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Robert Carson is a psychologist at Duke University who wrote a book on Abnormal Psychology which was influenced by bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence thinking on gender variance.

Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life 

by Robert C. Carson

James N. Butcher

Susan Mineka


Dr. Sharon Valente, PhD, coauthored a book with Simon LeVay which Bailey uses in his human sexuality course.

Valente is assistant professor and RN-BSN coordinator, is internationally known for publications and scholarship in mental health, particularly suicide. Her research on suicide, life threatening illness, and professionals’ attitudes toward suicide/assisted suicide, and media presentations have helped set suicide prevention postvention standards. Her appointments include the National Youth Suicide Council, Death with Dignity, American Academy of Nursing Expert Panel on Culture, and she was elected to membership of American Academy of Nursing, Phi Kappa Phi and Chi Eta Phi, Int. She conducts writing workshops and serves as consultant at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her research has been funded by Oncology Nursing Society, Glaxo, Bristol Myers, Zumberge, and American Cancer Society.

She’s taught at USC, won some accolades, began in nursing, has some “obsessive / compulsive disorder” presentations to her credit. Interestingly she was, however, one of the additional editors to the book “Before Stonewall” by Vern Bullough, and apparently published a paper on suicide risk in the Gay & Lesbian community. Also involved with the Death with Dignity folks (assisted suicide on terminal illness).

There’s nothing else really tying her to the G&L community per se. Just with this cursory look, I’m going to go out on a limb and say she’s not really the prime culprit here. Rather, I think she was brought in more as the emotional pathology expert from a risks sensibility, rather than a LeVay who appears more inclined toward questioning the ulterior mental motivations. Valente probably is the input of anything dealing with “risks of depression / suicide among those who feel they made a mistake” and the prevalence data relating to that, if I had to venture a guess.

On this LaVey/Valente book, Dartmouth noted this as one of their new texts, as well as Michigan State’s Psych 492 Syllabus, Univ. of Nottingham (UK), Univ. of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio, and presumably one would think USC as well.

Yula Ponticas, Ph.D.

Ponticas is one of several people at Johns Hopkins involved in the repression of trans people through psychiatry.

Yula Ponticas graduated in 1979 from McDaniel College in Maryland and received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Florida State University in 1987. Her advisor was Jon Bailey (to my knowledge, no relation to our friend at Northwestern). Ponticas is a somewhat unusual surname that brings up several people, all from Chile.

She has written about in-vitro fertilization (with Fagan), care for the developmentally disabled, and paraphilia. Note that the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, where her first paper on crossdressing appeared, is where “autogynephilia” first appeared in print two years prior. Her only solo paper appeared in the same issue as the “five factors” paper co-authored with Wise et al.

The five-factor model goes like this:

Surgency (introvert/extrovert)

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Emotional Stability

Intellect/ Openness to Experience

My take on all these personality assessment tests is that they are about as useful and scientific as horoscopes. A lot of this is coming out of Northwestern ia Revelle and friends, though:

http://www.personality-project.org

—–

Relevant papers by Ponticas include abstracts.

Wohl MK, Finney JW, Riordan MM, Iwata BA, Ponticas Y, Page TJ. (1981).   Behavioral assessment and treatment of complete food refusal in a developmentally disabled child.   Association for Behavior Analysis, Milwaukee.

Ponticas Y, Fagan PJ. Issues in the Psychological Evaluation and Care of In Vitro Fertilization Couples Appl Res Ment Retard.   1986;7(1):21-35.

Richman GS, Ponticas Y, Page TJ, Epps S. Simulation procedures for teaching independent menstrual care to mentally retarded persons.

Wise TN, Fagan PJ, Schmidt CW, Ponticas Y, Costa PT. Personality and sexual functioning of transvestitic fetishists and other paraphilics. J Nerv Ment Dis.   1991 Nov;179(11):694-8.

Utilizing the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and the Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory (DSFI), 24 transvestitic fetishists (TVs) were compared with a similar clinic-evaluated group of 26 other paraphilics (OPs). The data replicated previous results and extended them by showing that TVs did not differ from OPs on most dimensions of the NEO-PI and the DSFI. Both groups were significantly higher on neuroticism and significantly lower on agreeableness than the NEO-PI male normative population. The other paraphilic group tended to score lower on conscientiousness than the TVs and the normative comparison group. For nine of the 10 DSFI variables, there were no significant differences between the TVs and the OPs. The TVs were significantly higher than the OPs on role identity, indicating a more feminine identification. Both the TVs and OPs reported elevated levels of fantasy. The implications of these findings suggest that, in general, TVs and OPs are more similar than they are different, with a common personality profile and a similar pattern of sexual functioning.

Fagan PJ, Wise TN, Schmidt CW Jr, Ponticas Y, Marshall RD, Costa PT Jr. A comparison of five-factor personality dimensions in males with sexual dysfunction and males with paraphilia. J Pers Assess.   1991 Dec;57(3):434-48.

We compared personality profiles of men with sexual dysfunction (n = 51) to those of age-matched men with a primary diagnosis of paraphilia (n = 51) employing the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI), a measure of the five-factor model. Preliminary analyses in a large sample of patients in a sexual behaviors consultation unit supported the reliability and factorial validity of the NEO-PI for this population. Analysis of variance showed significant differences between the dysfunctional and the paraphilic groups on two of the five NEO-PI domains, Neuroticism (N) and Agreeableness (A). The group personality profile of the sexually dysfunctional men was comparable to the normative sample of the NEO-PI, except for a slight elevation in N. By contrast, men with paraphilia had a personality profile marked by high N, low A, and low Conscientiousness (C). Treatment implications of the average personality profile of the sexual dysfunction group and the distinctive personality profile of paraphilic men are discussed.

Ponticas Y. Sexual aversion versus hypoactive sexual desire: a diagnostic challenge. Psychiatr Med.   1992;10(2):273-81.

Our work with women with sexual aversion documents the presence of marked sexual avoidance behaviors as specified in the DSM-III-R1 diagnostic criteria for this disorder. At the same time, we demonstrate the presence of normal sexual desire and capacity for orgasm in these women. These two findings offer support for a valid diagnostic differentiation between sexual aversion disorder and hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Inherent in the diagnosis and treatment of sexual aversion disorder is an appreciation by the clinician of the tremendous approach-avoidance conflict that exists in these patients. The behavioral and cognitive avoidance features, therefore, need to be elicited actively by the clinician during all phases of assessment and treatment. These features are not always offered readily by the patients for fear of having to relinquish these strategies and their related sense of control over the overwhelming anxiety that sexual intimacy can produce. Consequently, treatment is not always straightforward and successful.  

Costa PT Jr, Fagan PJ, Piedmont RL, Ponticas Y, Wise TN. The five-factor model of personality and sexual functioning in outpatient men and women. Psychiatr Med.   1992;10(2):199-215.

454 adults seeking evaluation at a sexual behaviors consultation clinic were evaluated for the major dimensions of personality as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory and various aspects of sexual attitudes and experiences via the Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory. The results showed that elevated Neuroticism was correlated with dysphoric symptoms, negative body image and lowered satisfaction. More extraverted individuals reported increased drive, more sexual experience, positive body image, and more positive affects. Agreeableness was unrelated to sexual drive and satisfaction but was negatively related to symptomatology. Openness was positively associated with amount of Information, range of sexual experiences, liberal attitudes toward sex, sexual drive and fantasy and appears to broadly impact upon sexual functioning. The more conscientious subjects had lowered sexual drive, but fewer dysphoric symptoms and a better body image. Women showed a similar pattern of personality correlates with the exception that personality was unrelated to females’ sexual experiences and sexual satisfaction. The present findings support and expand previous research and contribute to our understanding of how personality dispositions influence the experience and expression of sexual functioning in male and female clinical samples.

Chris Brand was a British evolutionary psychologist best known for being involved in the modern eugenics movement. Brand was a frequent J. Michael Bailey supporter and a member of the Human Biodiversity Institute mailing list.

Background

Christopher Richard Brand was born June 1, 1943 in Preston, England.

Brand taught at Edinburgh University from 1970–1997. In 1996 Brand published the book The g Factor, claiming that general intelligence correlates with life outcomes. Brand claimed people of African descent had lower general intelligence as a group, which affected their success.

Brand was fired following an investigation into his 1996 comments about age of consent following child molestation charges brought against medical researcher Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. Brand’s firing became a rallying cry for “academic freedom” extremists.

Brand had three children and married spouse number three in 2001. Brand died May 28, 2017.

Comments on trans issues

Here’s what Brand had to say in 2003 when trans people began criticizing J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen:

Dr Sex‚ VERSUS ANTI-HOMOPHOBISTS AND ASSORTED FAGGOTS

A book-burning witch-hunt began against psychologist J. Michael Bailey, of Northwestern University, near Chicago, who claimed from his research that some transsexuals are homosexuals, thus apparently managing to annoy representatives‚ of both these hyper-sensitive groups at the same time. Fortunately, Chronicles of Higher Education (20 vi) gave Bailey, a Texan nerd‚, a friendly write up, saying he had plenty of transsexual/friends, did a good job on the dance floor and bought a round of drinks, so there was a possibility that he and his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, might survive.

See also the Chris Brand information on Lynn Conway’s site, which Brand responded to thus:

HUMAN BIODIVERSITY GROUP (HBDG) ‘NAMED AND SHAMED’  Opponents of J. Michael Bailey, the Texan sexologist (who has ‘controversially’ suggested that some transsexuals are actually homosexuals), managed to discover the names on Steve Sailer’s private list of experts (and gifted amateurs
.) on the subject of ‘human biodiversity’ i.e. racial differences. They set up a website to denounce selected and possible HBDG members:

  • Andrews, Lewis R. (“promotes an array of neoconservative (mostly racist) theories”) {Normally called Louis Andrews}
  • Bailey, Michael (“under investigation here {i.e. by transsexuals} regarding his HBDG affiliations”)
  • Brand, Chris (“infamous ‘scientific racist’”)
  • Brimelow, Peter (“prominent and active member and contributor to {anti-immigration} VDARE)
  • Burr, Chandler (believes “biological cause of male homosexuality as a “defect in development””)
  • Buss, David M.(has “notions of rigidly bi-polar genders in humans”)
  • Cochran, Gregory M. (actually environmentalistic but “highly extolled for his racial-genetic-profiling science and homosexual-causation-science by various neoconservative and far-right groups, such as the British National Party”)
  • Derbyshire, John (“virulently homophobic”)
  • Entine, Jon (“condescending toward Asians, like a comical stereotype, and believe[s] blacks are uncivilized animals who are mentally inferior and only suitable for athletics”)
  • Hausman, Patricia (“part of a neoconservative organization that makes a special point of trashing trans women”)
  • Miller, Edward M. (“made strongly racist “scientific” statements in 1996 about the intelligence of black people”)
  • Murray, Charles (“widely perceived as racist by most moderate people”)
  • Pinker, Steven (“biology-is-destiny theory”
.“active participant in the Baileyan defamation of transsexual women”
.“Could he be a Fourattist-type gay man?…”)
  • Pitchford, Ian (actually a keen leftist but called “another of the HBDG’ers known to have supported Bailey”)
  • Rushton, J.P. (“misrepresented the entire evolutionary theory simply for the shock value”)
  • Sailer, Steve (“has long exploited the works of racial-profiling scientists and pundits such as Brand, Cochran, Entine, Miller, Murray, Rushton, etc., to justify his positions”
.”one of a handful of extreme “scientific racists”, affiliated with and often paid by extreme right-wing groups like VDare”)
  • Seligman, Dan (“promoting HBDG’s vain hope that Bailey could somehow be anointed as the national expert on homosexuality and transsexualism”)

What a wonderful display of leftists’ willingness to caricature scholarly opponents! And such hypersensitive leftists have the temerity to complain I jest about them as ANTI-HOMOPHOBISTS AND ASSORTED FAGGOTS! (Of course, it was a pity that members of the HBDG list did not all plainly announce their scientific racism / race realism seven years ago when they might collectively have made a mark and defended me in Edinburgh. Sadly, still in 2003, the world’s only declared academic race realists (Glayde Whitney having sadly died) were Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn and myself. The unwillingness of race realists to pull together reflected the non-emergence of national neoliberealism or any comparable liberty-respecting realism with which academics could be happy.

https://web.archive.org/web/20031119044358/http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk:80/indexlatest.htm

chris brand website example

References

Egan V, Brand N, Brand T (2018). Obituary of Chris Brand (1st June 1943–28th May, 2017). Personality and Individual Differences Volume 122, 1 February 2018, Pages 206-207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.011

Wotjas, Olga (27 March 1998). ‘Racist’ Brand loses dismissal appeal. Times Higher Education http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=106530&sectioncode=26

Wotjas, Olga (10 April 1998). Key factors in the fall of a ‘scientific racist.’ Times Higher Education http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=106773&sectioncode=26

Ward, Lucy (9 August 1997). Lecturer sacked for saying child sex “harmless.” The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/news/lecturer-sacked-for-saying-child-sex-harmless-1244412.html

Resources

Chris Brand — Psychologist (crispian.demon.co.uk) [archive]

Cycad (cycad.com)

  • His summary of his views
  • http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/Brand/index.html [archive]

IQ & PC (gfactor.blogspot.com)

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.

David Buss is an American evolutionary psychologist whose life’s work is dedicated to maintaining and reinforcing a sex binary.

Buss is a frequent supporter of anti-trans psychologist J. Michael Bailey. Of all the people in the investigation to date, Buss has the most overlapping interests and experiences with Bailey:

Background

David Michael Buss was born April 14, 1953.

Buss earned a doctorate in the notoriously anti-trans psychology department at University of California, Berkeley in 1981.

Buss was married to Cynthia Louise “Cindy” Refhues (1958-2012) in 1981. 

The Man Who Would Be Queen

He was cited in promotional materials for Bailey’s book.

“Bailey is one of a rare breed of writers who manages to combine first-rate science with deep psychological understanding, resulting in great breadth of vision. He takes us on an unforgettable journey into the minds and lives of feminine men. Bailey skillfully interweaves vivid case studies with cutting-edge scientific findings, placing both in a deep historical context from the sexual playground of ancient Greece to the dilemmas of gender in the modern world. Refreshingly candid, remarkably free of ideology, this book is destined to become a modern classic in the field. But readers should be prepared to have some cherished assumptions about human nature shattered.”

– David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating and Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

Sexuality and Its Disorders

College textbooks on psychology and human sexuality are consistently among the most transphobic knowledge produced in academia. A 2017 textbook by Mike Abrams lays out Buss’s views.

Teachings

A reader reports:

“Every Spring semester since 2016, Dr. Buss has co-taught PSY 306: Introduction to Human Sexuality, a seminar class, with Dr. Cindy Meston. The class is taught in a live-streaming, online format. There’s a little studio on-campus. The professors show up 15 minutes before class time, then sit in the studio to give their lecture in front of some cameras and a small live studio audience of 20 of their students. That lecture gets broadcast live to a much larger number of students – typically between 250 – 700 students each semester. So, 1000s of students have seen this class. Each semester, there is a lecture on Gender Dysphoria. I’ve attached a .txt file of the transcript. Here’s a particularly concerning section from that class (as spoken by Dr. Meston):

I think what’s happening is that people are more aware of the disorder. Absolutely, people like Jazz Jennings. This is the little girl that was on the 20/20 video you watched. She is now a huge voice for the transgendered community. She’s set up a foundation. She’s done a lot of good will for the transgender community. She has put out many videos giving advice and education. She’s had a reality show.

There was actually the first transgendered doll launched a few years ago in her image. So people like this, people like, and a few years ago, the very first transgendered Playmate appeared.

So what’s happening is there’s a lot more talk about transgender, a lot of famous people have come forward to talk about their struggle with gender dysphoria, and so this has been, has had a remarkable good impact, I believe, in the sense that, when it’s so much more visible and so much more talked about, people become educated.

They learn about the disorder, and when you learn about a disorder then you’re less afraid of it. And not always, sadly,
but a lot of the time, people become more accepting, and you know, we see now, compared to even a decade ago, that there are policy changes made with regard to transgendered individuals in, for example, washrooms.

So that’s something that never would have occurred even, you know, a decade ago. So this awareness has clearly made many people more comfortable in coming forward and talking about their problem, and seeking help, which is a good thing.

Now, I want to mention, just on the other hand, why sometimes social media may not be in one’s best interest. So what is happening is that, among young people, teenagers, early 20s, there’s this rise in the prevalence rates of gender dysphoric individuals. That’s really unusual and it doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of what we know clinically, and have known for many, many years about individuals who have gender dysphoria.

So, for example, adults, who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, they almost always have been either diagnosed as having childhood gender identity dysphoria, or gender dysphoria I should say, and if not diagnosed as a child, they showed signs as a child. Their tales are that they have struggled with this most of their lives, or there has been some pattern very early on that there were signs of gender dysphoria. This group that has emerged in young people presents a very different picture.

They present, often, as suddenly realizing they’re gender dysphoric, and so some researchers are concerned by this, and clinicians, and have talked about this disorder, which has been given the name rapid-onset gender dysphoria. And rapid-onset gender dysphoria is exactly as it sounds, the development of gender dysphoria begins suddenly, during or after puberty, in adolescents or a young adult, who would not have met the criteria in childhood.

So this is not a typical etiology because, as I just described, the typical etiology is that they would’ve met the criteria in childhood. And so this has led to a debate or a discussion in the research and clinical community as to the possible role of social media and online content in possibly leading a group of young adults to self-diagnosing themselves incorrectly as having gender dysphoria.

Now, we know that, oftentimes, depression, or anxiety, or autism, individuals along the autism spectrum, some of you may have heard the term, Asperger’s. This term is no longer used in the DSM, it’s now just considered part of the autism spectrum, but it refers to individuals who struggle somewhat with social aspects of their lives.

And sometimes, what may be happening is individuals who are experiencing some type of mental disorder, they google on the internet, or they do some research online to figure out what’s wrong with them, and there’s so much information out there now on transgendered individuals, that they may be incorrectly identifying as a transgendered individual as opposed to some other underlying mental disorder.

References

[Obituary] (January 20, 2012). Cindy Rehfues. Austin American-Statesman https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/statesman/name/cindy-rehfues-obituary?id=21660678

Abrams, Mike (2017). Sexuality and Its Disorders: Development, Cases, and Treatment. SAGE https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071801192

Resources

University of Texas Psychology (liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology)

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

Kenneth Zucker is an American-Canadian psychologist and anti-transgender activist.

The archival information below is from earlier versions of the site and will be updated in the future to reflect events of the past few years.

www.tsroadmap.com/info/zucker-blanchard-salary.html

$325,000+ in salaries for Zucker & Blanchard to pathologize trans people

Transgender taxpayers in Canada help foot the bill for their own pathologization, helping to pay nearly $328,000 in 2008 to two conservative Toronto psychologists working to turn back the clock on the rights of sex and gender minorities worldwide.Public disclosure documents show that Ray Blanchard was paid over $172,000 in 2008, and Kenneth Zucker was paid over $155,500. Both men work at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. This former “lunatic asylum” is home to the most notorious and regressive facility in the world dedicated to preventing and “curing” gender non-conforming behavior in children and adults.

Both Blanchard and Zucker are also heavily involved in the political push within psychology to continue labeling sex and gender minorities as disordered and diseased. Homosexuality was depathologized in 1973, but these men have an obvious and substantial financial interest in not just maintaining the status quo, but in expanding the definitions of sexual “disorders” that can be applied to all people. Their CAMH clinics are major recipients of taxpayer funds via the provincial and federal healthcare systems in Canada, so more “disordered” people mean more money for their clinics and themselves.

Motivations

Both men are not just driven by money. They are also driven by a desire to promote their own reactionary beliefs about sex and gender minorities.

Zucker is the world’s foremost proponent of reparative therapy for gender-variant youth. The few clinics that do this reparative therapy treat up to 30 times more children assigned as boys at birth. This remarkable statistic reflects the deeper hatred of boys who are “too feminine.”

Zucker’s therapy for these children includes forcing them to stop wearing pink or purple, or creating art with those colors. He also prohibits playing with or drawing pictures of girls. Parents are expected to enforce this behavior through withholding attention and affection until the children conform.

Blanchard seeks a broad expansion of the definition of “paraphilia” to include anyone attracted to someone who is not “phenotypically normal.” Under such a definition, being attracted to people who are obese, disabled, or even taller or shorter than “normal” could be reduced to a paraphilic disorder. Blanchard reserves special contempt for transsexual women, for whom he has created a rigid taxonomy in which they are either a type of gay man or a sexually obsessed fetishist. He once declared to the Toronto Globe and Mail that a transsexual woman who has transitioned is merely “a man without a penis,” echoing his fixation on “phallometrics,” the measurement of penile length, width, and tumescence when subjects are exposed to erotic stimuli. The field of “phallometrics” was developed by Blanchard’s mentor at CAMH to determine if army recruits were gay or not. Blanchard, who has not disclosed his own sexual orientation publicly, is considered an expert in determining the size and tumescence of male genitalia.

Decades of self-preservation and self-promotion

American citizens Blanchard and Zucker left the United States for Canada in the midst of the Vietnam War, then stayed in Canada after President Ford declared amnesty for draft evaders. This instinct for self-preservation is echoed in their efforts to keep taxpayer money flowing into their clinics. They frequently claim in their defense that they support medical procedures for trans people, but that is because any tax money allotted for that went directly to their clinics. Their support of these procedures meant more money for them. When they did control all acccess to trans health services in Ontario, they rejected more than 90% of applicants at their clinics and were known for long wait lists and regressive requirements. This led most trans people in Canada to seek health services from other sources. CAMH’s own Diversity Program Office published a report critical of their approach and attitudes toward the trans people they are paid to serve. They have responded to criticisms from outside their organization by using CAMH lawyers to threaten SLAPP suits. In one instance, they threatened Professor Lynn Conway with a libel suit for simply posting a link to another website.

Both men have methodically worked to shore up their job security over the years by politicking their way into key positions at organizations that set policy around sex and gender minorities. Zucker and Blanchard are hoping to codify their ideologies in the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Both are on the committee dealing with sex and gender “disorders” along with several like-minded associates. They seek deeper entrenchment of existing “diseases” and a broad expansion of concepts like “paraphilia” to include attraction to anyone who is not “phenotypically normal.” By most accounts, their efforts will likely be rewarded, and their worldview will be codified for more than a decade. The next edition of the DSM would not be published until after both men are retirement age in the 2020s.

Any funding secured for trans health directly benefits them

Though many in the Ontario transgender community have been critical of these men for years, activists have had limited success. That’s because most funding for trans health services goes directly to CAMH, who’ve had a controlling monopoly over the lives of trans people. Until the tax dollars that keep these bigots in business are diverted to better options, any funding victory for trans people in Ontario will be an even bigger victory for CAMH and its employees.

Effectively, the Ontario Ministry of Health is subsidizing the pathologization and stigmatization of transgender people worldwide by funding these CAMH “experts.” It’s time to let Ontario legislators know the harm they are doing to trans people worldwide. Once CAMH is out of the picture, trans people will be able to move toward true equality and access to health services for all.

Zucker was listed on a show about homosexuality with J. Michael Bailey and his usual suspects. Bailey replaced Zucker as an officer at the International Academy of Sex Research, publishers of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. This publication is the source for nearly all problematic “science” produced on gender variance in the English language.

The Sex Files
HOMOSEXUALITY
IN THIS EPISODE

Why are some people gay? That’s the $64,000 question – at least in the scientific community. Is it something genetically predetermined? Or does environment have an impact on whether an individual turns out to be gay or lesbian? These questions are beginning to be probed in ways that might finally be leading to an answer, and the Sex Files has interviewed the foremost authorities on the topic to uncover some of those scientific clues:

Dr. Devendra Singh, University of Texas psychologist specializing in the evolutionary significance of human physical attractiveness

Dr. Ken Zucker, head of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at the University of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry

Dr. Ray Blanchard, head of the Clinical Sexology program at the University of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry

Dr. Michael Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois and specialist in the genetics and environment of sexual orientation

Dr. Marc Breedlove, professor of psychology* specialising in the sexual differentiation of the brain.

* The original episode guide described Dr. Breedlove as a “professor of psychology at UCLA.” Dr. Breedlove noted in 2008 “I am not, and have never been, a professor of psychology or of anything else at UCLA.” Breedlove earned his Ph.D. at UCLA but taught at UC Berkeley before taking an appointment at Michigan State.

References

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/publications/salarydisclosure/2009/hospit09.html

Petition: “Objection to DSM-V Committee Members on Gender Identity Disorders”
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/objection-to-dsm-v-committee-members-on-gender-identity-disorders

Petition: “To the Honourable George Smitherman, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care for Ontario – Against human rights violations of apparently gender variant children and adults”
http://www.petitiononline.com/hrights/petition.html

Close the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic group on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=72087499258

NARTH http://www.narth.com/docs/gid.html

John Michael “Mike” Bailey (born 1951) is an American psychologist, considered one of the most unethical sexologists in history. Bailey’s checkered career is a series of ethics scandals and controversies.

Since 2003 this site has documented Bailey’s central role in the academic exploitation of sex and gender minorities. One history book says my work coordinating the community response to anti-trans academics “represented one of the most organized and unified examples of transgender activism seen to date.” In 2021 the United States Library of Congress selected this site for archiving because it is “an important part of this collection and the historical record.”

Bailey’s notable ethical scandals

Children and sex

  • supporting “many offending pedophiles who are usually punished far more harshly than research suggests is warranted by the harm they cause.”
  • supporting leniency for a rapist whose victims are infants and young children: “if he didn’t physically hurt them, and if they didn’t remember traumatically, his actions should be penalized less than had he physically hurt them and they did remember.”
  • promulgating the concept of “pre-homosexual” children: “pre-homosexual children tend to be relatively gender nonconforming.”
  • claiming to know the sexual orientation of children
  • supporting fired sexologist Kenneth Zucker, whose “therapy” of gender diverse children has been widely outlawed and described as “child abuse”
  • supporting penile plethysmography, a controversial device for measuring genital arousal; some sexologists have attached plethysmographs to the penises of children to measure their erections for “research”
  • Supporting convicted serial child rapist Jerry Sandusky: “In an exchange with Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, Bailey affirmed his belief that Sandusky’s accusers had lied. ‘You believe the people testifying against Jerry Sandusky are lying?’ Carter asked. Bailey responded, ‘I can see that if you are not familiar with the evidence that I am familiar with, you would be shocked.'”

Eugenics

  • dissertation advisor and mentor Lee Willerman was a member of the American Eugenics Society
  • stating it is “morally acceptable” to screen for and abort gay fetuses: “selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm.”
  • arguing that “offering sex offenders the opportunity to be castrated in return for a reduced sentence is not ethically problematic coercion.”
  • member of the Human Biodiversity Institute

Gay and lesbian

  • claiming that “evolutionarily, homosexuality is a big mistake.”
  • claiming homosexuality may represent a “developmental error.”

Bisexuality

Northwestern students

Transgender

  • fabricating the case report that led to getting tenure: the “Danny Ryan” transgender cure narrative
  • misusing images and video of gender diverse children without their knowledge or consent as part of a lurid sexualized presentation that drew laughter from future clinicians
  • writing The Man Who Would Be Queen, widely considered one of the most transphobic books in history
    • featuring case reports in the book without consent
    • offering clinical assessments to satisfy gatekeeping models without being licensed by the state
    • attempting to have sex with at least one of the transgender book subjects / clients
    • working closely with historian Alice Dreger to cover up these ethical scandals
  • making deliberately low population estimates of LGBT people
  • writing for and publicizing “gender critical” activists
  • supporting the ex-trans movement:
  • supporting nearly every disease model of gender identity and expression ever created
    • “gender identity disorder”
    • “gender dysphoria”
      • “early onset”
      • “adolescent onset”
      • “rapid onset”
      • “adult onset”
      • “caused by psychotic delusions”
    • “rapid onset gender dysphoria”
    • “autohomoerotic gender dysphoria”
    • paraphilic models, especially those of Ray Blanchard and Anne Lawrence
  • Signing a 2018 letter from hate group American College of Pediatricians to the Trump Administration. Bailey demanded “upholding the scientific definition of sex in law and policy,” adding “an individual who identifies as transgender remains either a biological male or female.”
  • 2023 retraction of a questionable paper on “rapid onset gender dysphoria” published in Archives of Sexual Behavior

In this section

Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.

In March 2003, J. Michael Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen was released. By the end of April, transgender people worldwide took unprecedented action to fight back against the academic exploitation of our community.

The trans community was galvanized in opposition following reports of Bailey’s lurid book tour lectures. In the lecture witnessed by Stanford evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden, Bailey was misusing images and video of very young gender diverse children without their knowledge or consent.

Bailey’s crass presentation of these children was punctuated with laughter from assembled psychology professors and future clinicians. It reminded many trans people of the abuse and reparative therapy they had endured as children from similar academics.

Bailey and his colleagues featured in his book are the main proponents of reparative therapy on small children to change their gender identity and expression. This practice is outlawed in many places and has been described as child abuse.

Historians consider the international transgender response to this book to be one of the most significant moments in the history of the global transgender rights movement.

The parts in bold led to our community’s unprecedented efforts to ban unethical practices that harm our children.

Stanford Daily report (2003)

Stanford Daily, April 25, 2003
CAMPUS VIEWPOINT

Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation

By JOAN ROUGHGARDEN, GUEST COLUMNIST

On April 23, Psychology Prof. Michael Bailey from Northwestern University presented a lecture entitled “Gender Nonconformity and Sexual Orientation” to the Stanford University Psychology Department as part of its regularly scheduled departmental lecture series.

The audience, including about 10 faculty and 100 students, enjoyed laughing at pictures, quotations and voice recordings of gay, lesbian and transgendered people. The material consisted mostly of film clips and animated cartoons. At no point was the audience admonished to assume a professional decorum. No faculty challenged the scholarship, and criticism of the evidently limited sampling was left to several graduate students.

Bailey was introduced as “controversial,” someone whose work has important implications for law, medicine and social policy and as a successful teacher whose courses feature “Transsexuals stripping after class.” (First big laugh.) The initial photographs included a male-bodied child wearing her mother’s shoes, when the second round of laughter erupted. A female-bodied child was then shown in male clothes and quoted as saying she “wanted a penis,” again producing laughter. In another example, an older child in a clinical setting was given the choice of toys and chose a doll and a wig. She was quoted as saying, “1 hate my hair,” greatly amusing the audience.

Bailey’s main claim is that 75 percent of gender-variant male-bodied children grow up to be gay men. Furthermore, gay men questioned about their childhood report more feminine identification on the average than straight-identified men. A similar claim is made for gender-variant female-bodied children growing up to become lesbians, though with less certainty. Therefore, Bailey’s thesis is that gay men are more feminine than straight men, lesbians more masculine than straight women and that transgendered people do not exist as a distinct category but as an extreme gender-variant “subtype” of homosexuality.

Bailey did not present, much less do justice, to the many alternative theories and supporting data that conceptualize gender identity and sexual orientation as distinct axes of description.

Bailey followed this claim with more photographs and film clips. Two gay men were interviewed and the audience was invited to sharpen their ability to discern a gay male from a straight male — to train their “gaydar” (his word) and “pick up the vibes.” An animated cartoon showing effeminate gestures for a gay man was contrasted with one depicting a macho manner for a straight man, again sending the audience into peals of laughter. He then proceeded to show clips of a drag queen and a transgendered woman.

The transgendered woman was described as “an extremely feminine gay man who decided to become a woman.” Bailey would show bar graphs (without error bars) purporting to show that gay men and straight men prefer “casual sex” more than straight women, and straight women also prefer this type of sexual behavior more than lesbian women. The transgendered woman was claimed (though no data given) to be as sexually active in casual sex as a straight man or gay man, and for this reason had to be considered a gay man “himself.”

The lecture continued with a catalogue of diagnostic criteria to include in one’s “gaydar” for accurately discerning gay people from straight people, a project that drew an approving wisecrack from one faculty member. Using Northwestern undergraduates as subjects (“Northwestern has a good theater department”) he developed a rating for gay presentation, leading to the phrase, “the gayest-rated gay man.”

Then voices of two gay men and two straight men were played and the audience was asked to guess who was gay and who was straight. Those who guessed correctly grinned with joy and were applauded by their neighbors, leading to the conclusion that if a gay sounds really gay, then he probably is. If Bailey had presented a scholarly account of his theory in comparison with alternative theories of gender expression and sexuality, he would not have had to rely on a comical and vulgar performance to garner audience support.

Finally, Bailey presented the book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen,” in which he identifies the other “subtype” of transsexual as someone motivated by fetishistic body morphing, a largely obsolete idea that originated with Ray Blanchard. Bailey said his seminar had avoided the “really controversial” material that was available in his book. The official publicity for the book distributed at the Denver American Association for the Advancement of Science Convention in February, leads with the phrase “Gay, Straight, or Lying? Science Has the Answer” and ends with the claim that Bailey’s conclusions “may not always be politically correct, but they are scientifically accurate, thoroughly researched and occasionally startling.” Instead, many are now offering the book as the latest example of junk science and are appalled at the National Academy’s complicity in the sensationalizing of lesbian, gay and especially, transgendered people.

Bailey’s book is fulfilling the prophesy of being “controversial.” Gay, lesbian and transgendered people are organizing protests at bookstores around the country and are writing critiques in every media outlet possible.

To many observers, Bailey appears to be a rather dumb, stubborn, dense and possibly deceptive regular guy with some experience in locker-room humor. Meanwhile, the day before, on April 22, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the California State Assembly passed a bill extending California’s housing and employment nondiscrimination laws to cover gender-variant people, including transvestites and transsexuals. The bill will soon move to the state senate and will proceed to the governor. The political progress being made by gay, lesbian and now transgendered people greatly exceeds that in academia, if the homophobic and transphobic welcome to Bailey given by the Stanford Department of Psychology is any indication.

Joan Roughgarden is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford. She can be reached at [email protected].

Stanford Daily, April 25, 2003 (Archive)

Stanford Daily letters (2003)

Stanford Daily, May 1, 2003
LETTERS

Psychology grad students respond to controversial lecture

This letter is in response to Joan Roughgarden’s guest column, “Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation” (April 25). We regret that there were any misunderstandings on the part of Roughgarden regarding the Psychology Department’s colloquium. However, we feel that her recounting of the event was inaccurate, and we would like to offer our opinion from the perspective of graduate students in the Psychology Department.

Roughgarden makes two claims in her column. One, that the talk given by Northwestern University Michael Bailey was poorly presented and without merit. We have no dispute with this claim. The speaker’s data were poor, and his conclusions based on those data were severely lacking in merit and validity. No one we spoke with following the talk found his conclusions to be persuasive or scientifically valid, and that was made clear in the questions and critique he received from graduate students and faculty members following the talk. The second point Roughgarden makes is that the audience response was homophobic and supportive of Bailey’s view. She cites “peals of laughter” of the audience at several points within the talk, as well as a lack of criticism by those present as evidence of this support. There was, in fact, criticism by both professors and students regarding the scientific validity of the evidence presented. While the criticism was limited to the merit of the research, it was in no way supportive, and, in our view, was a clear indication of the critical and dismissive view of the audience toward this research. In addition, Roughgarden made the inaccurate assumption that the audience was laughing because it was reveling in some communal homophobic expression. The audience’s laughter was partially a reaction to the absurdity of some of Bailey’s claims, a reflection of embarrassed discomfort with the glib comments made by Bailey and unease about being asked to participate in Bailey’s guess-who’s-gay experiments.

The Psychology Department is committed to examining scholarly work documenting the true experience of different peoples and, in particular, of studying the processes that have heretofore been in large part omitted from psychological study, including the study of gender, race, social class and sexual orientation. We have a particularly strong research program in questioning stereotypes about marginalized groups. Bailey was included as a speaker in our colloquium series to further our understanding of the psychology of individuals in the gay, lesbian and transgendered communities. That his talk did nothing to elucidate our knowledge of those processes was extremely unfortunate, but we fully support the process that brought him to our campus.

KELLY MCGONIGAL Doctoral candidate, Psychology
JULIE MCGUIRE Doctoral candidate, Psychology
TECETA THOMAS Doctoral candidate, Psychology

References

Stanford Daily (archives.stanforddaily.com)

Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation

Psychology grad students respond to controversial lecture

Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.

Originally published by Donna Rose, who writes:

The following is the transcript of an interview with J. Michael Bailey, author of the controversial book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen”. It aired on KOOP-FM, Austin, TX in May 2003. I provide no personal opinion or slant, instead choosing to print the words exactly as they were spoken in the hopes that the reader will make their own decisions regarding what is said. Whether you agree with him or not, I think you will find his thoughts very interesting.

http://www.donnarose.com/JMBInterview.html

I’ve marked some noteworthy comments in bold.

Transcript

Interviewer: In your book you state that most gay men are feminine, or at least they’re feminine in certain ways. I was wondering, what does “feminine” mean to you?

JMB: Well, umm, I think that in general, “feminine” is a murky term.  But to say that it’s murky doesn’t mean that it’s meaningless. I think “feminine,” in general, means “female-like” but there are different ways that one can be female-like. There are ways in which gay men, on average, are somewhat female-like and there are ways in which, on average, gay men are not at all female-like. And the ways in which they are include superficial aspects of behavior such as movement and voice, and then interests, occupational and recreational interests, you know
 often in their childhoods many gay men have
 will recall, umm, having feminine behaviors such as a preference for female activities and games and female playmates and a dislike of stereotypic male activities such as rough play and competitive sports. So those are the ways in which, on average, and
 I’m going to stop saying that “on average” because it’s annoying to have to keep saying it. It’s probably annoying for you to hear it over and over. While I do, let me just say that all of these things that I’m saying don’t apply to all gay men and there are some gay men who are as masculine in any way as the typical straight man and there are some straight men who are feminine, ahh but on average, there are these significant differences between the two groups, so when I say gay men and straight men differ, that’s that way in which I mean it.

I:  Do you think that the post-modern disapproval of stereotyping has actually impeded the scientific process?

JMB:  Yeah, I do. I… well
 I think that there are a number of, or at least a couple of main issues that have impeded scientific progress in this area. One of them is the disapproval of stereotyping but, you know, the other is discomfort with this particular stereotype by, uh, not only let’s say the “politically correct” but also by gay men themselves. Many gay men, uhh, have extreme discomfort with the idea that they might be feminine. And, ahh, I think that stems from two different sources. First of all, um, I think that gay men who were feminine boys had a hard time being feminine boys. Our society is not kind to feminine boys and I think that some gay men internalize the shame that they were made to feel, um, and actually have come to feel, even if they wouldn’t explicitly acknowledge this, that there is something wrong with male femininity.

I: You have this phrase, “femophobia.” Is that a phrase that you coined or is that–

JMB: Femophobia is a phrase that I coined, although, uhh, independently another writer named Tim Bergling wrote a book called Sissyphobia about the same phenomenon. And the other thing relates to a finding that we got in a scientific study, and that’s the finding that, uh, gay men, in seeking romantic partners, tend to be really prejudiced against feminine guys. And so to say that a gay man might be feminine, in a way is to say that he might be unattractive.

I:  Do you think that all men display feminine characteristics?

JMB: You know, I don’t think that every action any man does his whole life is classifiable as masculine. But, you know, all of these things are relative traits. It’s not that you either are masculine or feminine. It’s how are you compared with other people.

I: You know, your book actually winds up discussing mostly feminine men and then, um, transgender
 what I would call transgender people.

JMB:  Uh-huh.

I: And so, I was wondering, to you, what’s the difference between transsexual and transgender? Since the modern movement is really pushing towards the word “transgender,” why bring “sexual” back into the lexicon?

JMB:  I think that
 I don’t really care what word we use as long as we’re speaking in way that leads to correct understanding and, uh, I believe that a subgroup of the transgendered have a very different understanding of motivations than I do and I frankly think that my understanding is more accurate.

I: Your book actually introduces the concept of the homosexual and then the autogynephilic transsexual. Do you care to elaborate a little bit for our audience?

JMB:  Sure. By the way, this terminology is not mine. That particular part of the book, the third section on transsexualism, is based upon the work of a psychologist named Ray Blanchard, and Blanchard proved, I think, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there are two very distinct types which he calls “homosexual transsexualism” and the other kind he called  “non-homosexual transsexualism.” A homosexual male-to-female transsexual is a transsexual who is unambiguously attracted to males. Um, and I believe that this type of transsexual is essentially a type of gay man who is very feminine and very gender dysphoric. That is, they really don’t like, for example, having a penis. One thing that I write about in the book, uh, is that one element of some of their motivation, of this type anyway, is because some of them are far more attractive as women than they are as men – particularly because they tend to be extremely feminine men – and as I say, most gay men don’t want to be romantically involved with very feminine men. So, that’s the first type.

Uh, the other, the second type – the one that invented the word “transgenderism” is more likely to be in identity politics and so on. These include primarily transsexuals that Blanchard classified as non-homosexual and basically that means that any natal male that is naturally born male who wants to become a woman or who has become a woman, and they’re not unambiguously attracted only to men. What Blanchard’s, um, discovery, and this is the most brilliant aspect of it, is that they are motivated by something called “autogynephilia.” Autogynephilia is, um, the sexual arousal and attraction to the idea of oneself as a woman. That is, these individuals
 and their primary sexual object is not some person on the outside, but it’s some person on the inside. And that is, the idea or the image of themselves as a woman.  

I:  What do you think about the, um, common saying that, you know, “I am just a woman trapped in a man’s body” or “I’m a lesbian woman trapped in a man’s body.”

JMB: Well, you know, it depends upon what one means by being a woman trapped in a man’s body. You might mean two things. If all you mean is that it’s a person who was born a man who really wants to become a woman then sure, I agree. But I don’t think that’s what they mostly mean. I think that they mean that they are “like” a woman, in the sense of having the same psychology and feelings that a woman has. And I don’t think that autogynephilic transsexuals do. I think that autogynephilic transsexuals are much more like heterosexual men than they are like women. Ah, in contrast I think homosexual transsexuals, uh, do have a strong flavor of being a woman trapped in a man’s body although even they have some atypical traits for a female.

I: One of the things that was mentioned in the book about the autogynephillic transsexual was the fact that they’re interested in themselves as sexual objects as a woman, and proof for this was things like wearing women’s undergarments and masturbating.

JMB:  Right.

I:  And that made me wonder if, perhaps, they were not just attracted to women and the idea of a woman was sexually arousing in the same way that a gay man might wear a jockstrap and masturbate.  

JMB:  Well, I don’t think so. Um, and it’s not just wearing female undergarments, uh, you know, I have somebody I write about in my book, Cher, uh, is an autogynephilic transsexual who is also a friend of mine. She used to wear, um, fake breasts and fake vaginas when she was a man, and film herself, uh, simulating intercourse with a
 with a basically a robot, and that was extremely erotic to her. Uh
 You know, I just don’t think straight men really find the idea of wearing frilly undergarments to be sexy, uh, and this has actually been studied. Autogynephilic males will become sexually aroused in the lab if they listen to a narrative about cross-dressing whereas men without any history of erotic cross-dressing do not become aroused. Regardless, some of them insist that, you know, that it’s not about autogynephilia, it’s just they feel like women so they dress like women and any male who wore frilly lacy panties would become sexually aroused. I don’t think so.

I:  Do you think that there is any consensus at all, amongst the psychological community, that the homosexual transsexual is, I don’t know, somehow acceptable versus the autogynephillic somehow being a disorder?

JMB:  There is not, uh, widespread discussion of this distinction. Uh, I think that my book, uh, breaks ground that way. I mean, these ideas have been around for a decade, but the fact that non-homosexual transsexuals are motivated by autogynephilia is not known and I think that that relates to your question. I think that those types of transsexuals tend to dislike discussion of autogynephilia; many of them deny that it applies to them. However, Blanchard showed the ones who deny it also show evidence for it. So, for example, males who denied ever cross-dressing fetishistically, if you bring them to the lab and you measure their erections while they listen to a narrative saying, “Well, you’re getting ready
 you’re putting on your panties
 you’re putting on your stockings
” they get erections! Now, why would they deny it? Well, I think it’s because, in part, people in our society are very judgmental about sexual motivation. Some people are able to accept the “woman trapped in the man’s body” justification for getting a sex change but they have much more of a problem accepting the idea that somebody has some sort of sexual “attachment” to this image of themselves as a woman. Personally, I don’t think either is a superior justification. To me, they’re both good excuses. All I want to know is, is somebody going to be happier if they get a sex change than they were before? If so, good for them.

I:  One of the researchers that you mentioned was Ken Zucker, who is the head of the child and adult gender identity clinic in Toronto. He was representing the view that Transsexualism was wrong and that he would suggest treating the gender identity disorder in childhood while he was kind of, uh, value-neutral concerning homosexuality. How can one make a distinction between a feminine gay man and someone who’s going to become a transsexual?

JMB: You actually raised two issues, and let me address both of them. First off, is kind of a value issue of, you know, does he say that transsexualism is “bad” and I think many people who are sympathetic to transsexuals still think that transsexualism would be good to avoid if one could. Because this involves major surgery, it involves, often, an adjustment in one’s social life that requires a level of acceptance in society that we just don’t have yet. I know transsexuals who say that they think that it should be considered a disorder because it would have been good if they had been cured of it.

Another question is, how do you distinguish feminine gay men from homosexual transsexuals? Do you mean in childhood, how do you know who is going to become what?

I:  You seem to suggest that you needed to treat this condition during childhood


JMB:  Right.

I: What if you make a mistake? How can you tell the difference between someone who’s just feminine and someone who wants to become a woman later in life?

JMB: Let me start by telling the listeners an important fact. There are boys who, ah, I think it’s reasonable to think of them as transsexual children. These are boys like, in the file “Ma Vie en Rose” who want to be girls, and they are pervasively and persistently feminine in a number of ways, and they would be happy to be girls. Now, those boys who have been followed-up – boys who start out that way – usually become
 not transsexuals but gay men. A few of them are transsexuals but not nearly as many as are gay men. There is a number of questions, like “How does that happen?” “How do you know which ones are going to be gay men and which ones are going to be transsexuals?” and so on. Now, nobody really knows, you know, because we can’t do controlled scientific studies on kids like that. Zucker thinks that these kids who become gay men, he thinks that that’s the more desirable outcome than being transsexual because transsexualism is a hard life.

I:  It sounds like people have been saying that about, uh, just being a gay person, in general.

JMB:  Yeah.  Well, that’s
 but I
 Zucker also thinks that what distinguishes those who become gay men versus those who remain transsexual is, in part, how they’re reared, and if they do not have systematic pressure to masculinize, he believes, then they may not. So, a parent who never puts their foot down and takes away the Barbie dolls and so on, Zucker believes, ahh, risks having a transsexual child more than those who do make a persistent effort to masculinize the child. I’m very torn. I know mothers in this situation..

I:  Well, should we encourage of should we be discouraging that behavior?

JMB: I don’t
 I don’t
 I don’t know. I don’t know. I see both sides.  Because we really don’t know
 I mean, let’s assume that Zucker is right, and he might be, then should we enable these kids to become women as soon as they can? Maybe we should! Maybe we should keep our minds open and… and say that these boys will have a better life if they’re allowed to become girls as adolescents. That’ll keep them from masculinizing, and they’ll be prettier, and so on
 ahh, if we can
 ahh facilitate their sex change earlier. I mean, what are the chances that people are going to do that?

I: It seems such a murky situation cause, I mean, on the one hand I definitely did display some feminine characteristics as a child and was told I was “wrong,” but then I have a straight friend who was allowed to play with Barbie dolls. And then you have the autogynephilic transsexuals who are, by all means, masculine during their childhood and


JMB: Okay. Let’s not get the situation overly murky. There is a clear, strong correlation between these very strong feminine traits and a homosexual outcome. Now, I personally don’t see a homosexual outcome as any kind of problem. A transsexual outcome is a harder case for me because, you know, I have transsexual friends. I quite like them, but I think that they’ve had a very hard time and they’ve had to undergo some very risky medical procedures, too. I think we’ve got to be honest about the potential tradeoffs here, and that is if we’re gonna struggle for a more gender “kind” world that there might be more transsexualism and if so, is that okay with us? Are we willing to accept that? And maybe we are
 maybe we should be.

I:  Speaking of feminine characteristics, in your book you were talking about the high number of gay men who have dancing careers


JMB:  Uh-huh.

I: 
and you seem to indicate that there is some latent cause. You have your son saying, you know, why do you think that gay men are more likely to be dancers and he says, “because dancing is feminine and gay men tend to be feminine.”

JMB:  Right.

I:  Is it possible that there are social factors, rather than biological factors at play? Cause you seem to be building a case that there are feminine career tracks that gay men are interested in. It seems possible that masculine men are just discouraged from being dancers.

JMB: Well, I think it’s both ways. As masculine men are discouraged by
I mean
 ALL men are discouraged from being dancers in a certain way, you know? In our dance study we, uh, asked how people got interested in dance and we found that, actually, straight men – on average – got into it a couple of years earlier than they gay men. You know how they got into it? They got into it because their parents made them. The gay men got into it on their own. Something happened
 they saw something on tv
 they went to a dance performance
 they said, “Oh, I love that!  I want to do that!” And, you know, what is it about dancing
 I mean, I do think that dancing, uh, is a feminine activity, but what is it about dancing that’s feminine? I don’t really know, but I think that that is the cause of the relation between male sexual orientation and interest in dancing careers.

I: There is some data that was in the book that, I have to admit, I got upset about. I guess it’s that most of it was pre-AIDS data


JMB:  Uh-huh

I:  
and one was saying that a typical gay male has 500 sex partners


JMB: Well, I didn’t say “has.”  I… I think I said that was a study in San Francisco before the AIDS epidemic. And it also
 it gets a little more complicated with gay men, because what does one mean by sex partner?  We should be clear that gay men are not just counting anal sex when they are listing their sex partners. They are counting oral sex, they’re probably counting manual sex
 So, I think if heterosexual people counted those they would have more than they think of when they think of their “sex” partners. Nevertheless, I’ve done several studies and gay men always have substantially more partners than straight men.

I: Well, you also talk about monogamous relationships between homosexual men usually become open relationships within five years. You know, speaking as a gay man whose adolescence happened after AIDS, I think the entire atmosphere for dating, and for monogamy, and casual sex, has really changed. And I’m surprised that this book is still quoting those older datas.

JMB: The study I
 that we have been talking about is one by David McWhirter which is well over a decade old. However, I have lots of gay friends and they all conform to that generalization. That is, the ones who have been together for five years are not monogamous.

I:  When you’re comparing, um, gay people to straight people are you looking at gay club-going men and straight club-going men?

JMB: Well, I think that, for many of our studies we’ve advertised in urban publications. Gay Chicago is a bar magazine, and The Chicago Reader is a very alternative publication. Ah, and so
 yeah
 I think actually, they tend to be comparable in their lifestyle and I would say that actually, that’s a bias against my hypothesis. I think it minimizes differences in partner numbers between gay and straight guys. Because the fact is, gay men who read Gay Chicago and respond to our ads are probably more typical gay men than the straight people who read The Chicago Reader.    

I:  How do you think that gay and straight men are alike?

JMB:  Uh, well, I think that the whole thing with sex partners is
 and the fact that gay men have more
 is a function of the ways in which gay and straight men are exactly alike. And that is the fact that they both find casual sex to be gratifying and, uh, exciting. Much more so than women do, on average. The difference is that gay men can get it because their partners are also into casual sex. So, um, I don’t think that gay men are psychologically promiscuous. I think they’re just like straight men. They just are able to realize their desires more easily than straight men.

Another way is that gay men are like straight men in being shallow and focused on physical looks as partner. It’s not that woman are necessarily deep. They’re more concerned with, like, resources and dishin’ and that kind of thing whereas men are focused on how the face and the body looks.

Ah, another way in which they’re alike
 their interest in looking at naked people, erotica – that is a male sort of thing. Men pay money to watch videos of people having sex with each other. Well, the big markets for that are straight men and gay men.

I:  You mention findings that, uh, being gay has biological background and one of them was the INAH 3. Could you elaborate?

JMB:  In 1991 Simon LeVay published a study in The journal Science that made the front pages across the nation and got him on Oprah. This was the study showing that, in a region of the brain called the hypothalamus, which has long been known to be important for sexual behavior, there was a small group of cells called the nucleus, that was larger in straight men than in gay men. And gay men’s INAH3 looked like that of women. This was a very exciting finding because it was in the right region of the brain and it was the way, you know, people thought it might turn out that since women and gay men are both interested in men, that they should have similar sexual orientation centers. Now, this was an autopsy study and it depended upon people of known sexual orientation having died and it was made possible by the tragic AIDS epidemic. This study hasn’t been followed up until recently when a guy named Bill Byne repeated the study, didn’t have quite as many subjects as LeVay had, and my sense of his replication is it looks similar to what LeVay found. That he was, in fact, on to something. So, I think that there is likely something there, and I think that type of research is potentially quite valuable.

I:  Do you think the finding that there is a gay gene will lead to gays being treated as handicapped?

JMB:  Well, let me give a little context to this. Uh… Greenberg and I have collaborated on papers and neither he nor I thinks that there is anything wrong with being gay. The issue, though, is I have had people say, “You know, you’ve got to stop doing your research because we’re gonna find something that allows people to manipulate sexual orientation or test for it, and then they’re going to do terrible things like, abort fetuses with the gay gene, and so on. First of all, I would say that those scenarios are scientifically very impossible. But secondly, I think that they’re hysterical because the people making these claims are not thinking through the ethics of it. And these are the same people who think that abortion on demand for any reason is no business except for the woman who wants to have the abortion, and then they’re at the same time raising the spectre of murdering gay babies when they would never countenance the word “murder” in any other discussion of abortion. So anyway, I think that, uh, Greenberg’s analysis which I talk about in the book is, uh, actually very cogent. And it is that changing the sexual orientation of a baby from gay to straight, or for that matter, from straight to gay, really doesn’t have any ethical import, first of all, and to get to your question if we find a gene or if we find a brain region or any kind of biological factor influencing sexual orientation will it lead to gay people being thought of as handicapped, I don’t see how that would happen. For any people who differ in their behavior there must be, at some level, biological differences between them because at some level of explanation everything is biological. And, that doesn’t mean that people who behave differently than the norm are handicapped.

I:  Recently there has been some discussion about the evolutionary advantages to being gay. Um, specifically, the idea of the pack mentality.  The idea that if you’re in a family of three, let’s say, and all of your brothers and sisters have children and you don’t then you can use your resources to help those children rather than spread it out amongst more children. Then also the issue of zero population growth. How do you feel about some of these evolutionary arguments? 

JMB:  Well, the evolutionary hypotheses about homosexuality, and I have reviewed these very carefully… I’m writing a paper on them… they have all been, in my opinion, quite lame, um, and this is another place where sensitivity has impeded careful thought. I mean, one thing to realize is that evolutionarily, homosexuality is a big mistake. And, I don’t mean anything bad by saying that because lots of good things, that we would like to have more of, would be evolutionary mistakes. People being extremely kind to strangers and giving poor strangers lots of their money, that would be a great thing. But evolutionarily, it would be a terrible mistake. And when I say something would be a big mistake I just mean I don’t see how it would ever evolve. And I don’t see how homosexuality has ever evolved and remained in our population at relatively high rates: 1, 2, 3, 4 percent?! That’s very high for something that has vastly reduced fertility related to it. And I should
uhh
 the flip side of when I say it’s an evolutionary mistake certain things that are evolutionarily clearly adaptive include jealousy, selfishness, the uh willingness to commit infidelity, all those things. Those are very evolutionarily adaptive. But, they’re not good, right? So by saying something is an evolutionary mistake or evolutionarily adaptive that’s not a value judgement. That’s just counting number of descendents one leaves. So the hypotheses that people have raised to explain homosexuality have included all kinds of things like population control. That’s a non-starter because nothing can ever be explained at such a group level because you could always have selfish people who would thwart population control and they would, um, they would win the evolutionary race.

The other hypothesis which we’ve actually investigated empirically, uh, is what I call the “kind gay uncle” hypothesis. That instead of, uh, investing in his own offspring, uh, a gay man invests a lot in his, uh, nieces and nephews. Well, first of all, empirically we don’t find much evidence that gay men do that. But secondly, the amount by which they would have to do that in order to make up for not having children or having, you know, half the number of children
 actually we
 the best estimates are that gay men have about one fifth the number of children than straight men
 the amount of investment that they would have to do would be tremendous. They would have to devote their lives to helping their nieces and nephews and of course they don’t do that.

I:  I was wondering, can we expect a book about masculine women and transsexuals in that community?

JMB:  We certainly should have one. Uh
 and
 there are such books, you know, about the individual topics
 there are books about tomboys, there are books about female to male transsexuals, and there are certainly books about lesbians, including butch lesbians. But it would be good to have them all in one book, I think. And if you’re asking me am I going to write a book
such a book? I don’t know. No time soon. I’m still involved in the controversies and discussions about my current book and I have a lot of work to do in that domain. So


I:  Well, I really want to thank you for your time and this interview.  I think it’s been really informative. 

JMB:  Well, I think you have asked very thoughtful questions, and I hope I said some things you can use. 

Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.

On April 2, 2003, Joseph Henry Press publicist Robin Pinnel sent out promotional materials for The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey, including the following attachment.

One of our investigators retrieved this from three attached files mentioned by Pinnel and sent the following analysis:

What’s really important about these documents is one was written by Bailey, on his outdated little Mac, on December 3, 2002.

I decoded all three and was able to open them directly in Microsoft Word and see all three authors stats and electronic signatures, as well as see their thinking in their own words before the book went to press.

These docs are very damning, and really show some of the backroom thinking that was going on. JHP and Bailey won’t be able to back away from their own words on what they “meant” and what they “intended” when it’s all right here in black and white!

[controversial ideas.doc]

The Man Who Would Be Queen
by J. Michael Bailey

This book is controversial. It is about feminine men, from before birth to adulthood, to the rebirth experienced by those who decide to become women. Its three sections include one on very feminine boys, one on gay men, and one on transsexuals. These meld scientific studies with stories about real people.

Male femininity is a phenomenon that most people find interesting but which has been ignored by science due to concerns ranging from social conservatism to sensitivity (or less charitably, political correctness). For example, despite widespread stereotypes that gay men tend to be feminine, research related to the stereotype has only recently been conducted. 

Here are some of the topics and questions the book addresses:

FEMININE BOYS

  • Do very feminine boys become gay men?
    • Yes they usually do. As adults, nearly all are attracted to men.
  • Are feminine boys born or made?
    • Scientific studies of rare conditions in which boys are changed into girls soon after birth show that even the most extreme social manipulation can’t make a feminine boy. They seem to emerge that way from the womb.
  • How often do feminine boys become transsexual adults?
    • Although most feminine boys become gay men rather than transsexuals, a significant minority—perhaps 10%—of very feminine boys will choose to become women.
  • Do feminine boys need therapy to make them happy and well-adjusted adults?
    • This is controversial, and participants in the controversy tend to ignore the best points of the other side. On the one hand, treatment that focuses on extinguishing feminine behavior may make the boys masculine at the expense of shame and self-hatred. On the other hand, if we could make society completely accept feminine boys, more of them might choose to change into women.

GAY MEN

  • Are gay men feminine, like stereotypes suggest, or are they masculine, like social scientists have asserted for thirty years?
    • Yes. That is, gay men are a mixture of masculine and feminine traits. In some respects, they are remarkably feminine, but in some others, they are as masculine as straight men.
      • Gay men do in fact have feminine occupational and recreational interests, and this affects the jobs they choose and the ways they spend their time.
      • Gay men are also feminine in their speech patterns—there is a “gay voice”—and in their movement.
      • In some other ways, gay men are just like straight men. These include many aspects of sexual behavior. For example, gay men and straight men both enjoy casual sex—but gay men are able to have much more casual sex, because their partners also enjoy it.
  • Do some gay men act feminine in order to be accepted by other gay men? Do feminine and masculine gay men pair up as “husband and wife?”
    • No. Actually, gay men dislike feminine attributes in their romantic partners. Virtually all gay men prefer masculine rather than feminine partners.
  • Are gay men born or made?
    • Born. The best evidence for this is the feminine boys who will become gay men. These boys act that way despite, not because of, the social influences that surround them.
  • Aren’t we all really bisexual, like the ancient Greeks?
    • No. Men tend to be attracted to either men or women, but not both. Furthermore, the existence of feminine gay men transcends cultures and time.

TRANSSEXUALS

  • Are transsexuals women trapped in men’s bodies?
    • No. First of all, there are two very distinct types of males who become females. (Few scientists, much less laypeople, have understood the difference between them.) One of them—the type that likes only men—is naturally feminine in many respects, but not in all. The other is not at all feminine except as the result of effort.
  • What about men who become women only to be lesbians?
    • This is the second type of transsexual. They are primarily sexually attracted to the image of themselves as women, but they also are attracted to women.
  • Are transsexuals born or made?
    • The feminine transsexual is born feminine. However, whether he elects to become a woman depends on lots of social feedback. For example, will he be more attractive as a man or as a woman? The other, non-feminine, type of transsexual seems to develop his unusual sexual preference (for himself as a woman) without any social input.
  • Are transsexuals happy once they become women?
    • For the most part, they are happier than they were as men. However, they still do not lead conventional lives.

See the main page on Robin Pinnel for more materials put out by Joseph Henry Press.

References

Pinnel R (April 2, 2003). new book on homosexuality, transsexualism and science. via indymedia.org http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-atlanta-audio/2003-April/000188.html

Bailey JM (December 3, 2002). Controversial ideas (PDF)

Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.