The Northwestern Nurenberg Nightmares

Sophia Siedlberg

One researcher above all others seems to invoke passionate and sometimes visceral anger when his name appears on any paper, publication or conference speakers list. J. Michael Bailey will for sure be

recorded by history and will most probably be some byword for malpractice. Often he gets called "J Mengele Bailey" by his fiercest opponents, (A reference to a notorious Nazi war criminal, Josef Mengele who conducted medical experiments in the concentration camps of world war II).

But I want to just step back for a moment and find out exactly what it is about J Michael Bailey that causes such anger. The first I heard of him was when he published a book called "The Man Who Would be Queen",

in which he made a lot of negative remarks about transsexual folks. The ensuing controversy was something no one could miss. He made a few enemies most notably Andrea James who is from my understanding one

among a number of representatives from within the transsexual community.

My first impression upon reading his work was that it was the writing of Adolph Brandt. (Again a well known Nazi) presented in a modern tabloid journalist style  From what I understand Bailey is aware of the constant comparisons to Nazis, and the reasons people draw these comparisons. And yes quite frankly I can see why these comparisons happen.

Well what do I know of this man, above and beyond the various controversies that spring up around him, very little. I know that for a while he ran something called "Sexnet" that had Cheryl Chase and Eric Vilain as members. More recently he surfaced again with the argument between Alice Dreger and Andrea James, Where Alice Dreger was seen by Andrea James to be involved with Bailey in some academic work.  I have to admit finding it hard to believe considering that the sort of Ideology that Bailey is said to represent is something that Dreger would distance herself from. So I decided to look into what Bailey is about and draw my own conclusions. I regarded "The Man Who Would be Queen" that was designed to cause a controversy to increase sales. Not wishing to sound too cynical but some academics tend to do this from time to time in order to get more widely read.

What I needed to do was get away from all this Adolph Brandt prose and tabloid presentation and read something from him that was more serious. And I came across one paper that leaves me wondering about the

psychology of this man.

It was the paper called "Parental Selection of Children’s Sexual Orientation" by Aaron S. Greenberg, JD, and J. Michael Bailey,

PhD that struck me as curious.

And despite the somewhat curious sounding name of his fellow Author (the words "willing sonderkommando" spring to mind) the text again (Rather annoyingly) reads like Adolph Brandt. The basic proposition of the

work is really quite simple, Parents should be offered some form of screeneing to determine wether any potential offspring will develop a sexual orientation other than heterosexuality, and therefore prevent that

child from being born.

Now Bailey claims to be an evolutionary psychologist, and claims to understand evolution as manifested in human behavior. In which case he would surely be aware that homosexuality, or rather sexual activities that do not result in procreation according to one school of thought serve as population controls. In fact it is the school of thought I am more familiar with. There seems to be mounting evidence to support this, from various

animal studies. So where is Bailey at with this "Homosexuality is an evolutionary disease" model? And in a world that is already over populated, his "eliminate non heterosexual orientation from the gene

pool" seems a little suicidal from an evolutionary point of view.

But take into account that he seems preoccupied with "Effeminacy" and not "Macho gays", re-enforced by the fact that recently he has shown a lot of interest in Vilain’s work.

It seems like no coincidence that Eric Vilain (originator of ideas such as the "Brain sex test" 1 and In utero somatic gene therapy) is working with

Bailey at the NICHD I suspect.  And this is where I start finding this a little problematic. Why? Well the answer is simple, he does read like Adolph Brandt.

All this stuff about eliminating homosexuality does not make much sense when he has support from organizations that are pro gay, until you consider that behind it lies this demarcation between masculine and feminine constructs of sexuality. "The Man Who Would be Queen" seems to make horrible sense all of a sudden.

According to Scott Lively in his book "The Pink Swastika" 2 there was a lawyer called Karl Heinrich Ulrichs who came up with this idea that homosexuality was a feminine thing where men were "women trapped in

men’s bodies", Later Adolph Brandt, saw this as insulting and came up with the idea of "pure homosexuality" (A "superior breed" of masculine

homosexual men, who were to be rid of the effeminate homosexuals).

Outside documents of the time and books (Such as Scott Lively’s Pink Swastika) the only place I have seen this model and terminology is in Bailey’s work. He refers to male to female transsexual folks as "Feminine

homosexuals" and tags this to Blanchard’s "primary and secondary" transsexual model. Bailey is the only person I have read recently who proposes any link between transsexuality and homosexuality. (that is sees them as the same thing when manifest in a feminine manner).

So yes my respectful apologies to J Michael Bailey but his writing does appear to be a direct descendant of Adolph Brandt’s writings. I can see why he becomes such a hate figure so often.

Having established exactly what "non-heterosexual" orientations he wants to eliminate. (Which is what he is saying) Let’s look at the text of this one paper of his.

The astract reads thus:

"As we learn more about the causes of sexual orientation, the likelihood increases that parents will one day be able to select the orientation of their children. This possibility (at least that of selecting for heterosexuality) has generated a great deal of concern among supporters of homosexual rights, with such selection being widely condemned as harmful and morally repugnant. Notwithstanding this widespread condemnation, and even assuming, as we do, that homosexuality is entirely acceptable morally, allowing parents, by means morally unproblematic in themselves, to select for heterosexuality would be morally acceptable. This is because allowing parents to select their children’s sexual orientation would further parent’s freedom to raise the sort of children they wish to raise and because selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm."

What this reads like to most is that Bailey is really into the idea of propping up heterosexuality in his "evolutionary disease" model. But in truth there is this non committal "well you could but then you could not use it to screen out homosexuality".  Eliminating homosexuality would be technically

difficult anyway and perhaps unwise given the population control hypothesis. There is something else going on here.

He quotes Dean Haymer a lot but works with Eric Vilain when it comes to the genetics of all this. Surely it would be simply a case of screening out people with copies of a region known as "xq28" on the X chromosome

if Haymer is to be read correctly. This can (In blue sky theory) be done by very simple Mendelian matchmaking could it not? Well no it is more complex than that but given that Haymer presents us with the simplest model by which to carry out such eugenics (which is what we are talking about) Bailey’s interest in Vilian’s work seems to say the least curious. 

Well actually no it isn’t when you consider Vilain’s work on trying to formulate the potential "gender identity" of an unborn child, and "action can be taken" if that "gender identity does not match the physical sex". It becomes more Brandt-like by the minute.

Putting the gender identity bias aside for the moment let’s look at the content of the paper. Which continues:

"One would expect that the vast majority of parents inclined to attempt to influence the orientation of their children will wish to do so in the direction of heterosexuality. Are such parents little, if any, better than Nazi advocates of eugenics or can such actions be morally justified? In general, how should we evaluate such parental actions from an ethical standpoint?  Our purpose here is not to propose or defend any general ethical system.

Instead, we will attempt to evaluate certain actions within the framework of what we perceive to be factors that are, in actuality, commonly taken into account in secular moral decision making."

Again we find this non-committal line when framing the argument in favor of  "eliminating homosexuality".  This reasoning (Rationalization) continues throughout the paper, at the expense of the science as it happens. What Bailey fails to mention is that while he presents this "neutral" reasoning he presents the same reasoning that we find on the internet with gamete "donation" (selling) where potential parents can choose from "bargain basement" eggs and sperm (originating from donors who were not blonde haired blue eyed) to "the quality stuff" (from, you guessed it blonde-haired blue-eyed donors). The argument (which is neutral of course) is that this is down to market forces. And a neutral morality. But we are still really in this area where people possessing certain types of genome are considered superior in some sense.

Read a few Nazi propaganda leaflets and these rationalizations seem a little familiar. Whatever Bailey says or does, it seems he will not shake this

"Nazi" label off in a hurry.

Back to Brandt-like reasoning.

The "Parental Selection of Children’s Sexual Orientation" (Stepford children?) paper seems to be little more than a list of rationalizations about

eliminating people from the gene pool, "The Man Who Would be Queen" seems to give us a clearer picture of what is to be eliminated. And it is at this stage we find things getting really odd. The row that took place recently Between Andrea James and Alice Dreger. To begin with a lot of people had distanced themselves from Andrea James because her approach when not agreeing with Bailey was, well notorious to say the least. But during this row Dreger mentioned some very curious characters, in very glowing terms. All of whom were supporters of Bailey. They were also big preachers of the Brandt model, Most notably Anne Lawrence who is now famous for saying that male to female transsexual people are "men trapped in men’s bodies".

What makes this really interesting is that Dreger was a representative of the DSD Consortium at this time, (A separate body from anything to do with Bailey we are told). Dreger represented the latest manifestation of these ISNA driven initiatives that were intended to deal with intersex children, and all these initiatives so far had one thing in common, They seemed only supportive of victims of childhood surgical feminization. Victims of any other surgery (especially masculinizing surgery) were told they had been "privileged having male privilege". (Not that many victims of this had decided they wanted to be women, seems like the Transsexual debate had spilled over). The problem is that this stuff again fits hand in glove with Bailey’s "Brandtism".

While the connections between Bailey and the DSD consortium seem tentative (Like Bailey running the NICHD psychosexual group with most of it’s members being on ISNA’s medical advisory board, yes very tentative). It does seem rather telling that in both cases there is this underlying sexism. And bingo! We have found the real problem.

Whether or not Bailey is in fact a Nazi seems to me to be irrelevant, perhaps he makes a fortune with this reputation of his. He even seems to gather his little flock of willing Sonderkommandos around him to gain

"Non Nazi but is Nazi really credentials". The truth of the matter is we are really talking old fashioned paternalistic medicine. The sort that regards women as bits of meat, and anything other than man or woman as a disease, however tentative the definition of "other than male or female" really is. (The Ulrich v Brandt models of sexual orientation for example).

The Science is lousy to be honest, the use of single gene models when discussing "genetic health" is outdated with modern ideas like the polygenic and pleotrpic model of the genome. Could this be why Vilain

is so popular with Bailey? He is trying to find a way of taking eugenics into the realm of modern genetics?

Whatever Bailey is up to it seems a little dated and absurd to be truthful about it. Of more immediate concern to any group of people who’s lives are affected by Bailey be that Transsexual folks, Intersex folks and

Gay folks (the list grows), there are very insidious messages coming from the Northwestern university.  Talk of genetic purification, elimination and screening with a half humourous pantomime (not unlike the Producers) orchestrated by Bailey playing out on the stage of public relations makes people very nervous. Bailey further destroys his own credibility by being secretive about much of his research. And when "Bailey wants people gassed" gets leaked out from time to time, without any real attempt to refute all this is forthcoming from Bailey himself. Then yes it is hardly surprising that Bailey is regarded as some sort of Nazi hate figure.

As for the DSD Consortium which is of more concern to people in the intersex community, ISNA can deny Bailey’s involvement until they are blue in the face, and in the US he may be considered some comical figure who is a bit of a controversy, in other countries (Especially in Europe) the man is considered dangerous. There are some things you do not use mockingly in your public persona, and using Nazi style rationalizations to talk of eliminating "undesirable children" is one of them. And for organizations like ISNA to have many of their medical advisors also belong to a research group headed by Bailey does not inspire confidence, meanwhile Bailey can Cry "Mc Cathyism" all he wants to. There is that expression "It walks like a duck, talks like a duck so therefore it is a duck" Substitute the word "Duck" for "Adolph Brandt" and the answer is quite clear really.

References

Parental Selection of Children’s Sexual Orientation

Aaron S. Greenberg, JD,1 and J. Michael Bailey, PhD.

(2001)

The Man Who Would be Queen

J Michael Bailey (2003)

1: Sexually dimorphic gene expression in mouse brain

precedes gonadal differentiation

Dewin P, Shi T, Horvath S, Vilian E.

2: The Pink Swastika, homosexuality in the Nazi Party

Lively S, Abrahams K.E (1995)

Sophia Siedlberg