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His name is J. Michael Bailey, and he is a psychologist at Northwestern University. What makes Dr. Bailey remarkable is a recent book he wrote entitled The Man Who Would Be Queen. A study about transgender psychology and an explanation of sexual biology, the book proposes that some men who wish to become women are, according to Dr. Bailey, spurred on by an erotic fantasy of seeing themselves as women. This is clearly much different than the alternate approach, which states that men who feel themselves truly to be women are instead victims of a mistaken biology.
Following the book’s publication Dr. Bailey was then attacked on several fronts, both academic and otherwise. One transgender computer scientist compared Dr. Bailey’s research to Nazi propaganda, while several people Dr. Bailey had interviewed came out and argued that he had committed ethics infractions – one claiming Dr. Bailey had sex with her. Dr. Deirdre McCloskey, a professor from the University of Illinois, joined in, seeking to curb what she believes is "a false and unscientific and politically damaging opinion." Dr. McCloskey also wrote to Northwestern accusing Dr. Bailey of ethical research violations. Nevertheless, a recent investigation conducted by Dr. Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar at Northwestern, has concluded that all the accusations against Dr. Bailey are ultimately baseless. But in a world where a transgender advocate smeared pictures of Dr. Bailey’s children with sexually explicit captions on her website, the question arises whether academic discussion of politically sensitive topics can be conducted at all.
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Oversimplification by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
This is such a gross oversimplification of the issues invloved. Mr. Bailey’s descriptions of transsexual women are particularly demeaning. Ms. Dreger – well – she works for the same instittion as Baily, was unable to gain enough trust with the three other subjects of her "history" to even converse with her and the journal it’s published in has – wait for it – Bailey on the editorial board, he is also past president of the association.
Bias & conflict of interest at such a level that one wonders why reviewers accepted it for publication.
Interesting by scubasteve :: NR0 :: Show
I haven’t read the book, and probably won’t. But it’s interesting to see the user reviews on Amazon.com. So far, it seems that you either love it or hate it – 93% of the people that rated it gave it 1 star or 5 stars. Again, not having read the book and given the subject matter, it seems that a book like this is not going to change your opinion from what it was before you read it. That being said, I totally agree with Will’s last sentence. It’s interesting that with certain topics, the calls for open-mindedness mysteriously go silent.
What about female-to-male transsexuals? by Dereck :: NR6 :: Show
Just out of curiosity, what does this theory say about female-to-male transsexuals?
Dreger is the Bailey of the Intersex Community by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
We are starting our own Satire provided to us by Shirley Spammer.
For information about the Baileyesque figure in the Intersex community
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html
I feel that Dreger and Bailey deserve NO serious response from most of us at this point. What Dreger has done in my opinion is use her social status and her normborn privilege to caricature me and in so doing it has been crafted into a genetic definition of me as disordered sexually. This is a very dangerous caricature. What Shirley Spammer and Andrew Kerr have done in the following satire is simply mirror back what they are doing; but, of course, there is no real danger there because it is not to be taken seriously as a scientific, truthful article. What Dreger and Bailey have done is very serious and even though it is a caricature, a perversion of what I am, it will end the lives of many like me in the future because of having a DSD or more precisely: a genetic birth defect suitable to be eliminated from the gene pool.
Dreger and Bailey are the only ones with the TRUTH. All others are liars or erroneous. That ends the discussion. Freedom of expression only applies to the ones doing the research and speaking about us and for us – never to us the actual subjects. Like Sophie Siedlberg has so clearly pointed out, when we the subjects object, then the objection is the subject of another clinical study of the squeaks of the labrats. By accident of birth, we have no access to their Ubermensch truth. This is our disclaimer. We don’t pretend to have the truth. Only those who speak for us do.
The first two in ours series:
Professor Rike Mengele Fatbastard and Dr M. Alice Doormat De Vile Are Innocent!!
"When Professors are branded neo Nazi scum and liars"
Access to the articles in this series
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_68
Dreger is the Bailey of the Intersex Community by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
We are starting our own Satire provided to us by Shirley Spammer.
For information about the Baileyesque figure in the Intersex community
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html
I feel that Dreger and Bailey deserve NO serious response from most of us at this point. What Dreger has done in my opinion is use her social status and her normborn privilege to caricature me and in so doing it has been crafted into a genetic definition of me as disordered sexually. This is a very dangerous caricature. What Shirley Spammer and Andrew Kerr have done in the following satire is simply mirror back what they are doing; but, of course, there is no real danger there because it is not to be taken seriously as a scientific, truthful article. What Dreger and Bailey have done is very serious and even though it is a caricature, a perversion of what I am, it will end the lives of many like me in the future because of having a DSD or more precisely: a genetic birth defect suitable to be eliminated from the gene pool.
Dreger and Bailey are the only ones with the TRUTH. All others are liars or erroneous. That ends the discussion. Freedom of expression only applies to the ones doing the research and speaking about us and for us – never to us the actual subjects. Like Sophie Siedlberg has so clearly pointed out, when we the subjects object, then the objection is the subject of another clinical study of the squeaks of the labrats. By accident of birth, we have no access to their Ubermensch truth. This is our disclaimer. We don’t pretend to have the truth. Only those who speak for us do.
The first two in ours series:
Professor Rike Mengele Fatbastard and Dr M. Alice Doormat De Vile Are Innocent!!
"When Professors are branded neo Nazi scum and liars"
Access to the articles in this series
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_68
Possible! by MrJeem :: NR0 :: Show
I haven’t researched this as yet, but the article posted here states that "the book proposes that some men who wish to become women…" ‘Some’ is an interesting word to use, and ought to be word enough to stem criticism.
And certainly academic discussion of politically sensitive topics can be and are conducted by many, many educated people. Sure some of them do it better than others, but I think we shouldn’t confuse dialogue with media reporting.