In response to my reply to her letter, Deirdre McCloskey wrote again:
Dear Professor Roberts,
You are not listening, which I rather expected you would not. You are satisfied with debating points rather than trying to get to the scientific truth. Is this your modus operandi, or are you for some reason wedded off-stage to Bailey behaviorism, say, or transphobia? I really would like to know where your indignant certitude about things you know practically nothing about is coming from.
“The big issue” for you is free speech. In what way have I or anyone else in this debate abridged anyone’s free speech? We aren’t the government. It’s just confused to identify published complaints by private citizens about someone—justified in this case, but let’s for the moment set the issue of the merits aside—with censorship or some other governmental act in violation of “free speech.” People complain about other people all the time. For example, I complain about Paris Hilton.
Your confusion fits smoothly with your strange assertion, swallowed from Dr. Dreger’s self-dramatizing piece published at bizarre length in a distinguished journal run by the chief Baileyite, that we have “great power.” That’s how the Bailey-as-brave-victim line, adopted by Mr. Carey of the NY Times from an uncritical reading of Dr. Dreger’s assault on me and others, got going.
Hmm. In what does our great power lie? Professor Bailey, like us, is a senior, tenured professor. We objected to his work and to his behavior, through our writings and through channels. What exactly is the exercise of “great power” there? Isn’t this power called “the power of the pen,” and isn’t that exactly the “free speech” you believe you are so courageously defending? The National Academy of Science, which published Bailey’s unscientific book, and which has been taken over it would appear by a clique of Gay Gene theorists (I suppose it is an indirect effect of Bush’s administration, but I don’t know), is powerful. That’s the hand of a governmental advisory body, great power indeed, right? We are a couple of professors not in sexology who objected to the mistreatment of some of our poor and ignorant friends, and objected to Bailey’s theories and especially to his lack of interest in investigating the bulk of the actual scientific evidence on the matter, namely, any serious sample of the lives of gender crossers. Where’s the power?
And how about our right of free speech? We complained to the licensing board about Bailey practicing psychology without a license and you regard that action as requiring defense. (One reason the board did not act, by the way, is that the physician-created statute of limitation on malpractice had run out. It has a notably short fuse.) We complained about his abuse of scientific subjects (it’s his claim, not ours, that they were scientific subjects), to the proper authorities. The proper authorities took what you call an “absurd” complaint most seriously, and Bailey resigned from the chairmanship of his department. You regard our actions not as the “free speech” you believe you are defending but as attempts to destroy Bailey.
May I suggest that you are not making sense? Criticizing people in open forums and through channels is precisely what Dr. Dreger, and now the reporter for the Times, and now you, have done. That’s fine. I do not call Dreger’s hysterical letters through channels against Andrea James, or her Bailey-group subsidized piece which you have so completely swallowed, an attempt to “destroy” James or me. I call her action self-dramatizing and illiberal, and I call her writings unscientific and nonsensical, politically slanted pseudo-history. I do not call your blog retailing Carey’s article an attempt to destroy me or to suppress free speech. I call it a silly remark about a subject you have no experience of.
What sort of double standard are you applying to my speech but not to your own? My criticism and complaint is “an attempt to destroy.” Dreger’s, the reporter Carey’s secondary, and now your tertiary criticism and complaint are then. . . what? I say both are free speech, the duty of serious citizens in a democracy. Go to it. Aux barricades for a free press. But stop making these unsupported claims about censorship and destroying Professor Bailey’s life.
Speaking of “destroyed lives,” by the way, what about our lives and the lives of the gender crossers we sought to protect? My children have not spoken to me since I transitioned, in 1995. I have two grandchildren I have not been allowed to meet. One important reason is the sex, sex, sex theory, known in the field to be of little scientific merit, which Bailey defends with shallow evidence but which is attractive to ignorant outsiders hostile to gender crossers. More widely, the sex, sex, sex theory is one potent reason for transphobia and for the numerous violent deaths of gender crossers. You may consult GenderPak on the issue, if you can rouse some scientific curiosity about the actual facts of the matter. Or you can read the hate mail I have received since Carey’s piece.
Let me ask you what you would do in a similar case. I don’t know what your scientific work has been, but let’s be symmetrical. Suppose an economist had written a book with a exiguous selection of evidence saying that psychologists were liars and sexual perverts, and refused to risk his theory in a serious scientific test by interviewing a wide range of psychologists. Suppose he found, by searching in places where prostitutes gather, some psychologists working as prostitutes, and concluded that psychologists tended to be prostitutes. Suppose the psychologists he interviewed were very eager to get The Letter that would, they believed in their innocence, give them, say, very valuable rights to trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and suppose the economist said he would write the letter if they would talk to him. Suppose he then in addition slept with one of the psychologists, and then used the “evidence” thus acquired to support his unscientific theories in a long book published with the government’s imprimatur filled with anti-psychologist lore. First, kill all the psychologists.
What would you do about the economist’s unscientific claims, let us say, on your blog? And would you also complain to the legitimate authorities about the economist’s unprofessional and fraudulent behavior? When someone mugs you or a friend on the street, do you report it to the police? And would your just complaints against such a character be an attempt to ruin him? Or would it be fair comment in a free society and the exercise of the rights and duties of a citizen?
You may quote anything I write, in whole or in part. My pieces are posted on my webpage, deirdremccloskey.org. I expect, however, to be answered again with silly debating points. You have closed your mind on the issue, and are not open to evidence or to reason. It is a most unscientific stance. Shame on you. (That’s called fair comment in a free society, dear, not an attempt to destroy you.)
Sincerely,
Deirdre McCloskey