John Michael “Mike” Bailey (born 1951) is an American psychologist, considered one of the most unethical sexologists in history. Bailey’s checkered career is a series of ethics scandals and controversies.
Since 2003 this site has documented Bailey’s central role in the academic exploitation of sex and gender minorities. One history book says my work coordinating the community response to anti-trans academics “represented one of the most organized and unified examples of transgender activism seen to date.” In 2021 the United States Library of Congress selected this site for archiving because it is “an important part of this collection and the historical record.”
Bailey’s notable ethical scandals
Children and sex
supporting “many offending pedophiles who are usually punished far more harshly than research suggests is warranted by the harm they cause.”
supporting leniency for a rapist whose victims are infants and young children: “if he didn’t physically hurt them, and if they didn’t remember traumatically, his actions should be penalized less than had he physically hurt them and they did remember.”
promulgating the concept of “pre-homosexual” children: “pre-homosexual children tend to be relatively gender nonconforming.”
claiming to know the sexual orientation of children
supporting fired sexologist Kenneth Zucker, whose “therapy” of gender diverse children has been widely outlawed and described as “child abuse”
supporting penile plethysmography, a controversial device for measuring genital arousal; some sexologists have attached plethysmographs to the penises of children to measure their erections for “research”
Supporting convicted serial child rapist Jerry Sandusky: “In an exchange with Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, Bailey affirmed his belief that Sandusky’s accusers had lied. ‘You believe the people testifying against Jerry Sandusky are lying?’ Carter asked. Bailey responded, ‘I can see that if you are not familiar with the evidence that I am familiar with, you would be shocked.'”
Eugenics
dissertation advisor and mentor Lee Willerman was a member of the American Eugenics Society
stating it is “morally acceptable” to screen for and abort gay fetuses: “selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm.”
arguing that “offering sex offenders the opportunity to be castrated in return for a reduced sentence is not ethically problematic coercion.”
Signing a 2018 letter from hate group American College of Pediatricians to the Trump Administration. Bailey demanded “upholding the scientific definition of sex in law and policy,” adding “an individual who identifies as transgender remains either a biological male or female.”
Angel Eduardo is an American anti-transgender activist.
Background
Angel Lemuel Eduardo was born in March 1985 and grew up in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Eduardo earned a bachelor’s degree from New Jersey City University in 2008 and a master’s degree from Hunter College in 2015.
Eduardo was in the band Blue Food from 2008 to 2016 and contributed to NewsCult.com while doing research for TitleVest. Eduardo the wrote for Action Without Borders (also known as Idealist) from 2019 to 2021.
Eduardo has been a columnist for Center for Inquiry since 2020, and advisor for Greenhouse Scholars since 2022.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2021, Eduardo defended a transphobic special by Dave Chappelle.
Since 2022, Eduardo has been writing for anti-trans publication Quillette.
Diane Frank is a American crossdressing activist. Frank was Director of Outreach and Communications for the Alpha Omega Society AOS), a group which split from Tri-Ess, a national crossdressing group. AOS became inactive in 2005.
The Man Who Would Be Queen
In 2003 Frank was quoted on the Joseph Henry Press site promoting anti-trans book The Man Who Would Be Queen, though the full comments are much more reflective of Frank’s views:
Mike Bailey has finally published his book “The Man Who Would be Queen”. Drawing heavily on Blanchard (see above), Bailey describes in a readable form a theory that works as follows: Boys who are feminine will mostly grow up to be gay, and a few will become what I’ll call transkids. These transkids often go through a ‘gay boy’ phase before seeking to transition. Like gay men, these people who seek sex changes early in life are promiscuous, or “boy crazy” in one observer’s mind. They also seek to become exotically beautiful women and seek heterosexual men as partners. To the extent that so many of these kids are throw aways whose parents cannot face their gender differences, Bailey may be again confusing cause and effect when he talks about promiscuity, sex work and the like in these cases. But it is clear that he does not regard them wholly as women. (According to one ex-trans kid I’ve corresponded with, they don’t care!) Boys who are not particularly feminine discover crossdressing at puberty, and it is an erotic turn on. For some the turn on becomes focused on the idea of actually having a woman’s body, although Bailey cites examples of fantasies about being in a women’s knitting circle as being in this category as well. Blanchard called this kind of eroticism ‘autogynephilia’. Few people like this transition early in life, instead they attempt to cope with a forbidden eroticism, get conventional jobs, marry, have children and so forth. Some will, in middle age find themselves unable to cope with the accumulated desires and ideation and find it impossible to live further as men. Thus, one kind of transsexuality is related to ‘gayness’, while another kind is related to a sexual kink shared with ‘heterosexual crossdressers’. In either case he believes the cause is not a question of moral weakness or bad parenting, but instead is the result of variations in brain development. In other words, it’s not anyone’s fault.
Bailey is not unsympathetic to the plight of either kind, and states emphatically and forcefully that old notions of morality do nothing to help the individuals or improve the situation. He believes the distress caused by these conditions is real, and some people can and should be treated by sexual reassignment. He also notes that the general public finds ‘homosexual transsexuals’ understandable and is generally sympathetic to them, while not understanding and being totally unsympathetic to either crossdressers or late transitioning transsexual’s alleged sexual motivation. He is also emphatic about not believing stories from late transitioning transsexuals or heterosexual crossdressers that don’t acknowledge autogynephilia as part of their being.
I’ll keep my comments brief on this right now: While Bailey and Blanchard are correct in recognizing the existence of ‘autogenyphilia’ as a possible sometime motivator for some late transitioning transsexuals and some heterosexual crossdressers, they confuse cause and effect. We know that there is massive rewiring of the during adolescence. The question of which comes first at this point, identification with the other gender and then a variant eroticism or variant eroticism followed by identification with the other gender. This is a difficult question and I suspect that the answer is that both occur. The other point that Blanchard, Bailey and the rest seem to willfully overlook is about outcomes. Face it, marriages generally don’t occur in Western Societies where people pick their own mates because of sincere devotion, admiration, understanding and mutual respect…and sex comes along as the caboose on the train. We live in a sex saturated society because the sex drive does come first…but out of it come devoted couples who admire, understand and respect each other. Thus the real question isn’t so much why or about categories, but what circumstances can create positive outcomes from these variations, just as we expect positive outcomes from typical heterosexuality? So much of human experience rises from the muck. What we should look for are the transcendent outcomes that show paths to being better people.
In August, Frank sent this follow-up note:
I got a rather snarky reply from Mautner…but they’ve pulled our quote from the website…I had suggested that if they really wanted the proper context for quoting me they should substitute as follows:
If you really must quote us, how about “yet another version of the idea that crossdressing is only and always about sexuality (and transsexuality is just an extreme version of it), presented as if it were based on science but lacking a scientific foundation. Read it so you know what you’ll have to deal with”
Abnormal Psychology
Ms. Frank also excerpted relevant passages from a common anti-trans textbook taught in American colleges at the time: Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life (11th Edition)
Bev Jackson is a Dutch anti-transgender activist. Jackson is a founder of UK anti-trans hate group LGB Alliance.
Jackson promotes the conspiracy theory that trans people and gender recognition based on self-identification are erasing or eradicating lesbians.
Background
Beverley Ruth Jackson was born in June 1951. At 11 years old, Jackson reportedly experienced antisemitism at a new school.
Jackson studied math at the London School of Economics. Jackson was a founding member of the UK Gay Liberation Front, the only woman to attend the first GLF meeting in October 1970:
I was a student at LSE. I started there in 1969, I was studying maths, and I walked down the corridor and I saw a poster which said: “First meeting of the UK Gay Liberation Front.” It was the most astonishing thing because I had to translate it in my head as to what it might mean. I had heard that “Gay” was a new word for homosexual, and I knew “Liberation” was about freedom and “Front” sounded a bit militant. It sounded very exciting and I thought “I think I want to be on there that sounds right.” I went to this first meeting and there were 19 men there, and just one woman – me – so I was immediately voted on to the steering committee.
[…] I was among the minority of lesbians who decided to work within gay liberation; most lesbians worked within women’s liberation because of feeling more in common with other women’s issues. The fact of lesbians being doubly oppressed both as women and as homosexuals is just a really important part of understanding what it means to be a lesbian.
Jackson has worked as a translator and writer. In 2015 Jackson was mostly involved with refugee rights, writing A Month with Starfish, a book about volunteering to aid refugees for a month on the island of Lesbos.
Anti-trans activism
In late 2016 Jackson began criticizing transgender youth and was surprised that other disagreed. Jackson’s radicalization happened in 2018 when Angela Wild went to the front of the Pride march with the “Get the L Out” group.
Jackson wrote a letter to Stonewall president Ruth Hunt expressing concerns “about young lesbians having nowhere to meet, not being able to call themselves lesbians any more, about the way in which people were encouraging children to think that they might be born in the wrong body and a whole range of other concerns that really worried me.” The letter was ignored.
Jackson has said of trans women:
Look: you can be a lovely gentle male and you can wear dresses and you can call yourself Lilian and it’s absolutely fine. But you’re still a male and you can imagine you might be all sorts of things, but you’re still a male.
The final straw for Jackson was when Stonewall opposed ex-transgender activist Keira Bell, who sued the Tavistock GIDS Clinic.
After a meeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of Gay Liberation Front was cancelled, Jackson and Kate Harris decided to have a secret meeting to start LGB Alliance. “But everyone kept the secret. Not one of the 70 people we invited gave away the meeting at which we formed LGB Alliance.”
Jackson remains committed to separatism for lesbian and gay people:
Gay men and lesbians need spaces of their own and they have a right to spaces of their own – and that we have to say this now in 2021 is an absolute outrage. We could really lose a lot here if we don’t stand together and fight against this madness.
Bridle, David (February 18, 2021). The first woman in the Gay Liberation Front in 1970 is fighting again for lesbian and gay rights in 2021. Lesbian and Gay News https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/02/the-first-woman-in-the-gay-liberation-front-in-1970-is-fighting-again-for-lesbian-and-gay-rights-in-2021/
Róisín Michaux is an Irish anti-transgender activist based in Brussels who claims to be “researching the explosion of the gender identity movement in EU/global institutions.”
Background
Michaux reportedly grew up experiencing poverty in a housing estate in a single-parent home.
Michaux “wrote for culture magazines in Belgium and abroad” before becoming a “Twitter TERF.”
Michaux is married and is a parent of children, one of whom was born in 2012.
“Mr. Menno” is the stage name of Menno Kuijper, a Dutch anti-transgender extremist and separatist based in the UK.
Background
Menno Kuijper was born June 19, 1976. Kuijper held numerous roles in marketing and social media from 1996 to 2012. From 2012 to 2021 Kuijper was head of design and production at mobile marketing firm Gappt.
Menno appeared in theatrical productions before focusing exclusively on anti-trans content. Performances include Brixton Batty Boy (2012).
Anti-trans activism
Since 2022 Kuijper has been director of communications for anti-trans group The Gay Men’s Network.
Kuijper considers the trans rights movement to be “gender woo woo,” promoting the outdated terminology “homosexual male” and other binary ideas about traits and behaviors.
Also in 2022, Kuijper showed up to an anti-trans “Save Our Sex Jubilee campaign” in a black morph suit and a diaper with a sign that said “Right Side of History.” Kuijper was apparently mocking black bloc protesters who interrupted the anti-trans “Standing for Women” protest in Manchester earlier that month. Transphobes mocked those protesters online as “Black Pampers,” a play on Black Panthers. Kuijper insisted it was not a blackface performance.
Razib Khan is a Bangladeshi-American writer and anti-transgender activist. Khan comes to anti-trans “sex science” via “race science” and is best known for laundering extremist views about race into mainstream media.
Khan hopes to usher in the “second age of eugenics” through genetic screening and manipulation to increase “good” traits and eliminate “bad” traits. Many of Khan’s like-minded colleagues consider being trans and gender diverse to be undesirable traits to be eliminated from the gene pool.
Newamul K. “Razib” Khan was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1977. Khan’s family moved to the US in 1982. Khan lived in upstate New York as a child before the family moved to Oregon.
Khan earned two bachelor’s degrees from University of Oregon in 2000 and 2006. While there, Khan wrote a blog called Razib’s Rants, which later became Gene Expression. Following graduate work at UC Davis, Khan was a software engineer before receiving money from Ron Unz to write about hereditarian and eugenic topics.
In 2010, Khan co-founded the group blog Brown Pundits with Zachary L. Zavidé and Omar Ali. Khan has also promoted an “intellectual brown web.”
In 2015, the New York Times announced they had contracted with Khan to write monthly pieces, but they rescinded the offer following protests.
Podcast
Khan has platformed a number of anti-trans guests, including:
Cussins, Jessica (June 26, 2014). Quantified and Analyzed, Before the First Breath. Center for Genetics and Society https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/quantified-and-analyzed-first-breath
Khan, Razib (June 18, 2008). Curing the Gay.Unz Review https://www.unz.com/gnxp/curing-the-gay/
Daum co-hosts the podcast A Special Place In Hell with Sarah Haider.
Daum published the essay collections My Misspent Youth and The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion. Daum’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Vogue, GQ, and Harper’s.
Daum authored the book The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars.
Comments on Leelah Alcorn’s suicide
In 2018, Daum expressed what many felt was more sympathy for Leelah Alcorn’s unsupportive parents than for the dead teen.
“There’s no question that Leelah’s death and the circumstances leading to it are worthy of—and, in fact, demand— public rage. But along with that rage should come compassion, not just for the Alcorns but for anyone who’s ever been slow to reach acceptance, or whose circumscribed worldview has clouded their understanding of somebody else’s experience.”
References
Daum, Meghan (August 24, 2018). Nuance: A Love Story.GEN https://gen.medium.com/nuance-a-love-story-ae6a14991059
Benjamin Boyce is an American YouTuber who promotes alt-right and intellectual dark web viewpoints, with a special focus on gender critical anti-transgender movements. Boyce is a key promoter of the ex-transgender movement.
Note: For the British musical artist born in 1968, see benjamin-boyce.com
Background
Benjamin Arthur Boyce was born on July 7, 1976 in Ukiah, California to Dan and Teresa Boyce. Boyce grew up in a religious household. Boyce’s family moved frequently around California, living in Milpitas, San Jose, Loomis, and Rocklin. Boyce’s parents met in Bible college and reportedly came under the influence of a charismatic minister named Gordon, who had been paralyzed after being shot. The families under Gordon’s control were split up. Teresa was given to another family, and Dan inherited two “spiritual children” from the minors who were part of other families. At 14 Boyce reportedly became “intensely sexual.”
Boyce’s family eventually left the group, and they were shunned. Dan went to a seminary school in Chicago while Benjamin remained behind in Rockland to complete high school, staying with a family that was part of their church.
Boyce attended Covenant Bible College in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, a vocational Bible college which has since closed. Boyce then moved to Chicago in 1995. Boyce’s parents then took over a church in Fresno, California, and Boyce remained in Chicago until age 24. Boyce moved many times looking for a church, eventually moving to Portland. Boyce has been involved in Subud, “a direct spiritual experience of the soul being reawakened by the power of God.”
Boyce got a job at a preschool and would write at night. Boyce is also an aspiring children’s entertainer who has recorded and performed under the names Benjamin, Benzo, Benjamin Arthur, and Benjamin Ampersand.
In 2010 Boyce released the album Scariously, which includes songs like “(I Have Had An) Accident,” about a young child accidentally defecating and then removing soiled clothes.
In 2011, Boyce released the album Wildling under the name Benjamin Arthur. In 2012, Boyce released the EP Combustible Sundress, and in 2013 released the EP confessions of a headless man under the name Eo Ipso. In 2013, Boyce self-published the book Iconogasms under the banner of Critically Othersuch Press.
Boyce attended Evergreen State College from 2013 to 2017 and witnessed a major conflict involving the school’s progressive faction that led to the resignations of professors Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, members of the so-called intellectual dark web. Boyce began commenting about conservative politics following those experiences.
Boyce was an elementary school bus driver for the Griffin School District in Washington State from 2017 to 2020. During that time Boyce founded Othersuch Constructs LLC, which lasted from 2017 to 2018.
Anti-trans activism
In 2018, Boyce started a YouTube channel and podcast called Calmversations, alternately titled The Boyce of Reason. Despite the show’s relaxed tone, Boyce’s guests are often strident critics of progressive aspects of the trans rights movement.
Corinna Cohn is an American software developer who identifies as transsexual and gender critical. Cohn frequently appears in media to share conservative opinions and criticize various aspects of the trans rights movement.
Corinna Ariel “Cori” Cohn was born on June 13, 1975 and transitioned in the 1990s.
Cohn ran a comic store and website called Otakurama from 2002 to 2005.
Cohn is a software engineer who has worked for Fusion Alliance and Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance.
Activism
Cohn is a longtime internet troll who participates in virulently anti-trans forums.
In 2018 Cohn was triggered by Twitter’s revised policies that prohibited deadnaming and misgendering trans and gender diverse people. Cohn began making media appearances soon after.
In 2021 Cohn and fellow gender critical activist Nina Paley began the podcast Heterodorx.
In 2022 Cohn published a regret narrative in the Washington Post, suggesting that minors and young adults considering transition should “slow down.” Cohn has expressed the following regrets:
“a lifetime set apart from my peers”
“I wasn’t old enough to make that decision”
“I have resigned myself to never finding a partner”
“became a medical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life”
“intercourse never became pleasurable”
“I’m still working out how much regret to feel”
Via Media Matters for America:
Cohn, who hosts the podcast Heterodorx, has recently begun to put her anti-trans views into action. In late January, Cohn spoke in front of the Indiana House of Representatives in favor of HB 1041, a legislative effort that Cohn claimed would “strengthen the rights for girls and young women competing in sport” by excluding trans student athletes from competition. In her testimony, Cohn defined herself as “a transsexual,” arguing that her “sex is male, and neither science nor medicine can change that.” In the months since, Cohn has served as an expert and a witness for legislative efforts to restrict gender-affirming care in both Alabama and Ohio.
Cohn signed her testimony to the Ohio General Assembly as the secretary and treasurer of Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network. GCCAN was founded in 2019 under the stated mission “to empower recipients of gender transition-related care to become healthy and whole,” but it has rapidly aligned itself with the right-wing campaign against gender-affirming care policies, with Cohn serving as a board member.
Steve Hammer and Chuck Workman (September 3, 2003). 30 under 30: Innovators in the arts.Nuvo https://www.nuvo.net/arts/30-under-30-innovators-in-the-arts/article_c99ebd9c-ae71-5c71-93dd-4f0f26bc75bc.html