Kenneth Zucker is an American-Canadian psychologist and anti-transgender extremist.
Zucker’s ideology has caused profound harm to sex and gender minorities over a long career. Zucker has created several disease models to describe these minorities and has promoted many more sex and gender “disorders” as editor of The Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Zucker developed a non-affirming model of care for gender diverse youth that has been described as “child abuse.” Zucker was fired by employer CAMH in 2015. Zucker’s clinic was shut down, and non-affirming models of care have been outlawed in many jurisdictions.
After I was defamed in Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2007, I personally began working in earnest to get Zucker fired. Below is the last major exposé I wrote prior to that firing:
Kenneth J. “Ken” Zucker was born on December 29, 1950 to Eugene M. Zucker (1922–1997) and Sara Miller Zucker (1924–2020). Zucker has one sibling, Barbara Ann Zucker-Romanoff aka Barbra Zucker (born 1957). The family lived in Skokie, Illinois. Zucker married Rochelle Fine, also from Niles Township. Their child Simone Zucker is a Toronto-based filmmaker, and their child Josh aka “Concentration Camp” is guitarist in Toronto band Fucked Up.
Zucker attended Southern Illinois University during the Vietnam War and was one of the key campus leaders in the anti-war protest movement there, staging mock trials and declaring people war criminals in absentia (Lagow 1977). Zucker earned a bachelor’s degree there, then a master’s degree at Roosevelt University in 1975.
Zucker headed to Canada eventually just to be safe. Zucker earned a doctorate from University of Toronto in 1982.
Zucker’s frequent collaborator Richard Green had the same impulse for self-preservation: “I left Los Angeles in 1964 to avoid the Vietnam War by going to NIMH [National Institutes of Mental Health]” (Green 2004). In 2001 Green handed over editorial control of Archives of Sexual Behavior to Zucker, to continue pushing their toxic ideology about sex and gender minorities.
Physical attractiveness of children “research” (1993–1996)
Zucker was a psychologist at the Clarke Institute (aka “Jurassic Clarke”) in Toronto. Zucker is infamous for forcing gender-diverse children into reparative therapy to conform to expectations for gendered behavior in children. Zucker considers a gender transition a “bad outcome.”
Zucker had access to hundreds of children through the Clarke and took photos of all children brought to the clinic. In one particularly troubling “study,” Zucker wanted to see how “physically attractive” these children’s faces and upper torsos were. Adults were shown images of children in Zucker’s care and asked to rate their attractiveness.
Zucker’s conclusion: “Boys with gender identity disorder were judged to be more attractive than were the clinical control boys.”
Zucker repeated the “research” with the remaining children a few years later, concluding the “Girls with gender identity disorder had significantly less attractive ratings than the normal control girls for the traits attractive, beautiful, and pretty.”
Zucker is a darling of the ex-gay movement because of decades of attempts in “curing” gender-diverse children. Zucker was frequently cited by ex-gay groups like NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuals) and Leadership U.
As the rest of the world begins to understand and accept gender diversity as a trait and not a disease, Zucker has been increasingly cast as the old-school holdout in press coverage. As noted in the New York Times:
Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, disagrees with the “free to be” approach with young children and cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20 percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately change their sex.
Dr. Zucker tries to “help these kids be more content in their biological gender” until they are older and can determine their sexual identity — accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict gender roles.
Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual. His experience has convinced him that if a boy with GID becomes an adolescent with GID, the chances that he will become an adult with GID and seek a sex change are much higher. And he thinks that the kind of therapy he practices helps reduce this risk. Zucker emphasizes a three-pronged treatment approach for boys with GID. First, he thinks that family dynamics play a large role in childhood GID—not necessarily in the origins of cross-gendered behavior, but in their persistence. It is the disordered and chaotic family, according to Zucker, that can’t get its act together to present a consistent and sensible reaction to the child, which would be something like the following: “We love you, but you are a boy, not a girl. Wishing to be a girl will only make you unhappy in the long run, and pretending to be a girl will only make your life around others harder.” So the first prong of Zucker’s approach is family therapy. Whatever conflicts or issues that parents have that prevent them from uniting to help their child must be addressed.
The second prong is therapy for the boy, to help him adjust to the idea that he cannot become a girl, and to help teach him how to minimize social ostracism. Zucker does not teach boys how to walk in a manly fashion, but he does give them feedback about the likely consequences of taking a doll to school.
The third prong is key. Zucker says simply: “The Barbies have to go.” He has nothing against Barbie dolls, of course. He means something more general. Feminine toys and accoutrements—including Barbie dolls, girls’ shoes, dresses, purses, and princess gowns—are no longer to be tolerated at home, much less bought for the child. Zucker believes that toleration and encouragement of feminine play and dress prevents the child from accepting his maleness. Common sense says that a boy who wants to play with dolls so much that he is willing to risk his father’s wrath and his peers’ scorn is unlikely to change his behavior due to inconsistent feedback, sometimes forbidding, sometimes tolerating, and sometimes even encouraging it. Inconsistent parenting like this is ineffective in stamping out any kind of unwanted behavior.
Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome. … Why put boys at risk for this when they can become gay men happy to be men?
Zucker blames poor family dynamics and maternal psychopathology for gender-nonconforming behavior. Zucker claims this phenomenon is more likely in non-white children with lower IQs. As J. Michael Bailey noted:
Ken Zucker, whom we met in Chapter 2, has tried to predict which boys with gender identity disorder (GID) would still have the disorder when they become adolescents. Adolescents with GID are much rarer and presumably much closer to being transsexual. Zucker found several predictors of adolescent GID: lower IQ, lower social class, immigrant status, non-intact family, and childhood behavior problems unrelated to gender identity disorder.
Zucker’s alleged “desistance” rate hides the fact that many children brought to Zucker’s clinic are hardly success stories in terms of quality of life outcomes:
Yet Zucker’s approach has its own disturbing elements. It’s easy to imagine that his methods—steering parents toward removing pink crayons from the box, extolling a patriarchy no one believes in—could instill in some children a sense of shame and a double life. A 2008 study of 25 girls who had been seen in Zucker’s clinic showed positive results; 22 were no longer gender-dysphoric, meaning they were comfortable living as girls. But that doesn’t mean they were happy. I spoke to the mother of one Zucker patient in her late 20s, who said her daughter was repulsed by the thought of a sex change but was still suffering—she’d become an alcoholic, and was cutting herself. “I’d be surprised if she outlived me,” her mother said.
Lagow, Larry Dwane (1977). A history of the Center for Vietnamese Studies at Southern Illinois University, 1969-1976. Ph.D. dissertation; typescript in Hoover Institution Archives https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0d5nd9g7/entire_text/
Staff report (December 29, 1997). Obituary: Eugene Zucker. Chicago Tribune
Eugene Zucker. 75. beloved husband of Sara, nee Miller; loving father of Dr. Ken (Rochelle) Zucker and Barbra (Steven) Romanoff; devoted grandfather of Joshua and Simone Zucker and step-grandfather of Samantha Sprigel: fond brother of Howard (Shirley) Zucker; dearest uncle of Deborah, Adina, David, and Ellen. Mr. Zucker was a life-long intellectual.
Sandeen, Autumn (May 20, 2009). GID Reform Now Protest At Annual APA Meeting. Pam’s House Blend http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/11064/gid-reform-now-protest-at-annual-apa-meeting-speaker-madeline-deutch-md [archive]
Conway, Lynn (April 5, 2007). “Drop the Barbie”: Ken Zucker’s reparatist treatment of gender-variant children. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/Drop%20the%20Barbie.htm
Conway, Lynn (April 30, 2009). “The War Within: CAMH scathing internal report Zucker’s and Blanchard’s gender clinics http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/The_War_Within_CAMH.html
Conway, Lynn (February 18, 2009). Kenneth Zucker’s legal threats: Part of a pattern of silencing transgender critics. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/News/US/Zucker/Kenneth_Zucker%27s_pattern_of_silencing_transgender_critics.html
Winters, Kelley (2009). Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the Struggle for Dignity BookSurge, ISBN 978-1439223888 – see also (gendermadness.com) [harchive]
Staff report (July 1997). Childhood Gender-Identity Disorder Diagnosis Under Attack. Leadership U http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/childhood.html [archive] – now merged with Cru: Campus Crusade for Christ International (cru.org)
Singh D, Bradley SJ, Zucker KJ (2021). A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder. Front. Psychiatry, Volume 12 – 28 March 2021 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784
Brown, Patricia Leigh (December 2, 2006). Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn’t Clear. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/supporting-boys-or-girls-when-the-line-isnt-clear.html
Rosin, Hannah (November 2008). A Boy’s Life. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/a-boys-life/307059/
David Buss is an American evolutionary psychologist whose life’s work is dedicated to maintaining and reinforcing a sex binary.
Buss is a frequent supporter of anti-trans psychologist J. Michael Bailey. Of all the people in the investigation to date, Buss has the most overlapping interests and experiences with Bailey:
Buss earned a doctorate in the notoriously anti-trans psychology department at University of California, Berkeley in 1981.
Buss was married to Cynthia Louise “Cindy” Refhues (1958-2012) in 1981.
The Man Who Would Be Queen
He was cited in promotional materials for Bailey’s book.
“Bailey is one of a rare breed of writers who manages to combine first-rate science with deep
psychological understanding, resulting in great breadth of vision. He takes us on an unforgettable
journey into the minds and lives of feminine men. Bailey skillfully interweaves vivid case studies
with cutting-edge scientific findings, placing both in a deep historical context from the sexual
playground of ancient Greece to the dilemmas of gender in the modern world. Refreshingly
candid, remarkably free of ideology, this book is destined to become a modern classic in the field.
But readers should be prepared to have some cherished assumptions about human nature
shattered.”
– David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating and Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind
Sexuality and Its Disorders
College textbooks on psychology and human sexuality are consistently among the most transphobic knowledge produced in academia. A 2017 textbook by Mike Abrams lays out Buss’s views.
Teachings
A reader reports:
“Every Spring semester since 2016, Dr. Buss has co-taught PSY 306: Introduction to Human Sexuality, a seminar class, with Dr. Cindy Meston. The class is taught in a live-streaming, online format. There’s a little studio on-campus. The professors show up 15 minutes before class time, then sit in the studio to give their lecture in front of some cameras and a small live studio audience of 20 of their students. That lecture gets broadcast live to a much larger number of students – typically between 250 – 700 students each semester. So, 1000s of students have seen this class. Each semester, there is a lecture on Gender Dysphoria. I’ve attached a .txt file of the transcript. Here’s a particularly concerning section from that class (as spoken by Dr. Meston):
I think what’s happening is that people are more aware of the disorder. Absolutely, people like Jazz Jennings. This is the little girl that was on the 20/20 video you watched. She is now a huge voice for the transgendered community. She’s set up a foundation. She’s done a lot of good will for the transgender community. She has put out many videos giving advice and education. She’s had a reality show.
There was actually the first transgendered doll launched a few years ago in her image. So people like this, people like, and a few years ago, the very first transgendered Playmate appeared.
So what’s happening is there’s a lot more talk about transgender, a lot of famous people have come forward to talk about their struggle with gender dysphoria, and so this has been, has had a remarkable good impact, I believe, in the sense that, when it’s so much more visible and so much more talked about, people become educated.
They learn about the disorder, and when you learn about a disorder then you’re less afraid of it. And not always, sadly, but a lot of the time, people become more accepting, and you know, we see now, compared to even a decade ago, that there are policy changes made with regard to transgendered individuals in, for example, washrooms.
So that’s something that never would have occurred even, you know, a decade ago. So this awareness has clearly made many people more comfortable in coming forward and talking about their problem, and seeking help, which is a good thing.
Now, I want to mention, just on the other hand, why sometimes social media may not be in one’s best interest. So what is happening is that, among young people, teenagers, early 20s, there’s this rise in the prevalence rates of gender dysphoric individuals. That’s really unusual and it doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of what we know clinically, and have known for many, many years about individuals who have gender dysphoria.
So, for example, adults, who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, they almost always have been either diagnosed as having childhood gender identity dysphoria, or gender dysphoria I should say, and if not diagnosed as a child, they showed signs as a child. Their tales are that they have struggled with this most of their lives, or there has been some pattern very early on that there were signs of gender dysphoria. This group that has emerged in young people presents a very different picture.
They present, often, as suddenly realizing they’re gender dysphoric, and so some researchers are concerned by this, and clinicians, and have talked about this disorder, which has been given the name rapid-onset gender dysphoria. And rapid-onset gender dysphoria is exactly as it sounds, the development of gender dysphoria begins suddenly, during or after puberty, in adolescents or a young adult, who would not have met the criteria in childhood.
So this is not a typical etiology because, as I just described, the typical etiology is that they would’ve met the criteria in childhood. And so this has led to a debate or a discussion in the research and clinical community as to the possible role of social media and online content in possibly leading a group of young adults to self-diagnosing themselves incorrectly as having gender dysphoria.
Now, we know that, oftentimes, depression, or anxiety, or autism, individuals along the autism spectrum, some of you may have heard the term, Asperger’s. This term is no longer used in the DSM, it’s now just considered part of the autism spectrum, but it refers to individuals who struggle somewhat with social aspects of their lives.
And sometimes, what may be happening is individuals who are experiencing some type of mental disorder, they google on the internet, or they do some research online to figure out what’s wrong with them, and there’s so much information out there now on transgendered individuals, that they may be incorrectly identifying as a transgendered individual as opposed to some other underlying mental disorder.
Devendra Singh was an Indian-American evolutionary psychologist who held harmful and biased views about sex and gender minorities.
Background
Singh was born January 12, 1938 in Urai, India. Singh earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Agra University before earning a doctorate in psychology at Ohio State University in 1966. Following positions at Wright State University and North Dakota State University, Singh began teaching at University of Texas at Austin in 1969.
Singh is best known for research about waist-to-hip ratio in women, which Singh claimed has evolutionary significance.
Singh was married to Barbara Singh (1943–2022) and had three children. Singh died on May 18, 2010.
Views on sex and gender minorities
In 2000 Scott M. Strong, Singh, and Patrick K. Randall published an article that claimed “a ‘high feminine’ subtype of gay males had greater body dissatisfaction than ‘less feminine’ subtypes had.”
Singh appeared with a number of anti-trans activists on the series The Sex Files in an episode titled “Homosexuality.”
Why are some people gay? That’s the $64,000 question – at least in the scientific community. Is it something genetically predetermined? Or does environment have an impact on whether an individual turns out to be gay or lesbian? These questions are beginning to be probed in ways that might finally be leading to an answer, and the Sex Files has interviewed the foremost authorities on the topic to uncover some of those scientific clues:
Dr. Devendra Singh, University of Texas psychologist specializing in the evolutionary significance of human physical attractiveness
Dr. Michael Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois and specialist in the genetics and environment of sexual orientation
Dr. Marc Breedlove, professor of psychology* specialising in the sexual differentiation of the brain.
Singh was also a mentor to J. Michael Bailey’s son Drew Bailey.
Exploration Production (November 20, 2000). S02 E08: Homosexuality. The Sex Files
Strong SM, Singh D, Randall PK (2000). Childhood Gender Nonconformity and Body Dissatisfaction in Gay and Heterosexual Men. Sex Roles https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007126814910
* The original episode guide described Dr. Breedlove as a “professor of psychology at UCLA.” Dr. Breedlove noted in 2008 “I am not, and have never been, a professor of psychology or of anything else at UCLA.” Breedlove earned his Ph.D. at UCLA but taught at UC Berkeley before taking an appointment at Michigan State.
J. Michael Bailey‘s 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen was an an important turning point in asymmetrical information warfare. Transgender activists had to employ novel strategies to fight the anti-transgender bias that was being put forth via socially-credentialed sources. One of the sites of dispute was the Amazon listing for Bailey’s book, where Amazon manipulated the consensus to remove the majority of negative reviews while sparing positive reviews by the author’s friends and colleagues.
The nascent online practices of “academic logrolling” vs. “review bombing” came to wider notice when a glitch in Amazon’s Canadian system revealed the names of anonymous reviewers, exposing how much of this activity was occurring on Amazon’s platform. Amazon later implemented a number of changes, including giving more weight to verified purchases and allowing readers to vote and comment on reviews. Because their ultimate goal is to make money by selling books, Amazon is generally going to favor the side of shills.
Shill reviews
The pro-Bailey shill reviewers in the first year included a number of colleagues and supporters, several of whom are mentioned in the book:
This page went live in 2003 as part of a systematic plan to document everyone involved in this debate. Trans people had begun reporting difficulties getting their reviews accepted, suggesting Amazon was manually blocking negative reviews:
I spent over a month of fighting with Amazon to get them to post my review. Amazon is systematically censoring negative reviews. You have to follow their rules precisely to get things posted and even then people may have to fight. I advise anyone trying to post a review to followup with an e-mail if it is not posted within a week. And then if it is not posted, it is key to ask for the supervisor in charge of book reviews and demand that it be posted (lest they be accused of censoring, which they are definitely definitely doing)
In April 2004, the book had a 2-star rating based on 80 reviews.
By March 10, 2004, Amazon had removed 24 customer reviews from the review section, including several from famous trans writers and scholars, and even a Top 500 Amazon reviewer (Geoff Puterbaugh). All but one of these reviews gave the book the worst numerical rating possible. Amazon’s actions raised the book’s overall rating from 2 stars to 3 stars.
The purge removed negative reviews by many notable people, including scientists and clinicians:
The reader who reported difficulties getting a review posted was one of the 24 suppressed in the purge.
Single-purpose reviewers
From the 2004 purge into June 2006, someone posted 40 different 5-star reviews under different names. In almost every case, Bailey’s book was the only review ever made by the account. It’s very likely these were all posted by the same person familiar with the controversy, probably Denise Magner. Magner compulsively used sockpuppets, starting with an Amazon review by her sockpuppet Stephanie Alejandra Velasquez on May 4, 2003. That review was taken down in the Amazon purge, and the 40 new reviews began appearing immediately after. Many of the names used are puns on people involved in the controversy, like Simon LeVay and John Bancroft.
Book publishers and authors were just learning about how to improve sales by manipulating Amazon, something Amazon encourages. Right below an author’s Amazon Sales Rank is an invitation: “(Publishers and authors: improve your sales)”
Publishers increasingly use these unconfirmed reviews edited by an unnamed Amazon employee as evidence about a book’s reception. Joseph Henry Press Executive Editor Stephen Mautner cited Amazon reviews in his open letter about Bailey’s book:
As of June 13, 2003 there were 27 1-star (lowest) ratings, and 11 5-star (highest) ratings, with only 5 in-between.
From the start, this book was marketed as controversial. The trans community had to use a number of innovative methods to fight the unscientific ideas presented in this book. Many of these methods have since been widely adopted, like online petitions and this kind of systematized documentation to expose patterns of bias like Amazon’s.
References
Harmon, Amy (February 14, 2004). Amazon Glitch Unmasks War of Reviewers.New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/us/amazon-glitch-unmasks-war-of-reviewers.html
The American Psychological Association Division 44 (The Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues) was founded in 1985 to represent sexual orientation issues within and beyond the Association. The Division sponsors 9 committees and 3 task forces in order to fulfill its mission.
Many of the problems raised by publication of The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey intersect with the upcoming battle over depathologizing gender diversity. Many of the political gains made by gays and lesbians can be directly linked to the decision to depathologize homosexuality by the American Psychological Association in 1973. Bailey, Blanchard, and Lawrence promote a taxonomy that plays into the outmoded idea that gender variance is an expression of a psychosexual pathology.
Nicknamed DIV 44, they maintain an online presence here:
http://www.apa.org/divisions/div44/
The official name as it stood in 2004 still does not include “Transgender,” suggesting DIV 44 is woefully behind the learning curve regarding the complex relationships involving aspects of gender variance and sexuality. Unfortunately, into this vacuum of ignorance has poured an infestation of Clarke Institute psychologists with a taxonomy of gender variance to promote and an axe to grind.
James Cantor and the Clarke Institute infest DIV 44
James Cantor is a notably virulent representative of the transphobia rampant at the Clarke Institute and in pockets of resistance within this psychology trade group.
Cantor has clear political aspirations in his field. Cantor was probably involved in orchestrating an event in August 2003, where DIV 44 President James Fitzgerald inexplicably gave an award to Cantor’s mentor Ray Blanchard of the Clarke Institute for his “contributions” on gender identity.
As noted by sociologists like Ekins, Blanchard’s “science” is yet another example of that tradition within the medical model and positivist science which seems overly preoccupied with classification, in the service of diagnosis, etiological theorizing and the management of “disorders.” Blanchard has another protégé named Anne Lawrence, who vigorously defends the diagnosis of “autogynephilia” that Ray Blanchard created. The similarities between Blanchard’s work on gender variance and pre-1973 “science” about the pathology of homosexuality are striking.
In 2003, Cantor had an incident placed on his personnel record after heckling a transgender presenter invited to the Clarke Institute. Ironically, the presenter was there to work on repairing the historically strained relationship between that mental institution and the Toronto transgender community. The Clarke Institute is nicknamed “Jurassic Clarke” for its regressive policies regarding access to health services for gender-variant clients. Though it has since changed its name, The Clarke has not shaken the sociobiological stigma of its namesake, renowned eugenicist Charles Kirk Clarke, and the Canada’s notorious policies toward “the unfit,” including the GLBT community.
Cantor praises J. Michael Bailey in the name of DIV 44
James Cantor wrote a glowing review of The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey for their Summer 2003 newsletter. Cantor and Bailey are both protégés of Ray Blanchard. Bailey considers himself an adherent of evolutionary psychology and claims that “evolutionarily, homosexuality is a big mistake,” and that homosexuality may represent a “developmental error.”
The review appears on page 6, or you can read it on this site’s page on James Cantor.
Cantor’s shill review was later used in promotional material by Bailey’s publisher, Joseph Henry Press. In Summer, 2003, the APA DIV 44 Newsletter printed a review of Bailey’s book by James Cantor of Toronto’s Clarke Institute. This review was in turn used in promotional materials by Joseph Henry Press on their website. Publicist Robin Pinnel failed to include Cantor’s name with the blurbs, suggesting that Cantor’s views represented all of DIV 44’s assessment of the Bailey book. Cantor’s name was added after DIV 44 protested.
Below is a sample of the wide-ranging concerns about this book’s ideology:
Dr. Madeline Wyndzen responds in DIV 44’s Spring 2004 newsletter
Dr. Madeline H. Wyndzen has written several essays outlining flaws in Blanchard’s thinking and methodology. She was invited by DIV 44 to respond with a full-length article, which is available here:
A personal and scientific look at a mental illness model of transgenderism by Madeline H. Wyndzen, Ph.D. (pen name) Division 44 Newsletter, Spring 2004, page 4.
Editor’s Note: Ms. Wyndzen originally submitted a brief letter to the editor in response to a recent book review of The Man Who Would Be Queen in this Newsletter. I invited her to expand on that letter here.
If a man sought therapy due to unhappiness over his attraction to other men, a therapist would likely diagnose him with Depression. If a transsexual sought therapy due to unhappiness over his or her biological sex, a therapist would almost certainly diagnose him or her with Gender Identity Disorder. Whereas gay men and lesbian women are diagnosed for how they suffer , transsexuals are diagnosed for who they are. As a psychologist and transsexual, I find that the mental illness label imposed on transsexuality is just as disquieting as the label that used to be imposed on homosexuality.
Similar to antiquated ideas suggesting that homosexuality is a deviant sex-drive, Ray Blanchard (1989, 1991) proposed that transsexuality is a mis-directed form of either heterosexuality (named “autogynephilia”) or homosexuality. Rather than asking the scientifically neutral question, “What is transgenderism?” Blanchard (1991) asks, “What kind of defect in a male’s capacity for sexual learning could produce … autogynephilia, transvestitism …?” (p. 246).
Blanchard’s model is featured prominently and uncritically in J. Michael Bailey’s (2003a) recent book, The Man who would be Queen: the Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. A balanced portrait of Blanchard’s key empirical findings (1989) would reveal that they: (1) have never been replicated, (2) failed to include control groups of typically-gendered women, (3) failed to covary the acknowledged age-differences from ANOVA, and (4) drew conclusions about causality from entirely observational data.
Inconsistencies between transsexuals’ self-portraits and Blanchard’s model are reconciled by Bailey (2003a) with the suggestion that some transsexuals are deceptive: “There is one more reason why many autogynephiles provide misleading information about themselves that is different than outright lying. It has to do with obsession” (p. 175). Aware of concerns that some may be troubled by his portrayal of them, Bailey has said, “I cannot be a slave to sensitivity” (quoted in Wilson, 2003), and “ There is good scientific evidence that says you should believe me and not them” (quoted in Dreier & Anderson, 2003). In a critique of Bailey’s book available on my website, I provide alternate interpretations of this evidence:
http://www.genderpsychology.org/autogynephilia/
Bailey (2003b) contends that negative reactions to his book are merely “identity politics” that are a “hindrance” to “scientific truth” (Bailey, 2003b). Contrasting his objectivity with others’ politics reminded me of “81 Words,” a radio documentary about the removal of homosexuality from the DSM (Spiegel, 2002). Those who diagnosed ‘homosexuality’ as a mental illness genuinely felt that they were helping their clients. I know that Ray Blanchard, J. Michael Bailey, and others are similarly concerned about the welfare of transsexuals. I only wish they would see the bias in their theories and diagnoses. When I listened to “81 Words,” I was struck by how foreign it sounded to talk about being gay or lesbian as a disorder. I am too young to remember that time. My hope is that someday my children will think it just as unfathomable that I was once diagnosed and treated for “Gender Identity Disorder.”
References
Bailey, J. M. (2003a). The Man who would be Queen: the Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. Joseph Henry Press, Washington DC.
Bailey, J. M. (2003b, July 19). Identity politics as a hindrance to scientific truth , presented at the conference of the International Academy of Sex Research. Abstract retrieved July 16, 2003, from http://www.iasr.org/meeting/2003/ABSTRACTS2003.doc
Wilson, R. (2003, June 20). Dr. Sex’: A human-sexuality expert creates controversy with a new book on gay men and transsexuals. Chronicle of Higher Education , retrieved June 27, 2003, from http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i41/41a00801.htm
DIV 44 has been taking steps to be more responsive to the needs of transgender people interacting with mental health professionals, including the mission statement below:
One of the most important steps DIV 44 can take is to learn about the context of the Clarke Institute’s historically adversarial relationship with the clients they were supposed to serve.
The upcoming controversy
The American Psychiatric Association (http://psych.org) is currently gearing up to revise the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from the DSM-IV-TR to the DSM-V (due around 2010).
A reader notes:
In short American Psychological Association (APA.org) are our friends, but American Psychiatric Association (PSYCH.ORG) are our oppressors, the ones who who re-pathologize homosexuality if they thought they could get away with it. I added their target date – 2010 – so as not to raise false hopes of a constructive change.Personally I believe GID will be rendered irrelevant for practical purposes (by increasing circumvention of the HBIGDA SOC) before GID is abolished.
One of my research assistants saw similarities in this story of behind the scenes manipulation of APA guidelines with the Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence controversy.
The full text of this roundtable discussion transcribed by June L Roberts can also be found here: https://transgendermap.com/info/div-44-roundtable.html
As a community, we must begin working with APA DIV 44 to counter the distortions and pseudoscience that the Clarke Institute has used to dominate this important debate. I encourage any of you with an interest in this matter to contact the following community leaders:
Christopher Richard Brand was born June 1, 1943 in Preston, England.
Brand taught at Edinburgh University from 1970–1997. In 1996 Brand published the book The g Factor, claiming that general intelligence correlates with life outcomes. Brand claimed people of African descent had lower general intelligence as a group, which affected their success.
Brand was fired following an investigation into his 1996 comments about age of consent following child molestation charges brought against medical researcher Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. Brand’s firing became a rallying cry for “academic freedom” extremists.
Brand had three children and married spouse number three in 2001. Brand died May 28, 2017.
Comments on trans issues
Here’s what Brand had to say in 2003 when trans people began criticizing J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen:
Dr Sex‚ VERSUS ANTI-HOMOPHOBISTS AND ASSORTED FAGGOTS
A book-burning witch-hunt began against psychologist J. Michael Bailey, of Northwestern University, near Chicago, who claimed from his research that some transsexuals are homosexuals, thus apparently managing to annoy representatives‚ of both these hyper-sensitive groups at the same time. Fortunately, Chronicles of Higher Education (20 vi) gave Bailey, a Texan nerd‚, a friendly write up, saying he had plenty of transsexual/friends, did a good job on the dance floor and bought a round of drinks, so there was a possibility that he and his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, might survive.
See also the Chris Brand information on Lynn Conway’s site, which Brand responded to thus:
HUMAN BIODIVERSITY GROUP (HBDG) ‘NAMED AND SHAMED’ Opponents of J. Michael Bailey, the Texan sexologist (who has ‘controversially’ suggested that some transsexuals are actually homosexuals), managed to discover the names on Steve Sailer’s private list of experts (and gifted amateurs….) on the subject of ‘human biodiversity’ i.e. racial differences. They set up a website to denounce selected and possible HBDG members:
Andrews, Lewis R. (“promotes an array of neoconservative (mostly racist) theories”) {Normally called Louis Andrews}
Bailey, Michael (“under investigation here {i.e. by transsexuals} regarding his HBDG affiliations”)
Brand, Chris (“infamous ‘scientific racist’”)
Brimelow, Peter (“prominent and active member and contributor to {anti-immigration} VDARE)
Burr, Chandler (believes “biological cause of male homosexuality as a “defect in development””)
Buss, David M.(has “notions of rigidly bi-polar genders in humans”)
Cochran, Gregory M. (actually environmentalistic but “highly extolled for his racial-genetic-profiling science and homosexual-causation-science by various neoconservative and far-right groups, such as the British National Party”)
Derbyshire, John (“virulently homophobic”)
Entine, Jon (“condescending toward Asians, like a comical stereotype, and believe[s] blacks are uncivilized animals who are mentally inferior and only suitable for athletics”)
Hausman, Patricia (“part of a neoconservative organization that makes a special point of trashing trans women”)
Miller, Edward M. (“made strongly racist “scientific” statements in 1996 about the intelligence of black people”)
Murray, Charles (“widely perceived as racist by most moderate people”)
Pinker, Steven (“biology-is-destiny theory”….“active participant in the Baileyan defamation of transsexual women”….“Could he be a Fourattist-type gay man?…”)
Pitchford, Ian (actually a keen leftist but called “another of the HBDG’ers known to have supported Bailey”)
Rushton, J.P. (“misrepresented the entire evolutionary theory simply for the shock value”)
Sailer, Steve (“has long exploited the works of racial-profiling scientists and pundits such as Brand, Cochran, Entine, Miller, Murray, Rushton, etc., to justify his positions”….”one of a handful of extreme “scientific racists”, affiliated with and often paid by extreme right-wing groups like VDare”)
Seligman, Dan (“promoting HBDG’s vain hope that Bailey could somehow be anointed as the national expert on homosexuality and transsexualism”)
What a wonderful display of leftists’ willingness to caricature scholarly opponents! And such hypersensitive leftists have the temerity to complain I jest about them as ANTI-HOMOPHOBISTS AND ASSORTED FAGGOTS! (Of course, it was a pity that members of the HBDG list did not all plainly announce their scientific racism / race realism seven years ago when they might collectively have made a mark and defended me in Edinburgh. Sadly, still in 2003, the world’s only declared academic race realists (Glayde Whitney having sadly died) were Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn and myself. The unwillingness of race realists to pull together reflected the non-emergence of national neoliberealism or any comparable liberty-respecting realism with which academics could be happy.
Egan V, Brand N, Brand T (2018). Obituary of Chris Brand (1st June 1943–28th May, 2017). Personality and Individual Differences Volume 122, 1 February 2018, Pages 206-207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.011
Wotjas, Olga (27 March 1998). ‘Racist’ Brand loses dismissal appeal. Times Higher Education http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=106530§ioncode=26
Allen Rosenthal is an American psychologist and anti-transgender activist who published pathologizing research on transgender people and trans-attracted people with advisor J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern University.
Rosenthal is based in Vallejo California. Do not go to Rosenthal for therapy of any kind, especially if you are trans or gender diverse.
Background
Allen Michael Rosenthal was born December 10, 1979. Rosenthal graduated in 1997 from Robinson Secondary in Fairfax, Virginia, then attended Brigham Young University from 2004 to 2006. Around that time, Rosenthal earned the first of two Bachelor’s degrees.
Rosenthal earned a second Bachelor’s Degree in psychology from University Of Utah in 2006, where he was a member of Psi Chi, Phi Kappa Phi, and Golden Key Honor Society. He then came to Northwestern University for his PhD.
Rosenthal wrote in 2008:
I moved to Chicago in July of 2007 after having spent ten bittersweet years in Utah. While there, I started college at Brigham Young University, came out of the closet at the ripe ol’ age of 18, left BYU, moved to Salt Lake City, and met my partner (now of nine years). Together, we became ‘New Agers’ for several years, were heavily involved with life enhancement trainings, and then became anti-‘New Agers’ (read: realists). Finally, beginning in 2004, I discovered psychology–the ‘science of the mind’–and completed a BS (my second) in Psychology at the University of Utah.
The Northwestern University psychology department profiled him in 2011:
Originally from the suburbs of Washington, DC, Allen Rosenthal completed his undergraduate work at the University of Utah, where he graduated with a major in psychology in 2006. Before he began attending graduate school, he worked in three psychology labs and gained clinical experience doing psychological assessments of sex offenders. Allen’s primary research area is sexual orientation and the paraphilias (i.e., uncommon / unusual sexual interests). Although his interests within this field are many, he is especially interested in the relationships between sexual arousal, behavior, and orientation. His lab has recently published two papers on a study of the sexual arousal of bisexual men. Contrary to earlier controversial findings which suggested that bisexual men are only aroused by men, they found that a subpopulation of bisexual men are aroused by both men and women (in the lab). Currently, Allen is conducting two studies of men who are sexually attracted to partially transitioned male-to-female transsexuals. This phenomenon is referred to as gynandromorphophilia (GAM), which roughly translates to woman-man-form-lover. Very little is known about men with GAM. Perhaps of greatest interest is whether they are otherwise primarily sexually attracted to men or women; one could easily tell the story either way. In another ongoing study, they are assessing the genital arousal of some of these men in the lab. When Allen is not doing research or clinical work, he enjoys being with his partner of twelve years and their two cats. He and his partner enjoy good food, movies, and gardening. His idea of heaven is making dinner with him using their own produce while Frank Sinatra plays in the background. He is also an avid cyclist and is oft to be found on the lakeshore trail bordering Lake Michigan. He gets some of his best thinking done while biking to and from Northwestern everyday. After graduate school, he plans on finding an academic job that will allow him to continue to wear his three favorite hats: researcher, clinician, and teacher.
Rosenthal interned from 2015-2016 at the West Virginia University School of Medicine in Charleston. That school says he then worked in the Department of Psychiatry at a Kaiser Permanente facility in Vallejo, California.
Rosenthal was reportedly subjected to sexual orientation change efforts by NARTH.
Anti-transgender activism
Rosenthal diagnoses the common attraction to trans women as “gynandromorphophilia” (GAMP), which he and his colleagues describe as “sexual interest in gynandromorphs (GAMs; colloquially, shemales).”
Rosenthal and Bailey also magically “discovered” that bisexual men exist after receiving money from the American Institute of Bisexuality. Before the payment, Bailey had proclaimed in the press that bisexual men do not exist, saying males are “gay, straight, or lying.”
Hsu KJ, Rosenthal AM, Miller DI, Bailey JM (2015). Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women. Psychological Medicine. 2016 Mar;46(4):819-27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291715002317 Epub 2015 Oct 26.
Rosenthal AM, Hsu KJ, Bailey JM (2017). Who are gynandromorphophilic men? An internet survey of men with sexual interest in transgender women. Archives of Sexual Behavior [17 Nov 2016, 46(1):255-264] https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0872-6
The trans community was galvanized in opposition following reports of Bailey’s lurid book tour lectures. In the lecture witnessed by Stanford evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden, Bailey was misusing images and video of very young gender diverse children without their knowledge or consent.
Bailey’s crass presentation of these children was punctuated with laughter from assembled psychology professors and future clinicians. It reminded many trans people of the abuse and reparative therapy they had endured as children from similar academics.
Bailey and his colleagues featured in his book are the main proponents of reparative therapy on small children to change their gender identity and expression. This practice is outlawed in many places and has been described as child abuse.
Historians consider the international transgender response to this book to be one of the most significant moments in the history of the global transgender rights movement.
The parts in bold led to our community’s unprecedented efforts to ban unethical practices that harm our children.
Stanford Daily report (2003)
Stanford Daily, April 25, 2003 CAMPUS VIEWPOINT
Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation
By JOAN ROUGHGARDEN, GUEST COLUMNIST
On April 23, Psychology Prof. Michael Bailey from Northwestern University presented a lecture entitled “Gender Nonconformity and Sexual Orientation” to the Stanford University Psychology Department as part of its regularly scheduled departmental lecture series.
The audience, including about 10 faculty and 100 students, enjoyed laughing at pictures, quotations and voice recordings of gay, lesbian and transgendered people. The material consisted mostly of film clips and animated cartoons. At no point was the audience admonished to assume a professional decorum. No faculty challenged the scholarship, and criticism of the evidently limited sampling was left to several graduate students.
Bailey was introduced as “controversial,” someone whose work has important implications for law, medicine and social policy and as a successful teacher whose courses feature “Transsexuals stripping after class.” (First big laugh.) The initial photographs included a male-bodied child wearing her mother’s shoes, when the second round of laughter erupted. A female-bodied child was then shown in male clothes and quoted as saying she “wanted a penis,” again producing laughter. In another example, an older child in a clinical setting was given the choice of toys and chose a doll and a wig. She was quoted as saying, “1 hate my hair,” greatly amusing the audience.
Bailey’s main claim is that 75 percent of gender-variant male-bodied children grow up to be gay men. Furthermore, gay men questioned about their childhood report more feminine identification on the average than straight-identified men. A similar claim is made for gender-variant female-bodied children growing up to become lesbians, though with less certainty. Therefore, Bailey’s thesis is that gay men are more feminine than straight men, lesbians more masculine than straight women and that transgendered people do not exist as a distinct category but as an extreme gender-variant “subtype” of homosexuality.
Bailey did not present, much less do justice, to the many alternative theories and supporting data that conceptualize gender identity and sexual orientation as distinct axes of description.
Bailey followed this claim with more photographs and film clips. Two gay men were interviewed and the audience was invited to sharpen their ability to discern a gay male from a straight male — to train their “gaydar” (his word) and “pick up the vibes.” An animated cartoon showing effeminate gestures for a gay man was contrasted with one depicting a macho manner for a straight man, again sending the audience into peals of laughter. He then proceeded to show clips of a drag queen and a transgendered woman.
The transgendered woman was described as “an extremely feminine gay man who decided to become a woman.” Bailey would show bar graphs (without error bars) purporting to show that gay men and straight men prefer “casual sex” more than straight women, and straight women also prefer this type of sexual behavior more than lesbian women. The transgendered woman was claimed (though no data given) to be as sexually active in casual sex as a straight man or gay man, and for this reason had to be considered a gay man “himself.”
The lecture continued with a catalogue of diagnostic criteria to include in one’s “gaydar” for accurately discerning gay people from straight people, a project that drew an approving wisecrack from one faculty member. Using Northwestern undergraduates as subjects (“Northwestern has a good theater department”) he developed a rating for gay presentation, leading to the phrase, “the gayest-rated gay man.”
Then voices of two gay men and two straight men were played and the audience was asked to guess who was gay and who was straight. Those who guessed correctly grinned with joy and were applauded by their neighbors, leading to the conclusion that if a gay sounds really gay, then he probably is. If Bailey had presented a scholarly account of his theory in comparison with alternative theories of gender expression and sexuality, he would not have had to rely on a comical and vulgar performance to garner audience support.
Finally, Bailey presented the book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen,” in which he identifies the other “subtype” of transsexual as someone motivated by fetishistic body morphing, a largely obsolete idea that originated with Ray Blanchard. Bailey said his seminar had avoided the “really controversial” material that was available in his book. The official publicity for the book distributed at the Denver American Association for the Advancement of Science Convention in February, leads with the phrase “Gay, Straight, or Lying? Science Has the Answer” and ends with the claim that Bailey’s conclusions “may not always be politically correct, but they are scientifically accurate, thoroughly researched and occasionally startling.” Instead, many are now offering the book as the latest example of junk science and are appalled at the National Academy’s complicity in the sensationalizing of lesbian, gay and especially, transgendered people.
Bailey’s book is fulfilling the prophesy of being “controversial.” Gay, lesbian and transgendered people are organizing protests at bookstores around the country and are writing critiques in every media outlet possible.
To many observers, Bailey appears to be a rather dumb, stubborn, dense and possibly deceptive regular guy with some experience in locker-room humor. Meanwhile, the day before, on April 22, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the California State Assembly passed a bill extending California’s housing and employment nondiscrimination laws to cover gender-variant people, including transvestites and transsexuals. The bill will soon move to the state senate and will proceed to the governor. The political progress being made by gay, lesbian and now transgendered people greatly exceeds that in academia, if the homophobic and transphobic welcome to Bailey given by the Stanford Department of Psychology is any indication.
Joan Roughgarden is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford. She can be reached at joan.roughgarden@stanford.edu.
Psychology grad students respond to controversial lecture
This letter is in response to Joan Roughgarden’s guest column, “Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation” (April 25). We regret that there were any misunderstandings on the part of Roughgarden regarding the Psychology Department’s colloquium. However, we feel that her recounting of the event was inaccurate, and we would like to offer our opinion from the perspective of graduate students in the Psychology Department.
Roughgarden makes two claims in her column. One, that the talk given by Northwestern University Michael Bailey was poorly presented and without merit. We have no dispute with this claim. The speaker’s data were poor, and his conclusions based on those data were severely lacking in merit and validity. No one we spoke with following the talk found his conclusions to be persuasive or scientifically valid, and that was made clear in the questions and critique he received from graduate students and faculty members following the talk. The second point Roughgarden makes is that the audience response was homophobic and supportive of Bailey’s view. She cites “peals of laughter” of the audience at several points within the talk, as well as a lack of criticism by those present as evidence of this support. There was, in fact, criticism by both professors and students regarding the scientific validity of the evidence presented. While the criticism was limited to the merit of the research, it was in no way supportive, and, in our view, was a clear indication of the critical and dismissive view of the audience toward this research. In addition, Roughgarden made the inaccurate assumption that the audience was laughing because it was reveling in some communal homophobic expression. The audience’s laughter was partially a reaction to the absurdity of some of Bailey’s claims, a reflection of embarrassed discomfort with the glib comments made by Bailey and unease about being asked to participate in Bailey’s guess-who’s-gay experiments.
The Psychology Department is committed to examining scholarly work documenting the true experience of different peoples and, in particular, of studying the processes that have heretofore been in large part omitted from psychological study, including the study of gender, race, social class and sexual orientation. We have a particularly strong research program in questioning stereotypes about marginalized groups. Bailey was included as a speaker in our colloquium series to further our understanding of the psychology of individuals in the gay, lesbian and transgendered communities. That his talk did nothing to elucidate our knowledge of those processes was extremely unfortunate, but we fully support the process that brought him to our campus.
KELLY MCGONIGAL Doctoral candidate, Psychology JULIE MCGUIRE Doctoral candidate, Psychology TECETA THOMAS Doctoral candidate, Psychology
Jeff Sherman is a social psychologist and longtime supporter of J. Michael Bailey. I got the following note on May 7, 2003. Sherman’s comment in bold reflects typical thinking from anti-transgender psychologists. Sherman ignores that Bailey was mocking transgender people, including our young children, on his book tour. Apparently Sherman thinks it’s fine for Bailey to do that to our children while “trying to find the truth,” but any reciprocation is “vile.” Via Sherman:
you are a vile human being for putting pictures of mike’s kids on your web site. you disagree with mike’s theories? fine. there is ample opportunity for scientific debate, and no one more than mike welcomes a scientific critique of his work. to ascribe any motives to mike beyond trying to find the truth is nothing more than an attempt to stifle free and open discourse. you should hook up with kansas state legislature.
sincerely, jeff sherman
***************************************************************** Jeffrey W. Sherman Associate Professor Department of Psychology Northwestern University 2029 Sheridan Rd. Evanston, IL 60208-2710 phone: 847-467-4133 fax: 847-491-7859 url: www.psych.nwu.edu/People/JeffSherman.htm ******************************************************************
WEB LINK: http://www.psych.northwestern.edu/psych/people/faculty/sherman/sherman.html email: sherm@northwestern.edu
My reply in part:
It’s what he’s doing to my kids in his lectures. “Vile” is an apt descriptor. May I borrow it?
Maybe Mike should open his lecture to the parents of those kids whose images he features. I wonder how they’d feel to see their children’s expressions of pain being used by Mike to amuse audiences? I bet they’d think he’s a pretty vile human being. I certainly do.
Many people in our community have been helped by psychologists who worked with them to determine the best course of action for their unique transition needs. Psychology has also been used as a way to control and even harm our community, especially via disease models of gender identity and expression.
At its worst, psychology has been misused in the academic exploitation of our community.
