Several commenters have mentioned and quoted from Michael Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen.
Click this link to read the first two chapters of the book.
The Man Who Would Be Queen is published by Joseph Henry Press.
PS – Much has gotten in the way of the second part of Danielle’s remarks on gender identity issues, but they are coming soon…
8 thoughts on “The Man Who Would Be Queen – Chapters 1 & 2”
Comments are closed.
That so many responded in kind, deliberately insulting Dr Bailey by using carefully selective evidence of his sexual proclivities rather than arguing about the data, is all too human but Not Useful.
You do have to love the double standard at work here, though. Bailey puts out a book dripping with sexualized contempt for transwomen (the book undergoes a remarkable shift in tone when you get to part 3), and that’s just fine, because it’s “science.” Or maybe “popular science.” Something “sciency” in any case. Yet the second someone dares to treat him the way he takes it for granted he has the right to treat transwomen, they’re the bad one. As in rape trials, the victim must automatically be held to a much higher standard than the offender because, well, just because.
I arranged to interview her for the study we were conducting. When she came to my laboratory, my initial impression was reconfirmed. She was stunning. (Afterwards, my avowedly heterosexual male research assistant told me the he would gladly have had sex with her, even knowing that Kim still possessed a penis.) (p. 182)
Now granted I’m not a professional social science researcher, but it seems to me sitting around with your grad students discussing which hot trannies you’d like to screw is not a very professional way to run a lab. The fact that he would just stick this in the book unremarked says volumes about which of his heads was doing his thinking.
In my experience, most lay people are happy to accept the “I’m a woman in a man’s body” narrative, and don’t really want to know about autogynephilia-even though the preferred narrative is misleading and it is impossible to understand nonhomosexual transsexualism without autogynephilia.
Now granted I’m not a professional social sciences researcher, but I was under the impression that scientific conclusions are supposed to be tentative and always subject to new data and interpretations. Guess that’s why I’m not a professional.
The above quote also incapsulates another of the main problems with the book: this “preferred narrative” that Bailey and Blanchard are always yapping about is actually largely something of their own construction. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that in the chapter that’s supposed to be telling us about “autogynephilic transsexuals,” Bailey actually spends nearly the entire chapter talking about crossdressers, who are a bit of a different breed. He claims that McCloskey’s Crossing memoir includes the “I always felt like a woman on the inside” “narrative” when in fact that’s nowhere in the book. In his book and his subsequent comments on the controversy, he always presents himself as this big brave politically incorrect iconoclast blasting through “transsexual myths” with the big Light of Scientific Truth, but fails to mention that he basically created the “myths” himself and projected them onto transwomen. (Not to mention the second someone did respond in kind, this big brave anti-PC iconoclast immediately began running around whining to everyone about how unfair it all was.)
Zoe,
If that section of the book was removed, I’d probably have thought it a quirky but interesting book. It’s not so much that Bailey paints with a broad brush, but he picks up the paint bucket and dumps it all overtop of us.
There are indications of two sorts of ‘paths’, but he paints it in such a negative light, and doesn’t allow for any crossover. If he presented the theory as a scale, like a kinsey scale, and his two prototypical Type 1 Type 2 examples as the extremely ends of the sliding scale, then I would actually probably agree with him on most points!
“To be sure, only a small minority of gay men become transsexual, but homosexual transsexuals are a type of gay man”. p. 178
“With luck, the next revision of the DSM will distinguish between “homosexual” and “autogynephilic” transsexualism.” p. 176
I think we can take that as given, since Dr Blanchard heads the subgroup on paraphilias.
” – – – autogynephilia seems to be a type of paraphilia. Paraphilias comprise a set of unusual sexual preferences that include autogynephilia, masochism, sadism ,… , frotteurism , … necrophilia, beastiality, and pedophilia.” p. 171
“If a man has one paraphilia, then his chances of having any other paraphilia seem to be highly elevated. p. 172
Now since I didn’t transition early, and am in a traditionally male occupation (Computer Science), I fit the AGP model very well. On Dr Bailey’s test, I got up to +5, when +3 is all that is required for AGP. Ok, so it got down to -1 afterwards with all the HS questions, but you have to answer the AGP ones first and stop if you hit +3.
In any event, transsexuals are either gay men, or paraphiliac men. All of them, no exceptions. All men. And if they are post-op, they are mutilated men.
If they transition late, not only are they paraphiliac mutilated men, they might very well be sadists too. And probably masochists.
“The best established link is between autogynephilia and masochism. .” p. 172
Actually, I’ve noticed that he’s probably right. A lot of TS women of my acquaintance have confessed to having erotic fantasies about bondage, though not usually ones involving pain. This is a case of “calling ’em how he sees ’em” regardless of fear or favour. OTOH so have some of my non-TS girlfriends… in neither case have they acted them out. I think. The subject doesn’t exactly come up much.
“Cross-dressing has also been linked to sexual sadism – although most autogynephiles are not sexual sadists, they are more likely to be sadists compared with men who are not autogynephilic” p. 172
When I testify that before transition, I never cross-dressed, not once in 47 years, nor felt the urge to…
“Most gender patients lie – – – ” p. 172
“The most common way that autogynephiles mislead others is by denying the erotic component of their gender bending.” p. 173
Much of TMWWBQ is uncontroversial, even insightful in places. In others, it’s undiplomatic, insulting even, but if that’s what the data says, that’s what the data says. In others it’s just plain nasty, and any observations in it far more plausibly accounted for by observer bias than by any other cause.
I find it very difficult to understand how someone can write some chapters of the book, do some really good science in other areas, come across as rational and reasonable, and then write both the stuff around pages 170-180. and also deliberately choose such a “provocative” title.
That so many responded in kind, deliberately insulting Dr Bailey by using carefully selective evidence of his sexual proclivities rather than arguing about the data, is all too human but Not Useful. Worse is the complete lack of data and cross-referencing in TMWWBQ, there are no facts to argue with, merely statements illustrated by the example of “a couple of tranny hookers he met in a gay bar”. (Hint: TS women are not likely to be found in Gay Bars. Try Women’s Institutes or even Bridge clubs. Where women are. Look in Gay Bars, don’t be surprised if you find gay men, even if they are in miniskirts)
Personally, I’d like to put the whole thing behind us. Look at the facts, argue the science, and neither be deliberately provocative nor politically correct.
CAMH, where Dr Blanchard did his work on the subject of Autogynaphilia, is in a peculiar position.
They turn away 9 in 10 people presenting with “gender issues”. It’s not known how many of those have already been independantly diagnosed with GID.
It appears that anyone who does not fit either the “gay who wants to entice straights into having sexual relationship” or “fetishist who’s so in love with the female body he wants one too” categories is refused treatment, because they’re not transsexual. They can’t be, Dr Blanchard says so.
Public Funding of surgery in Ontario is contingent on getting clearance by CAMH.
So in order to get surgery, it is not just important, but totally necessary to tell the CAMH people what they expect to hear.
The CAMH people, not being stupid, realise that many patients are telling them lies in order to qualify for surgery. So they come to the natural conclusion that TS people are liars. Moreover, many don’t fit neatly into one category or the other, so they must be lying about which category they’re in.
Under such circumstances, eliminating observer bias would be most difficult.
One way to do it would be to look at outcomes in long-term follow-up, both of those who passed the CAMH gate, and those who did not, and then compare them with outcomes for treatment centres that have no truck with AGP theory.
As far as I know, this hasn’t been done.
There’s good reason to believe that AGP is a separate issue from TS – see Dr O’Keefe‘s lecture.
Of course Dr O’Keefe is herself TS, and Lesbian, so therefore must be AGP in denial by Blanchard’s theory. That’s the wonderful thing about it, it says that anyone whose personal narrative contradicts the theory is lying by definition.
This does tend to rather raise hackles in people like myself. It’s difficult maintaining objectivity in the face of such arrogance.
Stating that there are only two types
“The most important reason that most people do not realize that there are two types of transsexuals is that members of one type sometime misrepresent themselves as members of the other. … they are often silent about their true motivation and instead tell stories about themselves that are misleading and, in important respects, false.” -From page 146
We don’t plan about the future, we’re stupid etc.
“Homosexual transsexuals tend to have a short time horizon, with certain pleasure in the present worth great risks for the future.” -p184
We’re whores.
“Prostitution is the single most common occupation that homosexual transsexuals in our study admitted to.” -p184
More about us being whores.
“Nearly all the homosexual transsexuals I know work as escorts after they have their surgery.” p. 210
We’re thieves
“As for shoplifting, homosexual transsexuals are not especially well suited as much as especially motivated. For many, their taste in clothing is much more expensive than their income allows.” p185
We’re sluts
“Gay transsexuals are boy crazy.” p. 178
Again with the binary set.
“The two types of transsexuals who begin life as males are called homosexual and autogynephilic … homosexual transsexuals are extremely feminine gay men, and autogynephilic transsexuals are men erotically obsessed with the image of themselves as women.” p. 146
We can’t settle down
“They wanted to get their surgery (if they had not had it yet) and meet a nice, attractive, and financially stable heterosexual man who would marry them and take care of them … When I was conducting my study of homosexual transsexuals, I routinely asked them if they knew anyone who had realized this dream. No one did.” p. 186
We doll ourselves up way too much
“Many of the transsexuals we interviewed in the course of this study were more attractive than the average genetic female.”p141
A long way of saying we’re all liars. I haven’t had sex in 5years. If twas about sex, I would have shot myself by now I think!
“The standard transsexual narrative says that transsexualism is not about sex but about “gender identity”, or the internal sense that one is a man or a woman. According to this narrative, transsexuals want to change sex because their sense of self diagrees with their bodies, not because they have any unusual sexual preferences that depend on a sex change. … It should be clear by now that the “gender, not sex” part of the transsexual narrative is false”p180
The first two chapters are not what bothered us.
Ok, I just finished 1 & 2 and for the life of me I have NO CLUE why Transexuals are up in arms about this book. That was the most middle of the road thing I’ve ever read.
I will say this, it’s only human to want to be part of a growing country, company, social group, etc. etc. This probably has something to do with people’s natural desire to feel safe.
I think that is why transexuals (despite a lifetime of pain) don’t want GID to be considered a disorder. If it’s considered a disorder treatment might reduce the number of future transexuals. Morover if scientists keep poking around they will ultimately find a way to cure dysphoria. I think this shows that nobody wants to lose their group even if it is bound together by emotional pain and undeserved suffering.
For anyone else reading Danny’s saga this is what stuck out for me…
And the school counselor
No way. Something biological happened to this kid. It could have been before birth, maybe after. Nobody socializes their kid to be transgendered, including this mom.