Skip to content

Steven J. Gaulin vs. transgender people

Steven J. Gaulin is an American anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, and anti-transgender activist.

Background

Steven J. C. “Steve” Gaulin was born in August of 1947. Gaulin earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1972 and a doctorate from Harvard in 1978. Gaulin taught at University of Pittsburgh from 1978 to 2003, then took a position at University of California, Santa Barbara.

From 2002 to 2011, Gaulin was co-editor of anti-trans academic journal Evolution and Human Behavior, the publication of the Human Evolution and Behavior Society.

Anti-transgender activism

Gaulin was a co-investigator and co-author with anti-trans psychologist J. Michael Bailey.

In 2003, Gaulin wrote an early Amazon shill review for Bailey’s transphobic book The Man Who Would Be Queen:

Why is this book so controversial?

J. Michael Bailey is one of the leading academic psychologists specializing in the study of sexual orientation. He is Chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University, author of scores of scientific articles in the field, a holder of numerous National Science Foundation grants, and widely respected among professionals for his adherence to the empirical facts in a field fraught with political landmines and peopled by “vested interests”. His “Man Who Would Be Queen” courageously tackles these hard problems with both scholarship and sympathy. Unfortuantely most people can’t see beyond their own personal concerns to evaluate the larger scale science. Apparently alienating many on the political right, Bailey summarizes a large body of evidence making it plain that gayness has major “inborn” components (professionals read “high heritability” here), rather than a mere “lefestyle” choice. But, apparently equally iritating to others, Bailey recognizes that there are (at least) two types of male transsexuals. Exactly why this conclusion is so threatening is beyond me. If, as Bailey advocates, we lived in a world where sexual preferences were undestood to be grafted onto the self in utero, it would be no more defensibe to limit the kinds of acceptable selves to 2, 4, 6, or…? Those without an axe to grind and with an honest curiousity about the origins and develepment of sexual orientation will be amply rewarded by this well researched and highly readable book.

References

Bailey, J. Michael; Gaulin, Steven; Agyei, Yvonne; Gladue, Brian A. (1994). Effects of gender and sexual orientation on evolutionarily relevant aspects of human mating psychology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 1081-89. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.66.6.1081

Harrington, Jill (November 1994). How Gender And Sexual Orientation Influence Dating Dynamics. Northwestern Observer https://web.archive.org/web/20050204093914/https://www.northwestern.edu/univ-relations/media/observer/1994-95observer/social-science/gaygend-socsci.html [archive]

Gaulin, Steven J. (July 6, 2003). Why is this book so controversial? https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3G68238F1GZQ3/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0309084180

Resources

University of California, Santa Barbara Anthropology (anth.ucsb.edu)