In reply to Deirdre McCloskey’s second letter, I wrote:
Dear Professor McCloskey,
I’m glad to hear more of your side of the story. To answer your questions:
“In what way have I or anyone else in this debate abridged anyone’s free speech?” By attacking someone — Bailey — who said something you didn’t like. Fearful of future attacks from you or Conway or Andrea James, others will keep their mouths shut. The term is chilling effect. Here is Wikipedia’s definition: “A chilling effect is a situation where speech or conduct is suppressed or limited by fear of penalization at the hands of an individual or group.” Wikipedia’s example is fear of a lawsuit — which you have threatened (” I’m going to sue Bailey for defamation if . . . “). Minutes after I posted my second blog entry about the attacks on Bailey, the first post that mentioned you, I got an email from a wise friend. “There has been a big McCloskey/Bailey feud, I believe involving also lawsuits or the threat thereof,” he wrote. It was a warning. He was worried.
“In what does our great power lie?” In four things: 1. Job security. Not only tenure — you and Conway are near the top of your professions. 2. Money. 3. Respect. Your upcoming honorary degree, for example. A recent memoir by an esteemed economist praised you for your “courage.” Conway’s membership in the National Academy of Engineering. 4. Knowing how the system works — in particular how to get powerful bureaucracies (such as Northwestern’s) to do what you want. “We are a couple of professors not in sexology.” Please. You and Conway are not average professors. What fraction of professors get honorary degrees? What fraction of engineering professors are in the National Academy of Engineering?
“What about our right to free speech?” You think calling your absurd complaints to credulous and powerful authorities “free speech” somehow defends them? I don’t.
“What about our lives? . . . My children have not spoken to me since I transitioned, in 1995. I have two grandchildren I have not been allowed to meet.” Yes, that is horrible. No one should be treated like that. But the fact that you have been treated badly doesn’t justify doing something awful (your absurd complaints) to someone else.
How would I react if your scenario about psychologists came to pass? I would do nothing. I’m supposed to get upset that Person X asked Person Y for a letter and before Person Y wrote that letter he asked Person X to speak to him — perhaps about the contents of the letter? On what planet is that wrong? I should react because someone “had sex with a psychologist”? I should be upset that the person “used the “evidence” thus acquired to support his unscientific theories in a long book”? We are at a curious place in intellectual history when a Distinguished Professor of this and that, soon to receive an honorary degree from a major university, thinks that a sane person might be upset that someone had sex with a psychologist.
Your complaints to powerful and credulous authorities, you say, were not absurd because they were taken seriously. (”They took what you call an “absurd” complaint most seriously.”) Okay, here is why your complaints were absurd. 1. You and Conway complained to the State of Illinois that Bailey was practicing psychology without a license because he wrote letters on behalf of several persons who had come to him for help. He helped them! They came to him for help! To complain about this is absurd. To say your complaint “protects” anyone is absurd. To say what Bailey did resembles “mugging” is absurd. No one seeks out a mugger and asks to be mugged. 2. You and Conway orchestrated the filing of human-subjects complaints against Bailey. These complaints assumed that persons mentioned in stories in Bailey’s book were “research subjects” — simply because they were in the book. Never before in the history of science had the subject of a story told to illustrate a point been thereby considered a research subject. Bailey’s book is not a scientific monograph. It is not a piece of science. It is a trade book about science. When I or anyone else gives a lecture about a scientific subject, and tell a story from everyday life to make the conclusions come alive, do we need informed consent from everyone mentioned in the story? Of course not. No one has ever been required to do this. No one has ever done this. No one has ever even conceived of such a thing. The whole idea is absurd. Northwestern administrators may be credulous; I’m not.
Twice in your letter you combine two very different activities as if they are similar. “My criticism and complaint” is one example; “criticizing people in open forums and through channels” is the other. These two activities of yours were very different. Open-forum criticism, if factually correct, is fine with me. Absurd complaints to credulous authorities with the power to destroy someone’s career are much much less than fine with me. When Dreger says you tried to “ruin” Bailey, she is referring to the absurd complaints. Not to the review in Reason.
Sincerely,
Seth Roberts
do you honestly think you’re going to convince her of anything? why bother? that’s not a facetious question; I’m actually kind of curious.
I am not familiar with the whole story here — the theory in question, the actions of one researcher or the other — but I am following these exchanges with interest. To be perfectly honest, it seems you two are talking past each other. She doesn’t believe you have anything to say, and you can’t get her to answer the points you raise. She believes you are attacking her right to object to a theory and challenge the theorist; you are disagreeing with her methods of doing so. Détente.
Personally, I certainly believe in her right to challenge the credibility of a theory, but it does seems she is taking it personally. I come from the queer community and I’ve known trans of all kinds; they have good reason to be defensive, to be honest. Still, I would expect more from a professional, tenured professor than condescension….hmmm, or maybe not.
p-ter, no, I don’t expect to convince her of anything. Why bother? She did two awful things — those two complaints — and I wonder how she defends them. It is also therapeutic to write about this. I was sickened by what McCloskey and Conway did to Bailey.
KimBooSan, I don’t mind her challenging the credibility of a theory. I mind her trying to ruin Bailey’s life.
I’m particularly fascinated by the fact that she continues to resort to grouping anyone who might disagree with her actions to agreeing with Bailey, as if this were the main issue at hand.
The main issue is freedom of speech. And, I believe, is particularly important when in consequence to the exchanging of ideas, knowledge, and culture.
If she truly believes what she is backing, there would be no need to flee from what she has done. There would be no need to make excuses or hide behind rhetorical speech to mask henious behavior.
The effort thus far exerted to silence Bailey is deplorable.
The act of her trying to ruin Bailey’s life just shows how personally she takes this whole matter. To her, defending her position is a self-evident argument and she thinks less of you for questioning it. That’s why she won’t debate the issue of her methods. The more she is hammered about her methods, the more she will defend her reasons.
It’s just silly reactionism, and Bailey is on the stick end, unfortunately. See? THIS is why I decided not to pursue a career in academia, oh so long ago!
I tried for days to find other studies about this particular theory by Blanchard, but apparently he’s the only one that ever studied it. I think it is a wrong theory, I see evidence contrary to it every day of my life by looking in the mirror. Of course this means I am a compulsive liar.
That’s where the rub is, you read the book, right? The language Bailey uses to describe both type 1 and type 2 is very…offensive to say the least. I think Conway and company feel they were made fun of, mocked and insulted by Bailey’s words in the book, and they think of it as returning the favor.
I don’t find anything in particular about the theories horribly offensive, but I do find Bailey’s way of describing various women as incredibly offensive in the book. We feel insulted, degraded and spat on by this man’s book, so the reactions are needless to say going to come from the gut rather than thoughtful counter-arguments from the mind.
Would you give an example of something from Bailey’s book that made you feel “spat on”?
Quote that seems to indicate we’re stupid:
“Homosexual transsexuals tend to have a short time horizon, with certain pleasure in the present worth great risks for the future.” p184
Quotes that seem to indicate the only thing I’m good for is being a whore:
“Prostitution is the single most common occupation that homosexual transsexuals in our study admitted to.”
“Nearly all the homosexual transsexuals I know work as escorts after they have their surgery.” p210
Quote that indicates that I’m likely to be a shop-lifter, and obsessed with clothing:
“As for shoplifting, homosexual transsexuals are not especially well suited as much as especially motivated. For many, their taste in clothing is much more expensive than their income allows.” p185
That I’m not marriage material, for the record. I*AM* happily married, and yes to a man, but I have a career, I did not become some stepford wife.
“Do they get married? … homosexual transsexuals are not very successful at finding desirable men willing to commit to them.” p209
“They wanted to get their surgery (if they had not had it yet) and meet a nice, attractive, and financially stable heterosexual man who would marry them and take care of them … When I was conducting my study of homosexual transsexuals, I routinely asked them if they knew anyone who had realized this dream. No one did.” p186
Quotes that we’re sex crazed men with vaginas that don’t care about our partner of the time.
“Gay transsexuals are boy crazy.” p178
“ability to enjoy emotionally meaningless sex appears male-typical. In this sense, homosexual transsexuals might be especially well-suited to prostitution.” p185
From an analytical point of view, I think I can see why he found what he did find. As far as I can tell, his source for ‘homosexual transsexuals’ was hitting up inner city gay bars. You’re going to get a VERY skewed sample if your only source of people is from one sort of environment. Not all of us live in the inner city and work the streets.
Rachel, thanks for providing those examples.
These quotes describe traits that some people consider negative, yes, but not in an unfriendly or insulting way. You seem to be saying you are a homosexual transsexual. The whole book is enormously sympathetic to homosexuals, part of why it was nominated for a Lambda Award. How you have failed to see that I don’t know.
Lamba re-examined the book more closely and revoked its status as a nominee and deemed it “Not appropriate”.
https://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?2004/03/16/3
In particular this quote.
“The specific issue was whether the book was transphobic,” Marks told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network. “The judges looked at the book more closely and decided it was.”
I don’t find it sympathetic towards me at all, I feel dirty because of the way he talks about us. I find it degrading and insulting. I am NOT a homosexual, I dislike the terminology itself. I’m only using it when talking to you because you seem to have swallowed the theory hook line and sinker.
This sounds a lot like the Larry Summers fiasco: legitimate (albeit possibly misguided) discussion of sensitive issues (in both cases gender-related) leads to personal attacks with ultimately severe professional consequences. Nobody won that one.
https://members.aol.com/katrinacrose/new/Dreger-Bailey_Bush-Libby.pdf
https://www.intersexualite.org/Eugenics.html
Two, I guess I would say professional, commentaries on Dreger’s article. One by a transwoman, another by another intersexed individual.
It should be noted that Dreger herself seems to be a somewhat controversial person in her own circle of intersex organizations and individuals. Also, Exodus International and NARTH wholeheartedly support the book for study to understand how homosexuality can and should be ‘cured’.
I dealt with NARTH myself when I was a teenager and I was forced to undergo shock and noise aversion therapy in an attempt to make me ‘more masculine’ and to undo the attraction towards men that I have. These people have ENDORSED Bailey’s book. They more or less tortured me as a teenager, and they support the book. How on earth can I side with people that destroyed my childhood and left me mentally scarred?