San Francisco Public Radio station KQED featured a discussion of Alice Dreger‘s defense of controversial psychologist J. Michael Bailey, author of the 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen. “Transgender Theories” aired 22 August 2007 on Forum with host Michael Krasny.
Alice Dreger Associate Professor of Clinical and Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Northwestern University
Joan Roughgarden Professor of Biological Science, Stanford University
Mara Keisling Executive Director of theĀ National Center for Transgender Equality
Transcript
Krasny: From KQED public radio in San Francisco, Iām Michael Krasny. Coming up next on Forum, outrage and allegations have been hurled back and forth over the controversial work of a Northwestern psychologist explaining what he views as the motivations behind why some men become women. Itās a very messy imbroglio which brings with it questions of research ethics, sexual and gender identity, and charges on both sides of immorality. Weāll attempt to sort it all out and hear from both sides, next after this.
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Krasny: From KQED public radio in San Francisco, Iām Michael Krasny. Good morning and welcome to this morningās Forum program. In 2003 Northwestern Psychology Professor J. Michael Bailey published a work on gender-bending and transsexualism called The Man Who Would Be Queen, a study of feminine roles. The work has outraged transsexuals because of its thesis that some of the men who become women are motivated by largely erotic attachments and sexuality, rather than the long-held view that men who become women largely do so because they feel like women trapped in the bodies of men. Or to put it more plainly, that male-to-female transsexuality can be rooted in sexual attraction rather than in possessing or coveting an inner female self or soul. This part of the work of Professor Bailey caused a firestorm, and there followed allegations against him, as well as allegations against those who strongly disagreed with his methods and conclusions about trans men. An investigation took place at Northwestern, and web postings appeared charging Professor Bailey with illegal and unethical conduct, and targeting both him and his loved ones. Many of the feelings on both sides remain raw and damaged, and in fact Benedict Carey reported on this in a discussion that went on controversially at the International Academy of Sex Research in Vancouver. This was reported in yesterdayās New York Times, and he said it was āone of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory.ā We want to try to sort all this out and what is at stake in the argument, and why it has created such a firestorm that really continues right up to the present. Let me tell you who is joining us for this hour. We have with us by phone Dr. J. Michael Bailey. Heās Professor of Psychology at Northwestern and joins us from Evanston. Good morning to you.
Bailey: Good morning.
Krasny: I also have with us Dr. Alice Dreger, who is Associate Professor of Clinical and Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern, and she joins us from East Lansing this morning. Welcome to you.
Dreger: Thank you.
Krasny: And we are also joined this morning by Mara Keisling, who is Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Sheās with us from St. Augustine, Florida. Welcome, Mara Keisling.
Keisling: Thank you, Michael.
Krasny: Here in studio, we want to welcome Joan Roughgarden, Professor of Biological Science at Stanford University, author of Evolutionās Rainbow, and welcome Joan Roughgarden.
Roughgarden: Thank you.
Krasny: And I want to do this sort of in seriatim, weāre going to hear from what I call the Bailey-Dreger side first, and then weāll hear from Joan Roughgarden and Mara Keisling, who take strong exception to the study and what it puts out there. Professor Bailey, let me begin with you, and letās get you on the record here in terms of what you see is the minefield you stepped into here. It has to do, as I said, with the nature of transsexual sexuality, I suppose, more than anything else, doesnāt it?
Bailey: Well, it does, but before I address that specifically, I want to point out some inaccuracies in the way you kind of began, one of which is the implication that my book offended all transsexual women. That is certainly not the case. It offended a subset of transsexual women. And the percentage of the transsexuals who it offended is impossible to tell, because the transsexuals who approve of the theories that I wrote about are so intimidated by the people like Lynn Conway, who have attempted to suppress this work. Itās really impossible to know. So Iāll say a bit about the science behind this.
Krasny: Let me stop you there for a second, and thank you for making thatāI didnāt want to give the impression that it was anything other than a subset, because I would agree with that characterization. But Ms. Conway did write to us, and I think one of the big arguments seems to be calling this science. You said it was a book in which you interviewed people for a book, as opposed to being taken seriously as perhaps science or researchā¦ or nothing other than a social or soft science, so letās maybe distinguish that if we could.
Bailey: Well, sure thing. This would be a pretty simple matter to tell you what the book was if there hadnāt been an intentional attempt to defame me and my book. I wrote what is commonly understood to be a popular science book, in which I reviewed serious academic work by myself and other scholars. And the serious scholar who did the traditional academic work, peer reviewed and published in respectable journals, who wrote about transsexuals, is a guy named Ray Blanchard from Toronto, who I think is the worldās expert in transsexualism. And I, kind of coincidentally, because they came to me and wanted to talk to me and tell me about themselves, I came to know a group of transsexual women in Chicago. I was struck when I got to know them that there seemed to be these two completely, utterly distinct types of transsexuals, and I had not known about that. I subsequently became familiar with Ray Blanchardās work, which was published in the 80s and early 90s, and it completely explained what I was seeing. It made me understand. And so I consulted gender experts, allegedly, such as Randi Ettner, and I read autobiographies of transsexuals, and I was struck by how they donāt write about what I could plainly see with my eyes and was there in Ray Blanchardās work. And so I decided to write my book in part because of this.
Krasny: What was there is what I described earlier as erotic attachment.
Bailey: Well, you simplified a bit. That was the key thing that was missing, which is an erotic motivation in some males to become women. And this is expressed most commonly and most early in these individuals as erotic crossdressing. So when they first go into puberty, they discover that it really turns them on to wear, say, panties, womenās panties, and look at themselves in the mirror, and to masturbate and so on. And there are various manifestations of this trait, which is called autogynephilia: auto (self), gyne (woman) philia (love for). In a subset of autogynephilic individualsāwho remember, begin life as menāthis drive manifests as the desire to have female anatomy. And these are the males most likely that go on and get sex reassignment surgery and become women.
Krasny: And we should mention that this was actually nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, but thereās been a lot of opposition aside from the subset of transsexuals. Dr. John Bancroft, for example, Director of the Kinsey Institute, said this is not science, itās anecdotes. And youāve been singled out for a lot of criticism, particularly with some things gay menālet me just get you on record on thisāgay men supposedly, you said, are suitedā¦ you said, some gay men are suited to be florists or beauticians, Latinos have genes that suit them for transsexualism, and they are more likely to be prostitutes, so youāve been charged withā
Bailey: You sound like youāve been reading straight off of Lynn Conway’s website.
Krasny: I have. I want to give you every opportunity to answer her charges here.
Bailey: I didnāt say any of those things that way. All I did was notice some things. Is this controversial that gay men are more likely than straight men to be florists? [66] Thatās what I said. I didnāt say they were suited, althoughāyou know, I donāt know what that means. And I also said that in my observations, that Latina women are more likely than āor Iām sorry, Latina transgender peopleāare more likely than white transgender people to be a certain type of transsexual, that is the other type that we havenāt talked about yet. [183] I just talked about what I noticed with my eyes. I didnāt talk about them having genes. [183] If youāre going to be summarizing things that are really negative about me from Lynn Conway’s website, we will be here all week, and we will make no progress.
Krasny: Lest we do that, let me go to Professor Dreger, who has written a very strong and passionate defense of your work and of you. And sheās again Associate Professor of Clinical and Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern. And she has actually said in her paper, which is going to appear in the Archives of Sexual Behavior next year, that she sees this as a problem with science and free expression, and of accusations that are groundless. I want to find out Professor Dreger from you if it indeed is not the case, as I understand it, that you had your own concerns and skepticism about these theories when you started outā¦ before you became a rather passionate defender of Professor Bailey.
Dreger: Yeah, I guess I should correct the misperception that Iām a defender of Professor Bailey. What I did was to look very carefully at the history of what happened with regard to this book controversy. And what I did was do an in-depth one year long study, which essentially ended up in a book-length article that you can read online now. What I did was try to figure out what happened in terms of this controversy. So I was much less interested in the question of, and am much less interested in the question of the theory itselfā¦ than in fact what happened when he put forth this theory that turned out to be unpopular among this particular subset of transwomen. And so I wouldnāt say that Iām a strong and passionate defender of Bailey and his work. What I would say is that I am strong and passionate defender of the right to free speech, and also to scientific progress, and of people being able to study things that may be unpopular though scientific. A good example of that is John Bancroft of Indiana University, as being portrayed as having been somebody who denounced Bailey as not being a scientist. But I have talked to Bancroft myself, I interviewed him for this, and in fact what he was saying is actually what Dr, Bailey just said, which is that the book is not science in the traditional sense of the book was not original researchāwhat the book was is a scientific popularization. Bancroft told me and I think would tell you that it was based on scientific theories, in particular Blanchardās work. And Blanchardās work is science. So thatās clinical studies and laboratory studies and things like that. So I think thereās a real difference there, and I wouldnāt say that Iām somehow a defender of Blanchardās theory or a defender of Baileyās work. What I would say is that I looked at what happened to Bailey and was stunned and shocked to discover what three transwomen in particular did to try to basically ruin him because he was putting forth a theory they didnāt like.
Krasny: Well, one of those women whoās been mentioned already, Lynn Conway, said your history was one sided, was paid for by the sex research consortium at Northwestern.
Dreger: Yeah, Lynn Conway is actually making that up entirely. There is no sex research consortium at Northwestern. Northwestern could confirm that for you and would be happy to do so. I am paid out of an entirely different system than Bailey is. We are in different colleges. I am paid out of the medical school system. My research budget is mine to do with what I please, and this is exactly what I do in all sorts of different projects.
Krasny: We should mention you are an intersex researcher and activist and longtime veteran advocate of intersexā
Dreger: Indeed, I helped lead the Intersex Society of North America for ten years, which is part of how I got into this. Because I had heard through the gender activist grapevine, which I was part of, that Bailey was this horrible person. And I simply believed it all. Conway was in fact a donor to the Intersex Society, so she and I knew each other that way. In fact, I had invited her over to my home one day, because we both live in Michigan, to help out a colleague of mine who was considering sex reassignment surgery. And she was very kind, and came over and spent a couple of hours with this friend of mine. And I left them alone so they could do one-on-one peer support. I had heard all of these terrible things about Bailey, so when a mutual friend finally introduced us last year in February of 2006, he stuck me as somebody who didnāt seem at all like what I was hearing. And so I became interested. And then one of the three transwomen who went after him actually went after me for complicated reasons, so then I became even more interested and decided to do this study. I really expected when I started doing this history that I would end up with a āhe said she saidā kind of story, that there would be a misunderstanding. And I was absolutely shaken to my core to discover what I did find, which was that they had absolutely charged him with things that were baselessāand that they must have known were in fact baselessāand made his life absolute hell and nearly got him basically thrown out of the scientific profession in some waysā¦ because people became so afraid of associating with him because of all these charges that in fact had beenāas far as I could find from my intense investigationāwere not true. Now, Professor Conway says that she hasnāt had a chance to respond to this, but in fact I tried every which way but Sunday to get her to talk to me, and she refused. And this claim that the New York Times piece was published without her consultation, I also think is false. Mr. Carey at my request gave her a copy of my article so she could respond to it three weeks ago. So I simply donāt take herāyou knowā¦ āI havenāt had a chance to respondā kind of claim as being false, frankly. I think sheās had plenty of chances to respond. In fact, most of what I do in the article is actually taken from Conwayās own site. She has been so obsessed with Professor Baileyāand with ruining Professor Bailey and anybody associated with himāthat I was able to take largely things off of her site, and simply connect the dots in terms of what she did. All these things that she organized in terms of charges at Northwestern, she puts on her site. She calls them āconfidential,ā but theyāre all right there.
Krasny: Thereās stuff on the site even about his children as I understand it.
Dreger: Well, that stuff actually she didnāt put up, although she links to it. Thatās put up by a woman named Andrea James whoās a trans woman out of Los Angeles, and Andrea James basically does whatever she can to harass people who cross her. Bailey crossed her in this way by talking about a theory she didnāt like, so he [sic] went after his children by putting up photos of them when they were in grade school and middle school blocking out their eyes and putting basically obscene captions underneath. She says it was a satire, meant to be of his book, but his children didnāt take it as a satire as you might imagine, they took it as a personal threat, basically. And Iāve talked to them about that, and itās actually in my article.
Krasny: Alice Dreger again is with us from East Lansingāshe’s Associate Professor of Clinical and Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwesternāand will have a piece appear in the Archives of Sexual Behavior next year on the whole history of this. Joan Roughgarden is here with us in studio, sheās Professor of Biological Science at Stanford University, author of Evolutionās Rainbow, well-known transsexual and academic. Professor Roughgarden, I know this has you pretty exercised. Letās find out why. Youāve used the word āfraudā to me repeatedly.
Roughgarden: Yes I have, and thank you for inviting me. Itās interesting listening to the dialogue weāve just heard. From my standpoint the situation is fairly clear, and itās been clear for several years. The book by Bailey was initially advertised as science, and thereās no doubt about this. For example, The National Academy of Sciences letterhead had an advertisement that read āGay, Straight, or Lying? Science has the answer,ā and conclusions were promised that āmay not always be politically correct, but are scientifically accurate, thoroughly researched, and occasionally startling. And the bottom headline to the cover of Baileyās book says āThe Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism.ā But in point of fact, there is no science in the book, as theyāre apparently now agreeing. And on the whole, the book as a work of science is fraudulent. It presents only interviews of six subjects that Bailey himself admitsāstates in the bookāthat he met while ācruisingā (page 141) [141] in “The Baton, Chicagoās premier female impersonator club.” [186] And so based on a sample size of six, heās tried to draw the conclusions that heās just mentioned. And furthermore, he didnāt correctly and rigorously transcribe the narratives from those people. He relied on his memories of what they told him. And he manipulated those narratives, because when they said things he disagreed with, he in turn argued with them. So the data are corrupted and tampered with throughout. And then there are these additional charges of the absence of consent by the women. Some of the women claim to have had sex with him as well. And thereās a narrative in his book called āthe Danny narrativeā which is apparently completely fabricated. So as an act of science, this is fraudulent.
Krasny: I read that Danny narrative. How do we know itās completely fabricated? I found it a pretty fascinating narrative actually.
Roughgarden: Yeah, well it would be if it were true.
Krasny: How do we know itās not?
Roughgarden: Well, we donāt, but itās been reported not to be true. And so this is what surrounds the supposed data in the book. And so issue number one with Bailey is the fact that the… the claim that the science is fraudulent, and number two, that there is manifest bigotry throughout the book. And let me read, if I might, three quotations there that illustrate the manifest bigotry. One of them refersāone example quotation involves this āJuanita,ā in which he saysā
Krasny: The one with which heās alleged to have sex with, we should say for the record, yes.
Roughgarden: And he goes on to say, quote in the book, āHer ability to enjoy emotionally meaningless sex appears male typical. In this sense, homosexual transsexuals might be especially suited to prostitution.” [185] Homosexual transsexuals “lust after men.ā [191] And then he goes on, he actually says this in the book on page 183: āAbout 60% of the homosexual transsexuals and drag queens we studied were Latina or Black.” [183] Latina people “might have more transsexual genes than other ethnic groups do.ā [183] Very clearly racist. And then number three, the third one, is a particularly interesting one and gets at both women and gays at the same time: āThe brains of homosexual people may be mosaics of male and female parts.” [60] Gay menās pattern of susceptibility to mental problems reflects their femininity: “The problems that gay men are most susceptible toāeating disorders, depression, and anxiety disordersāare the same problem that women also suffer from disproportionately.” [82] “Learning why gay men are more easily depressed than straight men may tell us why women are also.ā [83] So basically, if Bailey hasnāt insulted you, youāre no one.
Krasny: Joan Roughgarden, again with us here in studio, is Professor of Biological Science at Stanford and author of Evolutionās Rainbow. I wanted also to get Mara Keisling in this. Mara is Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Mara Keisling, thereās something that has emerged out of this, those who are sympathetic with Professor Baileyāthe power of a subset of transsexuals to ruin a manās lifeāand it does seem to be us versus them.
Keisling: Well, let me just echo Dr. Dreger for a second. Weāre talking about two different issues here. One is the alleged ruining of a manās life. And the other was what was this, and I hate to use the word āstudyā as itās been used here, but going back to Professor Baileyās book, what is that? This would have been just some obscure thing that just happened and dissipated and nobody ever heard of it again had it not been for four things: One: The way it was presented as a scientific study. And everybodyās talked quite a bit about that. Had this been called Stuff I Suppose after Meeting Some People in a Gay Bar, that probably would have lessened the attention it got from trans people. Second: In the book, he thenābased on these seven peopleāhe then says there are only two types of transsexuals, and I think Professor Roughgarden just did a good job of explaining that. But itās equivalent to me saying, āWell, I talked to three professors on the phone today, and I can tell you that all professors live in California, Michigan, or Illinois.ā Itās kind of that stark. Third: There were the questions of impropriety and inappropriate following up of human subject rules. And then fourth: Just the way the book was sensationalized, even in its visuals. Itās called The MAN Who Would Be Queen. And I think itās unclear if āthe manā refers to gay people or trans people, although itās pretty clear that theyāre interchangeable in this context to a large extent. But then thereās a picture, which is clearly meant to be a muscularized calf in high heels. And itās trying to sensationalize it toā¦ obviously to sell the book. But really to follow in the theme that Professor Bailey follows throughout the book, of trans people being well-suited for prostitution, and really being just men.
Krasny: Mara Keisling, Iām going to have to come in here, because I think you can hear our theme is coming up. Weāre coming to our break, and I want to give out the phone number for those of you who would like to join us, you are cordially invited to do so. Our toll-free number for your calls is 866-733-6786. Again, toll-free from wherever youāre listening to us or howeverāradio, internet, Sirius satellite, join us: 866-733-6786. Or you can send an email [email protected]. Iām Michael Krasny.
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Krasny: This is Forum. Iām Michael Krasny. Weāre talking about a debate that began a number of years ago with the appearance of a book by Professor Michael Bailey of Northwestern called The Man Who Would Be Queen. And it continues to cause a good deal of stir as it was reported in the New York Times yesterday in a discussion of this controversy that took place at the International Academy of Sex Research in Vancouver. We have on the line with us Dr. Bailey, who is the author of the book and the subject of a great deal of this controversy, as well as Dr. Alice Dreger who is Associate Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern, who did a history of this affair, weāll call it. And we also have with us Mara Keisling on the line, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. And with us in studio, Professor Joan Roughgarden, Professor of Biological Science at Stanford and author of Evolutionās Rainbow. You are indeed welcome to join us. Our toll-free number again for your calls is 866-733-6786 or you can email us: [email protected]. Before I go to your calls and emails, I wanted to go back to Professor Dailey [sic]. I know he wants to respond to many of the things heās heard hereāI want to afford him the opportunity to do thatābut what I am really interested in, because I said I read the section on “Danny” and I found it fascinating. A boy who was what Professor Bailey calls a feminine man and an outcast going back to really before kindergarten and cross-dressing at an early age, wanting all kinds of girly things and playing with dolls and so forth. And weāve heard Professor Roughgarden say that you made this out of whole cloth, so Iād like to know what you have to say to that.
Bailey: I think her accusation reflects the degree of accuracy to which weāve become familiar with Dr. Roughgarden. Iā¦ Not only does “Danny” exist, but I amā¦ I have several informants who keep me apprised of his development, and now heās a happy, out gay man, as I predicted in the book. And I would say that both the critics in the studio there, either have not read my book, or they are lying about it. And that is, both of them, are saying that the only evidence I present for the theory of transsexualism that I espouse in the book is my interviews, or whateverā¦ my associations with several transsexual women. That is utterly false as I said earlier in the show, and itās clear to anybody who reads the book, there is a very systematic and large set of studies by Ray Blanchard, and thatās where the science comes from. I donāt know why itās so hard for them to understand, so I assume that this is what they prefer your listeners to believe. And itāsā
Krasny: Let meā
Bailey: Itās false.
Krasny: Let me ask Professor Roughgarden about that, because thereās been a good deal of criticism about theā¦ Mr. Blanchardās research as well from you and others, this whatās been called this āsubsetā of transsexuals.
Roughgarden: Right, umāwe have to be clear that the issue here is not whether or not there exist some people who satisfy the narrative ofā¦ that theyāre motivated to become transsexuals because of a sexual motivation. The issue is whether or not you can take all transsexuals and subdivide them exclusively into two subsets, with characteristics associated with each subset. And everyone who knows transsexuals knows that there are a lot of individual narratives. And all the work prior to Blanchard was involved with an elaborate taxonomy with different kinds of gender- and sexuality-variant people. And there are of course different sexuality- and gender-variant expressions in other cultures around the world. So itās ludicrous on its face to think that you can subdivide all of transsexuals into these two categories that Bailey and Blanchard before him were pushing. Now, the book wasnāt advertised as being about Blanchardās work, and Blanchardās data are not actually presented in the book. The book is all about Baileyās work. But if you go back to Blanchardās work, you again do find that the existence of these two clean-cut categories is a figment of imaginationā¦ because Blanchard sent out a bunch of questionnaires, and he has three different studies in which the results of the questionnaires are tabulated, and you see a scattering of all sorts of answers to the questionnaires. And trying to find that they coalesce into two distinct clusters is really an exercise in pure imagination.
Krasny: Seems to be the heart of one of the arguments that has been so contentiousāand we have Joe, a caller from Idaho who says āWhatās the argument?ā I guessā¦ Does that make it a little more clear, Joe, what you just heard?
Joe: Well, yes, yes, I appreciate your taking my call and I must say I am impressed by everyoneās level of education. But from somebody whoās just switching around the Sirius satellite radio, and I tune in, it sounds to me like an educated Jerry Springer Show, and real civilized. I hear the one doctor or professor say that you canāt categorize these two people, or these people into two groups, or two subsetsā¦ well, they do it to all males, youāre either normal or gay, right? You just kind of divide them into two groups, soā¦ this argument to me is… so, this guy wrote a book, it seems like itās a halfway decent book. Iāve never read it, it sounds like the guyās opinion, and people are up in arms about it. Again, itās a civilized Jerry Springer Show. I just donāt get it.
Krasny: Well, thatās the first time weāve been called a civilized Jerry Springer Show (laughs). Thank you for the call.
Keisling: Can I jump in there, Michael, for a second?
Krasny: Yes, please do, it’s Mara Keisling.
Keisling: I was just about to say when we went to the break, when this book came out, my organization, the National Center for Transgender Equality, was relatively silent on the topic. And there was a good reason for that, and it really ties in with this Jerry Springer idea here. What happenedāsomehow this has now been framed as a bunch of crazy transsexuals got all crazy, and theyāre crazyā¦ when in fact whatās happened here is an academic wrote a book, and other academics, and some other people, but mostly other academics with really incredible academic credentials, just as Professor Bailey seems to have, they said, āWait a minute, hereās how we react to that academically.ā And then other people join in, and thatās how academic things are supposed to happen. And so we steered clear of it initially, just because academics were reviewing it, responding to it, didnāt like it, thought it was junk science, and stated that. You know, I was asked by an interviewer the other day, āWas it fair that they tried to get Dr. Bailey in trouble with Northwestern University?ā And that was such an absurd question to me, because what from my view as a non-academicāalthough I taught college a long time ago, I donāt nowābut from my view as a non-academic, an academic wrote something and other academics responded to it, and thatās how academia is supposed to work.
Dreger: (unintelligible)
Krasny: Alice Dreger, I know you want in here, yeahā¦
Dreger: Yeah, sorry I lost you a little after the break. Yeah, you know I think Ms. Keisling does wonderful work, and itās really important work politically. But I think thatās a little bit of a misrepresentation of what happened. And as somebody who delved into the history, what I see is that it started with an academic discussion, but it very quickly morphed into something else entirely, which was a personal attack on Michael Bailey, and everything he stood for, and all of his friends, and all of his colleagues who chose to stand by him. The kinds of things you see on Lynn Conwayās site, the kinds of things, of stuff you see on Andrea Jamesā site is not academic. I would challenge anybody to Google āBailey Conway timelineā and take a look at what Lynn Conway has doneā¦ and to see it as like anything what academics do, which is to meet each other on the point of concepts, and to look at the evidence, and to do careful reasoning, and to have discussions in that way. This looks nothing like that. What concerns me is that Professor Roughgarden is repeating charges, and is in fact even misrepresenting those charges. For example, before the break she said some of the women claim to have had sex with him. One woman claims to have had sex with Professor Bailey, and as I show in my article, the evidence for that is very poor, and even if he did, in fact, it wouldnāt have represented any violation of ethics in any kind of reading of normal ethics reading. So I think itās easy to say that, āWell, this is an academic dispute,ā but itās really not. What we see here is an academic who chose to write a popularization, said some stuff that was unpopular, and then was the subject of a most extraordinary system of attack. And really, I would call it a system of attack, and I think if you look at Conwayās site, you would agree with me.
Krasny: And let me say also that we do run a very civil discourse type program here, but I think there are serious questionsāwe donāt try to create heat for the sake of creating heat, or have people slugging each otherābut there are questions of scientific research, there are questions of free expression, there are questions of how the internet is used. Accusations and denials and attacks, and all of thatā¦ and I want to go to more of your calls. Jen, join us, thanks for waiting, youāre on the air.
Jen: Hi, yes, thank you very much for taking my call. Iām actually surprised I got through because Iāve tried to call before. This is airing in San Francisco, where Iām sure lots of people are interested in this topic. Anyway, I guess Iām calling because Iām up in armsāand I apologize because I havenāt read the bookābut Iām very interested in whatās going on. I actually had a couple of comments. One comment, first of all, I have a lot of trans friends, although most of my trans friends are female to male, and actually one of my best friends is female to male. And I wondered, Iām actually looking at Ray Blanchardās site here onlineā¦ I wondered if this reasoning also applied to female to male transsexuals in his work, and it sounds like it does.
Krasny: No, actually I think, Professor Bailey, you stated pretty clearly from the beginning, that this is a research project for someone else, right?
Bailey: That is correct, and I happen to know that Ray Blanchard thinks itās very unlikely that any analogue of autogynephilia exists in genetic females.
Krasny: Jen, you had some more comments, please.
Jen: OK, well online it says a female to male attracted to women is driven by his attraction to women to become a man. Which is saying that basically a female to male wants to change their sex to become a man because theyāre attracted to women, which again, wouldā
Bailey: What website, what URL are you looking at?
Jen: Genderpsychology.org
Bailey: (laughs) Thatās not Ray Blanchardās website. Alice Dreger, you want to take that?
Dreger: (laughs) Thatās not at all Ray Blanchardās website. This is one of the things that’s happened–
Jen: Well, whatās his website?
Dreger: This is actually a website of an enemy of Blanchardās who doesnāt like his theory.
Jen: Well, whatās his website?
Dreger: His website would be at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Canada, heās got a very dull website, in fact, that just basically presents his research papers in a very scholarly fashion.
Jen: Well, Iām a molecular biologist, I can understand this stuff.
Dreger: One of the things thatās happened is that the folks who donāt like this stuff have put up websites that represent themselves as being the websites of these people saying outrageous things. And then people say to us, āGosh, you say the most outrageous things,” but in fact thatās not actually whatās going on.
Krasny: There has been in fact on some websites charges that Mr. Blanchard hasāI should say Professor Blanchard as well as Professor Baileyāare actually saying that transsexuals are perverts, that theyāre against sex reassignment surgery, things of that sort, so lots of stuff has gone on here that rhetorically just doesnāt have much basis for it. Let me thank the caller. However, what about the issues, and let me go to you on this, Mara Keisling, what about the issues that we keep hearing about with Professor Bailey failing to get institutional board permission on human rights subject research, lacking informed consent from research subjects, that these are in play as issues, and these are certainly what brought the Northwestern investigation into play.
Keisling: Well, yeah, and absolutely in the context in which I mentioned them was again, this would have been much less of a big deal had those issues not arisen. And those were reviewed and investigatedāor whatever the right terms areāat Northwestern where they should have, and they probably do on a regular basis with lots of different kinds of research. And had there not been those claims, and had there not been other conditions not being met, my comment is that this would not have been a big deal.
Krasny: I think, excuse, me, I think one of the things that made it a big deal was the imprint of the National Academy of Sciences, donāt you think?
Keisling: Absolutely. And I think if you readāI think Professor Roughgarden read from theirā¦ I think thatās where she was reading from, their initial announcement of the bookā¦ that caused a real problem. Again, framing this as science. Whatāsāthe thing thatās really hard to do here is to separate these two issues. The one is the initial book, and the second is the story behind what happened after the book. So when I mentioned earlier about academics responding as academics do, I still stand by that. Were there non-academics responding? Sure. Were there academics responding in non-academic ways? Thatās not my expertise. But I donāt pass judgment on those charges, you know. They were investigated as they should have been investigated.
Krasny: Professor Bailey, can you let us know why you left the chairmanship? You were Chair of the Psychology Department, as I understand it, at Northwestern.
Bailey: You know, I donāt see how this campaign of defamation requires me to open up my entire personal life to everybody, soā
Krasny: Let me just ask youā
Bailey: Everything that Iā
Krasny: Let meā
Bailey: Everything that Iām willing to say about my personal life Iāve already said, and you should probably be asking Alice Dregerā¦
Krasny: All right, Iām not asking you a personal question, Iām asking you what I hope will be a professional question, and Alice Dreger maybe because itāsābecause he has been defamed, and I want to give him every opportunity to clear his name here. If he resigned because of the investigation as has been alleged, then that probably ought to be made clear. If he resigned for other reasons, we donāt have to know what they were.
Dreger: Yeah, thereās no evidence in fact that he resigned because of the investigation. He says otherwise, Northwestern says otherwiseā¦ the dates donāt make any sense. Why would he have resigned in October of 2004 if the investigation finished in December of 2004?
Krasny: Thatās what I wanted on the record, thank you for that.
Bailey: I donāt know why you were asking my critic about the issue of consent and so on. I donāt think she has any expertise or knowledge about that. Alice Dreger just did a big investigation of that, and I think you should be asking her.
Krasny: Well, orā
Keisling: Professor Bailey, that was the point I was making. Thatās not for me to pass judgment on.
Krasny: Yeah, but Professor Roughgardenā
Bailey: Thatās why I donāt know why he asked you.
Krasny: Um, I asked for an opinion, just like you have given forth opinions here. Weāll hear other opinions, in fact. Letās go to another caller. Mike, youāre on the air, good morning. Mike, are you there?
Mike: Hello?
Krasny: Go ahead, youāre on the air.
Mike: Yes. Dr. Bailey, these are really hot issues that have political implications that are current right now, and thereās a lot of heterosexism rampant in our culture, as the first caller indicated. Are you aware of any of your own personal biases around these matters? And what have you done to take care of those, and amp up your personal cultural competence around those issues? Iāll take your answer off the air.
Krasny: Thank you for your call.
Bailey: I believe my book, if you will read itāand most people who are talking about it and yelling about it havenātāyou will find it to be an enormously sympathetic portrayal of both gay men and transgender males, and thatās in part why it was nominated for a Lambda Award until Conway et al. managed to get it off the nomination list. So I assumeāI certainly have worked to eliminate any bias. I donāt know if Iāve been successful, but I actually think that my book is very sympathetic. It really calls for tolerance for feminine males and for transsexuals, and I think that reasonable people would agree with me.
Krasny: And I know that Professor Dreger does, but I want to ask Professor Dreger about something else, which is thatāsome of those seeking grant money were actually told to dissociate themselves from Professor Bailey? Thatās a charge from Professor Baileyās bailiwick, so to speak.
Dreger: Thatās actually something that Ben Carey at the New York Times was able to uncover. I was not able to get anybody on the record to say that sort of thing, because I didnāt ask them specifically about that. Ben Carey at the Times interviewed a number of scientists who told him they had been told by various granting agencies that if they had any association with Bailey they should downplay it, because in fact it wasnāt going to make them look good in the granting system.
Krasny: Have you compared this or have others compared this to the Helmuth Nyborg episode, the Danish researcher who was fired back in 2006 after he reported a slight IQ difference between the sexes?
Dreger: Others have done that. I havenāt done that specifically, and thatās another example though, of where researchers go into controversial areas and say things that are unpopular. And rather than responding basically to the work in terms of the evidence and the reasoning, they go after the individuals. And that is something that has been frankly problematic since the time of Galileo.
Krasny: Joan Roughgarden.
Roughgarden: Iād like to add to this, though, that from my perspective, the implications of this scienceāthat I consider to be fraudulent and unfoundedāare that it gets incorporated into textbooks and used for instruction in medical schools. And we find for example in Simon LeVayās large over $100 textbook, this science which is at best controversial, and as I say, in my view, completely fraudulent. And what this does is it means that a transgender patient of a doctor has to look at the doctor and wonder whether or not theyāveāwhether the doctorās been indoctrinated in some science which is both pejorative and unfounded. And thatās why itās very important to make sure this isnāt seen solely in terms of personalities. And as Mara says, as the events that took place after the publication of the book. Itās the book itself and the research that it claims to present and popularize which is where the real problem lies in my view. And all this personality stuff thatās coming up is quite a distraction from where the serious issues lie.
Krasny: We go to more of your calls and weāre joined by Ben. Morning, Ben.
Ben: Yes, hiāthis is Ben Barres, Iām a professor at Stanford. So, I think an important point that really hasnāt come out on the show yet is that transgender people as a group are amongst the most oppressed and disparaged groups in this country, perhaps in the world. Dr. Baileyās book is using questionable science, I think both his and Blanchardās, to further oppress these people. And so Iād like to ask Dr. Baileyāhe feels heās been defamed. The transgender people feel rather defamed as well, and I would be very grateful if he could directly address whether he still feels many transgender people are best suited for work in the sex trades.
Bailey: You want me toāso just let me address the general point first. Again, I reject the assertion that itās all transgender people who are offended by my book. Many transgender people are actually very happy that people are finally talking about this phenomenon called autogynephilia, which they feel captures their motivation. Now of course when certain transgender people such as Anne Lawrence have publicly come out and said that, theyāve been the object of attack and defamation by Andrea James and Lynn Conway, who almost invariably erect a web page devoted to very negative publicity about them. So I think thatās what I will say.
Krasny: Well, what about what the caller says about making the connection between this transgender and the sex trade?
Bailey: OK, the idea is that the other kind of transsexual, which Blanchard calls a homosexual male to female transsexual, meaning theyāre homosexual with respect to their birth sexāthat is, they like menāis a type of, if you will, very feminine gay manā¦ who decides for various reasons that he would be more happy living his lifeāāhis,ā meaning before transitionāas a woman. I think that men in general, including heterosexual men, including homosexual men, even including very feminine homosexual men, have a greater propensity to enjoy casual sex than women do. If this is a news flash, you all need to get out more. And homosexual male to female transsexuals for whatever reason tend to be male typical in that respect.
Krasny: And you find that offensive, Ben?
Ben: I donāt think heās answered my question. Does he think that some transgender people are best suited for work as prostitutes in the sex trades? Yes or no?
Bailey: Thatās typical of Professor Barresāā
Ben: Iām quoting your book.
Bailey: I say ātheyāre best suitedā? Is that a quote?
Ben: Your book is very clear on that.
Bailey: Does it say the words ābest suitedā? Does it say the words ābest suitedā? If not, I think that you areā
Ben: Just answer my question, whatever your book says. Do you feel that transgender people, some of them, are best suited for work as prostitutes?
Bailey: I never said ābest suited.ā And Iā
Ben: Just answer the question, do you feel so or not?
Bailey: I donāt say ābest suitedā and I donāt think they are best suited.
Krasny: I think you answered the question.
Bailey: Theyāre better suited than genetic women are.
Roughgarden: He says āespecially suited.ā
Krasny: You say āespecially suited,ā you have that there, the quote?
Roughgarden: I have the quote, yes. [reading from page [185]] ā…transsexuals might be especially suited to prostitution.ā
Krasny: Professor Bailey?
Bailey: Well, I think that reflects what I just said, especially compared with genetic women. Thatās not like ābest suited,ā like thatās the best thing they could ever do.
Krasny: All right, let me go to some more of your calls. Weāre going to Richard next. Richard, youāre on.
Richard: Hello, yeah, I was just kind ofāI heard some of the stuff that Michael Krasny was saying about your study, and I have some objections to it. I mean, Iām a black male, and Iām not that well off, but you know, I have a bit of an organic problem. I have gynomastia, so does that mean I now have toā¦ Iāve experienced a lot of this recently where Iāve got people sniffing around me, trying to determine, I guess, what it is that they think that I am. And Iām just sort of minding my own business and now… I kind of think one thing you might be ignoring.. I think thereās a lot of things you might be ignoring in your study. One is economic factors. I mean, if people, poor people, canāt find jobs, then what else are they going to do? I mean, some of them probably are turning to the sex trade simply because they canāt find jobs. And then you also have health factors. If youāve got people, possibly like me, that have got male breasts, where do we go to get help? Do we just get cataloged as possibly some sort of drag queen, while some of your men want to sniff around and determine our sex?
Krasny: Professor Bailey, I think thereās a question in there. Do you want to respond?
Bailey: You know what, I think because of her background, Alice Dreger is a better person to address that question.
Dreger: Yeah, I actually would love to. First, the caller is talking about gynecomastia, which is whatās considered female-typical breast growth in men, although it happens in so many men I think thereās a problem with thinking of it as female-typical. But itās got a bigger question in how that Bailey talked about this. And one of the things Iāve uncovered in the work that Iāve was doing was this videotape of this woman identified as āJuanitaā in the book, And one of the things that happened was that āJuanitaā participated very willingly in a sex textbook video. And in that, she talks very openly about being a sex worker with no shame, and frankly, I donāt think she should have any shame. I donāt think thereās a problem with people who are able to choose sex work, truly choose it, doing it. But she talks very openly about doing it, making $100,000 a year, and about really, really enjoying sex with men. She said, āI did it because I enjoy sex with men. I like men and I enjoy doing it, and I make a lot of money out of it.ā And so I think one of the things thatās happening with this representation of Bailey as if heās the only person whoās ever said this stuff. But in fact āJuanitaā herselfāwho ends up charging him with all sorts of things after she meets Conwayāin fact said in this 2002 video that she was a sex worker, she enjoyed making the money, and she really enjoyed casual sex with men.
Krasny: All right, weāre coming to the end of the program, and I want to give Joan Roughgarden a final word here. What do you object most to in this study? The science, or the lack of science, should we put it?
Roughgarden: Well, yeah, from my position, itās the fraud and the bigotry. And the implication of the fraud is of course that it gets incorporated uncritically into textbooks, and which then feed an institutionalization of prejudice. And the problem with the bigotryāI mean, someone is entitled to be bigoted if they wantābut this creates a culture of siege at Northwestern. And it interferes with the possibility of developing research questions in an uncoerced and free way. And I think that the culture of siege thatās now grown up around Northwesternāand that Alice unfortunately has become involved withāis hurting that institution. And I think that the administrators there have to be more courageous about looking into this situation.
Krasny: It was hurt a lot more by a man named Arthur Butz, who Iāll just, for the sake of memory bring up here, but I want to thank Professor Bailey who is Professor of Psychology at Northwesternā¦ for his book again, The Man Who Would Be Queen. And Professor Alice Dreger, Associate Professor at Northwestern Clinical and Medical Humanities and Bioethics. Thanks also to Mara Keisling, Executive Director of National Center for Transgender Equality, and to Joan Roughgarden, Professor of Biological Science at Stanford and author of Evolutionās Rainbow. And thanks to you, our listeners. We are appreciative of you being with us. Our producers are Robin Gianattassio-Malle, Keven Guillory, and Dan Zold, and Iām Michael Krasny.
Please contact me with any corrections.
References
All quotations below were read or discussed during the program and are from Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen. Numbers refer to the page containing the quotation. Notes are in italics and indented.
Page #:
[60] “Psychologist Sandra Witelson has hypothesized that the brains of homosexual people may be mosaics of male and female parts, and I think she is right. This mixture explains much of what is unique in gay menās culture and lives.”
[66] “Here in Chicago just past the turn of the century, I think I observe a preponderance of gay men in the following occupations: florists, waiters, hair stylists, actors (or at least acting students), classical musicians (but not rock musicians), psychologists (or at least psychology students) and psychiatrists, antique sellers, fashion and interior designers, yoga and aerobics instructors, masseurs, librarians, flight attendants, nurses, clothing retail salesmen (e.g., at the Gap and Banana Republic), web designers (but not software or hardware designers), and Catholic priests.”
[82] “Another possibility is that gay menās pattern of susceptibility to certain (but not all) mental problems reflects their femininity. The problems that gay men are most susceptible toāeating disorders, depression, and anxiety disordersāare the same problems that women also suffer from disproportionately.”
[83] “Learning why gay men are more easily depressed than straight men might tell us why women are also.”
[141] “I have had only limited success tonight recruiting research subjects for our study of drag queens and transsexuals and am cruising the huge club one more time before leaving.”
Note: Here, Bailey is talking about the gay night at Crobar, and not the Baton. Bailey does discuss the Baton starting at page 186(see below).
[183] “About 60 percent of the homosexual transsexuals and drag queens we studied were Latina or black. The proportion of nonwhite subjects in our studies of ordinary gay men is typically only about 20 percent. Alma says she thinks that Hispanic people might have more transsexual genes than other ethnic groups do.”
Note: Bailey frequently attributes controversial statements to other people. By deferring to spokespeople like Dreger or his graduate students, he can later say, “I never said that.”
[185] “Although Juanita is so feminine in some respects, even some behavioral respects, her ability to enjoy emotionally meaningless sex appears male-typical. In this sense, homosexual transsexuals might be especially well suited to prostitution.”
[186] “The Baton is Chicagoās premier female impersonator club, featuring several past Miss Continentals, including the gorgeous Mimi Marks.”
[191] “Furthermore, I do not believe that Cherās attraction to men is as intense or as unambiguous as that of homosexual transsexuals. She is autogynephilic, and menās place in her sexual world is complicated. So the loss of a potential sex partner is less of a loss, overall, to Cher than it is to the homosexual transsexuals, who simply lust after men.”
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Higgon earned a doctorate from University of Edinburgh in 1999.
Higgon is a psychologist with Dumfries & Galloway Health & Social Care. Much of Higgon’s work is with older patients.
Anti-transgender activism
Higgon was one of several signatories who praised the Cass Review that finally closed the UK’s inefficient Tavistock youth gender clinic and opened the door for decentralized care for gender diverse youth. Higgon and friends celebrated the closure for different reasons in a response. Co-signers were:
Dr Maja Bowen [aka “Isidora Sanger”/”la scapigliata”]
Dr Tessa Katz, GP
Dr Ellen Wright, GP
Higgon wrote:
We think the current guidelines effectively prohibit psychologists from taking a questioning approach and applying ethical practice in these situations. The absence of a robust evidence base supporting psychological and medical intervention is a concern in this rapidly growing population, leaving significant gaps in our understanding of many relevant issues. The disproportionate increase in presentations of females to services, the phenomenon of so-called Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria, the voices of individuals who have desisted or detransitioned, and the experiences of those for whom existing treatments have been of value must all be addressed in the search for quality research informing best-evidence practice. Such research can only be conducted in an environment that is open to discussion in a respectful and professionally inquisitive manner.
In 2023, Higgon was convener of ScotPAG (Scottish Professionals Advising on Gender). Higgon outlined its origins: “Some of us CAN-SG members who are based in Scotland found ourselves talking about the situation in Scotland and the need to engage with Scottish institutions, most obviously the Scottish government, about gender healthcare.:
Higgon was also a signatory on WHO Decides, a petition protesting Florence Ashley and others in a working group announced by the World Health Organization. Higgon also signed the Protecting Puberty petition deisgned to halt clinical trials of puberty blockers in the UK.
Higgon et al (December 14, 2025). Plea to halt the Pathways Puberty Blocker Trial. via BPSwatch https://bpswatch.com/2025/12/15/plea-to-wes-streeting-to-halt-the-puberty-blocker-trial/ also via CAN-SG at https://can-sg.org/2025/12/18/open-letter-to-wes-streeting-on-the-pathways-puberty-blockers-trial/
Higgon et al (August 3, 2022). Time for honest reflection, not defence. The British Psychological Society https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/time-honest-reflection-not-defence
Higgon et al (September 3, 2020). Freedom of expression around diversity guidelines. The British Psychological Society https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/freedom-expression-around-diversity-guidelines
Resources
Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care (dghscp.co.uk)
Patrick Grzanka is an American academic and applied social issues researcher. Grzanka’s work often focuses on sex and gender minorities.
Background
Patrick Ryan Grzanka was born in November 1983. Grzanka attended University of Maryland, earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2004 and working as a lecturer there while earning a doctorate in American studies in 2010. From 2010 to 2014 Grzanka taught at the Honors College at Arizona State University. In 2014 Grzanka took an appointment at University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Grzanka is founder and director of Social Action Research Team (SART), a group conducting applied social research with a commitment to social justice-informed scholarship and praxis.
Grzanka became known to many from a confrontational interview conducted by anti-trans extremist Matt Walsh in the 2022 anti-trans propaganda piece What Is a Woman? The appearance led to significant backlash.
References
Grzanka PR, DeVore EN, Gonzalez KA, Pulice-Farrow L, Tierney D (2018). The biopolitics of passing and the possibility of radically inclusive transgender health care. The American Journal of Bioethics, 18(12), 17-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2018.1531167
Grzanka PR (2017). Undoing the psychology of gender: Intersectional feminism and social science pedagogy. In KA Case (Ed.), Intersectional pedagogy: A model for complicating identity and social justice (pp. 61-79). Routledge. ISBN 9781138942974
DeVore EN. Frantell KA, Grzanka PR, Miles JR, Spengler ES (2019, August). Conscience clauses and sexual and gender minority mental health care: A case study. Poster presented at the American Psychological Association Convention, Chicago, IL https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000396
Stella O’Malley is a conservative Irish therapist and anti-transgender extremist. O’Malley is a global ringleader in the modern ex-transgender and gender critical movements and a major supporter of anti-transgender efforts worldwide.
O’Malley founded anti-trans hate groupGenspect. O’Malley frequently collaborates with American clinician Sasha Ayad and anti-trans extremist Mia Hughes to uplift other conservative and anti-transgender voices.
Do not under any circumstances go to Stella OāMalley for any counseling, trans or otherwise. If you are a minor forced to see O’Malley, do everything in your power to end the sessions and find supportive local resources instead.
Background
O’Malley was born on November 16, 1973. O’Malley grew up with three siblings in the Dublin area in a household where at least one parent was alcoholic.
O’Malley and spouse Henry Thompson, a construction contractor, live in Birr, County Offaly with their two children RĆ³isĆn Thompson (born November 9, 2007) and Muiris Thompson (born August 5, 2009). O’Malley’s self-described parenting style is “impatient, moody and cranky” with “a very low threshold for ordinary whining.”
O’Malley was host of the 2018 propaganda piece Trans Kids: It’s Time To Talk. It features conservative and anti-trans activists, including James Caspian, Heather Brunskell-Evans, Venice Allan, Miranda Yardley, and people from the ex-trans movement
O’Malley is connected to a number of anti-trans organizations, most of which are just part of a web farm with reciprocal links to make O’Malley’s allies and their fringe ideologies seem more widespread and influential than they are.
In 2023 O’Malley co-authored the anti-trans book When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Parents with Sasha Ayad and Lisa Marchiano.
In 2024, when Texas politician Shawn Thierry lost the Democratic primary and joined Genspect as director of political strategy in the US. An article noting the announcement said:
Genspect has also been accused by medical experts and organizations of relying on junk science to support their stance. OāMalley, for instance, has falsely claimed that there are links between peer pressure, pornography and gender dysphoria. Genspect has also partnered with groups such as the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom, and argues that no one under the age of 25 should be allowed to transition because their brains āhavenāt yet fully matured.ā
In 2025, O’Malley criticized how the “the gender-critical woke” have been attacking anti-trans activists who share O’Malley’s conservative politics. According to O’Malley, “the gender-critical woke are liberal and left-wing. It is only on the issue of gender identity that the gender-critical woke break ranks with their fellow progressives.” O’Malley added:
In 2025, O’Malley filed a defamation suit against the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) and therapist Leonie O’Dowd, citing a article in the Winter 2024 issue of The Irish Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy titled “Providing therapeutic space to transgender and non-binary clients.” That article correctly noted that Genspect has taken “an anti-trans stance” in its activism.
Harris, Siobhan (April 25, 2024). Europe and the Puberty Blocker Debate.Medscape https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/europe-and-puberty-blocker-debate-2024a1000831
Pang, K. C., Giordano, S., Sood, N., & Skinner, S. R. (2021). Regret, informed decision making, and respect for autonomy of trans young people. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 5(9), e34āe35. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2352-4642(21)00236-4
Dianna Theadora Kenny earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Sydney in 1975, followed by training in music and education. Kenny then attended Macquarie University, earning a master’s degree in 1980 and a doctorate in 1988. While in school, Kenny worked in troubled students. Kenny taught at University of Sydney from 1988 to 2019. In 2019 Kenny founded DK Consulting.
Kenny, D. T. (2019). Gender development and the transgendering of children. In M. Moore & H. Brunskell-Evans (Eds.), Inventing transgender children and young people (pp. 93ā107). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Books
Kenny, Dianna (2025) InTRANSigence: Gender Ideology, Social Contagion, and the Making of a Transgender Generation. Independently published, ISBN 979-8262604371
Kenny, Dianna (2024). Gender Ideology, Social Contagion, and the Making of a Transgender Generation. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ISBN 978-1036414788
Ray Blanchard is an American-Canadian psychologist and anti-transgender activist. Blanchard is a key historical figure in academic exploitation and oppression of sex and gender minorities.
Blanchard’s Toronto gender clinic rejected 90% of trans people seeking healthcare. Blanchard also created several obscure diseases to categorize trans people and those who love us, including the mental disorders “autogynephilia” and “gynandromorphophilia.”
Following a long career of gatekeeping trans healthcare and creating transphobic diseases, Blanchard has become a key figure in anti-transgender extremism.
Overview
See this biography for Blanchard’s background and motivations.
Blanchard’s “contributions” to the field of gender identity and expression to date have been:
Regressive requirements for access to medical service
Forced submission to sexualized testing in order to get access to medical services
An obscure and largely-forgotten disease model of gender identity cribbed from Magnus Hirschfeld
A disease model of attraction to transgender people, which Blanchard called “gynandromorphophilia.”
Blanchard created a system in which only two subgroups of people could get through the Clarke Institute/CAMH program:
“Homosexual transsexuals,” or “gay males” who fetishize straight men
“Autogynephilic transsexuals,” or “nonhomosexual males” who fetishize feminizing themselves
“A man without a penis… is in reality what you are creating.”
From a June 2004 article :
Toronto psychologist Ray Blanchard, one of Canada’s leading — and most controversial — gender experts, argues the transgender movement is rife with delusion. “This is not waving a magic wand and a man becomes a woman and vice versa,” he says. “It’s something that has to be taken very seriously. A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you’re creating.” [1]
A 1984 article in the Toronto Star indicated that between 1969 and 1984, 90% of all people seeking trans health services were turned away at The Clarke. The Clarke averaged about 5 acceptances a year, totaling about 100 people. In other words, they denied access to over 900 applicants during that time. [2]
Blanchard’s program was more like a parole office than a therapeutic setting. It was a system based on mutual distrust, and treats gender diverse clients like sex offenders. In fact, Blanchard’s program used the same halls, offices, and staff for treating sex offenders. Imagine the dynamic that creates. Following in the footsteps of mentor Kurt Freund, B;anchard even subjects clients to the same sort of testing used on sex offenders (see plethysmograph: a disputed device).
By selecting for these patients and rejecting the rest, Blanchard has been able to advance the claim that being trans is all about sex, rather than gender identity. Blanchard published several articles regarding this theory, which went unnoticed until disgraced anesthesiologist Anne Lawrence latched on to them as a form of validation.
1998 was the year the Clarke Institute lost its federal funding for vaginoplasties, and the year Anne Lawrence wrote the pro-“autogynephilia” essay “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies.” Blanchard’s sudden irrelevance in the field of gender identity and to indigent patients in Toronto seeking funding for surgery made Anne Lawrence’s interest a natural opportunity for teamwork to advance their mutually beneficial agendas.
Following the publication of The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey, trans people and concerned professionals from around the world decided enough was enough with these people and started a public awareness campaign about Blanchard’s ties to a conservative-run eugenics think tank and behind-the-scenes bullying of dissenting peers. Once peers at HBIGDA expressed their concerns about Bailey to Northwestern University, Blanchard resigned in protest in November 2003.
Blanchard is going to go down in history as the George Rekers of gender diversity. Rekers was one of the most vocal critics of the American Psychiatric Association’s depathologization of homosexuality in 1973.
“Autogynephilia”
“Autogynephilia” is a sex-fueled mental illness made up by Blanchard, who defines it as “a manās paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.” [2]
This diagnosis appeals to some transgender people, who see the scientific-sounding term as a way to “elevate” themselves in social acceptability rather than compulsive masturbators, sex addicts, or people with a fetish for possessing a piece of female clothing or anatomy.
Look at the definition of āparaphiliaā put forth in the textbook used by Bailey in his cancelled Sexuality course (LeVay and Valente, Human Sexuality, p. 454). LeVayās description of paraphilias as āproblematic sexual behaviorā and “illnesses that need treatment” is a major insight into their entire project. These academic imply that āautogynephiliaā involves non-consenting adults, that being trans is a form of exhibitionism that requires responses from others. The suggest that coming out to friends and family and asking for public acceptance is a form of sexualized humiliation brought on by the very expression of gender.
Blanchard ideas appeal to a small group of other “autogynephilia” activists and conservative supporters. Most trans people and most mainstream scientists criticize “authogynephilia” as being similar to “nymphomania” and other fake sex diseases created to oppress others.
The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003)
Below is a shill review by Blanchard, posted on Amazon.com defending J. Michael Bailey.
[five stars] Man Who Would Be Queen, April 17, 2003 Reviewer: Ray Blanchard from Toronto
The explosion of rage detonated by the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, has largely obscured an important message of that book: There are two fundamentally different types of male-to-female transsexualism, and they are equally valid. The homosexual type are erotically aroused by other (biological) males, and the autogynephilic type are erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women.
When I joined the Clarke Gender Identity Clinic in 1980, the literalist interpretation of transsexualism as the condition of men-trapped-in-women’s-bodies reigned supreme. Many clinicians dismissed all transsexuals with a history of sexual arousal in association with cross-dressing as “mere transvestites” and summarily excluded them from consideration for sex reassignment surgery. This situation was extremely confusing to many male-to-female transsexuals who desperately wanted to undergo sex reassignment and live their lives as women, but who thought that their past history of masturbation in women’s attire meant that they were “merely” transvestites.
Fortunately for these patients, the policy of “one erection and you’re out” was never followed at the Toronto clinic. Several of the earliest patients approved for sex reassignment had been husbands and fathers in the male role, and they freely reported clear-cut histories of sexual arousal in association with cross-dressing or cross-gender fantasy. It gradually became clear to me that for such patients the erotic value of becoming a woman was the essential motive behind the desire for sex reassignment, and that erection and ejaculation in women’s attire were not simply accidental by-products. I never saw this as an invalid reason for desiring sex reassignment, I never saw these patients as some lesser breed of transsexuals, and I never designated their form of gender dysphoria as “secondary.”
During the years when I was publishing the autogynephilia papers, several autogynephiles wrote me to express their relief at learning that there were many others like themselves, and that their feelings of being transsexual were not a delusion. Those articles were published in specialty journals with limited circulations, and it is remarkable that any autogynephiles encountered them at all. Prof. Bailey’s book, which is written for a general audience in a clear and accessible style, has the potential to bring the same reassurance to a much larger group of people. The audiences for which this book was intended, which include students, clinical professionals, and laypersons, should not mistake the campaign of disinformation (verging at times on hate-mail) currently being waged by an ideologically-driven group of self-appointed “activists” as the universal view of all transsexual and transgender persons.
APA DIV 44
From an August 2003 CAMH newsletter: http://www.camh.net/careers/bt_pdfs/bt_august292003.pdf
Holding the framed citation is Ray Blanchard. Right is James S. Fitzgerald, Ph.D., President of Division 44 of the American Psychological Association.
The CAMH Gender Identity Clinic is delighted to announce that our clinic received a Presidential Citation from Division 44 of the American Psychological Association (the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues) at a ceremony on August 9, 2003.
The text of the Citation reads as follows:
“The Gender Identity Clinic has established itself as the premier research center on gender dysphoria research and clinical care since 1968, and is celebrating its 35th year.”
Resignation from HBIGDA
On 4 November 2003, Blanchard resigned from HBIGDA in protest of a letter they sent to Northwestern University regarding charges of ethical misconduct leveled at J. Michael Bailey.
November 4, 2003 Walter J. Meyer III, MD President, HBIGDA Bean Robinson, PhD Executive Director, HBIGDA
Dear Drs. Meyer and Robinson:
It is with deep regret that I tender my resignation in the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA). I have long supported the goals of the HBIGDA. I have been involved in the clinical care of transsexual persons for 24 years. During the years 1983 to 1991, I conducted eight research studies on the therapeutic impact of hormonal and surgical treatment of transsexuals, studies that were reported in six refereed journal articles and two book chapters. I published an additional article on the desirability of insurance coverage for sex reassignment surgery as recently as 2000. It is therefore a matter of some sadness that the recent actions of the HBIGDA Executive have made it necessary for me to disassociate myself from this organization.
I am referring to the appalling decision of the HBIGDA Officers and Board of Directors to attempt to intervene in Northwestern University’s investigation into the allegations made by certain members of the transsexual community against Prof. J. Michael Bailey. This decision is documented in the attached letter, which is prominently displayed on a popular transsexual Web site. Such an intervention, undertaken without any effort by the HBIGDA to conduct their own systematic inquiry or to learn all the relevant facts of the matter, could only be prejudicial to Northwestern’s investigation. In fact it has the appearance, whether this is accurate or not, of being a deliberate and improper attempt to bias that investigation. The HBIGDA would have been better advised to allow the Northwestern authorities, who are actually taking the trouble to investigate the allegations, to reach an impartial decision based on all relevant testimony and factual evidence.
I do not know the motives behind the Officers’ and Board of Directors’ actions, but those motives are irrelevant. It is their actions that are unacceptable and that make it impossible for me to continue to belong to the HBIGDA.
Very truly yours, Ray Blanchard
Blanchard and DSM
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association lists three “mental disorders” that can be diagnosed in gender variant people: gender identity disorder, transvestic fetishism, and childhood gender nonconformity.
Blanchard, who happens to be an American citizen, says a DSM listing has different implications in Canada than in the U.S. “This question of whether autogynephilia should be listed as a disorder is strictly an American preoccupation,” he says. “In the U.S. there is no universal health insurance plan, so people will pay for their SRS out of their own pocket. But in most of the Western world, where there is government-run health insurance, in order for their sex reassignment to be paid for, it has to be a disorder, it has to be in the DSM. Health plans don’t pay for surgery that is elective. They pay for surgery that is medically necessary.”
He points out that from 1970 to ’99 the Ontario Health Insurance Plan covered sex-reassignment surgery for patients who’d been approved for it by the Clarke Institute. But the conservative government that came to power in 1999 stopped paying for it. “Now a group of transsexuals have brought a human rights complaint against removal of sex-reassignment surgery as a benefit,” he says. “Their argument is that this is a recognized treatment for a psychiatric disorder. It’s got to remain in the DSM. The DSM has no formal jurisdiction in Canada, but in fact it’s taken as the standard.” [4]
Many are beginning to question whether these diagnoses are really necessary in order to receive health services. Many are even questioning whether these are diseases at all. Because Blanchard and several cronies are heavily involved in the DSM’s language about these “disorders,” it is likely that we will see a pitched battle about this matter when the next DSM revision is made.
In the meantime, Blanchard’s star continues to fade, reduced to eugenicists, old-school sexologists and psychologists, and those self-hating gender variant people who seek a “cure” for their gender variance. The Clarke has been surpassed by several other Toronto facilities offering more flexible and inclusive access to health services. As numbers at those clinics continue to surge, numbers at The Clarke continue to decline, a harbinger of Blanchard’s place in history as an interesting curiosity from the waning years when our community was considered disordered and diseased.
Blanchard on fifth estate
In October 2004, Ray Blanchard and team were featured in a news magazine program on transsexualism, reported by Hana Gartner. Below is a transcript of selected sections:
Gartner voiceover: One of the most established gender clinics in the world is at Torontoās Center for Addiction and Mental Health. Itās run by psychologist Ray Blanchard, who has been studying transsexuals for the past 25 years. He says they have a serious illness.
Blanchard: Transsexualism is considered a psychiatric disorder by the World Health Organization and by the American Psychiatric Association. We probably know more about how to treat them or manage them than we do know about what causes them.
Gartner voiceover: Those who come here looking for help must first be diagnosed and assessed by this panel of experts.
Blanchard to experts: They told the GP that they had some gender problem. Itās a biological female. It looks to me that the patient hasnāt been started on a testosterone medication yet.
Gartner voiceover: The only effective treatment for this psychiatric disorder is a combination of hormones and surgery.
Gartner to Blanchard: Can cosmetic surgery cure this disorder?
Blanchard: You are giving someone surgeries that enable them to be accepted as the opposite sex. Cosmetic surgery can help people lead much happier and more productive lives.
Blanchard: Her vocal cords will thicken and her voice will drop into the male range, and that is a permanent change.
Gartner voiceover: Ray Blanchard, who is in charge of Canadaās top gender clinic, believes very few people should go on hormones or change their sex. His clinic sees only about 50 patients a year, and he rejects most of them.
Blanchard: We are not trying to encourage people to have sex reassignment surgery; on the contrary, we encourage people to try and make an adjustment to their biological gender.
Gartner: A 17 year old female, if she came to see you, what advice would you give her?
Blanchard: At our clinic, the minimum age we would consider a patent for hormonal treatment would be 20 years, and the minimum age for considering them for surgical treatment would be 21 years.
1. Armstrong J. The Body within, the body without. Globe and Mail, 12 June 2004, p. F1. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040612/COVER12/TPComment/TopStories
2. Newbery L. Trans-sexuals happier after operation, MD says. Toronto Star, 27 November 1984, p. H2.
3. Bailey JM. (Chair), Phenomenology and classification of male-to-female transsexualism. Symposium conducted at the meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Paris. June, 2000. Slide 38. http://www.psych.nwu.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/Blanchard’s%20Paris%20Talk.ppt
“The foregoing studies indicate that there are only two fundamentally different types of transsexualism in males: homosexual and nonhomosexual. This finding points to the next question: What do the three nonhomosexual types have in common? I have suggested that the common characteristic is an erotic orientation that I have labeled autogynephilia. Autogynephilia may be defined as a manās paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.”
4. Rodkin D. Sex and Transsexuals. Chicago Reader December 12, 2003
‘The Man Who Would Be Queen’ Controversy Continues: Professor Blanchard Quits HBIGDA NTAC press release 10 November 2003 http://www.ntac.org/pr/release.asp?did=81
Magnus Hirschfeld and Max Tilke, Die Tranvestiten. Eine Untersuchung Ć¼ber den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb mit umfangreichen casuistichem und historischem Material
These are URLs from the original version of this site.
Ray Blanchard motivations for oppressing sex and gender minorities: http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-motivations.html
āMale gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists:” How Ray Blanchard sees us
Clarke Institute Clearinghouse: documenting the words and actions of CAMH staff
Toronto: epicenter of pathologization of sex and gender minorities: http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-hypotheses.html
Ray Blanchardās place in history: http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-history.html
Notes, updates, further reading: http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-notes.html
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Kenneth Zucker is an American-Canadian psychologist and anti-transgender extremist.
Zucker’s ideology has caused profound harm to sex and gender minorities over a long career. Zucker has created several disease models to describe these minorities and has promoted many more sex and gender “disorders” as editor of The Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Zucker developed a non-affirming model of care for gender diverse youth that has been described as “child abuse.” Zucker was fired by employer CAMH in 2015. Zucker’s clinic was shut down, and non-affirming models of care have been outlawed in many jurisdictions.
Kenneth J. “Ken” Zucker was born on December 29, 1950 to Eugene M. Zucker (1922ā1997) and Sara Miller Zucker (1924ā2020). Zucker has one sibling, Barbara Ann Zucker-Romanoff aka Barbra Zucker (born 1957). The family lived in Skokie, Illinois. Zucker married Rochelle Fine, also from Niles Township. Their child Simone Zucker is a Toronto-based filmmaker, and their child Josh aka “Concentration Camp” is guitarist in Toronto band Fucked Up.
Zucker attended Southern Illinois University during the Vietnam War and was one of the key campus leaders in the anti-war protest movement there, staging mock trials and declaring people war criminals in absentia (Lagow 1977). Zucker earned a bachelor’s degree there, then a master’s degree at Roosevelt University in 1975.
Zucker headed to Canada eventually just to be safe. Zucker earned a doctorate from University of Toronto in 1982.
Zucker’s frequent collaborator Richard Green had the same impulse for self-preservation: āI left Los Angeles in 1964 to avoid the Vietnam War by going to NIMH [National Institutes of Mental Health]ā (Green 2004). In 2001 Green handed over editorial control of Archives of Sexual Behavior to Zucker, to continue pushing their toxic ideology about sex and gender minorities.
Physical attractiveness of children “research” (1993ā1996)
Zucker was a psychologist at the Clarke Institute (aka “Jurassic Clarke”) in Toronto. Zucker is infamous for forcing gender-diverse children into reparative therapy to conform to expectations for gendered behavior in children. Zucker considers a gender transition a “bad outcome.”
Zucker had access to hundreds of children through the Clarke and took topless photos of all children brought to the clinic. In one particularly troubling “study,” Zucker wanted to see how “physically attractive” these children’s faces and upper torsos were. Adults were shown images of children in Zucker’s care and asked to rate their attractiveness.
Zucker’s conclusion: “Boys with gender identity disorder were judged to be more attractive than were the clinical control boys.”
Zucker repeated the “research” with the remaining children a few years later, concluding the “Girls with gender identity disorder had significantly less attractive ratings than the normal control girls for the traits attractive, beautiful, and pretty.”
Zucker is a darling of the ex-gay movement because of decades of attempts in “curing” gender-diverse children. Zucker was frequently cited by ex-gay groups like NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuals) and Leadership U.
As the rest of the world begins to understand and accept gender diversity as a trait and not a disease, Zucker has been increasingly cast as the old-school holdout in press coverage. As noted in the New York Times:
Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, disagrees with the āfree to beā approach with young children and cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20 percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately change their sex.
Dr. Zucker tries to āhelp these kids be more content in their biological genderā until they are older and can determine their sexual identity ā accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict gender roles.
Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual. His experience has convinced him that if a boy with GID becomes an adolescent with GID, the chances that he will become an adult with GID and seek a sex change are much higher. And he thinks that the kind of therapy he practices helps reduce this risk. Zucker emphasizes a three-pronged treatment approach for boys with GID. First, he thinks that family dynamics play a large role in childhood GIDānot necessarily in the origins of cross-gendered behavior, but in their persistence. It is the disordered and chaotic family, according to Zucker, that canāt get its act together to present a consistent and sensible reaction to the child, which would be something like the following: āWe love you, but you are a boy, not a girl. Wishing to be a girl will only make you unhappy in the long run, and pretending to be a girl will only make your life around others harder.ā So the first prong of Zuckerās approach is family therapy. Whatever conflicts or issues that parents have that prevent them from uniting to help their child must be addressed.
The second prong is therapy for the boy, to help him adjust to the idea that he cannot become a girl, and to help teach him how to minimize social ostracism. Zucker does not teach boys how to walk in a manly fashion, but he does give them feedback about the likely consequences of taking a doll to school.
The third prong is key. Zucker says simply: āThe Barbies have to go.ā He has nothing against Barbie dolls, of course. He means something more general. Feminine toys and accoutrementsāincluding Barbie dolls, girlsā shoes, dresses, purses, and princess gownsāare no longer to be tolerated at home, much less bought for the child. Zucker believes that toleration and encouragement of feminine play and dress prevents the child from accepting his maleness. Common sense says that a boy who wants to play with dolls so much that he is willing to risk his fatherās wrath and his peersā scorn is unlikely to change his behavior due to inconsistent feedback, sometimes forbidding, sometimes tolerating, and sometimes even encouraging it. Inconsistent parenting like this is ineffective in stamping out any kind of unwanted behavior.
Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome. … Why put boys at risk for this when they can become gay men happy to be men?
Zucker blames poor family dynamics and maternal psychopathology for gender-nonconforming behavior. Zucker claims this phenomenon is more likely in non-white children with lower IQs. As J. Michael Bailey noted:
Ken Zucker, whom we met in Chapter 2, has tried to predict which boys with gender identity disorder (GID) would still have the disorder when they become adolescents. Adolescents with GID are much rarer and presumably much closer to being transsexual. Zucker found several predictors of adolescent GID: lower IQ, lower social class, immigrant status, non-intact family, and childhood behavior problems unrelated to gender identity disorder.
Zucker’s alleged “desistance” rate hides the fact that many children brought to Zucker’s clinic are hardly success stories in terms of quality of life outcomes:
Yet Zuckerās approach has its own disturbing elements. Itās easy to imagine that his methodsāsteering parents toward removing pink crayons from the box, extolling a patriarchy no one believes inācould instill in some children a sense of shame and a double life. A 2008 study of 25 girls who had been seen in Zuckerās clinic showed positive results; 22 were no longer gender-dysphoric, meaning they were comfortable living as girls. But that doesnāt mean they were happy. I spoke to the mother of one Zucker patient in her late 20s, who said her daughter was repulsed by the thought of a sex change but was still sufferingāsheād become an alcoholic, and was cutting herself. āIād be surprised if she outlived me,ā her mother said.
Lagow, Larry Dwane (1977). A history of the Center for Vietnamese Studies at Southern Illinois University, 1969-1976. Ph.D. dissertation; typescript in Hoover Institution Archives https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0d5nd9g7/entire_text/
Staff report (December 29, 1997). Obituary: Eugene Zucker. Chicago Tribune
Eugene Zucker. 75. beloved husband of Sara, nee Miller; loving father of Dr. Ken (Rochelle) Zucker and Barbra (Steven) Romanoff; devoted grandfather of Joshua and Simone Zucker and step-grandfather of Samantha Sprigel: fond brother of Howard (Shirley) Zucker; dearest uncle of Deborah, Adina, David, and Ellen. Mr. Zucker was a life-long intellectual.
Sandeen, Autumn (May 20, 2009). GID Reform Now Protest At Annual APA Meeting. Pam’s House Blend http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/11064/gid-reform-now-protest-at-annual-apa-meeting-speaker-madeline-deutch-md [archive]
Conway, Lynn (April 5, 2007). “Drop the Barbie”: Ken Zucker’s reparatist treatment of gender-variant children. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/Drop%20the%20Barbie.htm
Conway, Lynn (April 30, 2009). “The War Within: CAMH scathing internal report Zuckerās and Blanchardās gender clinics http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/The_War_Within_CAMH.html
Conway, Lynn (February 18, 2009). Kenneth Zucker’s legal threats: Part of a pattern of silencing transgender critics. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/Kenneth_Zucker%27s_pattern_of_silencing_transgender_critics.html
Winters, Kelley (2009). Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the Struggle for Dignity BookSurge, ISBN 978-1439223888 – see also (gendermadness.com) [harchive]
Staff report (July 1997). Childhood Gender-Identity Disorder Diagnosis Under Attack. Leadership U http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/childhood.html [archive] – now merged with Cru: Campus Crusade for Christ International (cru.org)
Singh D, Bradley SJ, Zucker KJ (2021). A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder. Front. Psychiatry, Volume 12 – 28 March 2021 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784
Soh is a member of the intellectual dark web, a loose alliance described as a “gateway to the far right.” Soh has promoted a number of disease models of gender identity and expression:
Debra W. Soh was born in 1990, is of Malaysian-Chinese descent, and grew up in Canada.
Soh earned a doctorate from York University in 2016. Soh’s dissertation is titled: “Functional and Structural Neuroimaging of Paraphilic Hypersexuality in Men” The examining committee included K. Schneider, James Cantor, G. Turner, D. Stevens, D. Vanderlann, C. Davis
Soh left academia in order to promote anti-trans views in the media.
Anti-transgender activism
Soh authored the 2020 anti-trans book The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society.
Diamond views sexual orientation identity and gender identity as potentially fluid over developmental time, starting in childhood and continuing into adulthood. Diamond’s claim that these characteristics can change over time has been used to argue against LGBT rights by conversion therapists and in Supreme Court briefs.
Background
Diamond earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Chicago in 1993, then attended Cornell University, earning a master’s degree in 1996 and a doctorate in 1999, studying with Ritch Savin-Williams.
Criticism of “born this way”
Diamond has been a key critic of the idea that sexual orientation is an innate and unchangeable characteristic. A 2018 article states:
Sexual fluidity entered the spotlight in 2008 when Lisa Diamond published her book, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Womenās Love and Desire, where she presents the results of a study in which she tracked womenās desires and identity labels over the course of a decade. She found that over time many of her participants shifted along Kinseyās sexual orientation spectrum, often adopting new identity labels to accommodate their changing attractions and relationships. Sheās careful to point out that sexual fluidity is not the same as bisexuality. Traditionally, even bisexual people were thought to occupy a fixed spot on the spectrum, but Diamond challenges that narrative. She recalls one participant who described herself as equally attracted to men and women, but two years later reported that she was four times more attracted to women than to men.
“Research on sexual orientation has been based almost entirely on self-reports, and this is one of the few good studies using physiological measures,” said Dr. Lisa Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender identity at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the study.
The discrepancy between what is happening in people’s minds and what is going on in their bodies, she said, presents a puzzle “that the field now has to crack, and it raises this question about what we mean when we talk about desire.”
“We have assumed that everyone means the same thing,” she added, “but here we have evidence that that is not the case.”
Bailey frequently engages in “science by press conference,” a way of getting money and attention through carefully timed media manipulation with gullible or biased reporters. This study involved the use of a penileĀ plethysmograph, a sort of genital “lie detector” which is considered inadmissible in court because it does not meet legal standards for reliability.
In 2020 Bailey and Rieger suddenly “discovered” male bisexuality after getting money from the anti-trans American Institute of Bisexuality. The person who gave them the money, AIB leader John Sylla, was also a co-author of their “discovery,” a clear conflict of interest. Once again, they got favorable press coverage for their remarkable “discovery” in the New York Times:
While some bisexual activists filled Baileyās email inbox with hate mail, Sylla invited Bailey to dinner. āI wanted to work with Mike and help him design a better study,ā Sylla told me. āWhat I said to him early on was: āOf course there are bisexual men. You just havenāt found them yet.ā ā Bailey said he was skeptical, but he was impressed with Syllaās civility and decided to hear him out. That turned out to be a smart decision: A few years later, A.I.B. became an important source of funding for research on bisexuals. Lisa Diamond, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah who receives A.I.B. support, told me, āItās difficult to get funding to study sexual orientation for its own sake, unless youāre linking it to mental or physical health issues like H.I.V. or suicidality.ā
Boso, Luke, Disrupting Sexual Categories of Intimate Preference (2010). 21 Hastings Women’s L. J. 59 (2010), Available at SSRN:Ā https://ssrn.com/abstract=1537243
Vaughn-Blount, Kelli (2008). Champions of Psychology: Lisa Diamond.Observer. 21 (2). https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/champions-of-psychology-lisa-diamond original url https://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2008/february-08/champions-of-psychology-lisa-diamond.html
Diamond, Lisa M.; VillicaƱa, Ćngel; Burton, Raven (2024). The Development of Diversity in Gender/Sexual Identity and Expression. In Marc H. Bornstein,Ā Michael E. Lamb [editors]. Developmental Science (8th edition). Routledge, ISBN 9781003387145
Diamond, Lisa M. (2023). The Health of Sexually-Diverse and Gender-Diverse Populations. In Gia Merlo,Ā Christopher P. Fagundes [editors]. Lifestyle Psychiatry: Through the Lens of Behavioral Medicine. CRC Press ISBN 9781003275671
Diamond, L. M. (2020). Gender Fluidity and Nonbinary Gender Identities Among Children and Adolescents. Child Development Perspectives, 14(2), 110ā115. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12366
Diamond, L. M., & Rosky, C. J. (2016). Scrutinizing Immutability: Research on Sexual Orientation and U.S. Legal Advocacy for Sexual Minorities. The Journal of Sex Research, 53(4ā5), 363ā391. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1139665
Diamond, L. M. (2013). Sexual-minority, gender-nonconforming, and transgender youths. In D. S. Bromberg & W. T. O’Donohue (Eds.),Ā Handbook of child and adolescent sexuality: Developmental and forensic psychologyĀ (pp. 275ā300). Elsevier Academic Press.Ā https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-387759-8.00011-8
Diamond, L.M., Pardo, S.T., Butterworth, M.R. (2011). Transgender Experience and Identity. In: Schwartz, S., Luyckx, K., Vignoles, V. (eds) Handbook of Identity Theory and Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9_26
Diamond, L.M., Butterworth, M. Questioning Gender and Sexual Identity: Dynamic Links Over Time.Ā Sex RolesĀ 59, 365ā376 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-008-9425-3
Savin-Williams, R. C., & Diamond, L. M. (2000). Sexual Identity Trajectories Among Sexual-Minority Youths: Gender Comparisons. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 29(6), 607ā627. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1002058505138
Book
Diamond, Lisa (2009). Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Womenās Love and Desire. Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0674032262
Veale completed a doctorate at Massey University in 2012. Veale then worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, researching the health of Canadian transgender youth.
In 2015 Veale was appointed Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Waikato.
Veale has served on the Board of Directors of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and has served as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Transgender Health. Veale also helped to establish the University of Waikato Rainbow Staff/Student Alliance. Projects include:
Veale has attempted to refute Ray Blanchard and the controversial diagnosis of “autogynephilia” by applying Blanchardās Core Autogynephilia Scale to people who are not trans women. This in effect reified the diagnosis itself, allowing “autogynephilia” activistAnne Lawrence to retort that “Transsexual groups in Veale et al. (2008) are ‘autogynephilic’ and ‘even more autogynephilic.'”
In 2022, Veale and biologist Julia Serano published a paper refuting J. Michael Bailey and Kevin Hsu, who made the claim that “autogynephilia in women” does not exist. Veale and Serano argued that “autogynephilia” is a flawed framework and expanded on Serano’s model of “female embodiment fantasies,”
BA Clark, JF Veale, M Townsend, H Frohard-Dourlent, E Saewyc 4 Non-binary youth Today’s Transgender Youth: Health, Well-being, and Opportunities for ā¦
JF Veale, RJ Watson, T Peter, EM Saewyc (2017). Mental health disparities among Canadian transgender youth. Journal of Adolescent Health 60 (1), 44-49 265 2017 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.09.014
BA Clark, JF Veale, M Townsend, H Frohard-Dourlent, E Saewyc (2018). Non-binary youth: Access to gender-affirming primary health care. International Journal of Transgenderism 19 (2), 158-169 125 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2017.1394954
RJ Watson, JF Veale, EM Saewyc (2017). Disordered eating behaviors among transgender youth: Probability profiles from risk and protective factors. International Journal of Eating Disorders 50 (5), 515-522 126 2017 https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.22627
JF Veale, T Peter, R Travers, EM Saewyc (2017). Enacted stigma, mental health, and protective factors among transgender youth in Canada. Transgender Health 2 (1), 207-216 116 2017 https://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2017.0031
N Adams, R Pearce, J Veale, A Radix, D Castro, A Sarkar, KC Thom (2017). Guidance and ethical considerations for undertaking transgender health research and institutional review boards adjudicating this research. Transgender Health 2 (1), 165-175 114 2017 https://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2017.0012
J Veale, EM Saewyc, H Frohard-Dourlent, S Dobson, B Clark (2015). Being safe, being me: Results of the Canadian trans youth health survey. Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC) 146 2015 [PDF] https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/Diff/gahps/SARAVYC_Trans%20Youth%20Health%20Report_EN_Final_Web.pdf
F Pega, JF Veale (2015). The case for the World Health Organizationās Commission on Social Determinants of Health to address gender identity. American Journal of Public Health 105 (3), e58-e62 https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302373
Veale J, Clark DE, Lomax TC (2012). Male-to-female transsexuals’ impressions of Blanchard’s autogynephilia theory. International Journal of Transgenderism. 13 (3): 131ā139. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2011.669659.
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