How Can I debate this?
By Sophia Siedlberg, OII-United Kingdom
Well, Alice Dreger is doing Battle with Andrea James again. And I have reached the conclusion that this is really a non-debate. I was pointed to a blog run by one Seth Roberts today to see the predictable. Some big supporter of Bailey standing up for the “Truth” and a number of replies from a lot of angry transsexual folks with the odd “Well said Mike, Well Said Alice, Well Said Seth” from one of Bailey’s followers.
It just seems to me that there are a lot of angry people out there, being fed by other people who have an agenda. I wanted to respond on this blog and tried, but even though I felt I had made the core point, it was a bit of a waste of time posting to Roberts’ blog because of too much anger and too many posting limitations (350 words is not enough to convey what I think needs to be said about Dreger’s paper).
What I want to say now is that the following is not an attack on Roberts, or some “Guilt by association” narrative. I am in part addressing his web log because I do not agree with it, and would hope to engage some sort of debate as to why.
I am not transsexual but have come into contact with the treatment protocols to some extent being intersexed. This is how the system seems to “work”. If there is one thing that stands out, it seems to be the attitude, bordering on contempt shown towards transsexual folks by some clinicians.
I have tended to see Professor J. Michael Bailey as the text book example of the contemptuous clinician. OK, it is not entirely fair as I have never spoken to the man or taken much notice of him in this particular area. But there are some interesting observations I feel need to be made.
Professor J. Michael Bailey is very openly into eugenics. And this is not a slur or a smear. He quite proudly proclaims this fact himself. I suppose I should "admire his bravery" in today’s political climate. But the science he generally advocates is not the science I agree with. As for the “Truth” which is often cited as being the erudite wisdom of Bailey, well this is remarkably simple to sum up and it is not a good “Truth”.
In J Michael Bailey’s view there are those who are “Genetically healthy” and not “Evolutionary mistakes”. And then we find the “Evolutionary mistakes” as those groups of people who are to Bailey, a problem. Bailey has a particular interest in sexology so it is generally sexual minorities he studies.
To him these minorities are a problem, upsetting some as of yet uncertain “Natural order” (In terms of genetics). So what he does is devote time to each one of them, one by one, often doing a study, then writing a (Deliberately) “controversial” paper and then he rides the backlash. He also plays the martyr when the predictable reaction to his works gets heated. Then there is his punch line. “Wouldn’t it be nice to eliminate these people by pre-natal screening”?
Essentially this is it, and there is no big conspiracy involved. It is just the way he works. There is little to be gained by his critics using terms like “Shoddy research” and “Unscientific” and “Un ethical” for the simple reason Bailey does not care. If anything it makes him money, a bit of bad publicity makes his work more prominent.
It is his “Cheerleaders” I worry about. And yes Alice Dreger is a good example. Now her logic is far more interesting. She speaks out against Bailey’s most vocal critics, who are angry at Bailey because he as good as described them as medical oddities worthy of “study”. Essentially Bailey operates like this: reducing people to mere biological machines that are either defective or not defective. Alice Dreger does similar. Well, she writes a “Paper” that is a “Study” of the anger shown towards Bailey. In essence what she has done is reduce the reaction into a clinical model. She does what Bailey did in the first place only this time describing the anger that Bailey has invoked upon himself. Then there are all the outcries of “Bullying” from other supporters of Bailey when describing whoever it is he has upset now.
Well, Alice Dreger (who also complained of being bullied by Andrea James, Bailey’s most fierce critic) seems to have taken some of the methodology of bullying and turned it into a fine art. It is almost poetic. “Bailey called you lab rats, ha! and you answer back, right, then I will treat what you say as the squeaks of disobedient lab rats.” The subtle way she said this in the document “Studying” the reaction to Bailey’s book “The man who would be queen, the science of gender bending”, is quite clever in a grotesque sort of way.
So what of Seth Roberts? Well, all I can say is that he seems like another voice in this now surreal Machiavellian argument. But he is interesting because with him it is all moral indignation. “Bailey the brilliant scientist” and “His Brilliant work”. The way Roberts talks him up you would think Bailey was due a Nobel Prize.
But my problem is that while I have my doubts about Bailey being a baby eating Satanist who has sex with his patients in a gay bar gang bang, I do find his papers a bit odd. I do not agree with Roberts. Will I be hounded on his blog for not agreeing? (This is an interesting question).
On these “Truths” I keep hearing about, there is much to consider. I mean think about this logically. Bailey says he wants to eliminate gay folks from the gene pool. Well, OK this is Bailey in Eugenics mode. I would expect a eugenicist to come out with talk of elimination from the gene pool, but this makes little sense, because gay people are generally not all that into reproducing. OK, some take advantage of reproductive technologies, but we are not really talking about the sort of levels of reproduction found in heterosexual relationships. In a way they already “keep out of the gene pool” so what is Bailey playing at? I mean what he suggests is not even logical to his fellow eugenicists.
I mean “Gay eugenics” is such an oxymoron, it makes Bailey appear like a vindictive bigot. (Well, certainly in the eyes of those he wants to “Evacuate”? from the gene pool.).
This is where Dreger and other commentators miss the point really, Bailey is not the easiest man to defend, and to defend him will always incur the wrath of those who are angry with him. I am far from impressed with the fact that Bailey is now knocking on the door of the intersex community. It feels like “The militia killed all in the village down the road, now they are heading here”. Primarily because he does like to tell his “Truths” and often people do act on these “Truths” resulting in the stigmatizing and shaming of an entire community. Bailey does not damage these communities, he simply torments them.
At this point I have to take Alice Dreger to task, no matter how she presents her case for “DSD” (The equivalent of “autogynephilia” aimed at the intersex community). Again we are in the situation where the community plainly does not like “DSD” and many aspects of “DSD” are being presented as an irrefutable “Truth”. I am just waiting for Bailey to produce a book entitled “The freak who would be Normal, the science of Disorders of sex Development” or “Man, Woman or Disordered Monster”. Then, I am waiting for the hoards of pro Bailey bloggers to come out saying “Gas ‘em! They complain; get rid of ‘em!”
Of course it will all be described as “Serious academic discourse” and the people who object to being vilified over an accident of birth will be called “Bullies”. The point is (Roberts take note) it gets that ugly because Bailey likes it to be that ugly. If you look at it without some higher moral ground like “Defending the minority” or “Defending the academics” and be honestly cynical about it. It makes Bailey big bucks and makes him well known. Why bother even arguing with him? His “Truths” are wrong and he benefits from them. This is why I find Dreger’s defending him so difficult to understand. OK, she does say that Bailey was “unrepentant” about his “Politically damaging approach”. Though it was phrased as if Bailey was peddling his “Controverisal” (Money making) ideas and being a martyr to some cause of “the truth”. (Eliminate people who do not often breed from the gene pool for example?)
You see I ask myself what Alice Dreger gets out of it. The satisfaction that she stood up for the “higher moral principles” of these oxymoron “Truths”. I doubt that very much. It’s more like Bailey had a heavy handed approach with minority groups which seems to prove profitable in a number of ways. And she wants to spread the Gospel of DSD and gain similar benefits from it. This is how I see it: no moral high ground, no bullying, just a purely cynical explanation for what are in truth very cynical episodes of “debate” between a small group of academics who like to pick on minorities and the minorities themselves.
Am I biased? Well no, because I have commented on how often the people Bailey et al seem to annoy can be just as nasty in return. Alice Dreger and Bailey (cynically) hold their children up to the minorities almost saying: “Look we are breeders, you are scum” and reactions like, “I am not interested in your womb turd” are not exactly beyond understandable but wrong nonetheless. What distresses me is the fact that children are being involved. And on that it is six of one half dozen of the other.
However, I am someone with an intersex condition and I do get the feeling Dreger would want to see me in a gas chamber. Because it is profitable. That is not an objective view on my part, but the impression I get as a member of a targeted minority myself. But for the benefit of Seth Roberts, yes, this is how it looks from where I am sitting. It is not an objective observation, it is motivated by a deep seated fear of medical professionals who interfere with my life. But we need to be pragmatic about this and accept the fact that such anger and representation happens. Dreger is setting herself and Bailey up to have the intersex community as the next on their list. And if I as a member of the intersex community do not agree with them, I will expect to have the right to say so. This is the point, there seems to be an awful lot of whitewashing the cynicism and the “Truths” with the paint of “higher morality”. The result being that the people Bailey and Dreger comment on are denied the right to speak. It seems the very act of speaking against Dreger and Bailey would be subject to the same demeaning scrutiny (That they applied to people in the first place) and with the same conclusions about “Irrationality and bullying” from the victims of their bullying.
Well, I can see who the bullies are here. It is not the minorities. But then Bailey’s “Truths” are Machiavellian “Truths” so any hint that Bailey appears to be a bully is simply ignored “For a higher moral purpose”.
Essentially the Bailey approach is to have the targeted group argue with one hand tied behind their backs, (The actions of a Bully) to make out that he and his colleagues are just right, and telling a “Truth” (The actions of a Bully). When those he picks on appear to gain the upper hand, he cries “Mc Carthyism” and makes himself into a martyr (The actions of a bully) and then builds up a little gang of supporters around himself (Again the actions of a bully) and when he has done with one group of people he moves onto another (You guessed it, the actions of a bully).
Alice Dreger is perhaps his new sidekick in his latest little gang. All driven by vested interest and mutual back scratching. The question is what purpose is all this serving? Does all the (by now) over-complex debate caused by Bailey’s behavior serve any purpose? Well, it perhaps makes Bailey more of a public figure with more money and perhaps enables Dreger to profit from it all a little too. And anyone who jumps on the gravy train gets some of the spoils (Roberts for example). But it certainly does not benefit the by now millions of people who are being defined and “Treated” according to what Bailey says. I am also cynical and I will say I have no benefit from all this, quite the opposite. It would serve me well to join in with those already attacking Bailey with threats and legal sanctions. But there is a little bit of me that keeps saying. “Hang on, this is stupid”. To begin with some of Bailey’s ideas are plainly illogical (Gay Eugenics for example). Others are designed to maximize profit via whipped up controversy. (Autogynephilia for example). Dreger sees an opportunity to make “DSD” profitable, and that is simply that.
Why bother even opposing them, they will go on to annoy, upset and anger more and more people and at some point they will cross the wrong people and suffer for it. (Of that happening I am very confident).
I will even predict that if Bailey and Dreger get into picking on intersex people and start coming out with Baileys “Assigned men will be men or else”. (He has played this with transsexuals and just avoided something nasty so far, but you never know), that there could be a similar reaction as to what happens when some assigned male as a child rejects it because of overcompensation in the “male” upbringing. Ugly! I speak from experience. I would not want to be in Bailey’s shoes if he is confronted by an “autoandrophobe” (It was I who coined that term Alice) who is not able to “listen” to Bailey’s “Man, man, man, or else!” routine.
This is but one example of the fire Bailey and Dreger are playing with. Make of it what you will. With intersex it is a whole new ball game if the imposed sex is seen as man made and false in the first place by the person they are trying to push around. It would be a little more anger than you get from a transsexual that will be involved, believe me.
You see again this is the sort of fury Bailey invokes in people. We are talking about human beings not biological laboratory subjects. Bailey preaches eugenics and he will have relatives of concentration camp survivors glaring at him. He will have different ethnic groups glaring at him.
I am very confident that Bailey and Dreger will provoke something nasty upon themselves (If they haven’t already) This is not about political correctness or Mc Carthyism really. How serious does it get before a “Truth” becomes an overt provocation?
I do not see Bailey as “unscientific” nor Alice Dreger. I just do not agree with the “Truths” because the “Truths” have deadly consequences. It took scientific rigor to construct an atomic bomb to kill a lot of people in one go and just as much to produce a nuclear reactor to provide cheap electricity. It is not the science that is wrong; it is how it is used. Take Genetics (this is really my area of interest) 80 years ago eugenics and genetics were seen as one and the same thing. This is because the science of the time knew about Mendel’s model of inheritance, but did not know fully how it worked. The false notion of “Universal single gene genetics” came about. While in some medical conditions you can say that there is a single mutation in a single gene involved. (single gene genetics), there are always ranges of severity. Two people who inherited the same gene and the same mutation would show different manifestations of the condition. This is the range of severity.
The answer from eugenics was to “remove the dominant lethal” (Dominant genes that carry negative mutations). But they did not stop to think that “ranges of severity” may be telling them something. Like it is not just one gene that is involved? And sometimes the removal on a dominant lethal in a given gene pool may make a hidden mutation show. You may get rid of one problem and create another. This was a misuse of the science of genetics, not so much “bad science” as “missing the point because they had a plan”.
The real technical downfall of eugenics however would not be polygenic expression but the “double recessive lethal”. You see blonde hair, blue eyes etc (Much loved by eugenicists) are down to recessive genes. They also carry a predisposition for skin cancer. (Melanomas mainly). Some double recessive conditions are not very nice either (I know, I am a target of the likes of Bailey because I have a double recessive condition).
The point is 80 years ago this was not all that well known. But with the basic model that Mendel worked out and which was accepted as scientifically valid, even though they knew about the double recessives, they focused on the dominants. They were able to demonstrate why in a scientific context. But there were still hidden consequences. The real irony of this was that socially eugenics mutated into a killing machine (How lethal is a concentration camp?).
Eugenics was a misuse of the then science of genetics. Like Bailey’s work is in part the same misuse (At the core of it). But Bailey’s work is also a misuse of Blanchard’s work. Blanchard’s work had some merit; it is just that it did not apply universally. Similar to the way the science of picking off “dominant lethals” does not apply universally. Bailey’s misuse is to make it universal and drive a social agenda with it.
Technically he can validate all this scientifically but it does not benefit anyone except Bailey and those his theories apply to. (By that I mean people like Anne Lawrence who believes it applies to her. It does not benefit Andrea James though and calling people like Andrea James “Liars” is unscientific).
I cannot really attack Bailey’s science, just his method and motivations. It depends on what Bailey says is science. And what is in truth a “Truth” which would be an abuse of the science (Read the work of Kurt Gödel, no “Truth” can be proven).
I see Bailey for what he is, a bit of a maverick who makes a living simply by annoying people. I see Dreger as an opportunist who sees Bailey’s success and tries to use his approach and as such feels compelled to defend him. I see Seth Roberts as someone who just sees all this from a different perspective from me. (He is not part of the next target I am). Though I think his adulation for Bailey (As would his abhorrence if he was opposed to Bailey) is unwise.
I think the whole edifice that Bailey has built around himself will most probably come to a violent end. (As similar edifices often have). And I think that being a supporter of Bailey or a critic of Bailey is perhaps not a safe thing to be. It cuts about even really you support Bailey you get the minorities on your back, you oppose Bailey and you get a bunch of cynical but influential academics on your back.
I think Roberts is correct in describing the “Man who would be queen” episode of all this as “unsavory”. But considering Bailey’s need to be controlling what he sees as “male sexuality” and thus what he sees as “Men”, is reminiscent of the dominant male ape during rutting season trying to control the other males. Bailey’s motivation is a curious mutation in a socio-evolutionary sense. How the pool of “opposing males” comes to include females.
I wonder if by his own criteria Bailey is an evolutionary disorder. And his by now well felt effects are just that, the consequence of this disorder he himself happens to be. One point that is worthy of mention perhaps forms one of his well known punch lines that has yet to be understood. He says of the younger transsexual folk that they are “Homosexual Transsexuals” and this does come from his own reasoning as much as Ray Blanchard’s. (Who first proposed this AGT/HSTS model) He has gathered around him quite a following of “homosexual transsexuals” some of whom are quite aggressive in defending Bailey. Well, given that by default Bailey sees “homosexuals” as ripe for “Screening” and “Evacuation”, I cannot help but be reminded of the night of the long knives.
