Paul Varnell was an American journalist and LGBTQ rights activist.
Background
Paul Varnell was born on April 16, 1942 in St. Louis and grew up in the northeast United States. Varnell earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1963, then attended graduate school at Indiana University-Bloomington. Varnell taught at Northern Illinois University before moving into activism and journalism in the 1980s.
Varnell was among that generation’s most notable conservative/libertarian journalists in the LGBTQ community.
Varnell died December 9, 2011.
Selected works
In 2005 Varnell criticized sexologist J. Michael Bailey’s belief that bisexual men do not exist, and he wrote an early critical review of Bailey’s anti-transgender book The Man Who Would Be Queen.
Weird Science: J. Michael Bailey’s ‘The Man Who Would Be Queen’
Originally published July 23, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.
It’s a shame trees had to be sacrificed in order to print J. Michael Bailey’s controversial new book “The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism.”
Bailey takes a perfectly interesting and reasonable question — what is the relationship between childhood femininity in boys and gay men, and transgenderism — and succeeds only in writing a bunch of speculative and insulting nonsense.
Don’t be fooled by the “science” in the title: There is very little science in this book. It’s not science calling up a two-decades-old research study and declaring it the truth for all time. It’s not science without documentation — there are no footnotes, no references listed and no bibliography.
It’s not science sitting at a bar in Chicago’s gay neighborhood of Boystown talking to gay men and transgenders about their childhoods. It’s not science when someone answers your questions and you don’t like the answers or don’t believe them, so you dismiss the insight as lies, or internalized “femiphobia.”
It’s not science when you write pages about what “perfect” studies would need to be conducted to prove your wanted findings, and then write that, of course, these studies could never be done because of their length and complexity.
It’s not science to simply quote small studies and surveys with no context. It’s not science taking an 8-year-old boy’s cross-dressing issue and basing an entire book on the question of what he may or may not become later in life. And it’s not science or scholarship to praise your son’s ability to spot gay men on the street. It’s not science to base your knowledge of transgender and gay lives on what they say they are seeking in personal ads.
This book is not science. A discussion of ideas, yes. One straight man’s look into an unfamiliar world, yes. Science, absolutely not.
Bailey’s thesis is that there is a connection between femininity in boys and gay men and the desire to change gender. In investigating this he takes a long detour through covering gay masculinity and femininity, stereotypes of gay men and whether gay men are actually more like straight men or women.
Then he declares there are exactly two types of transgenders: homosexual and autogynephile. The former are men who want to change gender because they identify as women and the latter are men who are erotically charged by switching gender. In his limited exploration, Bailey paints an ugly picture of transgenders’ alleged sexual perversity, confusion and relationships. And he makes no effort to consider transgenders who carry on “normal” jobs, friendships, sexual desires, lives, etc.
While the argument Bailey makes is pretty bad, the writing and organization of the book aren’t much better. He never adequately connects the several different strands he’s weaving into a cohesive whole theory. And his personal anecdotes are annoying, not to mention credibility-busting.
This book is not worth reading, even for the controversy. You’d learn a lot more reaching out to someone in the trans community and having a friendly and honest discussion with them about their lives than reading this ridiculous concoction of speculation.
What’s also mystifying is that some reputable authors (Steven Pinker, Anne Lawrence) and literary establishments (Kirkus Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, Out magazine) gave the book positive quotes, since it doesn’t take much analytical ability to slice through Bailey’s arguments, speculations and assumptions. Also confusing is how an author of Bailey’s apparently reputable credentials can get away with a shoddy publication like this. He is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, has written for The New York Times and is a well-known sex researcher.
Wisely and appropriately, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition has called for the National Academy of Science to investigate the book and remove it from under its banner.
Bailey’s Bisexuality Study (2005)
Originally published August 3, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.
Most of us realize that there are many people who have had sex with both sexes but that that does not necessarily means they feel equal desire for both sexes. As Masters and Johnson wryly observed, “The label of bisexual often means whatever the user wishes it to mean.”
Now a new study published in Psychological Science by Northwestern University psychologist J. Michael Bailey and two Ph.D. candidates claims to advance science by reporting that none of the men in their study of male bisexuals experienced “strong” desire for both sexes and that most experienced much stronger sexual arousal by men than women.
Whether or not Bailey’s conclusions are true, the study fails to demonstrate them effectively. Bailey has repeatedly in the past employed problematic research procedures and this study is no exception.
Bailey and his team recruited 33 “bisexuals” as well as control groups of homosexuals and heterosexuals by advertising in the gay and “alternative” press. They then showed all three groups of men “several” two-minute-long erotic films, including two of two men having sex and two of two women having sex. The subjects’ genital arousal was determined by a device placed around the penis that measured any increased circumference. Bailey says, “For men arousal is orientation.”
It turned out that one-third of each group of subjects had no significant genital arousal at all from the films, which means that either they had no sexual orientation or else the technique for testing orientation was flawed. But Bailey ignored that possibility, simply eliminated the non-responders and used the 22 bisexual who did have an arousal response.
It also turned out too that three of the 25 gay men who had measurable genital arousal were more aroused by the female films than the male films. Bailey should conclude (“arousal is orientation”) that they were heterosexual but does not and does not say why. This interesting fact is buried in a footnote in a manuscript version of the study but I missed it in the uncorrected page proofs Bailey kindly provided.
In any case, the final result was that although all the bisexual men reported equal subjective (mental) arousal to both types of films, all of them “had much greater genital arousal from one sex than to the other” and three quarters of the 22 men had stronger genital arousal from the all-male films than the all-female films.
It is noticeable that there is no mention of heterosexual films – a man having sex with a woman. The study assumes that a film of two women having sex will always generate a heterosexual arousal response but offers no evidence or argument for the claim. No doubt some men are titillated by lesbian sex but whether it is as uniformly effective a heterosexual arousal agent as a heterosexual film seems questionable.
Some bisexual men, for instance, are far more interested in their own performance, their impact on the other person, than the gender of the partner. Masters and Johnson call them “ambisexuals” and C. A. Tripp mentions that some researchers describe them – somewhat inaccurately – as ready to “stick it in anywhere.” If such men are to be aroused by brief films it would more likely be one of a man having sex with another person, male or female, than by a film lacking any male participant. This could help explain the greater number of men aroused by the all-male films.
Since the bisexual men did report substantially equal subjective (mental) arousal to both types of films, someone might wonder if two-minute films were long enough to generate genital arousal particularly for the female films since they presumably did not involve specific arousal cues such as copulatory activity. As psychologist Murray Davis points out, the move from everyday life to erotic reality can take time, the right mental set, and the right cues.
Finally one might wonder if the recruitment ads were specific enough. If Bailey had advertised for men with “equal sexual desire” for men and women he might have obtained a more interesting study group. As it was, he defined “bisexuals” as people with Kinsey ratings of 2, 3 and 4 thus including people with stronger heterosexual responses (2s) and stronger homosexual responses (4s).
One might also wonder if most of the bisexuals solicited through ads in gay publications might lean toward the gay side of bisexuality – which could be why they were reading gay publications and saw the ad. That in turn might help explain the larger number of bisexuals who were more aroused by males than females.
These and related difficulties lead to me wonder why Bailey continues to try to do sex research when he demonstrates so little understanding of the human psychology involved in sex and sexual arousal and seems so unself-critical about research designs that include sample bias, dubious testing procedures, built-in assumptions, unaccountable anomalies, etc. Whatever he is doing, it is not psychology and it is not science.
References
Baim T (December 14, 2011). PASSAGES: Writer, activist Paul Varnell dies. Windy City Times. http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=35183
Reese R (October 15, 2011). Paul Varnell, 1941-2011: Gay activist wrote fiery conservative column. Chicago Tribune https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-12-15-ct-met-varnell-obit-20111215-story.html
Varnell P (August 3, 2005). Bailey’s Bisexuality Study. Chicago Free Press https://igfculturewatch.com/2005/08/03/baileys-bisexuality-study/
Varnell P (July 23, 2003). Weird Science: J. Michael Bailey’s ‘The Man Who Would Be Queen’. Chicago Free Press https://igfculturewatch.com/2003/07/23/weird-science-j-michael-baileys-the-man-who-would-be-queen/