The Other McCain

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Transgender Controversy as Gay Group Rescinds Book Award Nomination

Posted on | March 28, 2016 | 28 Comments

 

Pressure from transgender activists caused a gay literary organization to rescind its nomination for a former Northwestern University professor’s book, saying it is “inconsistent with . . . affirming LGBTQ lives.”

Alice Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science had been nominated for the 28th annual “Lammie” awards, given by the Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF). Last week, however, the foundation’s executive director Tony Valenzuela sent an email to Ms. Dreger informing her that the book’s nomination had been rescinded. Ms. Dreger says LLF yielded to pressure from transgender activists who disliked her book’s treatment of a decade-old scandal involving Northwestern University Professor Michael Bailey’s controversial sex research. Bailey was condemned by transgender activists for endorsing the diagnosis of “autogynephilia,” a type of fetish in which men become sexually aroused by imagining themselves as women. Bailey was accused of ethics violations, including the charge that he had a sexual affair with a transgender patient who had sought his assistance in helping secure approval for sex-reassignment surgery (SRS).

Ms. Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger was acclaimed “one of the most important social-science books of 2015” by Jesse Singal of New York Magazine, who praised her account of how political correctness “collides” with research “when science makes a claim that doesn’t fit into an activist community’s accepted worldview.” Describing how Ms. Dreger’s book deals with the Bailey controversy, Singal wrote:

[W]hat’s key to keep in mind is that some transgender people and activists hold very dear the idea that they have simply been born in the wrong type of body, that transitioning allows them to effectively fix a mistake that nature made. The notion that there might be a cultural component to the decision to transition, or that sexuality, rather than a hardwired gender identity, could be a factor, complicates this gender-identity-only narrative. It also brings sexuality back into a conversation that some trans activists have been trying to make solely about gender identity . . .
But as Dreger explains, Bailey, being someone with a penchant for poking mischievously at political correctness, wasn’t too concerned about the political dimension of what he was arguing in his book. From a scientific perspective, he explicitly viewed the idea that “everybody is truly and easily assignable to one of two gender identities” as an oversimplification; part of his motivation for writing [his 2003 book] The Man Who Would Be Queen was to try to blow it up, to argue that transsexuality is more complicated than that. So it shouldn’t be surprising that some trans activists and allies didn’t appreciate the book’s argument — and they obviously have every right to disagree with Bailey and [“autogynephilia” theorist Dr. Ray] Blanchard’s views. What is surprising is just how big an explosion The Man Who Would Be Queen sparked, and how underhanded the campaign against Bailey subsequently got.

Ms. Dreger had previously written about the Bailey controversy at her personal blog in 2006, as well as in a 2008 article published by the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. According to Ms. Dreger, the same activists who condemned Bailey for his views on transgenderism were responsible for pressuring LLF to rescind her book’s nomination as a finalist for the “Lammie” awards. In an email to the foundation’s director, Ms. Dreger noted that in 2003, LLF had been pressured into denying recognition to Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen:

As I and Dr. Anne Lawrence (a transgender woman) have explained, the real “problem” was that Bailey’s book put forth ideas about women like [transgender activists Deirdre] McCloskey, [Lynn] Conway, and [Andrea] James that they didn’t want disseminated. They wanted to kill the book to stifle the ideas and stories in it, presumably also to stop others from talking about autogynephilia.
At the time of this mess, writer Victoria Brownworth, who was on the [LLF awards] committee, said she saw the withdrawal as akin to censorship. But facing increasing harassment, the committee voted a third time, one vote flipped, and Bailey’s book had its finalist status withdrawn.
Naturally, given the [conflicts] I’ve been in with Bailey’s detractors since I showed in excruciating detail what they did to try to shut him up with a host of patently false charges, I had been assuming my book would never be named a finalist for the same award. Why would the Lambda Literary Foundation take that risk, particularly given that Andrea James had relentlessly harassed [former LLF official] Jim Marks online even long after it was all over?
But it was true: my book was named a finalist in the non-fiction category. . . .
Not too surprisingly, Conway and James soon launched a campaign against my book’s finalist status, but I pretty much ignored this. I figured the Foundation knew this would happen and was prepared to weather the storm.
But no. You caved. And quickly—much more quickly than the Foundation did under Marks in 2003. In spite of all the LGBT people who have actively praised my book, who have thanked me for the work, you quickly caved to a small group of bullies who have proven time and time again that they will do anything they can to get attention and to force everyone to adhere to their singular account of transgenderism, even when it negates the reported childhoods of gay and lesbian people, even when it denies the reality of many transgender people and attempts to force them into closets because of their sexual orientations.

Many conservatives and libertarians have sided with Ms. Dreger in this dispute, particularly because some of her angriest critics, including Sarah Nyberg, are among the SJWs (“social justice warriors”) who made themselves obnoxious by their attempts to impose their politically correct ideas on the videogame industry. However, the dispute over Bailey’s research is not a clear-cut matter of left/right politics. The supporters of Bailey’s “autogynephilia” theory include lesbian feminists like Professor Sheila Jeffreys, whom transgender activists denounce as TERFs (trans-exclusive radical feminists), while one of Bailey’s harshest critics, Deirdre McCloskey, is a libertarian and retired economics professor.

Criticism of Bailey’s work has also called attention to the way in which federal agencies spend taxpayer dollars on controversial sex research. As I reported in 2002, Republicans in Congress criticized the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for awarding a research grant to fund Bailey’s project of studying women’s responses to viewing pornography:

A federally funded study has paid women as much as $75 to watch pornographic videos to determine “what types of audiovisual erotica women find sexually arousing.”
Women participating in the $147,000 study at Northwestern University — funded through the federal National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD] — were paid to “watch a series of commercially available film clips, some of which will be sexually explicit, while we monitor your body’s sexual arousal,” according to a flyer seeking volunteers for the study. . . .
The two-year study began in September 2001 and is intended to “assess the subjective and genital arousal of 180 lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women as they watch erotic video clips of lesbian, gay, or heterosexual interactions,” primary researcher J. Michael Bailey explained in a description of the project.
“We have some really great results on it, and I think it’s going to make a big splash,” Mr. Bailey said of the research, which he said he hopes to publish soon. . . .
Previous studies have shown that male sexual arousal is “target specific” — that is, that heterosexual males respond to depictions of females, while homosexual men respond to images of males, Mr. Bailey said.
“There has been inadequate attention to the question of whether female sexual orientation is target specific,” Mr. Bailey wrote in a grant proposal. “However, some research . . . including our own preliminary data, suggests that target specificity is much weaker for women than for men.” . . .
Rep. Dave Weldon, Florida Republican, cited the Northwestern study as an example of misplaced research priorities . . .
“The NIH couldn’t find the money to look into this relationship between kids with regressive autism and the mandatory MMR vaccine, but they can pay people $150,000 to watch pornography,” Mr. Weldon said. . . .
Reports of Northwestern’s video sex research have prompted some ridicule, landing the study a spot in the nationally syndicated “News of the Weird” feature, but Mr. Bailey said it’s no laughing matter.
“I think it’s extremely important research, and I think it’s pathetic how skittish the government is about funding research about sex,” Mr. Bailey said.

Because I reported extensively on the Bailey controversy more than a dozen years ago, I am familiar with Conway’s activism. From my perspective, the major problem is that federal agencies, in funding such research, lend the authority of government to an “official” theory which may bias public opinion and also tends to preclude funding for research that challenges the “official” theory. Particularly alarming, to anyone familiar with the original Bailey controversy, were accusations that Bailey’s work was slanted by his own personal sexual preferences. Some of Bailey’s critics perceived in his research the typical attitude of so-called “tranny chasers,” i.e., men who have a perverse obsession with transsexuals. Whether or not these suspicions were fair, the history of “scientific” research into sexual behavior is crowded with examples of bias, fraud and methodological error. Anyone who has studied the careers of Wilhelm Reich, Alfred Kinsey and John Money knows how often dubious theories and findings have been presented as “science” by men who concealed their profound biases behind pretenses of objectivity.


 

While on the one hand, I despise the political correctness that treats Alice Dreger as guilty of ThoughtCrime (“transphobia”) for siding with Michael Bailey against his critics, on the other hand, I do not believe that the interests of U.S. taxpayers are served by spending their money to pay for Bailey to show porn videos to women to find out what turns them on.

Was this why heroic patriots fought the American Revolution? Was this why soldiers bled to death on battlefields? Was our constitutional republic — established at Philadelphia, ratified by the states, and defended against its enemies at such an enormous cost in human lives for more than two centuries — intended for such purposes as represented by the $147,000 grant to fund Bailey’s research? Does anyone suppose that General Washington, and his hungry troops who shivered in the snow at Valley Forge, ever imagined they were fighting to create a government that would squander money on such “scientific” absurdities?

It is one thing to say that Michael Bailey should have the liberty to show porn videos to women, if that’s his idea of “science.” It is another thing entirely, however, to claim that Michael Bailey has a right to have his idea of “science” funded at taxpayer expense. When we consider how the federal government has helped create The Higher Education Bubble, when we furthermore consider that tuition at Northwestern University is $49,047 a year, when we take a close look at the kind of deviant lunatics who get psychology degrees from Northwestern, and finally when we are aware that the national debt is now approaching $20 trillion, isn’t it about time we start taking a hard look at what kind of “science” and “education” is being billed to the account of the U.S. taxpayer?

People need to wake the hell up.




 


Category: Gays, Sex Trouble

Comments

28 Responses to “Transgender Controversy as Gay Group Rescinds Book Award Nomination”

  1. CaptDMO
    March 28th, 2016 @ 2:41 pm

    I wonder what the tuition, room, board, “activity” fees, price of text books, lab fees, would be if ALL tax based “financial assistance” were canceled overnight?
    I wonder what it would be if ALL university “teaching” positions were limited to the average salaries of graduates?

  2. Liza
    March 28th, 2016 @ 2:43 pm

    Unbelievable. Great research from Advocates of Natural Rights.

    “Perverting a Nation Part 1

    There are many people who are amazed at how, in the last couple of years, the transgender agenda has gained so much ground across the nation.

    I also was amazed. But having a naturally suspicious mind and 25 years+ experience in public policy, I realized this would not be happening without a trigger. Eventually I found the trigger and as is most likely in political movements, it was money.

    A LOT OF MONEY, nationally it adds up to $794,423,483. That is a LOT of money. In Washington State the two year total is

    $22,927,467. All of this courtesy of the United States Office of Justice.The money was funneled through the Office on Violence Against Women.

    This was the result of Congress passing the Violence Against Women Act of 2013. Contained within that act were new grant conditions. If anyone took one of their grants after the Act was adopted they were contractually REQUIRED to implement non-discrimination Gender ID policies.

    Every State in the U.S. and many organizations and cities have taken the money and are fulfilling their contractual obligations by pushing the Trans agenda. How hard they push can be correlated somewhat with which state agency took the money and how it was distributed.

    Essentially the federal government offered the states and organization cash in exchange for women’s and children’s privacy and safety. Our basic rights were turned into a commodity and every state government sold their citizens out.

    In part 2 we will show you the impacts at the state and local government levels.

    For now go to the link below to find which organizations took the money and essentially sold women’s privacy and safety for cash.”

    https://www.justice.gov/…/awards/fy-2015-ovw-grant-awards-b…
    https://www.justice.gov/ovw/awards/fy-2015-ovw-grant-awards-by-state

  3. trangbang68
    March 28th, 2016 @ 2:56 pm

    Degenerates on the right of me/ psychopaths on the left here I am stuck in the middle of Cisgenderville with you

  4. Transgender Controversy as Gay Group Rescinds Book Award Nomination | Living in Anglo-America
    March 28th, 2016 @ 2:56 pm

    […] Transgender Controversy as Gay Group Rescinds Book Award Nomination […]

  5. trangbang68
    March 28th, 2016 @ 3:00 pm

    I think the second bout on the card is goat rapers vs. corpse abusers followed by hermaphrodites taking on the coprophagia champion ( it ain’t exactly the Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest)

  6. marcus tullius cicero
    March 28th, 2016 @ 3:10 pm

    …my hypothesis is that “male” feminist is an oxymoron!
    (You cannot be a male and hate yourself for being a male)

  7. Joe Joe
    March 28th, 2016 @ 3:24 pm

    THANK YOU for this. Now it is beginning to make sense.

    Everyone needs to read this.

    It also proves that feminism is not about what’s good for women but is about changing conceptions of gender and obliterating gender entirely. It also seems to be about the sexualization of children.

  8. CrustyB
    March 28th, 2016 @ 3:37 pm

    Liberalism means coming to conclusions that are polite and disbelieving things that are impolite. Truth be damned.

  9. Joe Joe
    March 28th, 2016 @ 4:06 pm

    RSM, when you get a chance:

    https://transwidow.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/my-story/

    and this:

    https://autogynephiliatruth.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/the-faces-of-autogynephilia/

  10. Summerwarmth
    March 28th, 2016 @ 4:17 pm

    Leftists believe/support lots of things that are not polite as in pro-pedophillia and enabling ‘refugees’ to sexually harass/mutilate/rape women/children.

    Leftist also believe the end justifies their means which include faux hate crimes, harrassment, intolerance of free speech. If you find a cursing abusive intolerent person spouting racist/sexist/anti-Jewish/and or anti-Christian hate then it is a sure bet they are a leftist.

    My take on Leftists is that they are moral maggots.

  11. Steve Skubinna
    March 28th, 2016 @ 4:23 pm

    Yeah, all those people who shrugged at GamerGate because a) “I don’t play computer games” and b) “Bunch of geeks need to get a life” and c) “None of this affects me anyway…”

    Take note. Whoever you are, wherever you are, the SJWs will come for you. Maybe the loggers and oil field workers and commercial fishermen will be the last assaulted, maybe the SJWs would never soil their fingernails going anywhere near those professions, but everybody else? You’re either in the crosshairs, or you will be.

  12. tsrblke
    March 28th, 2016 @ 5:36 pm

    The great breast Dreger was fine with as long as it was targeting conservatives in her field (like me) has turned on her.
    I’d feel sorry, except she’s merely having thrown at her what is pretty much my daily experience, so schadenfreude it is I guess.

  13. Fail Burton
    March 28th, 2016 @ 6:48 pm

    Singal, Dreger, Bailey, transgender activists; what a tar pit of stupid that all is. It’s like mental patients arguing for wall space to write their names in their own blood.

    And where’s the controversy? What man wouldn’t be sexually aroused by imagining himself as a woman, or a Martian?

    As a result of these self-contradictions wrapped into self-contradictions, Judith Butler has reportedly regained her sanity after several years of running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

    Let’s reimagine de Beauvoir’s famous quote for the 21th century politburo of stupid correctness:

    “One is not born a woman, but becomes one except for when one does not and also only on holidays or odd days of the week, keeping in mind this may be subject to clarification at some later date, and assuming dates actually are dates and not a bit of tinfoil.”

    Be careful girls, the Patriarchy is very clever. They put on a wig and you’re right back where you started, because misogyny.

  14. Fail Burton
    March 28th, 2016 @ 6:50 pm

    Loggers and freezer warehousemen are considered like La of Opar’s degenerate ape-men; fit only to forage and deliver food and fire.

  15. Quartermaster
    March 28th, 2016 @ 7:34 pm

    Search the constitution and you will find nothing that allows funding of research such as this. Lawlessness burns.

  16. Fail Burton
    March 28th, 2016 @ 7:35 pm

    Firemen in America outnumber transgender 2 to 1. Why all the weird attention?

  17. Quartermaster
    March 28th, 2016 @ 7:36 pm

    H8tey H8er! Stop noticing those hate facts!

  18. concern00
    March 28th, 2016 @ 7:54 pm

    Nicolas Nyberg (oops micro-aggression) is a walking, talking sexual fetish.

  19. Joe Joe
    March 28th, 2016 @ 7:56 pm

    Full download of the J. Michael Bailey book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen.”

    http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/JMichael-Bailey/TMWWBQ.pdf

  20. Joe Joe
    March 28th, 2016 @ 9:39 pm

    Here’s Dreger’s article showing how the raging transsexuals treated her when she objected to their abuse of Bailey’s children online:

    https://autogynephiliatruth.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/dreger-2008.pdf

  21. Liza
    March 29th, 2016 @ 1:15 am

    Perverting a Nation Part 2

    “In part one of the series we showed people that the transgender wave is being funded by the Federal government through grants to state agencies , NGO’s, municipalities, and private businesses.

    Today we will chase the money down to the local level and look at impacts there.

    Pierce County , for example, took money directly from Office on Violence against Women (OVW). This required them to implement policy through-out their entire operation. To accomplish this , they reportedly tried to adopt a countywide non-discrimination plan that would have applied to private business as well. Due to local pushback, it is my understanding that it was scaled back to just County public facilities. Local privacy activists counted it as a win, while in reality the County government got exactly what they wanted. A local ordinance that hid the fact that they were under contract to do the same thing anyway. Score one for the sneaky bad guys!!

    Another way money gets funneled is through the Department of Commerce, which is the administrator for OVW block grants. They have, according to state personnel, over one hundred contracts with local county and municipality governments. Virtually every Prosecutor and Sheriff in the state is under contract to enforce nondiscrimination in Washington State.

    For those who wondered why the transgender that was arrested in King County was housed in the women’s facility, now you know! They had already agreed to sell your privacy rights in exchange for the grants!! To get copies of the grants to your local agencies, contact the Department of Commerce Office of Crime Victims Advocacy at the link below and ask for a copy of stop Grants given to your County Prosecutor and Sheriff.”

    http://www.commerce.wa.gov/…/Public…/OCVA/Pages/default.aspx

  22. WarEagle82
    March 29th, 2016 @ 5:55 am

    So crazy people acting cray-cray is not really news, is it?

  23. robertstacymccain
    March 29th, 2016 @ 6:59 am

    Is this series “Perverting a Nation” somewhere online, or do you intend to publish it as comments?

  24. JohnnyL53
    March 29th, 2016 @ 9:13 am

    One special interest group is saying gender identity is hardwired. Another competing interest group says gender identity is fluid.

  25. Liza
    March 29th, 2016 @ 9:29 am

    Yes here’s 2 links found: https://www.facebook.com/KeepLockerRoomsSafest/?fref=nf https://www.facebook.com/advocatesofnaturalrights/?fref=nf
    Transgender Women Male Violence level
    WATCH THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzwMJAFWLtQ&feature=youtu.be

  26. Steve Skubinna
    March 29th, 2016 @ 11:03 am

    Maybe they’ll turn out to be more like the Morlocks…

  27. Jim Bowie
    March 29th, 2016 @ 6:02 pm

    Well I think we all know about censorship and how it’s meted out to conservative commenters all through the internet!

    For Instance I had commented on an article about the Texas War of Independence at the History News Network and of course I was subjected to vindictive leftist harassment. Because they couldn’t win a debate with me on the facts they just accused me of racism and I got a bunch of my posts removed (the moderators are still at work) and was blocked. Here is my first post which is in reply to the article and was what started the whole argument (it’s been removed of course):

    “Mexico had in fact abolished slavery in 1829”
    Complete leftist nonsense. As the author himself “reluctantly” admits the Mexicans themselves compromised on the issue of slavery by allowing 99-year indentures thereby doing away with THAT motivation notwithstanding the authors pathetic attempt at explaining it away . The author leaves out the CONTINUED practice of slavery of Indians that Mexican “leaders” CONVENIENTLY avoided getting upset about. He also leaves out how escaped slaves from America were treated by Mexico in the 1820’s and 1830’s: They were subjected to forced labor for the Mexican government. Something that indigent American Whites NEVER experienced. What relevance the actions of the Mexican government AFTER the war is beyond ME. He talks about the increase in the Black or slave population but the White or Anglo population was increasing even more so what EXACTLY is the point?The Texas War of Independence WAS NOT about slavery. It was a war against the mass murdering, ethnic cleansing proto-fascist LEADERSHIP of Mexico namely Santa Anna and his abrogation of the Mexican Constitution of 1824. Better luck NEXT TIME on your attempt at creating a LEFT-WING mythology of the Alamo!

    Here’s the link to HNN:

    http://historynewsnetwork.org/…
    PLEASE feel free to go there and comment! You could ask the moderator why he engages in selective removals of posts and blocking of conservative commenters! You could even copy and paste my comment to that site in protest! 😉
    Granted this isn’t as bad as what Dreger and Bailey face but it is part of the larger problem.

  28. News of the Week (April 3rd, 2016) | The Political Hat
    April 3rd, 2016 @ 4:36 pm

    […] Transgender Controversy as Gay Group Rescinds Book Award Nomination Pressure from transgender activists caused a gay literary organization to rescind its nomination for a former Northwestern University professor’s book, saying it is “inconsistent with . . . affirming LGBTQ lives.” […]