Dr. Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey

[natina]

Whipping Girl (http://juliaserano.blogspot.ca/)
writer, performer and activist Julia Serano's blog! most posts will focus on gender & sexuality; trans, queer & feminist politics; music & performance; and other stuff that interests or concerns me. find out more about my various creative endeavors at juliaserano.com (http://juliaserano.com/)



http://juliaserano.blogspot.ca/2015/07/the-real-autogynephilia-deniers.html


John Michael Bailey is an American psychologist and professor at Northwestern University. He is best known among scientists for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation, from which he concluded that homosexuality is substantially inherited


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray Blanchard is a researcher at the University of Toronto’s School of Psychiatry. He is known for conducting studies that proved the more older brothers a boy has, the more likely he will be gay. Blanchard received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1973.There appears to be an increase in news relating to the science of sexual orientation. Why is this?
Starting in the early 1990’s there was a renaissance of interest in biological research on sexual orientation. To some extent this was probably a function of new technologies coming online, which allowed a lot of old questions to be reexamined.
Anti-gay activists claim there is no evidence for a biological influence on sexual orientation.
The Man Who Would Be Queen[edit (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._Michael_Bailey&action=edit&section=7&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro)]Main article: The Man Who Would Be Queen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen)
Bailey's book The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism was published in 2003.[31] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-jhp-31) In it, Bailey reviewed evidence that male homosexuality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality) is innate, a result of heredity and prenatal environment. He also reviewed the theory of Ray Blanchard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Blanchard) that there are two unrelated forms of transsexualism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexualism), one that is an extreme type of homosexuality and one that is an expression of a paraphilia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia) known as autogynephilia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogynephilia). Written in a popular science style, the book summarized research supporting Bailey's opinions.
The book generated considerable controversy. The most detailed investigation into that controversy was reported by Alice Dreger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Dreger),[32] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-32) a bioethicist and historian, known for her activism in support of intersex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex) rights. Dreger included additional details in Galileo’s Middle Finger, an analysis of modern clashes between scientists and activists whose beliefs are challenged by them.[33] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-33) In her documented account of the Bailey case, she concluded that a small group of self-styled activists tried to bury a politically challenging scientific theory by attacking Bailey. "These critics, rather than restrict themselves to the argument over the ideas, had charged Bailey with a whole host of serious crimes," but that "what they claimed about Bailey simply wasn't true."[34] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-34)
A transgender woman that he described in the book filed a complaint with Northwestern University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_University) alleging that her many discussions with Bailey about his view of trans women and the book he was writing made her a non-consensual subject of IRB-regulated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRB-regulated) research by Bailey, and that during this time, she had consensual sex with him.[35] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-35) Northwestern found no basis for the complaint.[36] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Dreger2008-36)[37] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-37) Transsexual professors Lynn Conway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway) and Deirdre McCloskey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_McCloskey) filed a complaint against Bailey with Illinois state regulators, alleging that he practiced psychology without a license by providing brief case evaluation letters suggesting candidacy for sex reassignment surgery; however, the department did not pursue those allegations, as he did not accept remuneration for the services and therefore did not violate the law.[36] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Dreger2008-36)[38] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Carey2007-38) At least two women who said they were subjects in his book filed a complaint with Northwestern alleging that Bailey committed scientific misconduct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct) by not informing them that they were to be the subjects of research used in the writing of his book.[39] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-39)[40] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-40) Northwestern did investigate this allegation. Although the findings of that investigation were not released,[41] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-41) Northwestern's Vice President for Research, C. Bradley Moore, said, "The allegations of scientific misconduct made against Professor J. Michael Bailey do not fall under the federal definition of scientific misconduct."[36] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Dreger2008-36) and that the university "has established a protocol to help ensure that Professor Bailey's research activities involving human subjects are conducted in accordance with the expectations of the University, the regulations and guidelines established by the federal government and with generally accepted research standards."[36] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Dreger2008-36) Bailey says that he did nothing wrong and that the attacks on him were motivated by the desire to suppress discussion of the book's ideas about transsexualism, especially autogynephilia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogynephilia).[42] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-McCarthyism-42) Alice Dreger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Dreger), a bioethicist, published an account of the controversy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBL_controversy) in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archives_of_Sexual_Behavior).[36] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Dreger2008-36) According to Dreger, the allegations of misconduct could accurately be described as "harassment",[43] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-NYTharassment-43) and an "anti-Bailey campaign".[36] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Dreger2008-36) Dreger wrote that of the four women who complained to Northwestern, two acknowledged that they were aware they would be included in Bailey's book in their letter to the university. The other two were not described in the book. Dreger also reported that while there was no definitive evidence to refute the allegation of sexual misconduct, datestamps on e-mails between Bailey and his ex-wife indicated that he was at her home looking after their two children at the time the misconduct was said to have occurred. The journal published in the same issue 23 commentaries regarding multiple aspects of the controversy, including criticism of Dreger's analysis.[44] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-44)
Outside of the transsexual community and sexology researchers, this controversy is largely notable because of its implications for academic freedom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom) and freedom of speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech). In an interview with The New York Times, Dreger said, "If we're going to have research at all, then we're going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we've got problems not only for science but free expression itself."[38] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-Carey2007-38) While one critic compared his work to Nazi propaganda, and another posted pictures of his children on her website with sexually explicit captions, other critics believe that their actions against Bailey and his book represent legitimate comment on a topic of public interest.[45] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-NYTlegitimate-45)
Helen Boyd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Boyd) explained what might have motivated some to object to the book:[46] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-46)

In the crossdressing community, the man who admits he is turned on by his dressing is still considered a pervert. The autogynephilic transsexual will not receive the same sympathy for her transsexualism as the non-autogynephilic transsexual. That's exactly what makes Bailey's book so dangerous: it allows transsexual women to be condemned by our society for having "perverse" sexual arousal patterns.
—Helen Boyd
In response to such criticisms, Bailey reiterated a line from his book: "True acceptance of the transgendered requires that we truly understand who they are."[47] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey#cite_note-47)

[natina]

Ray Blanchard (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/heres-how-the-guy-who-wrote-the-manual-on-sex-talks-about-sex) first proposed the theory of autogynephilia in the late 1980's - it asserts that there are two fundamentally different types of trans women, and that only one of these groups (the so-called "autogynephiles") not only experience sexual arousal or fantasies involving the “thought or image of oneself as a woman" (what, for clarity's sake, I will call female/feminine embodiment fantasies or FEFs (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/05/reconceptualizing-autogynephilia-as_26.html)), but that FEFs are the cause of any gender dysphoria & desire to transition that those individuals experience.

But the problem is that in *every single one* of Blanchard's research studies on the matter, he found a significant number of subjects who defied his two-subtype model and his assumption of causality (i.e., that FEFs are the supposed cause of transsexuality in those who experience them). Rather than question his model, Blanchard dismissed these many exceptions by accusing those research subjects of "misreporting" their experiences; other proponents of autogynephilia theory have subsequently followed suit. As I explained in my article The Case Against Autogynephilia (http://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf):

Notably, it is always those transsexuals who are constructed as “autogynephiles” that are accused of either lying about their sexual orientation, or of supposedly denying their experiences with cross-gender arousal [i.e., FEFs]; in contrast, the reports of those who neatly fit the “androphile” archetype are never questioned . . . This double standard is not only illogical . . . but it is tantamount to hand-picking which evidence counts and which does not based upon how well it conforms to the model . . . If proponents of autogynephilia insist that every exception to the model is due to misreporting, then autogynephilia theory must be rejected on the grounds that it is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. If, on the other hand, we accept that these exceptions are legitimate, then it is clear that autogynephilia theory’s two-subtype taxonomy does not hold true.

I don't doubt that *some* trans women who have experienced FEFs deny those experiences. Given the way that autogynephilia theory has been repeatedly used to slut-shame (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/07/two-articles-related-to-femininity-and.html) trans women, dismiss our identities, and/or to depict us as "sexually deviant men" (as described in detail at the end of this article), I completely understand why some trans women would be reluctant to discuss their relationship to this subject matter.

But what people like Cantor and others who invoke this notion of "autogynephilia deniers" consistently refuse to address is the *countless* trans women who acknowledge the existence of FEFs (in their own lives and/or others), yet reject Blanchard's autogynephilia theory.

And frankly, all the science is on our side, not theirs.

Who is doing the denying here?

To believe that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory is correct, you need to either 1) transport yourself back in time to around 2005, when the only scientific literature on this topic had been published by Ray Blanchard and his two biggest fans Anne Lawrence & J. Michael Bailey (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/109916074?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1), or 2) purposefully ignore all of the scientific/sexology literature that has been published since.

Since James Cantor seems not to be up to speed on the *actual* scientific literature on this matter, here is a little reading list that I've prepared for him and anyone else who denies the fact that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory has been thoroughly disproven:

--The Case Against Autogynephilia (https://learningtrans.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/serano-agreview-ijt.pdf) (by Julia Serano, 2010) & Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00918369.2010.486241) (by Charles Moser, 2010)
These are both review articles published in peer-reviewed journals (a whopping five years ago!) summarizing the many flaws inherent in Blanchard's theory and the overwhelming evidence against it. A few of the research studies cited in those article are listed individually below.

--Sexuality of male-to-female transsexuals (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18299976) (by Veale et al., 2008)
This was the first study testing autogynephilia theory that was conducted on a non-clinical population of trans women, as well as the first that actually used a control group of non-transsexual women. Their results contradict Blanchard's theory in a number of ways, most notably in that their "autogynephilic" and "nonautogynephilic" groups did not segregate along lines of sexual orientation (which had been a foundational premise of Blanchard's theory) and that many of their non-transsexual female controls were "autogynephilic" (demonstrating that FEFs are not a transgender-specific phenomenon).

--Autogynephilia in women (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19591032) (by Charles Moser, 2009)
Moser administered a survey (almost identical to the one Blanchard used) to non-transsexual women and found that: "By the common definition of ever having erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman, 93% of the respondents would be classified as autogynephilic. Using a more rigorous definition of 'frequent' arousal to multiple items, 28% would be classified as autogynephilic."

--A further assessment of Blanchard’s typology of homosexual versus non-homosexual or autogynephilic gender dysphoria (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20039113) (by Nuttbrock et al., 2011)
This study examined the frequency of FEFs in a non-clinical sample of 571 MtF transgender individuals living in New York City - this sample is far more diverse with regard to age and ethnicity than any previous study. As with Veale et al. (2008), they found many exceptions to Blanchard's two-subtype model. Notably, they also found that the incidence of FEFs were significantly higher in Whites compared with non-Whites, and in older subjects compared with younger subjects, suggesting that other cultural factors (independent of sexual orientation) lead to this phenomenon. The reduced levels of FEFs in younger subjects led the authors to suggest that FEFs (i.e., what Blanchard calls "autogynephilia") “may be a historically fading phenomenon.”

--When Selves Have Sex: What the Phenomenology of Trans Sexuality Can Teach About Sexual Orientation (https://learningtrans.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/whenselves.pdf) (by Talia Mae Bettcher, 2013)
This is a more theoretical paper (rather than a research study), but it elegantly explains how the popular conceptualization of sexual orientation as strictly "attraction to" other people has essentially erased the importance of our own bodies in our erotic thoughts and sexual fantasies & experiences. Bettcher instead forwards a theory of "erotic structuralism" that is far more consistent with real-life sexual experiences and all the available science on this particular subject than Blanchard's theory.

--Evidence Against a Typology: A Taxometric Analysis of the Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24619650) (by Jaimie Veale, 2014)
This study demonstrates that trans women's sexualities (including sexual orientation and experiences with FEFs) are dimensional (i.e., they fall on a continuum) rather than categorical (i.e., falling into distinct categories), thus further disproving Blanchard's two-subtype taxonomy.

--Reconceptualizing “Autogynephilia” as Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs) (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/05/reconceptualizing-autogynephilia-as_26.html) (by Julia Serano, 2015)
This is the only article listed here that has not appeared in a peer-reviewed science/sexology journal. But I included it because it summarizes my multifactorial model (originally forwarded in my 2007 book Whipping Girl (http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html)) to explain the existence of FEFs (i.e., what others call "autogynephilia") and why this phenomenon occurs more frequently or intensely in certain populations but not others. Unlike Blanchard's theory, this multifactorial model is consistent with *all* the available evidence on this subject.

So that is the evidence against Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia. And if Cantor or anyone else wants to assert that the theory remains valid - or that it is even still up for consideration! - they must actually address this significant body of research and reasoning.

And if they do not, then they are the ones who are in denial.

Indeed, today in 2015, the phrase "autogynephilia deniers" more appropriately describes those who continue to latch onto autogynephilia theory despite the overwhelming theoretical & scientific evidence against it. People like Anne Lawrence, who writes angry Letters to the Editor any time a research paper challenging Blanchard's theory is published (see here (http://www.jaimieveale.com/publications/replytoLawrenceBailey.pdf) and here (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2010.485859?journalCode=wjhm20#.VaM6gsZVi ko) and here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20559866) and here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26081247) - quite honestly, there may be more that I have missed). Or people like Alice Dreger (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/04/alice-dreger-and-making-evidence-fit.html), who just released a 2015 pop-science book discussing autogynephilia theory in depth (circa 2005) without discussing or addressing *any* of the post-2005 research & reviews on the subject.

They are the real "autogynephilia deniers," not us.

Or to put it in the form of a catchy tweet (à la James Cantor):

[natina]

Ray Blanchard (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/heres-how-the-guy-who-wrote-the-manual-on-sex-talks-about-sex) first proposed the theory of autogynephilia in the late 1980's - it asserts that there are two fundamentally different types of trans women, and that only one of these groups (the so-called "autogynephiles") not only experience sexual arousal or fantasies involving the “thought or image of oneself as a woman" (what, for clarity's sake, I will call female/feminine embodiment fantasies or FEFs (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/05/reconceptualizing-autogynephilia-as_26.html)), but that FEFs are the cause of any gender dysphoria & desire to transition that those individuals experience.

But the problem is that in *every single one* of Blanchard's research studies on the matter, he found a significant number of subjects who defied his two-subtype model and his assumption of causality (i.e., that FEFs are the supposed cause of transsexuality in those who experience them). Rather than question his model, Blanchard dismissed these many exceptions by accusing those research subjects of "misreporting" their experiences; other proponents of autogynephilia theory have subsequently followed suit. As I explained in my article The Case Against Autogynephilia (http://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf):

Notably, it is always those transsexuals who are constructed as “autogynephiles” that are accused of either lying about their sexual orientation, or of supposedly denying their experiences with cross-gender arousal [i.e., FEFs]; in contrast, the reports of those who neatly fit the “androphile” archetype are never questioned . . . This double standard is not only illogical . . . but it is tantamount to hand-picking which evidence counts and which does not based upon how well it conforms to the model . . . If proponents of autogynephilia insist that every exception to the model is due to misreporting, then autogynephilia theory must be rejected on the grounds that it is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. If, on the other hand, we accept that these exceptions are legitimate, then it is clear that autogynephilia theory’s two-subtype taxonomy does not hold true.

I don't doubt that *some* trans women who have experienced FEFs deny those experiences. Given the way that autogynephilia theory has been repeatedly used to slut-shame (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/07/two-articles-related-to-femininity-and.html) trans women, dismiss our identities, and/or to depict us as "sexually deviant men" (as described in detail at the end of this article), I completely understand why some trans women would be reluctant to discuss their relationship to this subject matter.

But what people like Cantor and others who invoke this notion of "autogynephilia deniers" consistently refuse to address is the *countless* trans women who acknowledge the existence of FEFs (in their own lives and/or others), yet reject Blanchard's autogynephilia theory.

And frankly, all the science is on our side, not theirs.

Who is doing the denying here?

To believe that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory is correct, you need to either 1) transport yourself back in time to around 2005, when the only scientific literature on this topic had been published by Ray Blanchard and his two biggest fans Anne Lawrence & J. Michael Bailey (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/109916074?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1), or 2) purposefully ignore all of the scientific/sexology literature that has been published since.

Since James Cantor seems not to be up to speed on the *actual* scientific literature on this matter, here is a little reading list that I've prepared for him and anyone else who denies the fact that Blanchard's autogynephilia theory has been thoroughly disproven:

--The Case Against Autogynephilia (https://learningtrans.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/serano-agreview-ijt.pdf) (by Julia Serano, 2010) & Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00918369.2010.486241) (by Charles Moser, 2010)
These are both review articles published in peer-reviewed journals (a whopping five years ago!) summarizing the many flaws inherent in Blanchard's theory and the overwhelming evidence against it. A few of the research studies cited in those article are listed individually below.

--Sexuality of male-to-female transsexuals (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18299976) (by Veale et al., 2008)
This was the first study testing autogynephilia theory that was conducted on a non-clinical population of trans women, as well as the first that actually used a control group of non-transsexual women. Their results contradict Blanchard's theory in a number of ways, most notably in that their "autogynephilic" and "nonautogynephilic" groups did not segregate along lines of sexual orientation (which had been a foundational premise of Blanchard's theory) and that many of their non-transsexual female controls were "autogynephilic" (demonstrating that FEFs are not a transgender-specific phenomenon).

--Autogynephilia in women (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19591032) (by Charles Moser, 2009)
Moser administered a survey (almost identical to the one Blanchard used) to non-transsexual women and found that: "By the common definition of ever having erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman, 93% of the respondents would be classified as autogynephilic. Using a more rigorous definition of 'frequent' arousal to multiple items, 28% would be classified as autogynephilic."

--A further assessment of Blanchard’s typology of homosexual versus non-homosexual or autogynephilic gender dysphoria (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20039113) (by Nuttbrock et al., 2011)
This study examined the frequency of FEFs in a non-clinical sample of 571 MtF transgender individuals living in New York City - this sample is far more diverse with regard to age and ethnicity than any previous study. As with Veale et al. (2008), they found many exceptions to Blanchard's two-subtype model. Notably, they also found that the incidence of FEFs were significantly higher in Whites compared with non-Whites, and in older subjects compared with younger subjects, suggesting that other cultural factors (independent of sexual orientation) lead to this phenomenon. The reduced levels of FEFs in younger subjects led the authors to suggest that FEFs (i.e., what Blanchard calls "autogynephilia") “may be a historically fading phenomenon.”

--When Selves Have Sex: What the Phenomenology of Trans Sexuality Can Teach About Sexual Orientation (https://learningtrans.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/whenselves.pdf) (by Talia Mae Bettcher, 2013)
This is a more theoretical paper (rather than a research study), but it elegantly explains how the popular conceptualization of sexual orientation as strictly "attraction to" other people has essentially erased the importance of our own bodies in our erotic thoughts and sexual fantasies & experiences. Bettcher instead forwards a theory of "erotic structuralism" that is far more consistent with real-life sexual experiences and all the available science on this particular subject than Blanchard's theory.

--Evidence Against a Typology: A Taxometric Analysis of the Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24619650) (by Jaimie Veale, 2014)
This study demonstrates that trans women's sexualities (including sexual orientation and experiences with FEFs) are dimensional (i.e., they fall on a continuum) rather than categorical (i.e., falling into distinct categories), thus further disproving Blanchard's two-subtype taxonomy.

--Reconceptualizing “Autogynephilia” as Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEFs) (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/05/reconceptualizing-autogynephilia-as_26.html) (by Julia Serano, 2015)
This is the only article listed here that has not appeared in a peer-reviewed science/sexology journal. But I included it because it summarizes my multifactorial model (originally forwarded in my 2007 book Whipping Girl (http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html)) to explain the existence of FEFs (i.e., what others call "autogynephilia") and why this phenomenon occurs more frequently or intensely in certain populations but not others. Unlike Blanchard's theory, this multifactorial model is consistent with *all* the available evidence on this subject.

So that is the evidence against Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia. And if Cantor or anyone else wants to assert that the theory remains valid - or that it is even still up for consideration! - they must actually address this significant body of research and reasoning.

And if they do not, then they are the ones who are in denial.

Indeed, today in 2015, the phrase "autogynephilia deniers" more appropriately describes those who continue to latch onto autogynephilia theory despite the overwhelming theoretical & scientific evidence against it. People like Anne Lawrence, who writes angry Letters to the Editor any time a research paper challenging Blanchard's theory is published (see here (http://www.jaimieveale.com/publications/replytoLawrenceBailey.pdf) and here (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2010.485859?journalCode=wjhm20#.VaM6gsZVi ko) and here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20559866) and here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26081247) - quite honestly, there may be more that I have missed). Or people like Alice Dreger (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/04/alice-dreger-and-making-evidence-fit.html), who just released a 2015 pop-science book discussing autogynephilia theory in depth (circa 2005) without discussing or addressing *any* of the post-2005 research & reviews on the subject.

They are the real "autogynephilia deniers," not us.

Or to put it in the form of a catchy tweet (à la James Cantor):

http://juliaserano.blogspot.ca/2015/07/the-real-autogynephilia-deniers.html

[natina]

Dr. Ray Blanchard Discusses Gay Brother Studies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtHx-Llvvk8


“Male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists:" How Ray Blanchard sees us
The quotation in the title above is from a 1993 paper by sexologist Ray Blanchard. [1] Blanchard is affiliated with Toronto’s Clarke Institute, long known as “Jurassic Clarke” among transsexual women for its outdated and draconian rules imposed upon women in our community seeking health services. In Blanchard's worldview, transsexual women are males whose condition is on a continuum with the other groups he studies.
Background: The Clarke Institute

The Clarke Institute is named after Charles Kirk Clarke (1857-1924). Clarke oversaw the two largest Canadian mental hospitals before accepting a government mental-health post. In addition to his desire “to keep this young country sane,” he sought to advance the psychiatric profession’s influence in making medical and political decisions.

Typical of “professionals” who are unable to see (or worse) unconcerned about larger systems which influence their realm of expertise or narrow interests, Clarke was an early proponent of eugenics, emphasizing the importance of restrictive laws that would limit the immigration and marriage of the“ defective.” [2] During his tenure, foreign-born patients made up more than 50 percent of the institutionalized population in Canada. [3]
As Katherine Wilson notes:
Psychiatric diagnosis on the basis of social, cultural or political affiliation evokes the darkest memories of medical abuse in American history. For example, women suffragettes who demanded the right to vote in the early 1900s were diagnosed and institutionalized with a label of "hysteria" (Mayor, 1974). Immigrants, Bolsheviks and labor organizers of the same era were labeled as socially deviant and mentally defective by prominent psychiatric eugenicists, such as Dr. Charles Kirk Clarke. [4]

Christened with his name, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry opened for business in 1966. A young staff member recalls those early days:
My first impression of psychiatry in Toronto was that it was rather parochial in outlook and had a distinct British socio-biological emphasis and little interest and much scepticism about psychoanalysis. […] The Clarke, instead of being an ivory tower, seemed more like a cold cement fortress. [5]

Enter Ray Blanchard
Ray Blanchard came to "The Clarke" after studying sexual behavior in criminal men, pedophilia in particular. He began his work with Kurt Freund, who brought Blanchard into Clarke, and who himself is an expert in the area of "phallometric testing," a "psychophysiological method for assessment of erotic preferences in males" -- strap a "strain gauge" around a guy's penis, show him pictures of whatever, and draw your own conclusions. Indeed, the Clarke Institute's own literature states,
The Clarke Division Phallometric Laboratory was established by Kurt Freund, M.D., D.Sc., the first clinical sexologist to use penile plethysmography to assess erotic preferences in men. It is the oldest laboratory in North America for the phallometric assessment of sex offenders and paraphilics, and its instrumentation for the collection and processing of phallometric data is still the most sophisticated in North America, or indeed, in the world. [6]

The problem with penile plethysmographs (PPGs) is that they are like lie detectors (polygraphs): they measure a body response, but the data is open to interpretation. For this reason, they are often challenged as evidence in court, as with lie detectors. As the Skeptic's Dictionary notes:
A man or woman may be aroused by the sight of animals copulating or be aroused by a film of a woman eating a banana and a man eating a fig in particularly provocative ways. Still, they may have no desire to engage in bestiality or have sex with a bowl of fruit. A heterosexual man or woman may be aroused by the sight of lesbians engaging in oral sex, but have no desire to have sex with lesbians or in the presence of lesbians.
Strong arousal need not imply strong desire for what causes the arousal; and weak arousal need not imply weak desire. Furthermore, no test can determine whether a person will act on his feelings and desires. [7]

This is the major controversy in Blanchard's work: interpretation of data, and issues of his subjectivity, based on his assumption that transition is about erotic preference. While this may describe someone like Anne Lawrence, who considers her sex drive "that which moves us most," many of us feel this is not an accurate or even correct description of our motivation for transition. Cause and effect may be difficult to distinguish.
Blanchard has headed both the department for sex offenders and the department for gender identity. In fact, patients have told me that in the past The Clarke was set up so sex offenders and transsexual women shared a hallway, offices, waiting room, and even staff, who would essentially just "change hats" whether they were seeing a transsexual woman or a sexual predator. Imagine the dynamic that created. It was under these conditions that Blanchard made many of his observations regarding people presenting with gender issues.
A reader writes:
Blanchard, like many researchers of his day (and sadly today as well) take their base assumptions from their formal training and experience. Homosexuality may be out of the DSM, but it was not that long ago that it was considered itself a psychopathology. The psychological community's exposure to "things trans" was for many, many decades the paraphilia and festishism that spring from transvestism. Erotic preference is, I think, an important key to understanding all the "taxonomy" of Blanchard.
In his research approach (and many, many others'), their tacit assumption is the problem lies solely in the mind, be you a pedophile or paraphiliac or gender dysphoric (the "constructionist" approach versus "essentialist"). This naturally leads in the matter at hand to focusing on erotic preference as the "natural" dividing line.
Put yourself in Blanchard's shoes (or Bailey's for that matter). They genuinely and honestly do not believe the claims of people like ourselves that we are who we are. To them, we're men, and it's just that simple. They take that stance not even as a conscious effort -- it's just where they came from as psychologists. The fact they might use the pronouns we prefer is just a way of humoring the patient, but in no way implies or lends credulity in their minds to the legitimacy of their use.

Not only do they see us as men, but they also consider transsexual women to be liars, guilty of "systematic distortion." Below is an abstract from a Blanchard paper (when Blanchard says "heterosexual" and uses male pronouns, he means transsexual women attracted to women):

The tendency for a heterosexual subject to describe himself in terms of moral excellence or admirable personal qualities was significantly correlated with scores in the 'transsexual' direction on all eight sexological measures; for the homosexual subjects, only one correlation was significant. [... It] is possible that the differences in the histories produced by transvestites and heterosexual transsexuals are exaggerated to an unknown degree by the motivation of the latter to obtain approval for this operation. The findings do not diminish the important distinction between these groups, but they do suggest caution in interpreting the self-report data that have been used in comparing them. [8]

We find ourselves in a no-win situation in changing their viewpoint. We are males to them, and when we try to explain why we feel this is not accurate, we are unreliable reporters who can't be trusted.
Karen Gurney writes:
The problems I see, with the Blanchard position is that:

(a) it falls into the fundamental trap of trying to put overarching labels (either/or) on a group which is the epitome of diversity itself;

(b) it fails to recognise the physical intersexual nature of transsexualism - the incongruence between the phenotypical and neurological sexes;

(c) it seeks to attribute the psychological manifestations of neurological sex solely to "sexual desire" and does not reflect the John/Joan evidence which was so revealing of the shortcomings of psychological thought in regard to then accepted notions that gender is constructed;

(d) it is inherently disrespectful of the experiences of the majority of us who live with transsexualism, and especially those who pioneered the way by undergoing essentially primitive surgeries (as the transsexual men forgotten by Blanchard and Bailey still do) which did not produce wholly functional genitals, sacrificed all sexual sensation for the sake of harmonising "mind" and body, and were carried out in often ill-equipped clinics in faraway places (I have a friend who had her surgery in Casablanca in the early 1960's);

(e) it is predicated on the notion that sex assignment at birth is immutable and hence is opposite the medical rationale applied to many thousands of intersex individuals each year that, where sex is atypical or ambiguous, a medical construction is a valid response, and the legal position that such a constructed sex is valid (I do not seek to justify the ethics of such assignments where they are carried out shortly after birth but point to the many XY females who are happy in their opposite gender role and are accepted as females for all purposes); and

(f) it fails to account for the experiences of a significant number of intersex individuals who do not fit into a theory which is based on the dichotomy of both sex and gender and whose gender, like their sex, is ambiguous.


In 1998, the Clarke merged with three other mental health and addiction facilities: the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, the Addiction Research Foundation, and the Donwood Institute. Collectively, they are now known as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) [9]
Perhaps we should think of The Clarke the way they think of transsexual women. They can change their name and act like a mental health facility, but deep down they are still the same fossilized institution that pathologized homosexuality and continues to pathologize those who do not fit society's standards for male and female.
From Blanchard to Bailey
From Blanchard's work comes Bailey' popularization of Blanchard's observations and theories, where we become exotic or pathetic males driven by sexual urges to drastic ends. As Katherine Wilson notes:

Much psychiatric literature about transgender people is shockingly similar to that published about homosexuality before it was depathologized. It is based on a presumption that cross-gender identity/expression is by definition pathological, is focused on unsubstantiated theories of psychodynamic (mother-blame) cause and anecdotal case studies of institutionalized subjects, denies the existence of healthy productive TG people in society, and ignores anthropological evidence of accepted cross-cultural TG roles. These tired old myths were debunked for sexual orientation 25 years ago and have been recycled to target transgender individuals. [4] (emphasis mine)

As we continue to see more work into the field of biologic and genetic investigations of sex and sexuality, it is very important to do what we can to help those undertaking this work to understand the larger systems in place, outside their realms of expertise. To ignore the historical context and the important ethical and political issues involved in this type of research has shown to be disastrous throughout history.
These people may consider themselves above criticism, especially critical comments by those from whom they make their livings, but they do so at their own peril, and at the peril of society.
It's impossible to separate ideological commitment from the highly specific historical contingencies bearing upon psychology and medicine in this time and place. This can certainly be demonstrated in Clarke's work on eugenics, which diffused through society and later accreted around fascism and Nazism. Those of us outside psychiatry, and those of us directly affected by the profession, must raise these important issues and maintain a rigorous critical viewpoint. In that way, we can hope to avoid having what appear to be "facts" misinterpreted, by both researchers and the public.
Bailey's interest in biological and genetic causes of sexuality and transsexualism does not occur in a vacuum, and he is not as "objective" as he'd like to think. As occasional Bailey co-author Richard Pillard notes:
No scientific knowledge is risk-free, and this must surely include genetic investigations of sexual orientation. One might take a sort of perverse comfort in knowing that homophobia, like racism (and all the xenophobias), exists regardless of whatever might be considered "the facts" of the moment. Research on human sexuality will, by its nature, evoke resistance and fear, to some extent legitimately. [10]

Draft version. Many thanks to those who contributed materials. Please contact me (http://www.tsroadmap.com/donate/contact.html) with comments.
References
1. Erotic target location errors in male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists. Freund K, Blanchard R, Br J Psychiatry 1993 Apr;162:558-63
2. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940. Ian Robert Dowbiggin. Cornell University Press, 1997.
3. www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/Leads98/benjamin.html (http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/Leads98/benjamin.html)
4. http://www.transgender.org/tg/gidr/tf3023.html (citing Dowbiggin, 1997, pp. 133-177).
5. http://www.psychoanalysis.ca/clients/cps/essays/tps%20history.html

6. Clarke website.
7. http://skepdic.com/penilep.html
7. Social desirability response set and systematic distortion in the self-report of adult male gender patients. Blanchard R, Clemmensen LH, Steiner BW, Arch Sex Behav 1985 Dec;14(6):505-16
8. www.gicofcolo.org/gd/writings/faqpsy.html (http://www.gicofcolo.org/gd/writings/faqpsy.html)
9. http://www.camh.net/
10. "The Genetic Theory of Sexual Orientation" in the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Winter 1997, pp. 61-67


http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-clarke.html
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-clarke.html

[natina]

What should you do if your son says he's a girl?http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-vilain-transgender-parents-20150521-story.html

Northwestern's Dr. J. Michael Bailey Talks About Science and Sexual Orientation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwT8wid5-E8

[natina]

M. Cantor (born January 2, 1966) is a Canadian clinical psychologist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_psychology) and research scientist specializing in sexology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexology), specifically on atypical sexualities.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cantor


Homosexuality and transgenderism

Cantor gave a speech about his personal experience of being a gay graduate student at the 1991 annual convention of the American Psychological Association (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psychological_Association).[16] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cantor#cite_note-16)[17] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cantor#cite_note-17)
He has written that transsexuals deserve a "bill of transsexual rights," saying that expressions of such rights are overdue. "People choose whether to transition, but one does not choose to be dysphoric about the sex they were born into."[18] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cantor#cite_note-18) He is skeptical of trans women (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_women) who undergo procedures to look female and who live as women, but who do not seek sex reassignment surgery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_reassignment_surgery). Cantor has said that such women "often change their stories as they come to terms with everything."

James Cantor is an out gay man (http://jamescantor.com/myres_overview.html), so perhaps he might appreciate the following (purposefully satirical) analogy: When you get right down to it, there are two fundamentally distinct types of gay men - those who are primarily driven by erotic thoughts and images of themselves as being sexually on top (apicalphiles) and those who are primarily driven by erotic thoughts and images of themselves as being on the bottom (basalphiles). Anyone who says that gay men's identities are more complex than this, or that their sexualities fall more on a continuum, are clearly basalphiles in denial. And since I have a PhD in *science* (http://www.juliaserano.com/biologist.html) (even though I don't put it in my Twitter handle à la @JamesCantorPhD), what I'm saying must be undeniably true. And as a scientist, I think we should talk more about gay men's identities in terms of their apicalphilia or basalphilia. Because you can't really understand gay men unless you know what sexual positions they strive for in their fantasies & in their bedrooms. And if you think that information about gay men's sexual histories and proclivities is a personal matter and not a public one, well then, you have clearly established yourself as a basalphile-denier.

So to summarize

James Cantor's tweet dismissing "autogynephile-deniers" targets either one of two classes of people

http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-real-autogynephilia-deniers.html

[natina]

Homophobic gays
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=57214 (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=57214)

Tgirls calling guys "fags" for liking them.
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=57502 (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=57502)

HOMOPHOBIC GAYS and the difference between a TS & a CD/TV/DQ
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=59838 (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=59838)


homophobic gays
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=57214