This message is a call for peer commentary on the following target article that will appear in the Archives of Sexual Behavior:
Dreger, A. D. (in press). The controversy surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A case history of the politics of science, identity, and sex in the internet age. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
ABSTRACT
In 2003, psychology professor and sex researcher J. Michael Bailey published a book entitled The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. The book’s portrayal of male-to-female (MTF) transsexualism, based on a theory developed by sexologist Ray Blanchard, outraged some transgender activists. They believed the book to be typical of much of the biomedical literature on transsexuality—oppressive in both tone and claims, insulting to their senses of self, and damaging to their public identities. Some saw the book as especially dangerous because it claimed to be based on rigorous science, was published by an imprint of the National Academies of Science, and argued that MTF sex changes are motivated primarily by erotic interests and not by the problem of having the gender identity common to one sex in the body of the other. Dissatisfied with the option of merely criticizing the book, a small number of transwomen (particularly Lynn Conway, Andrea James, and Deirdre McCloskey) worked to try to ruin Bailey. Using published and unpublished sources as well as original interviews, this essay traces the history of the backlash against Bailey and his book. It also provides a thorough exegesis of the book’s treatment of transsexuality and includes a comprehensive investigation of the merits of the charges made against Bailey that he had behaved unethically, immorally, and illegally in the production of his book. The essay closes with an epilogue that explores what has happened since 2003 to the central ideas and major players in the controversy.
KEY WORDS: transsexualism; transgenderism; gender identity disorder; autogynephilia; identity politics; institutional review board; human subjects research.
If you would like to write a commentary, please email: Ken_Zucker@camh.net. You will then receive an e-mail attachment of the entire ms in WORD. The commentary is due no later than September 30, 2007. Here are the instructions:
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Best regards
Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D.
Editor, Archives of Sexual Behavior
e-mail: Ken_Zucker@camh.net
The American Medical Association voted last week to amend its nondiscrimination policies to include transgender people. AMA nondiscrimination policies already included sexual orientation.
“Transgender patients, physicians and medical students continue to face discrimination around the country,” Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), said in a release.
“The AMA has said it’s time for this to stop.” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, called the new AMA policies "a great step in moving the American healthcare system in a direction of more fairness for transgender people."
The AMA has taken an increasingly high-profile stance in the past few years on issues of concern to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) patients and physicians. In 2005, a sitting AMA president for the first time addressed GLMA’s Annual Conference. Also that year, the AMA formed an Advisory Committee on GLBT Issues, with one of the seven seats reserved for a GLMA representative.
The new policies address a wide range of scenarios, including discrimination against patients, medical students and physicians. . . .
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Janice Raymond is a non-transgender lesbian feminist who was a professor of women's studies at Hampshire College when she wrote the 1979 book Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. In her book Raymond completely dismissed the notion that an individual could have a valid belief of being a different gender from the one assigned at birth. And with that as a foundation, Empire advanced the following two stereotypes:
(1) Male-to-female transsexuals are merely male agents of the patriarchy, reinforcing feminine stereotypes; and MTF lesbian feminists are really men masquerading as women so they can invade and dominate women's space.
(2) Female-to-male transsexuals are merely women who have copped out of the women's movement by changing themselves rather than changing society.
The first stereotype is no doubt one reason why the long-running Michigan Womyn's Music Festival maintains a policy, reiterated just last year, of limiting the festival to “womyn-born-womyn.” The second stereotype, say detractors, is perpetuated in director Catherine Crouch's short film The Gendercator, which was recently spurned by the San Francisco LGBT film festival Frameline. . . .
I almost forgot about her, buried alive in the back of my mind. At the time, I was a 26-year-old closet case, a self-described occasional crossdresser. And she was just like me only vice versa.
I met her in Kansas City at my first transgender support group meeting. The chairs were set up in a circle and most of the seats were filled with middle-aged transvestites in their 40s and 50s. They were painstakingly dressed, wearing Sunday’s best, floral prints and muted pinks with just a hint of five o’clock shadow. Looking strangely sweet, almost equal parts aunt and uncle. And she seemed so out of place there, the only one in t-shirt and jeans. And genetically speaking, she was the only girl in the room. And chronologically we were the only two in our twenties.
After the meeting’s minutes and a guest speaker from Mary Kay offering make-up tips, she introduced herself to me. She told me her name was Joan; I told her mine was Tom. And after a bit of random chitchat, she asked if I wanted to hang out some time. I said “sure,” and a week later we did. . . .
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(West Palm Beach, Florida) A teenager who severely beat a transsexual last year is not guilty of a hate crime a Palm Beach County Juvenile Court judge has ruled.
Judge Peter Blanc ruled that the teen, who cannot be named because he was a minor at the time of the crime, is guilty of aggravated battery, but tossed out the hate crime charge.
At the time of his arrest the teen told police that he and a friend had gone out to pick up some girls and met the 39-year old victim outside a local bar.
The teen said that the victim performed oral sex on him in the friend's car and then agreed to go to the beach with him. The teen told police that as they were "making out" on the beach he felt a male organ.
He then began to beat the victim, whose name also has been withheld. After realizing he had left his cell phone in the car he walked to the vehicle, retrieved it returned to the victim and began hitting her with it.
A witness told the court that the teen forced the victim to her knees while he pummeled her face. He then slammed her head against the side of a lifeguard stand.
A police officer who questioned the teen testified that he seemed arrogant and said he had beat the woman until his hand was sore.
The teen's attorney said that his client acted out of self defense, claiming the victim had threatened to kill him and his family if he ruined her reputation by disclosing she was transsexual.
Judge Blanc discarded the self defense argument saying that when the teen first walked away from the victim he did not have to return and continue the beating.
But he said that although the teen was guilty of assault, it did not rise to a hate crime.
The victim has denied having any sexual activity with the teen.
In the first batch, eight transgenders are slated to undergo the surgery at the government hospital in Vellore district on July 5.
The surgeries will be performed free of cost following a government order issued by the Social Welfare Department in April last.
Since sex change was not legal in the country, transgenders had been thronging quacks to remove their genital organs.
Due to unscientific surgical processes followed by quacks, many transgenders had developed complications like urinary infections and allergies.
In one or two cases, people had died too, South India Positive Network president S Noori told reporters.
Empathising is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. The empathiser intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat people with care and sensitivity. Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems. The systemiser intuitively figures out how things work, or what the underlying rules are controlling a system. Systems can be as varied as a pond, a vehicle, a computer, a maths equation, or even an army unit. They all operate on inputs and deliver outputs, using rules.
According to this theory, a person (whether male or female) has a particular "brain type". There are three common brain types: for some individuals, empathising is stronger than systemising. This is called the female brain, or a brain of type E. For other individuals, systemising is stronger than empathising. This is called the male brain, or a brain of type S. Yet other individuals are equally strong in their systemising and empathising. This is called the "balanced brain", or a brain of type B. There are now tests you can take to see which type (E, S, or B) you are. Not which type you'd like to be, but which you actually are.
A key feature of this theory is that your sex cannot tell you which type of brain you have. Not all men have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain. The central claim of this new theory is only that on average, more males than females have a brain of type S, and more females than males have a brain of type E. . . .
| The Gazette |
They sing. They dance. They do comedy shtick. They dress up as guys. They're King Size, a gaggle of Montreal girls who just want to have fun.
They perform their brand of drag-kinging tonight at La Sala Rossa in their latest burlesque escapade, The Parlour.
Think Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, and then some. The 'then some' also includes the delightfully dry wit of comic/emcee DeAnne Smith and the divinely inspired hoofin' of the Dead Doll Dancers featuring the incomparable Velma Candyass.
Drag-kinging is something of a phenomenon in the rest of North America and Europe. Introduced in Montreal by the Mambo Kings a few years back, it petered out, but is now making a comeback with King Size, a 12-to-15-woman collective that has been kicking it up together since January.
One of the leaders of the King Size pack is Gary Dickinson. By day, she's Nancy Leclerc, a single mom and a respected anthropology professor at a local CEGEP. But by night, she morphs into Gary and acts out her cultural anthropological instincts - in a manner of speaking.
"It's just about letting loose," says Nancy/Gary. "I'm doing stuff at night as Gary that Nancy would have liked to do as a teenager by day. Of course, I get to charm the ladies as well as the guys at the same time."
Donning her academic chapeau, the prof points out there is also a sort of social message to the madness: "We're messing around with the established gender norms and getting the message out there that we don't have to stick to such rigid norms."
Since the dawn of civilization (or thereabouts), drag queens have been messing with established gender norms and have gained mainstream acceptance, particularly on the urban cultural front. Drag kings are relative upstarts compared with their drag-queen cousins and have had to work harder at breaking down barriers. Which explains why they feel compelled to be more than one-trick cross-dressers.
"We cover the gamut of entertainment," says Nancy/Gary. "There's an awful lot of diversity. Some of us sing. Some of us dance. Some of us do comedy. Some of us do all of the above. We're trying to be very well-rounded." No pun intended.
And then there's King Size crooner Nat King Pole, who changes the lyrics of popular tunes and elicits king-size guffaws as a consequence. . . .
"I was able to go to school and have a family, but for the majority of us, life is extremely difficult," Luna told IPS.
"It's a cultural issue. For the typically 'macho' Latino male, 'fags' are something to look down on and laugh at from the time they are children, and this continues to be true later, in school or in hospitals, where we face discrimination," she said.
According to a report on the situation of transvestites, transsexuals and transgenders in Argentina, for which 302 people were interviewed in the cities of Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata and in outlying suburbs of the Argentine capital, the list of friends in the transgender community who have died in recent years totals 420, most of whom died at a young age.
The report reveals that 62 percent of the total died of AIDS, 17 percent were murdered, and the rest either committed suicide or died in car accidents, of drug overdoses, as the result of medical malpractice during plastic surgery or other procedures to change their physical appearance, or of cirrhosis of the liver, cancer and other diseases.
Almost 70 percent of these deaths occurred when the victims were between the ages of 22 and 41, adds the report, titled "La gesta del nombre propio" (which roughly translates as "the epic battle for one's own name").
The study was published this month by the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and coordinated by Lohana Berkins of the Association for the Struggle for Transvestite and Transsexual Identity.
Berkins was able to undertake tertiary level studies after successfully demanding official documentation in a name representing her chosen gender, which she achieved by filing a complaint through the Buenos Aires Ombudsman's Office. But it is because of obstacles like these that barely three percent of the women interviewed for the new study have had access to higher studies.
Of the 302 interview subjects, only 11 percent are currently undertaking studies of one kind or another. A full 64 percent have not even completed a primary school education, while 20 percent began but were unable to complete secondary school.
In almost all cases, the reason they dropped out of school is related to the conflict that emerged in childhood or adolescence with regard to their gender identity. . . .
Saturday, June 30th 2007, 4:00 AM
Khadijah Farmer was mistaken for a man in the ladies' room at Caliente Cab Co. and shoved out by a bouncer.
A masculine lesbian was kicked out of a Greenwich Village restaurant after a bouncer - who believed she was a man - saw her in the ladies' bathroom, the woman charged yesterday.
Khadijah Farmer said she felt humiliated by her experience at Caliente Cab Co. on Seventh Ave., which took place last Sunday shortly after the city's gay pride march.
"I felt violated ... to say the least," said Farmer, 27. "I really thought that especially in New York City, especially in the heart of the Village, things like this had stopped happening."
Farmer said she went into the popular Mexican restaurant with her girlfriend and another pal about 10:20 p.m.
The trio ate shrimp and nachos before Farmer, who is 5-feet-5 and has short hair, excused herself to go to the rest room.
Just as she was about to enter the bathroom, a woman walked out, flashed her a nasty look and said, "This is the women's bathroom," according to Farmer, who is an HIV counselor.
"I replied, 'I know that. Thank you. This is where I'm supposed to be,'" Farmer said, noting that she was wearing a yellow polo shirt, blue jeans and sneakers. . . .
Do you have questions about the coming out journey? The Human Rights Campaign has a set of resources to help you along the way. Download a copy of our newly released Resource Guide to Coming Out, or read it online. Or download our Resource Guide to Coming Out for African Americans, the Spanish-language GuÃa de Recursos Para Salir Del Clóset or our guide to Living Openly in Your Place of Worship.
