bad idea, part 3: shut up, i’m speaking for you
A couple of months ago, before the New York Times made it fashionable, i wrote about J. Michael Bailey and his claims about autogynephilia. Now, as Marti points out, Bailey has written on ScientificBlogging about the criticism he’s undergone since his book about transsexualism came out four years ago.
In this blog post he summarizes the argument of his book as follows (emphasis added):
Canadian scientist Ray Blanchard conducted a number of studies in the 1980s and 1990s supporting his theory that there are two, and only two, distinct kinds of males who decide to become women.
Members of one type are best conceived (before they become women) as very feminine homosexual males. They have been extremely and recognizably feminine since early in life. They are exclusively, strongly, and unambiguously sexually attracted to men.
… Members of [the second] type are not overtly feminine (at least prior to taking steps to become women), and they are not primarily sexually attracted to men. Rather, they are sexually aroused by the idea of becoming and being women. Members of this subtype, whom Blanchard has called both “nonhomosexual” and “autogynephilic” male-to-female transsexuals, are best conceived as a type of heterosexual male. In their unusual heterosexuality, their primary erotic target, or sex object, is not an actual, external woman, but rather, a woman that is fantasized, and ultimately created inside the self. That is, the primary sexual orientation of autogynephilic males is toward themselves as women.
…Although it is possible that another kind of male-to-female transsexual exists, no good evidence exists that this is the case.
He writes to say that some gallae have contacted him thanking him for helping to clarify what it is that they experience. So, there is no doubt that what he’s describing is true for at least some gallae.
But, no good evidence of there being other kinds of gallae? Except, perhaps, for the objection of many countless gallae who do not easily fit either description. But let’s not forget that Bailey is well-known in some circles for his prior claim that, despite the protestations and first-hand accounts of thousands, bisexual men do not exist.
He knows this how? Through the magic of watching what your privates do when you are asked to look at various kinds of pornography. That’s right, despite what you may think about the many dimensions of your life which inform your sexuality — your emotional connections with other people, your desires for relationships, your plans, your dreams, even your reactions to scents and textures — all of that means nothing compared to what makes your privates twitch when you look at naughty pictures.
While he claims that he only wants to promote support for transsexual people, at the same time he argues that we are liars:
[A]mong apparently autogynephilic males, those who denied their autogynephilia scored high on a psychometric test developed to detect the tendency to respond in socially desirable ways. Thus, among the transgendered, denial of autogynephilia is apparently related to the desire to give a good impression. Both of these studies suggest that denial of autogynephilia should not be taken at face value.
In other words, “Shut up, i’m speaking up for you.” Our accounts are not to be trusted.
As Joan Roughgarden wrote in her reply,
The dispute and acrimony will not end until transgendered people are permitted to voice their own narratives without being filtered through the lens of psychologists. Transgender narratives must be honored as primary data, first class evidence, and not subject to tampering, manipulation or subversion. Transgendered people cannot concede the meaning and definition of their lives to medical authority.