Lance Welton has given a concise summary of a debate that I certainly did not see covered in the Australian lamestream media – wonder why? – dealing with the attempted, and on-going cancellation attempts made against Professor J. Michael Bailey, author of The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism (2003). Professor Bailey reached conclusions, based upon psychological research, that are contrary to the existing trans narrative. He may be right, or he may be wrong, but one would think that scientific objectivity on such a controversial public policy issue would justify hearing what he has to say? But no; instead there were the cancellation attacks: “They included orchestration of charges of professional misconduct against Bailey, filed with Northwestern University and the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation; attempts to turn Bailey’s colleagues against him; attacks directed against Bailey’s children; and efforts to discredit or silence nearly anyone who openly supported him … Bailey’s opponents intended not only to discredit Bailey’s book, but also to destroy its author.”
The latest attacks are documented below. For those of us with long memories, we saw the same sort of methods get underway in the 1960s, with attacks upon race theorists such as Arthur Jensen, and then in the 1970s, sociobiologist, E. O. Wilson. Really, all that has happened is that the Left on universities has got even more power, now running the lunatic asylum, and much more violent. I agree with James Reed now that these places are beyond reform, and should be closed down, ASAP.
“A serious scholarly study by a world expert in his field is under threat of being cancelled. If the scheme unfolds according to plan, it will be declared scientifically and ethically flawed, forcibly withdrawn from an academic journal and expunged from the official scientific record. Why? Because it dares to explore empirically the actual causes of transsexuality. …
This was documented, also by Anne Lawrence, in the angry reactions of trans-activists to Prof. J. Michael Bailey’s 2003 book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. As she summarized the trans attack on Bailey.
They included orchestration of charges of professional misconduct against Bailey, filed with Northwestern University and the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation; attempts to turn Bailey’s colleagues against him; attacks directed against Bailey’s children; and efforts to discredit or silence nearly anyone who openly supported him … Bailey’s opponents intended not only to discredit Bailey’s book, but also to destroy its author.
[Shame and Narcissistic Rage in Autogynephilic Transsexualism, by Anne Lawrence, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2008]
Well, Bailey would not be silenced, so they’re at it again.
On April 20th, Bailey tweeted, “Woke-academic attempt to cancel our new article on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Read it while you can!”
The article in question, “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases,” by Suzanne Diaz and J. Michael Bailey, was published in Archives of Sexual Research as recently as March 29th.
In effect, it demonstrates something trans-activists really don’t want to hear, as it undermines their quasi-religious belief that they have been “born into the wrong body”: that there is a “New Anorexia” among teenage girls, “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” which spreads via social contagion. And, further, the more mentally ill the teenage girls are, the more likely they are to acquire it. And those who acquire it become even more mentally ill.
Teenage girls with pre-existing mental health problems, inevitably younger than boys who start to experience Gender Dysphoria, declare themselves to be “non-binary” or to be “boys ”according to Diaz and Bailey. About 75% of cases are female-to-male and 65% of the females, but only 28% of the males, “socially transition.”
The parents feel pressured, including by clinicians, to accept their daughters’ fantasy as reality. But their daughters’ mental health rapidly deteriorates after they transition.
The key point: These girls do not “medically transition.” In effect, in a society in which victimhood status and transgenderism are promoted, they deal with various teenage anxieties by adopting a transgender identity, which then spreads through their peer group.
This fits with findings by the remarkable Canadian researcher Eric Kaufmann that there is a rapid increase in young women identifying as “LGBT”—but little increase in homosexual behavior. It is merely an identity and status issue in a leftist, pro-LGBT world [Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity, Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, 2022].
The more mentally unstable they are, the more likely they are to takes things further: “Youths with a history of mental health issues were especially likely to have taken steps to socially and medically transition.”
This is absolutely not what trans-activists want to hear. So, needless to say, it has triggered their Narcissistic Rage. The International Academy of Sexual Behavior, which is associated with Archives of Sexual Research, and is “increasingly Woke,” according to Bailey, is, apparently, “incensed by ethical and scientific issues” in his journal article, which was based around interviews with parents of those suffering from Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria.
Bailey added that, “The critics could write letters to the editor (or do their own research). But no, that would allow rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) to be discussed in polite company.”
Naturally, Bailey’s preemptive strike against the cancellation of his study has set off a Twitter storm, both opposing and defending him.
Woke archaeologist Scott MacEachern declared: “Methodologically and ethically, this is one of the worst articles that I have seen in a very long time. Congratulations: you‘ve placed transphobia on the same academic level as ‘scientific racism.’”
He added that: “As for IRB approval, none of this went through any human subjects process, either for the parents... or the children/adolescents in question—whose life information is actually being used here. I'll bet the university in question declined to certify the study!”
And he nitpicked about the teenage sample having “above average intelligence.”
Reassuringly, many psychologists have leapt to Bailey’s defense. Psychologist Dr. Chris Ferguson tweeted: “That the IASR is even looking into this is a disgrace. If people have critiques of the original article, let them publish their critiques in comment/reply. Science can’t maintain integrity with this constant censorship of unpopular ideas.”
Even maverick public intellectual Jordan Peterson, notoriously something of a squish, retweeted the possibly about to be cancelled article, seemingly as an act of solidarity.
This new attempt to destroy Bailey and his research on the causes of transgenderism only underlines that point which Anne Lawrence made with regard to Narcissistic Rage. …
The attempted cancellation of Bailey’s paper is yet another example of this—and of the descent of science into a New Dark Age."