecostal evangelist ladies who had visited me a few weeks before and didn’t understand what I meant when I said I wouldn’t be acceptable in their church because of my “gender dysphoria”. I’d had to say something to enlighten them, so I made the explanation that “I used to think I was a man, but I haven’t had any surgery yet.” They immediately told me that I should remain the way God made me and not do anything to alter my body. They took my hands and prayed for me very movingly, always using “her” and “she”. I had initially marveled that these were so untypical of many Christians who criticize and ridicule transsexuals. It struck me several hours later that they were convinced I was a genetic female who had at one time been tempted to masculinize myself!
I made the point that while I have a very femme body and pass easily, I believed that the most important ingredient was confidence. It could have happened to any one of them if they just believed in themselves. A few people were impressed favourably. Most just sat there… they preferred to tell their sad takes of woe and receive sympathy. The leaders did very little to guide the discussion or give helpful advice to anyone. They looked bored. They told one woman that she transitioned backwards because she did it at work before she transitioned at home. I felt sad for her. It wasn’t a confidence builder. I felt very much out of place. I’d gone into every possible situation before and since my transition and felt completely at home, but I wanted to get out of this artificial and stultifying place. When it was announced that our time was up at 7:30 pm I was glad to get out of there, and never went back. They had nothing to offer me. If I went weekly I would have been depressed!
A long time Clarke girl told me later that the Clarke’s method was to deliberately intimidate, so you would be able to stand up to the scorn and ridicule of the outside world. I found that strange as the outside world was a very comfortable place for me to live and be at ease in. Only the contrived Clarke atmosphere was hard to take. There is such a thing as anticipating trouble, so that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy… I think they do their clients no favours by this “programme”.
Fourth Contact
I was expecting a 6-month recall interview and sure enough, a week before I went to Thailand for my surgery the envelope arrived. It had been sent to my old address in Bowmanville. I checked, and I had advised the Clarke of my current address in August. More surprises ahead! Inside, the letter said, “Dear Andrew”, which was never a name I owned or used. Furthermore, the date of my appointment was to be November 20, the day before my surgery, when I would already be in Thailand. I had mentioned that at the support group, but obviously it hadn’t made it into the system.
I phoned and left a message explaining why I wasn’t going to make it on that date on their voice-mail, then e-mailed and cc’d to Maxine. Within 20 minutes I had a reply, apologizing profusely and thanking me for my “generous offer” to keep in touch after my surgery. Since it was worded so winningly I decided that I would contact them on my return, once I felt up to it.
In early February I e-mailed Maxine and said that I was ready have the interview. She asked me to come in on February 28, 2003. I told her I was the biggest success story she would ever have sitting in her office. I showed her my psychiatrist’s letter to my surgeon, and my surgery photos. I offered to e-mail them to her, and did so at her request. She was interested in my psychiatrist and said she would invite him to join their new advisory committee. I told her I knew about it, but I wasn’t interested in applying to join the committee.
I discussed “what the Clarke could do for people” and asked why they doubled the Harry Benjamin standards. She told me about a few F to M TS’s who had dropped out of the programme and come back years later to thank her for not giving them hormones and thereby causing permanent sterility within months. That was the basis of their “higher” standards. I mentioned that a few handouts would really help clients: steps in transitioning; friendly electrologists; legal name change etc. She agreed it was a good idea. But after over 25 years in the business of “helping” Trans people they had nothing to give them.
Maxine was surprised to hear that the SRS surgeons in Thailand don’t follow the Harry Benjamin Standards. I was surprised that she was so unaware of that fact, and that many hundreds of people from all around the world prefer to go half way around the world rather than submit to the humiliation of the treatment gender clinics like the Clarke mete out.
I told her I try to steer as many people as possible away from the Clarke and to my own doctors, who give excellent service. She just shrugged. In light of their meager resources and diminishing budget I asked if I could volunteer and help them in some way. She said no, the only possibility was the advisory committee. I suggested that since they were not my support group I thought they should at least pay for parking, since I was aiding in their research. I was frostily told that they never did that.
So we didn’t part on the friendliest of terms, which was not my intention. She is a nice woman and as helpful as she can be within the restrictions the institution places on its staff. It seems the idea of being responsible to their clients is offensive to them. They are stuck in the “ivory tower” mentality of an old, fossilized institution which has grown arrogant and believes it is above questioning.
In Conclusion…
When they were the gatekeepers for government funded SRS they had great power. Now they are irrelevant, but still keep on in the same authoritarian way. Perhaps it is a good thing to have them to care (?) for those with serious co-morbid conditions beside gender dysphoria. It seems that many in the “support group” have fallen through the cracks of the health care system and they at least have something there. I know several people personally who went away from the Clarke weeping, yet found help elsewhere. There is no way of knowing for sure, but I believe the number may be quite high. They are success stories in the Clarke’s book, because they left the programme voluntarily and didn’t make the “mistake” of transitioning and SRS. At least the Clarke interprets it this way as they have lost touch with them. I’m told some former clients have committed suicide in despair of ever getting help, but I can’t verify that.
Would I go back if invited? Probably, but they won’t like the questions I ask and I doubt if I will hear from them again. I am not going to be put onto their committee and thereby neutralized as a critic of their practices and policies. It’s too bad they are so insular as they are the only “official” gender clinic in the province of Ontario. This means that every doctor has them in his reference book, and will send patients with gender issues only to them, unless they have specifically asked for another doctor.
I got what I wanted and needed without any help from the Clarke. It felt pretty good that I had gone through the evaluation and was treated with courtesy and compliments. It’s easy for me to “blend in” with feminine features and only 5’8” tall, but I wonder, do the big, angular girls have such a good experience from the Clarke?
Maxine did admit grudgingly that “maybe” I was one of the ones who didn’t need a full 2 year “real life test”. I’m told she took more like 5 years to make up her own mind. I knew after a week that this was the only life for me. I resent the fact that these people deliberately hold back very promising candidates for hormones and surgery just because they won’t treat them as individuals. It’s a “one size fits all approach” but we are not all the same! They don’t trust us to tell the truth about our transition dates. You have to change your name to an unmistakably female name (mine wouldn’t do) and show education receipts or pay stubs to prove you have lived it. Apparently “Big Brother” knows best… in their book.
I was 3 months on hormones before I found my hormone doctor and only 5 months full time before my psychiatrist recommended me for surgery. That would be considered irresponsible by the Clarke, but for me it was appropriate and worked. I like the way my psychiatrist put it better: “Any nurse, or secretary, can go down a check list and tell you when you have qualified for hormones or surgery. I assess you on the basis of my 23 years of working with trans clients and you are a classical transsexual.” I would never have heard that kind of statement at the Clarke.
I’m now 3 years post-op and living a happy and anonymous life in the community with my partner. I accompanied her just a year ago to the same SRS surgeon I used and her results have been equally good. I’ve had little contact with the CAMH Gender Clinic but sometimes talk to their clients.
One girl who went on their advisory board confided in me that they were still rigidly standing by their old principles and she doubted they would ever change. I had anticipated that. Another contacted me because she was due for an appointment and couldn’t get a reply back from them. She eventually did, and I had lunch with her in the CAMH Cafeteria. It’s a huge 12 story building with all sorts of addiction and mental health clinics. It might have been my imagination but I thought we got a lot more rude stares from passers by than I had in other restaurants.
My opinions of this venerable old institution have changed very little in the intervening years. I still think they do more harm than good, but in a time of penny pinching by the government perhaps that problem will solve itself. What we need is more private physicians and psychiatrists who will give proper care to those who wish to transition and the means of finding them easily. Too many doctors would rather not touch anything as controversial as feminizing transsexuals. Even the Clinics who do give care to transsexuals are notoriously conservative. One of them has a used needle disposal system in their patients’ washroom, with a notice that they operate a needle exchange. However, they still insist on a minimum 3 month wait after first contact before prescribing hormones and have turned some down. One candidate who was turned down for health reasons came to me for information. She has been happily on “offshore” hormones for 6 months with no ill effects and is planning on SRS next year. Why are hormones considered more dangerous than illegal injectable heroin?
Our provincial government is considering re-listing SRS as a surgery that is funded by our health care system, but moving painfully slowly in that direction. If they do I want 3 new standards built into the plan: 1) free choice of the preferred surgeon (with a reasonable maximum limit on the price of course), 2) approvals by nothing more restrictive than the Harry Benjamin Standards – http://www.hbigda.org/soc.htm , and 3) allocation of sufficient funds to clear the 7 year backlog and provide enough surgeries to meet the real needs, not the 10 a year that it averaged before. Not to be too much of a pessimist, but I have my doubts that they will ever actually pay for it again.
My experiences
by Sharon
In the mid 1970’s, when I was in my early twenties, I sought the assistance of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry’s gender identity program. The conflict between my gender identity and my sex arose at about age 9. By age 12, I had come to understand that I was in fact a girl, and that I needed to change my body to conform to the way I felt inside.
At about this time, the newspapers reported the first experimental organ transplants, and the enhancement of topless dancers’ breasts using silicone injections, which led me to speculate whether or not the same methods could be used to make my body female.
Unfortunately, I was very tall for my age – already over 6 feet, and still growing rapidly. I knew that this would be great obstacle to passing as a woman, and it was a tremendous source of anxiety.
I needed to start shaving at a younger age than most boys I knew. Had I been a boy, this might have been a source of pride and self-confidence, but I was a girl, so it was hell.
At about age 13, I read a newspaper article about transsexualism, and the existence of endocrinological and surgical treatment. It was a great relief to know that I was not alone, and that medical treatment existed. Through my adolescence, I never wavered in my desire to be female in all respects.
The Clarke made clear from the outset that research was the major focus of their program. I was supportive of their conducting research, but I soon realized that they offered precious little in the way of treatment, and then only to the small fraction of applicants they accepted into their program. They scheduled numerous appointments for all manner of tests and interviews. I was interviewed by at least two of their staff psychiatrists, including Dr. Freund, who tried to console me by pointing out that this problem was not my fault. I already knew that. The other psychiatrist focused a lot on my height, and pointed out that I would have a lot of problems, which of course, I already knew.
Several of my appointments were at nearby hospitals for various medical tests. I recall that one of them involved some sort of an imaging scan. I handed the test form to the technicians, one of whom giggled when she read on it “transsexual”, Fortunately, all other medical professionals I encountered at the hospitals treated me with respect.
My assessment by an endocrinologist led to the one bright spot in my Clarke experience. He was new to their program, and I recall that they talked him up as being a leader in his field, and something of a coup to have on their team.
I found him understanding, and willing to help. As part of his assessment, he asked to see me completely in the nude, so that he could get a sense of what hormones might do for me. While acknowledging that my height was an obstacle, he expressed the opinion that my body could be successfully feminized using hormones. This was music to my ears!
Even better, he offered to start me on estrogen right away, and I was thrilled to accept. At my first opportunity the next day, I presented my prescription to a local pharmacist, but there was a set-back. I was told that they could not provide the prescribed dose. At first they refused to explain the problem, but eventually told me that the unit of measure was out by a factor of 1000, e.g. micrograms vs milligrams. Fortunately, they were able to reach the endocrinologist by phone and quickly resolved the problem, but it was a nervous moment.
It felt wonderful to start on hormones. Soon, I had a follow-up meeting with the endocrinologist, at which he asked me a favour – would I be willing to meet some of his medical students, to provide them an opportunity to meet someone like me. He wanted to include that experience in their training, in the hope of promoting better understanding. Recalling the giggles from the imaging technician, I could see the potential benefit, so I readily agreed. We had the meeting, and it went very well. Needless to say, I was feeling much better about the Clarke’s program.
With the completion of the medical tests, my appointments reverted to the Clarke. As I recall, one of the staff asked how I liked their new endocrinologist. I responded very positively, and expressed my joy at finally having been prescribed estrogen. Upon hearing this, the staff member freaked, and next thing I knew, I was confronted by more senior staff, who told me that the endocrinologist had not been authorized to prescribe the hormones to me. They demanded that I turn over the unused portion of the drug, else they would drop me from their evaluation.
I felt I had no real choice in the matter, so I reluctantly complied. It was a huge let down, and from that point, the Clarke experience was just something to be endured.
One of their evaluations required that I present myself dressed as woman for an interview with one of their staff, which was to be videotaped. Since I had not transitioned, and would not have passed in public, they agreed that I could change into my feminine attire on the premises. They left me alone to change in the studio where the interview was to be taped, but soon I noticed the cameras slewing to aim at me. The bastards were taping me dressing! I complained, afterward, but they just sloughed it off. It was now becoming clear that I was much more of a test subject to them, than a human being. One of the final tests involved the plethysmograph. A contraption designed to measure penile response while the subject is shown various pictures. I was told not to speak, and to focus my attention on the pictures. I was surprised to find that some of them were from the session for which I had dressed as a woman. I remember little else about the test itself.
Afterward, I chatted briefly with the test conductor, as we walked down the hall. Trying to make the best of the awkward situation, I commented that I guessed it was valuable to have the opportunity to obtain scientific data on transsexuals. To which he responded that few true transsexuals were available for study, in contrast with homosexuals, who were available “by the wheelbarrow”. Clearly, I was just a data point to him.
Finally, I met with Dr. Steiner and several other of the staff, who told me, “You are not a transsexual, and you do not need a sex-change, at least not now.” Dr. Steiner warned against rushing to feminize myself on hormones, because in her opinion that accounted for most of the sex-change. I was told that I required years of intensive psychotherapy, and they offered to recommend some doctors. I told them, “thank you for nothing”, and walked out. I was little more than a research subject to them – research that spawned such nonsense as Dr. Blanchard’s theory of autogynephilia.
Within a year, I found a gynecologist who readily agreed to my request to begin hormone treatment. My body responded wonderfully to estrogen, and within two years, I had a pleasing bosom, and my hips had filled out – finally skirts fit properly! Having greater access to my female emotions was great, as was losing my male sex drive.
In the end, I found the prospect of transition too daunting. I was not at all confident that I could overcome the problems of my great height. I did not have the emotional strength to deal with the rejection of family, and the abuse of strangers. Living as a man is hell for a woman, but living as a woman seen by everyone as a man, likely would be even worse.
Nevertheless, I completed facial electrolysis, and I love the softness of my skin. My hair is shoulder length, femininely cut, and I love it! I have never for a moment regretted feminizing my body. After twenty five years, I could not imagine not having breasts. For me, some feminization has proven much better than none. It made my life bearable, though far from happy. Successful transition is the only way to have a chance at true happiness.
I am fortunate to have meaningful and intellectually stimulating hobbies, into which I can escape for brief periods. I am also fortunate to have a few good friends.
Sharon
—
Toronto Star, Tuesday, November 27, 1984 Trans-sexuals happier after operation, MD says By Lillian Newbery Toronto Star Page H2
The vast majority of men and women who had surgical sex changes in Toronto say they prefer their new gender. Most support themselves in society without welfare or unemployment insurance.
Dr. Mary Steiner, head of the Gender Disorder Clinic and the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, said recently the favorable results probably reflect the strict evaluation given those who seek such surgery. Only 1 in 10 men who request it are approved.
The Gender Identity Clinic assesses individuals who dress as the opposite sex, long to be the opposite sex or believe that inside they really are the opposite sex, research co-ordinator Leonard Clemmensen said during a recent research open house at the institute on College St.
In the most extreme cases, called trans-sexuals, the sense of belonging to the opposite sex is “longstanding and unalterable” and leaves them feeling constantly unhappy.
“If the patient has been definitely diagnosed as trans-sexual, has no other major psychiatric disorder and has proven ability to function in society as a member of the opposite sex, then the clinic may recommend sex reassignment.”
The Gender Identity Clinic contacted 38 women who became men and 41 men who became women, representing 77.5 per cent of all sex reassignments coordinated through the provincial institute in the past 15 years.
The study included only people who had the surgery a year or more before and the average time between the date of surgery and follow-up was 47.4 months.
Only one of the group said she was “unsure” if she still wanted to live as a female and none said they wish they hadn’t had the sex change. All but five said they prefer their current gender and would undergo such surgery again. One homosexual male changed to a female, three heterosexual males changed to females and one female changed to a man said they would “probably” choose the change if they had the decision to make over again.
One of the aims of the program has always been to end up with people who are self-supporting in society, Steiner said. Usually they hold jobs on a lower level than before the sex change, although some have returned to their old jobs.
Of 79 studied, 69 sustain themselves in society without welfare or unemployment insurance benefits.
All the 38 women who underwent the sex change had been attracted to females before the surgery. Of the 41 men: 32 known as homosexual trans-sexuals had been attracted to other males before surgery; nine known as heterosexual trans-sexuals has been attracted to females. Thirty-nine of the 79 live with a member of their own biological sex in a stable relationship.
If you had dealings with the Clarke Institute and the Gender Identity Program, particularly with Ray Blanchard, we hope you’ll contact me to share your story.
References
2. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940. Ian Robert Dowbiggin. Cornell University Press, 1997.
Blanchard, Ray, Collins, Peter (1993). Men with sexual interest in transvestites, transsexuals, and she-males. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Volume 181 – Issue 9.
Blanchard, R., & Bogaert, A. F. (1996). Homosexuality in men and number of older brothers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 27–31.
Thank you for calling my attention to the misleading information posted on the Internet by Andrea James.
My 2008 salary included a one-time buyout for unused vacation time (I had about six months’ worth of it) and does not reflect my annual base income.
At the time of the Vietnam war, I had an unusual exemption. According to my draft card (which I still have) it was a 4-A. This exempted me from the draft, in peacetime, as the sole surviving male heir of a serviceman killed in a foreign war. The US Congress never declared war on Vietnam, so it was technically peace time for the purposes of this draft law (or policy, whatever it was). My father, Ray Milton Blanchard Jr, a sailor in the US Navy, was lost at sea on 19 March 1945, in the bombing of the aircraft carrier, the USS Franklin. My mother was a few months pregnant with me at the time. I was the first, only, and posthumous child of Ray Jr.
In brief, I did not come to Canada to escape the draft. I had no incentive to do so.
Regards, Ray
[editor’s note: this base salary is only one of Blanchard’s revenue streams.]
Carlson, Tucker (8 March 1999), “The Hall of Lame“, Forbes Magazine. http://www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/1999/0308/063.html
As most of those listed in the book know, entries in Who’s Who are mostly self-reported and largely unchecked, making it the ideal place to tidy up an uneven educational or work history… Indeed, the first clue that Who’s Who is a vanity publication is the “Thoughts on My Life” feature that appears beneath some entries.
Diamond, Milton and H. Keith Sigmundson (1997). Sex reassignment at birth: Long-term review and clinical implications. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1997;151(3):298-304.
The psychiatrists had several choices of phraseology if they considered homosexuality a personality disorder or the expression of another kind of personality disorder. They could term a person a “psychopath,” “schizophrenic,” “normally imbalanced,” “weak psychological origins,” “arrested aggressive,” “purposefully immoral,” “containing a neurosis” or maybe “another natural human trait” which psychiatrists knew would not be acceptable to military standards. All categories were considered by the military to classify the person as “4 F”, undesirable for military service. Habitual criminals were also considered “4 F”.
In WWII, there were 2400 Army doctors and 700 Navy doctors who served as psychiatrists, many inadequately trained with poorly trained back-up personnel. Their policy was to discharge, court-martial, or reassign suspected homosexuals.
Military intelligence officers interrogated suspected military men for the names of other gay military and places the homosexuals met. Many innocents were arrested and imprisoned. Congress passed the May Act in 1941 giving the military the power to arrest and close businesses, and it was used against gays and their meeting places. Imprisonment gave way to military discharges for “4 F”, unfit for military service.
Freund, K., J. Diamant, and V. Pinkava. 1958. “On the validity and reliability of the phalloplethysmographic (Php) diagnosis of some sexual deviations.” Rev Czech Med 4:145-51.
Freund, Kurt (1963). “A Laboratory Method For Diagnosing Predominance Of Homo- Or Hetero-Erotic Interest In Male.” Behav Res Ther 21:85-93.
Green, Richard (2004). In Memoriam: Judd Marmor, MD. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 33, Number 4 / August, 2004, pp. 327-328.
“I left Los Angeles in 1964 to avoid the Vietnam War by going to NIMH.”
Inquirer staff report (December 29, 1992). South Jersey Deaths: Anthony Ruggero. Philadelphia Inquirer
ANTHONY RUGGERO, 75, of Hammonton, died Sunday at home.
Mr. Ruggero was a former lieutenant with Hammonton Volunteer Fire Co. 1 and a lifelong resident of Hammonton. He was a World War II Navy veteran and a member of American Legion Post 186, Hammonton.
Survivors: his wife, Angelina; three sons, Ray Blanchard of Toronto, Jim of Haddonfield and Bill of Monmouth Junction; two grandchildren, and a sister, Marie Stretch of Ocean City.
Services: friends may call, 11 to 11:45 a.m. today, Marinella Funeral Home, 102 N. Third St., Hammonton; Mass, noon today, St. Martin de Porres Church, South Egg Harbor Road, Hammonton; entombment, Greenmount Cemetery, Hammonton.
James, Andrea (2007). Plethysmograph: A disputed device. Transsexual Road Map.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/plethysmograph.html
James, Andrea (2009). $325,000+ in salaries for Zucker & Blanchard to pathologize trans people. Transsexual Road Map
Lagow, Larry Dwane (1977). A history of the Center for Vietnamese Studies at Southern Illinois University. Ph.D. dissertation; typescript in Hoover Institution Archives.
Ken Zucker, a member of the SIPC*, was reported in the student newspaper the Daily Egyptian as conducting mock trials. At least one person was found “guilty” of “all the war crimes he committed against the Vietnamese,” according to Zucker. Student body Vice President Rich Wallace later introduced Zucker at a Board meeting, where Zucker read a list of demands which called for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam first and foremost. On Wednesday, January 21, 1970, the Student Senate passed what was reported by the Dally Egyptian as a “hastily drawn” resolution supporting the SIPC.
*Southern Illinois Peace Committee, founded by Bill Moffett in 1967 as an anti-war splinter group of Students for a Democratic Society.
Lalumière, M.L.; Blanchard, R.; Zucker, K.L. (2000): “Sexual orientation and handedness in Men and Women: a meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 126, 575-592.
Lawrence, Anne (1996). Taking Portlandia’s hand.
http://www.annelawrence. com/twr/portlandia.html [deleted by Lawrence]
Lawrence, Anne (2008). Shame and Narcissistic Rage in autogynephilic transsexualism. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 37, Number 3 / June, 2008.
“Bancroft’s remark was followed by utter silence in the room, as though no one could believe that anyone would say something so tactless. It was as though Bancroft had stood up and loudly farted — people looked at each other in embarrassment for him. “
Lawrence, Anne (August 23, 2004). Bancroft’s “not science” comment.
According to another attention-craving eccentric who defends Blanchard, Lawrence is the source of false rumors that the author of this profile declared bankruptcy. I’ll have additional examples of Lawrence’s rage in an upcoming profile.
BLANCHARD, RAY MILTON, psychiatry institute research psychologist; b. Hammonton, N.J., Oct. 9, 1945; s. Ray Milton and Angelina (Celi) Ruggero. A.B., U. Pa., 1967; M.A., h4U. Ill.-Urbana, 1970; Ph.D., 1973. Cert. psychologist Ont. Bd. Examiners. Psychologist Ont. Correctional Inst., Brampton, Can., 1976-80; research psychologist Gender Identity Clinic, Clarke Inst. Psychiatry, Toronto, Ont., 1980–. Killam fellow Dalhousie U., Halifax, N.S., Can., 1973. Mem. Internat. Acad. Sex Research, A, Psychol. Assn., Can. Psychol. Assn. Subspecialty: Gender identity disorders. Current work: Taxonomy of gender identity disorders; psychosocial adjustment of transsexuals; phallometric assessment of sexual anomalies. Home: 32 Shaftesbury Ave Toronto ON Canada M4T 1A1 Office: Gender Identity Clinic Clarke Inst Psychiatry 250 College St Toronto ON Canada M5T 1R8
Newbery, Lillian (November 27, 1984). Trans-sexuals happier after operation, MD says. Toronto Star.
Sullivan, Nikki (2008). Dis-orienting Paraphilias? Disability, Desire, and the Question of (Bio)Ethics. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Volume 5, Numbers 2-3 / June, 2008, 183-192. See also Moser, Charles (2008). A Different Perspective. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 37, Number 3 / June, 2008, 472-475.
Wake, Naoko (2007). The Military, Psychiatry, and “Unfit” Soldiers, 1939–1942 Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2007 62(4):461-494; doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrm002
Harry Stack Sullivan’s failure to protect homosexual men from medical and social stigmatization by screening them out of the armed forces.
Wise TN, Lucas J. (1981). Pseudotranssexualism: iatrogenic gender dysphoria. J Homosex. 1981 Spring;6(3):61-6. See also Prince, Virginia (1978). Transsexuals and pseudotranssexuals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 7, Number 4 / July, 1978, 263-272.
These links are provided for those interested in this site’s historical coverage of Blanchard
Ray Blanchard on transsexualism
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard.html
Ray Blanchard motivations for oppressing sex and gender minorities
ray-blanchard-motivations.html
Toronto: epicenter of pathologization of sex and gender minorities
ray-blanchard-hypotheses.html
Ray Blanchard’s place in history
ray-blanchard-history.html
Notes, updates, further reading
ray-blanchard-notes.html
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Psychologist J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University related several stories in The Man Who Would Be Queen which he obtained from transgender women while presenting himself as a clinical psychologist. Bailey was not licensed to practice by the State of Illinois and has never been licensed there.
My initial inquiry
1 March 2004
Illinois Department of Professional Regulation 320 West Washington Street, 3rd Floor Springfield, IL 62786
To whom it may concern:
I am conducting an investigation of a psychologist named John Michael Bailey, Ph.D. Please provide any documentation from your department regarding four matters:
Evidence regarding any application for licensure in clinical psychology by John Michael Bailey, Ph.D. between 1993 and present.
Evidence regarding any granting of licensure in clinical psychology for John Michael Bailey, Ph.D. between 1993 and present.
Clarification of Illinois law as it pertains to Dr. Bailey; namely, whether he was required to be licensed in order to enter into therapeutic relationships and diagnose clients between 1993 and present.
Determination whether Dr. Bailey is in violation of 225 ILCS 15/16.5 and 225 ILCS 15/26, practicing without a license, which may carry civil and criminal penalties.
The first two requests regarding application and certification are routine. Your online lookup provided four licensees with the last name Bailey, none of whom were the subject of this investigation. I have enclosed a check for $20 to cover the certification fee.
The other two requests are more complex and require some background information.
Prior to 1993 and continuing to the date of this letter, Dr. Bailey has been an employee of Northwestern University in Evanston, in their Department of Psychology. Dr. Bailey is currently under investigation by Northwestern regarding his professional and procedural conduct when interacting with human subjects. I am trying to determine if he has violated your department’s regulations.
At issue are several therapeutic relationships Dr. Bailey undertook with gender-variant clients since 1993. According to Standards of Care established by HBIGDA, an organization of professionals specializing in the needs of gender-variant people, clients must obtain approval from a licensed and credentialed mental health professional to receive medical services. [1]
I am in possession of three letters from Dr. Bailey on Northwestern letterhead, sent on behalf of three separate clients to three different surgeons who follow the HBIGDA Standards of Care. In each of these letters, Dr. Bailey holds himself out as “an expert” and implies that he has the required documented credentials.
I am unable to ascertain if Dr. Bailey was licensed to enter into such clinical relationships, or if licensure was required for him. A reading of 225 ILCS 15 seems open to interpretation whether Dr. Bailey is required to be licensed to perform clinical psychology.
It is clear that Dr. Bailey held himself out to these clients and practitioners as rendering clinical psychological services, and that this may not have been for money, but for “other consideration,” namely gathering data for a book published in 2003, or for sex, as alleged by one woman who states she received an “approval letter” and later performed a sexual favor for Dr. Bailey.
Any assistance your office can provide in this matter would be deeply appreciated. I am happy to pay any reasonable fees associated with processing and duplication.
References:
1. Standards of Care Version 6: “The mental health professional should have documented credentials from a proper training facility and a licensing board.”
I, Daniel E. Bluthardt, to hereby certify that I have been designated by the Director as keeper of the records and seal of the Department of Professional Regulation, a department of the government of the State of Illinois, and that a standard search of the available records of this office indicates the following:
THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT JOHN MICHAEL BAILEY DOES NOT NOW HOLD NOR HAS EVER HELD LICENSURE UNDER THE CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST LICENSING ACT.
Department records were searched based upon the exact name and profession, as provided. Any variation in the name or profession may produce different results.
The information above is the only certification information provided by this Department. If other information is needed, it must be obtained from the above-named individual or the agency or institution which initially generated the information. To expedite the certification process, the above format is the standard format prepared for all professions regulated by this Department.
[SEAL] [SIGNED] Daniel E. Bluthardt [initialed] Deputy Director Licensing & Testing Division Respond to:
320 West Washington 3rd Floor Springfield, Illinois 62786 217/785-0800 TDD 217/524-6735 www.dpr.state.il.us James R. Thompson Center 100 West Randolph Suite 9-300 Chicago, Illinois 60601 312/814-4500
James, Andrea; Conway, Lynn; McCloskey, Deirdre (April 6, 2004). Re: Professor J. Michael Bailey of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University performed unlicensed clinical therapy. https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Bailey/Clinical/NU.Clinical.Complaint-open.pdf
Dreger AD (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. https://10.1007/s10508-007-9301-1 Full text: http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf [archive]
Resources
Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (/idfpr.illinois.gov)
Chivers runs the Sex and Gender Lab at Queens University, also styled SAGe Lab and Sagelab. Before he was banned from Wikipedia, anti-transgender troll James Cantor wrote her biography. Chivers is married to sexologist Michael Seto.
Research on trans people
In 2000, Chivers and Bailey published an anti-transgender article in Archives of Sexual Behavior titled “Sexual orientation of female-to-male transsexuals: a comparison of homosexual and nonhomosexual types.”
Homosexual and nonhomosexual (relative to genetic sex) female-to-male transsexuals (FTMs) were compared on a number of theoretically or empirically derived variables. Compared to nonhomosexual FTMs, homosexual FTMs reported greater childhood gender nonconformity, preferred more feminine partners, experienced greater sexual rather than emotional jealousy, were more sexually assertive, had more sexual partners, had a greater desire for phalloplasty, and had more interest in visual sexual stimuli. Homosexual and nonhomosexual FTMs did not differ in their overall desire for masculinizing body modifications, adult gender identity, or importance of partner social status, attractiveness, or youth. These findings indicate that FTMs are not a homogeneous group and vary in ways that may be useful in understanding the relation between sexual orientation and gender identity.
In 2004, Chivers, Bailey, Gerulf Rieger, and Elizabeth Latty published “A Sex Difference in the Specificity of Sexual Arousal” as evidence that trans women have “male” sexual arousal patterns.
We assessed genital and subjective sexual arousal to male and female sexual stimuli in women, men, and postoperative male-to-female transsexuals. […] Transsexuals showed a category-specific pattern, demonstrating that category specificity can be detected in the neovagina using a photoplethysmographic measure of female genital sexual arousal.
In 2005, Chivers, Bailey, and Anne Lawrence published “Measurement of sexual arousal in postoperative male-to-female transsexuals using vaginal photoplethysmography.” The cloncluded that trans women have “male-typical” sexual responses.
We used vaginal photoplethysmography to examine patterns of sexual arousal in 11 male-to-female (MtF) transsexuals following sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and in 72 natal women. […] All transsexual participants displayed category-specific sexual arousal. Five homosexual transsexual participants (attracted exclusively to males before sex reassignment) showed greater genital and subjective responses to male than to female stimuli, while six nonhomosexual transsexual participants showed the opposite pattern. […] We conclude that male-to-female transsexuals display male-typical category-specific sexual arousal following SRS.
Chivers was named President of IASR in 2023. She opened an investigation into the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s questionable 2023 paper on “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD).
1/Dear IASR members,
In the interest of transparency, we want to communicate to the Membership about recent concerns regarding a publication in our official journal, the Archives of Sexual Behavior. On March 29th, the journal published an article authored by …
— International Academy of Sex Research (@TheIASR) April 19, 2023
1/Dear IASR members, In the interest of transparency, we want to communicate to the Membership about recent concerns regarding a publication in our official journal, the Archives of Sexual Behavior. On March 29th, the journal published an article authored by …
2/…Suzanna Diaz & J. Michael Bailey entitled, “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases.” Since its publication, significant concerns about the ethical conduct and integrity of the editorial process have been raised about this study, by both…
3/…members and nonmembers of the Academy, including Editorial Board members. The IASR recognizes the sensitivity and controversy of the study topic, and we deeply value ethical and scientific integrity. (…)
4/ While the Archives of Sexual Behavior has editorial independence and IASR is not involved in determining what is published in the journal, Archives is our flagship journal. The IASR Executive is currently learning more about this matter, consulting with both …
5/…the Archives of Sexual Behavior’s Editor and our publisher Springer Nature, and will update the membership appropriately. Kind regards, The IASR Executive Committee
Chivers ML, Bailey JM (2000). Sexual orientation of female-to-male transsexuals: A comparison of homosexual and non-homosexual types Archives of Sexual Behavior 29 (3): 259–278. doi:10.1023/A:1001915530479
Chivers ML, Rieger G, Latty E, Bailey JM (2004). A sex difference in the specificity of sexual arousal. Psychol Sci. 2004 Nov;15(11):736-44. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00750.x
Lawrence AA, Latty, EM, Chivers, ML, Bailey JM (2005). Measurement of Sexual Arousal in Postoperative Male-to-Female Transsexuals Using Vaginal Photoplethysmography. Archives of Sexual Behavior 34, 135–145 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-005-1792-z
Smith YLS, Van Goozen S, Kupier AJ, Cohen-Kettenis PT (2005). Transsexual subtypes: Clinical and theoretical significance. Psychiatry Research 137 (3): 151–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2005.01.008
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Psychologist James Cantor is an anti-transgender extremist based in Canada. Cantor has decades of history attacking transgender people while claiming to be a supporter.
The archival information below dates to the turn of the century. See the main James Cantor profile for more.
Archival information
“The stronger one is invested in the outcome of a scientific endeavor, the more vulnerable is one’s ability to see straight.”
— James M. Cantor
http://www.apa.org/divisions/div44/vol18nu3.htm
James Cantor is a frequent supporter of J. Michael Bailey, Ray Blanchard, and Anne Lawrence who is part of the clique of sexologists at Toronto’s notorious Clarke Institute.
James M. Cantor, PhD Clinical Sexology Services Centre for Addiction and Mental Health—Clarke Site 250 College Street Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R8 CANADA (416) 535-8501 ext. 4078 email: [email protected]
Cantor praises Bailey
Bailey and Cantor seem to be cut from the same cloth: smug, unprofessional, and downright nasty when they perceive their “authority” is challenged.
Cantor leapt to Bailey’s defense regarding Bailey’s lectures exploiting gender-variant children. Bailey writes:
A gay psychologist and sex researcher, James Cantor, wrote in response to Roughgarden’s screed:
“I have seen Bailey give this lecture before (at least, an earlier version of it). Again, this was the one with several openly lesbian women and gay men in the audience, including me. None of us felt at all offended. What Roughgarden describes as laughter was actually an affectionate recognition of the truth. Effeminate speech is much more common among gay men than straight men, and telling the two extremes apart is like night and day.”
The following review appeared on page 6 of the Summer 2003 American Psychology Association Division 44 Newsletter (PDF: http://www.apa.org/divisions/div44/vol19nu2.pdf) and is being used by Joseph Henry Press in PR for The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey.
Parts in blue are being used in Joseph Henry Press promotional material
BOOK REVIEW The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey The National Academies Press, 2003 Review by James M. Cantor
Division 44 Newsletter Summer, 2003 page 6
J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would be Queen represents the first scientifically grounded book about male femininities written for a general audience. In three sections—devoted respectively to gender atypical boys, adult gay men and those MtF transsexuals who are attracted to men, and then fetishistic cross-dressers and those MtF transsexuals who are not attracted to men (autogynephilic transsexuals)—Bailey sympathetically portrays these peoples’ experiences and explores the roots of their development.
Readers seeing these topics for the first time will come to understand these mixes of traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics, free from the sensationalism they receive in the popular media. Readers more familiar with these areas will come to appreciate that none of these human conditions—hetero-/homosexuality, cross-dressing, gender non-conformity, and transsexuality—can be fully understood on its own. Human sexual behavior must be understood in its entirety, if it is to be understood at all.
In introducing us to vivid and engaging people, Bailey takes us on a tour that would leave few readers unchanged. Just as interesting, however, were the hints about how Bailey’s own ideas became changed by his experiences in working with these issues. He notes he “became less skeptical, if not yet convinced” of the idea that the correct intervention for gender atypical children is to change society (rather than the children), a philosophy he learned from thinkers including “Clinton Anderson, scientist Simon LeVay, and journalist Phyllis Burke” (p. 26). Likewise, he notes having become more openminded about the veracity of transsexuals’ memories of desiring to change sexes even in childhood, after discussing it with Ken Zucker (the head of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at C.A.M.H. in Toronto). Watching the evolution of a scientist’s thinking is particularly welcome in a field where so many other authors on these topics polarize and entrench.
Bailey’s engaging style and clear fondness for the people he describes invite all readers to appreciate these peoples’ experiences better, on both scientific and human levels. Although respectful, Bailey describes his subject matter warts and all. He unapologetically includes potentially controversial topics including the strong preference in the gay male community for masculine sexual partners and against effeminate men, the well-established finding that highly gender atypical boys nearly always become gay men in adulthood (and the shame many adult gay men experience in recalling their own childhood femininity), the frequency of sex trade work among androphilic transsexuals, the difficulties many MtF transsexuals experience in passing as women, and the challenges to the politically correct idea of MtF transsexuals literally being “women trapped in men’s bodies.” Yet, Bailey notes specifically that there is nothing objectively shameful in, for example, childhood femininity or sex trade work. It is the combination of Bailey’s willingness to challenge ideas based only on prejudice as well as ideas based only on political correctness that establishes the book as an even-handed introduction, rather than as a mouthpiece for either the socially conservative right or academic left. Writing as an openly heterosexual and non-transsexual man, Bailey’s respect for the people he describes serves as a role model for others who still struggle to accept and appreciate homosexuality and transsexuality in society. In the following passage, Bailey writes about Cher, an MtF transsexual:
Cher has been having a rough time lately. She has fallen out with Amy, a homosexual transsexual who used to be her closest friend. Cher thinks that once Amy got her surgery, she no longer needed her, and she feels used. When she goes out with Juanita, who has become her best friend, men are constantly approaching Juanita (who is 15 years younger and very sexy), but they approach Cher cautiously, if at all….She is also broke, and is being sued by her relatives for her father’s inheritance. Despite her troubles, she continues to visit her circle of (primarily transsexual) friends, helping them plan their transition, listening to their boyfriend problems….She is a good friend to them, although her advice is not always appreciated or heeded. I think about what an unusual life she has led, and what an unusual person she is. How difficult it must have been for her to figure out her sexuality and what she wanted to do with it. I think about all the barriers she broke, and all the meanness that she must still contend with. Despite this, she is still out there giving her friends advice and comfort, and trying to find love. And I think that in her own way, Cher is a star.” I think she is too, and I am grateful to Bailey for having introduced her.
POSTSCRIPT: As I write this postscript, it is has been four weeks since The Man Who Would Be Queen has been released. Of all the ideas Bailey presents, only the meaning of autogynephilia appears to have drawn any controversy. Although his book is unapologetic in its accuracy, Bailey notes quite distinctly which ideas are well-established scientifically and which are hunches and suspicions to help readers tie the data together. It is unfortunate that a vocal few (vocal over the Internet, anyway) do not actually address Bailey’s points, referring only to rumors about the content of the book and to assumptions regarding Bailey’s motives. I can recommend only that readers refer to the content of the book itself (available to read on-line, free of charge at http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/ ), explore Bailey’s own webpage (http://www.psych.nwu.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/controversy.htm#campaign ), and decide for themselves.
Cantor harasses trans speaker
Kyle Scanlon is Trans Programmes Coordinator at 519 Church Street Community Centre in Toronto. The 519 is where all trans youth are encouraged to go in order to avoid The Clarke Institute. Cantor was compelled to send a letter of apology to Scanlon following the event, and the letter was to remain in his file for 7 years.
Below is Scanlon’s original complaint letter about what happened at CAMH.
To Whom it Concerns:
Let me begin by saying that I was grateful and excited to be invited to present a workshop at the LGBT Staff Caucus event at CAMH. Not only was I thrilled that trans issues were considered important enough to be part of the agenda, I was extremely gratified that the Staff Caucus wanted them addressed not by a GIC expert, but by someone with lived experience as a transsexual who has also had invaluable community service experience with members of the lower income, street-involved trans community. I accepted the offer immediately.
But my elation quickly turned to frustration as I attempted to facilitate my workshop. I would like to register a complaint about what happened.
I was running a workshop that was clearly listed in the program as being “the perspective of a transsexual activist”. I did not set myself up as someone who was an expert in gender theory. I was attempting to address the “lived experience” of trans people that might lead them towards needing support from the Addictions Program, or that might affect their chances of receiving treatment.
Almost immediately -while I was still running through definitions of sex, gender, and intersexuality, one gentleman in the audience began aggressively interrupting to offer his “expertise”. He spent at least five minutes detailing “specific types of intersexuality” which was not germane to my workshop at all. This gentleman seemed to be trying to demonstrate his authority on this topic. I ultimately had to cut him off in a gentle yet firm manner in order to continue. He did continue to interrupt on a few more occasions, generally “defensively”, all in that same manner that he was more of an “authority” on the subject than I was, despite the fact that it’s my lived experience. It was extremely rude and honestly unnerving.
Next in the workshop I began addressing my concerns as an activist about “the real life test” and how the GIC is still using the year long life test rather than the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care approved 3 month life test, as well as to address HOW this real life test impacts on the lived experience of transsexuals. I discussed a variety of concrete issues faced by many trans people as they undergo the Real Life Test – high rates of suicide, low self-esteem, police harassment, street-involvement, inability to access shelters and hostels, being fired from jobs, the inability to find new work, losing key relationships, being kicked out of the family home, and losing access to their children. The audience was extremely empathetic, vocally so. At that point, this man interrupted again, very loudly and aggressively “Before you all JUDGE the GIC….”
At this point – thankfully – he was interrupted by a wonderful member of the audience calling him on his rude behaviour and asking him to identify himself. He replied “I’m Doctor James Cantor with the GIC.” A minor skirmish ensued, and I managed to utilize my facilitation skills to bring everyone back to the topic at hand. Again, his behaviour took valuable time away from my workshop. All in all, I think I lost about 15-20 minutes to James Cantor’s views, and having to “deal” with him. That’s close to one quarter of my total time to present. This was completely unacceptable. Keep in mind my workshop was only 90 minutes long, and since people strolled in late, I was already pressed for time.
I should mention that during the entire workshop, Peter Coleridge was sitting in the room. He was supposedly there to act as “moderator” of the workshop. He did nothing to control Cantor, nor to make any apologies to me. I felt hung out to dry, except for the great support of the members of the audience. It was all extremely confrontational, it took time away from my workshop, it distracted me as a presenter and it disrespected me as a community member who was INVITED to offer my particular experience and opinion. If Cantor was there to defend the GIC practices, then he shouldn’t have been there. The purpose of the forum was to air views that are not conventionally heard. He certainly didn’t seem to be there to learn or to listen.
His behaviour hindered my workshop, it put me on edge, and it made for an uncomfortable atmosphere for all those who were there to hear my presentation. I believe an invited guest deserves better treatment from CAMH staff. My workshop deserved ALL the time it was allotted and the men and women who attended the workshop deserved to hear the presentation that they specifically chose to attend.
CAMH says it’s opening itself up to community input and constructive feedback, but here’s an example of what happens to a workshop presenter who tries to offer it.
I was offended, angered, and frustrated by these events. This experience underscored my conviction that CAMH has only been paying lip-service to wanting to address the trans community’s concerns about the GIC if this is how they treat an INVITED GUEST.
The one “good” thing that came from all of this… almost everyone in the audience approached me personally later to say “thanks to today, we now have a better understanding of the kind of shit that trans people face trying to access service at the CAMH GIC.” So, for that, I do have to thank James Cantor and Peter Coleridge. They provided a look at what really happens inside the GIC doors in a way that my workshop on its own could never have done justice.
Scanlon described the response from CAMH:
I do think there is some gray area here of semantics. I was told that after my claims were investigated it was found that I had experienced harassment, but NOT that Cantor had harassed me. The woman seemed to be saying – in fact I think she did once say – that anytime a person feels it, it’s real. But I don’t know that anyone ever said “Cantor harassed you.” Cantor was made to apologize to me in a letter, but there he was also clever to apologize for my feeling harassed and did not in any way acknowledge he harassed me. Like I said, semantics. I definitely was told this would stay on his file for 7 years. I have no idea where else I would have gotten an idea like that unless it was specifically stated to me.
Cantor subsequently has tried to downplay the incident.
Other Cantor data
Cantor clearly has political aspirations in psychology, taking up several positions of influence, especially with people just starting their careers.
See also A Report to Lynn Conway by Kristin of a recent lecture at “The Clarke”
Science Committee The Science Committee encourages research on sexual orientation issues. The Committee has recently published a directory entitled: Directory of Researchers and Scholars of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and transgender Issues in Psychology. To obtain a copy of the Directory or to be listed in the Directory contact: Division 44 Science Committee Sean Massey [email protected] 4410 Burnet Road Austin, TX 78756 The Chairs of the Science committee is: James M. Cantor.
Cantor on a program in Toronto with the rest of Blanchard’s crew. Cantor’s topic at a Toronto program was:
July 9, 2003 – Is Transsexualism Really Independent of Sexual Orientation? Presenter: James M. Cantor, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Clinical Sexology Services, Law & Mental Health Program
Monitor on Psychology
http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug02/thematic.html
* “Cultural evolution of gender identity–changing the construction of identity,” with Ronald F. Levant, EdD, James M. Cantor, PhD, Joanne E. Callan, PhD, and Pamela Trotman Reid, PhD.
Malyon-Smith Scholarship Award
http://www.apa.org/divisions/div44/malyon.html
The Division sponsors a scholarship fund to grant cash awards for graduate student research. The chair is James M. Cantor PhD. If you would like more information about this award, please click here. If you would like to apply for the application, please visit the Malyon-Smith Scholarship Award 2003 website. Here you will find information, guidelines, and procedures involved in the application of the scholarship.
Malyon-Smith Scholarship The Division sponsors a scholarship fund to grant cash awards for graduate student research. The Malyon-Smith Scholarship Fund is a living memorial to two former Presidents of the Division. The fund is our way of encouraging graduate research into sexual orientation issues. If you are a graduate student and conducting your graduate research on gay, lesbian, or bisexual issues, why not apply for an award? To apply for this award, or to see more detailed information, please click here – Malyon-Smith Scholarship Award. Donations in all amounts are encouraged and appreciated. They can be sent to James M. Cantor, PhD at the address below.
4213 Symposium: Training in Psychology – Students’ Needs, Current Opportunities, and Academic Alternatives
Chair: James M. Cantor, PhD, Law and Mental Health Program, Toronto, ON, Canada
Click here: McGill Reporter <http://ww2.mcgill.ca/uro/Rep/r2911/rats.html> – as a grad student – resetach on impotence associated with prozac – lists self as, of course – a sex therapy student Click here: Toronto shemales strut their stuff, part of national quest for rights <http://www.shemale-transexual.com/news/toronto-shemales.html> some Cantor quotes on “shemales” – doesn’t think they exist- everyone really wants srs evenually -lists % of people who come into the Clarke and go on to SRS Click here: http://www.cwru.edu/affil/div29/Bulletin/V1997324/WASH.htm <http://www.cwru.edu/affil/div29/Bulletin/V1997324/WASH.htm> THE PRESCRIPTION AGENDA – CONSTANTLY EVOLVING From the very beginning, those of us involved in shaping the prescription agenda have been clear that the key to the profession’s ultimate success would be the active support of our future generations of clinicians and academicians. James Cantor, the APAGS liaison to CAPP, recently authored a formal “resolution of support” for prescription privileges which has now been formally adopted by APAGS. Click here: Outside Online – News <http://web.outsideonline.com/news/headlines/20020815_1.html> Dr. James Cantor, a psychologist at the University of Toronto’s Gender Identity Clinic, told the Ottawa Citizen this week that if gender is based on hormonal status, then Dumaresq is, indeed, a woman. “If you took a blood sample to measure the levels of sex hormones in a post-operative transsexual, that person would resemble a woman, not a man,” Cantor explained. The doctor declined to give the Citizenan opinion, however, on whether an athlete who is genetically male but hormonally female should be allowed to compete in women’s sporting events. “Hormone therapy does reduce, if not practically eliminate, the amount of testosterone in the blood, but it’s unknown how this affects athletic performance,” he said. “It just hasn’t been studied. Until we really have the science to say one way or the other, it’s anybody’s guess. One can reasonably argue either position.”
Cantor as “expert”
The post below gives a good sense of where Cantor is coming from: discouraging and turning away clients who seek medical services, discounting the first-hand reports of trans women in favor of those who share Cantor’s ideology, and the typical supposition of gay male superiority, suggesting he’s OK, but this subset of gays is disordered. One can see the same kind of thinking in the writings of Jim Fouratt and Tammy Bruce: assimilated queers who got their rights and feel entitled to deny us ours.
From: James Cantor Date: Sun Oct 5, 2003 6:01 pm Subject: RE: [NewPsychList] tx for gender identity d/o
This is not the approach I would take or recommend. I have worked for several years in the Gender Identity Clinic here at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (formerly, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry), and have now seen several hundred transsexuals in various stages of transition, including many who made the decision not to transition.
First, regarding diagnostic criteria, patient distress is not a criterion. If the person chooses to transition, s/he will require a lifetime of hormone therapy, a series of pretty major surgical interventions, and (depending on the assessment methods used) ongoing psychotherapy before, during, and after transition. For the psychologist (or other mental health professional) to make the appropriate referrals, the person will require a bone fide diagnosis. For people who live in areas with public health care systems (such as here in Canada), the diagnosis is required before the system will pay for the surgeries.
The desire not to diagnose GID comes from the understandable desire on the part of mental health professionals to avoid the stigma associated with having the diagnosis. I argue, however, that the problem is the stigma associated with “mental disorder.” If we cease to diagnose relevant conditions to avoid stigma, we are implicitly reinforcing the idea that such diagnoses are negative and to be avoided. The transsexual community is divided over this idea, and there appears to be a U.S. vs. rest-of-the-world split on this. I suspect that the split results from the U.S. not having insurance coverage for transition (and therefore having nothing to lose) while the rest of the world uses the diagnosis to argue that their health care systems should be covering surgery.
Second, no one has thus mentioned any of the relevant research with GID. I would caution anyone against treating someone without having the relevant training. Male-to-female transsexuals divide into two major types, usually called androphilic transsexuals and autogynephilic transsexuals. (The term autogynephilia has now been added to the DSM.) Androphilic MtF’s (also called homosexual transsexuals) transition very early in life, are remarkably feminine throughout childhood, are attracted to males, and have very high success rates after transition. Autogynephilic transsexuals tend to transition later in life (typically in their 30s or 40s), are externally unremarkable in childhood, are attracted to females, and having a more mixed adjustment after transition. Autogynephilia is extremely controversial within the transsexual community, because of the unfortunate myth that only androphilic transsexuals are “true” transsexuals, while the autogynephilic ones are just wannabes.
Because the person under discussion here is so young, s/he is mostly likely the androphilic type.
Next, what the patient here mostly likely needs the most is information. There are a great deal of mis-informative websites on transsexualism, and if the clinician does not provide the correct information, the patient will likely start running into the myths about transition on the web. Such information the patient will need is outcome data, diagnostic/surgical/hormonal outcomes, a >realistic< assessment of how well he would pass as a female, and a >realistic< assessment of the surgical and social risks. Only then will s/he ever be able to make an informed decision about how, whether, and when to transition (if at all).
As for the etiological aspects, the relationship between homosexuality and transsexuality is a little more complex. Androphilic transsexuality does appear to be related to male homosexuality. Some argue that androphilic transsexuality is an extreme form form of male homosexuality (or, depending on your point of view, that male homosexuality is an incomplete form of androphilic transsexuality). It is because of this relationship that some people call this type ‘homosexual transsexuality’. Autogynephilic transsexuality does not appear to be related to male homosexuality. Rather, it appears to be related to transvestic fetishism. That is, these people are erotically attracted to the idea of being female…like a cross-dresser who wants to appear female all the way down to the bone, rather than just by the clothes.
To wrap this up, is sounds like outside consultation might be best. An excellent compilation of experienced clinicians throughout the U.S. has been compiled by Anne Lawrence, MD, PhD, who is herself an openly transsexual MtF. Her website is annelawrence. com.
Best of luck. – James
From: James Cantor <James_Cantor@c…> Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 7:17 pm Subject: Neuropsychological characteristics of transsexual persons
> If we assume that gender differences in cognitive and attentional > abilities and processing speed arise out of biological differences, the > relevant gender norms to use would seem to be those of the person’s > original physical gender, not the one they subjectively experiences > themselves to be, or the one they may have transformed their body into.
Not so simple.
1. There is more than one type of transsexuality (e.g., Blanchard, 1993), each of which has different correlates (e.g., Blanchard & Sheridan, 1992; Blanchard, Dickey, & Jones, 1995). One could reasonably expect these types to differ neuropsychologically with regard to which characteristics look male versus female.
2. People in sex transition are typically taking sex hormones, which has been shown to affect neurophysiological and neuropsychological measures (e.g., Kruijver et al., 2001). Although this has been tested in transsexuals directly (Van Goozen et al., 1995), relevant literatures also include neuropsychological differences associated with menopause, hormone replacement, anti-androgens (used to treat prostate cancer in men), and oral birth control.
3. It is unclear exactly what ‘transgender’ means. People with intersex conditions are a very different mix of characteristics than are transsexuals, and there are many different types of intersex conditions. Discussions (and research) are far more useful only after knowing exactly which condition is being considered.
4. Many transsexuals are also homosexual (Blanchard, Dickey, & Jones, 1995), and homosexual men and women neuropsychologically differ from heterosexual men and women (e.g., Gladue & Bailey, 1995; Wegesin, 1998). Much research on transsexuality unfortunately collapsed different types of transsexuals into a single group, obscuring any differences that could actually be sexual orientation differences. – James
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American evolutionary psychologist, linguist, and central figure in anti-transgender extremism.
Pinker is frequently involved in academic controversies, particularly around race, gender, and eugenics. Pinker is a key connector in the so-called intellectual dark web, a gateway to the far right.
Background
Steven Arthur Pinker was born in 1954.
Pinker moved to Harvard in 2003 after 20 years at MIT working in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department. Pinker is the author of many books on mind and language, including:
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
How the Mind Works
Pinker is a hereditarian, believing that genes are far more important than environment in shaping who we are. Pinker falsely claims that ideological opponents believe in a blank slate, where everyone begins the same until social forces change us.
“With a mixture science, humanity, and fine writing, J. Michael Bailey illuminates the mysteries of sexual orientation and identity in the best book yet written on the subject. The Man Who Would Be Queen may upset the guardians of political correctness on both the left and the right, but it will be welcomed by intellectually curious people of all sexes and sexual orientations. A truly fascinating book.” — Steven Pinker, Peter de Florez Professor, MIT, and author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”
Joseph Henry Press marketing materials (unattributed):
J Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen is an engaging book on the science of sexual orientation. …highly sympathetic to gay and transsexual men…” — The Guardian (London), June 28, 2003
Below is the full review:
J Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen (Joseph Henry) is an engaging book on the science of sexual orientation. Though highly sympathetic to gay and transsexual men, it has ignited a firestorm by claiming that transsexuals are not women trapped in men’s bodies but have either homosexual or autoerotic motives.
Pinker’s writing was also used in Bailey’s since-canceled Human Sexuality class.
Anti-trans logrolling
Anti-trans activists and extremists frequently defend Pinker with the same zeal seen in defenses of other celebrity transphobes like J.K. Rowling.
Jesse Singal defended Pinker in the New York Times, writing: “The idea that Mr. Pinker, a liberal, Jewish psychology professor, is a fan of a racist, anti-Semitic online movement is absurd on its face, so it might be tempting to roll your eyes and dismiss this blowup as just another instance of social media doing what it does best: generating outrage.”
gender role and orientation as male or female, established while growing up
making biased claims about trans women:
Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment (1969)
“devious, demanding and manipulative” and incapable of love (1970)
John Money should have died in prison along with other “leading lights” of late 20th-century sexology. The astonishing lack of accountability or responsibility makes him easily the most unethical sexologist in history.
John Money vs. J. Michael Bailey
Takes one to know one, they say.
John Money was an ethically-challenged sexologist at Johns Hopkins whose work led to the woes of untold intersex people around the world until his “science” was debunked and his academic misconduct exposed.
Mike Bailey is an ethically-challenged sexologist at Northwestern whose work nearly led to the woes of untold transgender people around the world until his “science” was debunked and his academic misconduct exposed.
John Money put out a book in May 1990 with the title:
The similarities in titles certainly beg a comparison, as do the remarkable similarities in the lives of the two well-known sexologists.
Why would Bailey and friends replace “in-between” with “lying”? Below is a very interesting passage from pages 108-110 of John Money’s Gay, Straight, and In-Between: The Sexology of Exotic Orientation.
“Gender Crosscoding”
by John Money
Among adolescents who circumvent homosexual activity or who quit in panic, there are some who coerce themselves into heterosexuality, only to find as husbands and fathers (or wives and mothers, in the case of females) that the lid on Pandora’s box springs open. These are the people who, when young adulthood advances into midlife, begin the homosexual stage of sequential bisexuality. For some the transition is to homosexual relations exclusively, whereas for others heterosexual relations also may continue. The transition may take place autonomously, or it may be a sequel to the divorce or death of the spouse or to sexual apathy in the marriage. When the youngest child leaves home, there may be a degree of freedom hitherto unavailable. The bisexualism of a parent is not transmitted to the offspring, and is not contagious. However, to avoid offending a heterosexual child, a bisexual parent may be self-coerced into suppressing homosexual expression.
The late expression of homosexuality in sequential bisexuality may be associated with recovery from illness and debilitation (e.g., recovery from alcoholism) that had masked the homosexual potential. Hypothetically, it might, conversely, be associated with premature illness and deterioration from brain injury or disease, as in temporal lobe trauma and Alzheimer’s disease. However, although brain pathology may release the expression of sexuality formerly strictly self-prohibited as indecent or immoral, it is not especially associated with releasing bisexuality.
In sequential bisexuality, the transition from homosexual to heterosexual expression is also known to occur autonomously in adulthood. Since this transition is socially approved and not registered as pathological, it is not likely to be recorded. If the individual were at the time in some type of treatment, the transition might be wrongly construed as a therapeutic triumph.
More than sequential bisexuality, concurrent bisexuality may be jocularly considered as having the best of two possible worlds. But it has a dark and sinister potential also. Its most malignant expression is in those individuals in whom it takes the form of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The split applies not simply to heterosexuality and homosexuality, but to good and evil, licit and illicit, as well. The two names are not gender-coded as male and female as they are in the two names of the tranvsvestophile, nor are the two personalities and the two wardrobes. Instead, the two names, wardrobes, and personalities are both male (or in the less likely case of women, female), but one, the given name with its wardrobe and personality, is for the heterosexual, and the other, an alias or a nickname, for the homosexual. The heterosexual personality is the servant of righteousness and the acolyte of a vengeful God. The homosexual personality is the servant of transgression and a fallen angel in the legions of Lucifer. The heterosexual personality has the pontificating mission of a sadistic grand inquisitor, bent on the exorcism of those possessed of homosexuality, himself included. The homosexual personality has the absolving mission of officiating indulgences in the place of masochistic penances for homosexuality, but only for himself and nobody else.
The absolute antithesis of homophobia and homophilia in this malignant form of bisexuality takes its toll in self-sabotage and the sabotage of others. Self-sabotage is an ever-present threat that materializes if there is a leakage of information from those in one antithetical world to those in the other. The greater danger is, of course, that knowledge of the illicit homosexual existence will leak out to the society that knows only of the heterosexual existence. The ensuing societal abuse and deprivation, legal and social, may be extreme.
The sabotage of others is carried out professionally by some individuals with the syndrome of malignant bisexualism. Their internal homophobic war against their own homosexuality becomes externalized into a war against homosexuality in others. The malignant bisexual becomes a secret agent, living in his own private and secret homosexual world, while spying on its inhabitants, entrapping them, assaulting and killing them, or, with less overt violence, preaching against them, legislating against them, or judicially depriving them of the right to exist.
The malignant bisexual is the perfect recruit for the position of homosexual entrapment officer or decoy in the employ of the police vice squad. Supported by clandestine operations, blackmail, and threats of exposure, in espionage or in the secret police of government surveillance, he may achieve legendary power, such as that attributed to J. Edgar Hoover of mythical FBI fame.
People in high places may have the power to keep under cover for a lifetime, with the homosexual manifestations of their bisexuality never exposed. Others have their career blown, as did the bisexual former U.S. congressman from Maryland, Robert E. Bauman, a fanatical homophobic ultraconservative of the religious new right, who subsequently published a biography of his own downfall (Bauman 1986).
Bauman was exposed by a combination of surveillance and the testimony of a paid informant and blackmailer. Nowadays there is a hitherto nonexistent way of being suspected or exposed, namely by dying of AIDS. This is what happened to Roy Cohn (New York Times, August 3, 1986), the malignantly bisexual legal counsel for the homosexual witch hunter from Wisconsin, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, himself suspected of malignant bisexuality. Together, they destroyed the lives of many American citizens, simply by publicly accusing them of being homosexual, falsely or otherwise.
…
Scratch the surface of the self-righteous and find the devil. This is a maxim of widespread acceptability, not only to the self-righteous in high places of homophobic power, influence, and authority, but also to the homophobic, gay-bashing hoodlums who, as in the case with which this section began, pick up or are picked up by a gay man, have sex with him, and then exorcise their own homosexual guilt by assaulting and maybe killing him. Both versions of homophobia are manifestations of malignant bisexuality that, in an interview with the journalist, Doug Ireland, for New York Magazine (July 24, 1978), I called the exorcist syndrome.
There must be a very widespread prevalence of lesser degrees of the exorcist syndrome in the population at large. If it were not so, otherwise-decent people would not persecute their homosexual fellow citizens nor tolerate their persecution. Instead they would live and let live those who are destined to have a different way of being human in love and sex. They would tolerate them as they do the left-handed. Tolerance would remove those very pressures that progressively coerce increasing numbers of our children and grandchildren to grow up blighted with the curse of malignant bisexuality.
Bullough, Vern L. “The contributions of John Money: a personal view.” The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 40, no. 3, 2003, pp. 230–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490309552186
John Money and John G. Brennan, “Heterosexual vs. homosexual attitudes: male partners’ perception of the feminine image of male transsexuals,” The Journal of Sex Research, 6, 3 (1970): 193–209, 201, 202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224497009550666
Downing, Lisa; Morland, Iain; Sullivan, Nikki (26 November 2014). Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Goldie, Terry (2014). The Man Who Invented Gender: Engaging the Ideas of John Money. Vancouver, British Columbia: University of British Columbia Press.
Money, John; Hampson, Joan G; Hampson, John (October 1955). “An Examination of Some Basic Sexual Concepts: The Evidence of Human Hermaphroditism”. Bull. Johns Hopkins Hosp. Johns Hopkins University. 97 (4): 301–19. PMID 13260820.
“David Reimer, 38, Subject of the John/Joan Case”. The New York Times. 12 May 2004. Retrieved 27 September 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/us/david-reimer-38-subject-of-the-john-joan-case.html
