Visible Man: Bailey's wick
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Jamison Green offers a man's POV on life in the trans lane. Opinion,
advice and information from an internationally respected leader of the FTM community.
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In April 2003, professor and chair of Northwestern University's psychology department J. Michael Bailey launched his book, "The Man Who Would Be Queen" (Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C.). Six months later, Dr. Bailey is the subject of an investigation into his research practices. Some of the transgendered and transsexual women he wrote about, as well as others, like professor Lynn Conway of the University of Michigan, were deeply offended by much of the content of Bailey's book. What is all the fuss about? He and his supporters say he's presenting real science and that his detractors are merely transwomen who don't like the way they look in print. I thought I'd better read the text myself before taking sides.
Subtitled "The Science and Psychology of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism," "The Man Who Would Be Queen" reads more like a limited review of the literature merged with abstracts from a diary than the results of truly scientific study. Employing an engaging literary technique to draw readers into the "life" of one dramatic character, "Princess Danny," to whom the author returns as to a port in a storm, Bailey practices near-tabloid journalism with essentially the same educative effect as the novel and film "Silence of the Lambs."
The technique is obvious: It relies on the audience's fascination with stereotypical notions of freakishness or difference to create a bond between author and audience, enabling these two entities to indulge what might seem an almost morbid curiosity about transgendered and transsexual people, in this case specifically male-to-female people and gender-variant, male-bodied people, gay and straight.
Bailey relies most heavily on the work of Canadian psychologists Ken Zucker and Ray Blanchard, yet there are very few actual citations of their published work. Dr. Bailey makes suggestions for further reading, but offers no bibliography, nor references to studies he mentions, nor discussions of any work that might contradict his own theories and experience. In fact, there is no real premise or hypothesis, no experiment, no result -- no science at all, only invocations of science.
Is it science because he says it is? Certainly Dr. Bailey does make statements throughout the text that ring true to our own experience and assumptions, such as "Coming out as gay to others, or even to onesself, sometimes takes time ..." (p. 19). He also makes some intriguing statements, such as "Men's category-specific pattern of sexual arousal is probably important in developing their sexual orientation. The experience of intense sexual arousal to one sex or the other, but not to both, is a powerful source of information" (p.94). I only wish he had given us more real information in the form of citations of further studies or sources that corroborate the information he purports to be reporting.
In his preface, Dr. Bailey writes: "Butch women are fascinating, too, and [he has] studied them. ... Butch women are not simply the opposite of femme men. ... Masculine females deserve their own book." That feels like being put on notice! He also says his book is concerned with transsexual sexuality, but is Dr. Bailey giving transsexual sexuality the attention it deserves, as he claims to be doing? What is his book about? Is it about "the science of gender-bending and transsexualism," as the subtitle implies, or is it about transsexual sexuality, as the preface states? Or is it about Dr. Bailey's interpretation of something he calls "transsexual sexuality," something that he does not define, perhaps because he can't?
Readers cannot know, because Bailey has not made a commitment to a scientific topic. He wants us to believe these people he tells us about are his bailiwick (he is so expert, he tells us many times, that he only needs to look at some of them to know exactly what their childhood was like and what their future will be), but how can we trust someone who sees only what he wants to see?
He does write positively about sexuality, however, and I must applaud his approach in some respects. He acknowledges and criticizes the inability or unwillingness of society and government to deal realistically with childhood sexual development, and he touches on the complexities of social and biological factors that affect human beings as they grow and come to terms with who they are as individuals. But is it enough to tout one's gay friends and occasional attractions to tranny girls? Is that redemptive enough to counter the net result of this book, which is to pronounce: Trans people have always existed; the stereotypes society has of them are true, but we don't have to be so afraid of them because some of them are nice and attractive people in spite of their transness and the exigencies of their childhood experience. That is the primary message underneath the superior tone of Bailey's words, a tone that shifts from patronizing to salacious and back again.
If Bailey were to employ the same logic and tone to write about those masculine females he's studied, we would have first the presentation of a typical tomboy with one supportive parent and one ambivalent one. We'd then be led into a review of the literature, which would most likely rely on the work of Leslie Lothstein and Robert Stoller, perhaps with a nod to Holly (but not Aaron) Devor.
As we traversed the erotic territory between childhood gender variance and adult transsexualism, we would drift through a few tenets of feminism that Bailey might interpret as encouraging women with ambivalence or even hatred toward men to become lesbians.
Perhaps we'd visit some lesbian bars and even be treated to a drag king show. At last we would hear about some men who had been born in female bodies, some whom he might find pathetic parodies of men and some he finds so convincing as men that they even cause our intrepid scientist/author to question (but only for a moment) his belief that they are still women.
For that is the unstated, unquestioned underlying assumption in "The Man Who Would Be Queen": that the presumption of Y chromosomal material and the presence of male genitalia are the determinants of maleness, hence a presumable lack of Y and presence of female genitalia determines femaleness, and these states cannot be changed. And further, that sexual drives and social expectations of gender-based behavior and individuals' ability or inability to "measure up" is the primary reason people attempt to live as the opposite sex.
There is no scientific basis for this theory, no matter how much assumption or projection one invokes as an attempt at proof. This theory is nothing more than a social agreement. In fact, it is this same social agreement that allows transsexual people who go through the prescribed course of treatment to be adjudicated members of their new sex, with some or all (depending on the jurisdiction) of the attendant rights and privileges.
On page 201, Dr. Bailey praises the "very conservative real-life experience requirement" of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Canada and states it "is motivated by a concern for genetic females who want to become men" arising from the irreversible effects of testosterone. Rather than be accused of gender bias, Bailey tells us, Dr. Blanchard holds transsexuals in both directions to the same requirements. This sounds like scapegoating to me. Testosterone actually introduces fewer health-risk factors than estrogen does. Is Bailey trying to imply that transsexual people must be protected from their own self-awareness?
Granted, not all transsexual people are socially or mentally stable (like any other group), but I suspect that if all transsexual people were treated first as responsible adults and counseled about the consequences, both medical and social, of transsexual treatment, whatever aspects of their personalities that were dysfunctional could be dealt with, in most cases, on a separate trajectory from their gender issues. In fact, dealing with "the gender issue" can often facilitate dealing with other complicating issues as the individual has an opportunity to grow through her or his personal transformation, removing old barriers and old patterns from lived experience, while certainly introducing new problems to deal with for which the patient can only be partially prepared, as anyone is only partially prepared for the events of her or his life.
Could it be that for people like Drs. Bailey and Blanchard, whose curiosity about gender variance is primarily driven by interest in sexuality and sexual behavior, there is a fixation on the erotic charge inspired by any behavior? Is that why they so vehemently discount any other explanation than their own theories for transgender and/or transsexual experience?
It is this writer's opinion that sexism is a large part of what fuels the fear of gender variance. Merge sexism with a sense of moral superiority in the belief that biology is destiny and you have nothing more than essentialism. For those who think that the purpose of one's body is to tell others who we are and what place we have in society, the fear and loathing of people who fall outside conventional norms runs very close to the surface of their potentially volatile psyches.
Bailey touches on this when he talks about the risks for young men of revealing a homosexual orientation (p. 35) and acknowledges the kind of fear inspired by confrontations with such rigid beliefs, and he seems to want to fight against this convention. But he makes only a halfhearted attempt to urge change in the status quo.
The real damage Bailey's book could do is undermine the recent efforts of some legislatures and courts to validate the lived experience of gender-variant people -- transsexual or not -- when our opponents hold it up as validating the stigmas and social bias against gay and lesbian people, even though Bailey claims his own attitudes are not anti-homosexual or anti-feminine. Bailey may very well be as egalitarian as he positions himself to be, but his reported "science" supports a position of social disapproval of both sex- and gender-variance from presumed norms because, in spite of the occasional compassionate sentiment or flattering comment on their appearance, he continually characterizes his subjects as easily analyzed, simply categorized, defective, sex-obsessed damaged goods.
Some people tell me that J. Michael Bailey is a very nice guy, that I'd probably like him if I met him. That may very well be true -- I'd be willing to give him a chance, personally. But his book panders to popular misconceptions about all transgendered people, and those women who shared their stories with him thinking he was a friend (some claim he did not inform them he was doing research when he met them in Chicago's tranny bars) have every right to complain. This is not science; it's just a very small Baileywick.
I do not believe this book will become a classic text. Though it may be cited by some anti-trans and anti-gay lobbyists concerned with reinforcing notions of the danger of acknowledging or encouraging gender variance in children, it cannot ultimately carry the authority it claims. Trying to make a "popular" book, Bailey cut too many scientific corners. Trying to make a "science" book out of personal opinion, and adventure stories out of his interviews, undercuts the authority Bailey might have had in his academic position.
I am also fervently opposed to censorship. I think Dr. Bailey has every right to create his text and disseminate it. It should be read and discussed. The author should not be shouted down at presentations, nor should he be barred from making appearances. He does have some ideas that are worthwhile, and no idea is so threatening that a rational person cannot analyze it, discern its flaws, engage in respectful debate and persuade others to see their own rationale. This is how knowledge is advanced. Dr. Bailey's "popular science" approach may end up a stepping-stone to the truth about femininity in male-bodied people. It isn't the end of the road.
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