Pam's House Blend
by: Autumn Sandeen
Tue Aug 28, 2007 at 02:02:14 AM EDT

And, given that perspective of what one of two conditions must exist for one to identify as a male-to-female transsexual, it should come as no surprise that he consistently refers to transwomen like me as "transsexual men." Bailey has essentially relegated transsexuality to the functional status of a paraphilia, stigmatizes transsexuals and the accepted treatments for transsexuals, and exposes transpeople, like me again, who want civil rights furthered for transpeople to further societal resistance.

I don't understand how anyone can say Bailey was mistreated,
his "scientific" methodology is non-existent, he's a huckster
peddling his book on controversy. He wants to be seen
as a victim of a non PC crowd when its his selling far and
wide of shoddy work that we object about.

Well, if you go through and read her blog on this deal, she reveals that Bailey is an unapologetic eugenist. THAT would explain a lot if true.

Just as they attempt to refute the Holocaust simply be denying it happened over and over, people from that community have a vested interest in "proving" that anything other than what they define as "normal" is a pathology that can be cured, or simply does not exist, hence, "there are no 'real' transsexuals."

I am afraid that this is just the tip of a VERY large iceberg. I have been warning my friends from the "T" community that they were being set up to be in the gunsites of the whacked out conservative right for some time, and it appears that time is now. Just in time for the elections. What do you bet that Bailey shows up on Bill O'Reilly's show sometime between now and the election? Bet on it.

He has recruited Dreger to go after the IS community, which is a very big mistake. They are hoping that by discrediting the existence of IS people, that we will simply go away. But we won't go away, and if anything, we destabilize their entire belief system. They are wise to fear us.

What IS people do is to destroy the very hierarchy of the heterosexist culture. If we exist, than all their ideas about what is male/female, feminine/masculine, hetereosexual/homosexual are shown to be what they are ~ a false set of parameters that don't really exist in nature.
What we call sex, sexual orientation, gender, and gender roles are all just shades of grey, not black and white as they want to believe. We destroy the very rules that allow their control system to function. If we exist, all their walls come tumbling down.

We have set back and let things unfold as they will, not looking for a fight. Now, they are coming to our doorstep and they are going to find out that we are not going to hide in the shadows like our trans-folk relatives. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We are not vested in trying to fit into their ridiculous heterosexist culture. We do not skulk around for fear of being found out. You can't out someone that is already just being themself. Without fear as a motivator, they have no control over us.

They are making a HUGE mistake. Just as they do with the larger queer community, their only trump card in attempting to discredit us is to control the perception in the public as to how rare we are in nature. The more of us there are in the public eye, the more likely we will not be perceived as an aberration and the more likely we will be seen as just a "normal" variation that occurs. That means as our visibility increases, and the perception that we a normal part of the genetic code, that we can no longer be referenced as a pathology.

And it doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that if we bridge the gap between the extremes of brain sex and anatomical sex, that variations based on sexuality and gender differences are just "normal" variations in the human genome as well. Bottom line is that 20% of the population cannot be explained away by statistics, although they would like to try.

They will fail.

Sing it, Sister-Thundra!

I, too, see the vigorous defense of what isn't.  Why, if the one true God they profess their faith in is, as they profess, all powerful -- do they rush to defend Him?  From WHAT?

Why can't they just trust that if God were truly all powerful and truly, as Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro baptist church says, hates ->-bleeped-<-s, He would reduce all us ungodly abominations to a greasy smoking cinder when He is damned good and ready?  They can all go about their business, and one day the odor of incinerated flesh will tell them that God has gone about His business.  What's the matter?  Don't they have FAITH that God can do this and so they must rush in to help Him?

It would also scare them to their core to find out that all teenie-tiny-baby-embryos start out as female -- only some of them get morphed (or deformed) into males -- ANOTHER thing to be defended at all costs!  The TRUTH must be defended from the FACTS!

Karen

From the original New York Times article:

QuoteThe site also included a link to the Web page of another critic of Dr. Bailey's book, Andrea James, a Los Angeles-based transgender advocate and consultant. Ms. James downloaded images from Dr. Bailey's Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided. (Dr. Bailey is a divorced father of two.) Ms. James said in an e-mail message that Dr. Bailey's work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect.

In my opinion, involving Bailey's children in the way they were in the debate over the Bailey/Blanchard model of transsexuality crossed a line.  Not many non-transpeople are going to find that behavior reasonable -- I believe most would find the behavior overzealous. 

Quote from: regina on August 28, 2007, 10:12:11 PMIt's interesting that the extremely biased Times article doesn't even mention the first part of this sordid saga.

Last gasp of the conservatives (I hope) before the pendulum swings back towards the liberal side or not, The Media knows the best way to attract eyeballs and their dollars is by setting up straw-men bogey-men and knockin' 'em down.

And at the time the pendulum is firmly in progressive territory, the bogeymen will be whatever conservative stereotypes they can find and cast into a role that stirs their (now liberal) audience's passion.

Karen

Quote from: Thundra on August 28, 2007, 09:25:23 PM
Without fear as a motivator, they have no control over us.

YES!

QuoteIf you feel like wasting 20 minutes, here's a link to a local radio show on NPR that had Dreger, Bailey, Roughgarden and Keisling. Pay special attention to how Bailey talks about how supportive he is about transwomen, and then refers to us as "Transgender Men" towards the end of the interview.

I'd followed the link from Pam's blog to this radio program and listened to the whole show (50 + minutes) last night. I wasn't impressed! Bailey said that there are many TS who agree with his theories, and how glad they are that someone is finally saying these things. Funny, I don't know any trans people who think of themselves as being either of his two categories of TS. 

BTW, for anyone interested, you can also download Dreger's article "The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age" from a link at Pam's blog. I downloaded it, not sure how much of it I can actually stomach reading though. Grrrrr

Zythyra