Interim Investigative Report on
J. Michael Bailey's 06-02-03 Public Lecture at UCLA
by Lynn Conway
 
Initial Posting: 10-07-03
Updated Version of: 4-07-04
 
Incident
Evidence
Witnesses
Background
Timeline of unfolding events
Evidence supports extremely serious charges of research misconduct
 
 
 

Incident:
 
The incident reported here is the showing by Prof. J. Michael Bailey of selected clips from an ~8 to 9 year old psychological research interview tape of his research subject Anjelica Kieltyka in 1994-95 (specific date to be determined). Prof. Bailey showed the tape in an open public lecture at UCLA on 06-02-03, without authorization for any public showings of that tape.
 
 

Evidence:
 
Evidence that this incident occurred as reported is in our possession, in the form of an audio CD of Prof. Bailey's complete lecture at UCLA and of informal Q/A sessions afterwards.
 
A copy of this audio CD evidence is being submitted along with this interim investigative report to the Office for the Protection of Research Subjects at Northwestern University, for use in their internal Northwestern University investigation of J. Michael Bailey's transsexual research and the publication of his research results in the book The Man Who Would Be Queen: The science of gender bending and transsexualism (abbreviated as TMWWBQ ).
 
 

Witnesses:
 
This investigative report is based on numerous in-person and telephone interviews of Anjelica Kieltyka during the summer and fall of 2003. Triangulations on the events reported by this witness were made by interviewing others of Prof. Bailey's transsexual research subjects (especially "Juanita"), and by studying numerous e-mails sent between the parties involved.
 
Several women who attended Prof. Bailey's 06-02-03 lecture at UCLA were eyewitnesses to and can confirm the events there, including Vanessa Foster (Board Chair, National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC)) and Anneliese Anderle (who made the audio recording).
 
 

Background:
 
J. Michael Bailey is now Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University. During most of the years reported herein, Prof. Bailey was an Associate Professor of Psychology at Northwestern, and had established a name for himself as an expert on the psychology of homosexuality. In 1994, Prof. Bailey began interviewing a series of transsexual research subjects he had opportunistically encountered when they were brought to him for the purpose of obtaining letters of recommendation for sex reassignment surgery (SRS). He also began a long period of research interactions with those women's mentor, Anjelica Kieltyka, that extended over the years from 1994 up to 2003.
 
Anjelica Kieltyka (formerly "Chuck") is a postoperative transsexual woman who underwent gender transition in 1990-92, including SRS in 1992 at age 41. In addition to suffering from and surviving transsexualism by completing her gender transition, Anjelica has been diagnosed as also suffering from life-long chronic depression. In spite of these difficulties, Anjelica is a creative artist and photographer, and she has for almost 12 years been a mentor to young trans women who were undergoing transsexual transition. In recent years she had also been studying psychology as a part-time student at Northwestern University. However, due to her chronic depression she lives on SSI disability income (she only had full-time employment for a brief 1-1/2 year period in her life), and she is very vulnerable to emotional stresses.
 
As we will learn below, there was a great asymmetry of understanding of their respective roles during the interactions between Prof. Bailey and Ms. Kieltyka. In Anjelica's mind, the interactions were those of "intellectual colleagues" in which she educated Prof. Bailey about her extensive field experiences among transsexual women and helped him teach about transsexualism by herself giving lectures on the topic in Prof. Bailey's classes on human sexuality. However, to Prof. Bailey, Anjelica was a research subject whom he observed, interviewed and recorded. She was an especially prized research subject, being an example in his mind of a hypothesized type of sexual-paraphilic whose existence supported a theory of transsexualism he greatly wished to "prove" to other psychologists.
 
As the evidence here and elsewhere will demonstrate, Prof. Bailey was clearly aware of Anjelica's perception of their mutual roles. However, Prof. Bailey never informed Anjelica that his perception of their mutual roles was totally different from hers, namely that she was his research subject. In Prof. Bailey's mind, Anjelica was not a colleague who was teaching him. Instead he was a research scientist who was studying her as a research subject.
 
It is important while reading the report below that you keep clearly in mind the asymmetry in self-perceptions of roles of Prof. Bailey and Anjelica Kieltyka, and also the great "imbalance of power" in the working relationship between this senior Professor and his research subject.
 
 

Timeline of unfolding events:
 
1994-95: Bailey records a research interview videotape of Anjelica
1996: Anjelica's makes her own transition videotape
1998: Bailey tells Anjelica he's "writing a book".
1999: Bailey gives Anjelica draft of WWWOB, including a description of her transition tape. She tells him "You can't use my story!"
2000: Bailey posts WWWOB on the internet (never tells Anjelica)
5-11-01: E-mails show Bailey is leading Anjelica into thinking she can still affect contents of the book.
4-03: Bailey'sbook emerges onto the market, with chapters on trans unchanged. He doesn't tell Anjelica or the other research subjects.
4-10-03: Lynn Conway alerts key trans women about Bailey's book.
4-23-03: Lynn Conway and Andrea James post websites about the book, spreading the alert in the trans community.
5-2-03: Julie Ann Johnson telephones Anjelica, asking her "Anjelica, what have you done?"
5-3-03: Anjelica receives a copy of TMWWBQ in the mail, and realizes that Bailey has defamed her and had outed her.
5-4-03: Anjelica came across Andrea James' and Lynn Conway's websites, and contacts them for help.
5-11-03: Lynn Conway posts Anjelica's e-mail on the web. Bailey becomes aware that Anjelica has "turned on him".
5-19-03: Bailey calls Anjelica to meeting; attempts to get her permission to show interview tape; she does not authorize its use.
Later in 5-03: Prof. Bailey increasingly on the defensive as condemnation of his book spreads in the trans community.
 
6-02-03: Bailey shows his 94/95 research interview video of Anjelica in a public lecture at UCLA - to defend his theory and defame her as a critic.
 
6-04-03: Bailey sends an "friendly" e-mail to Anjelica, trying to cover himself after the fact re showing that tape. Anjelica has no clue what's happened.
6-21-03: National Transgender Advocacy Coalition releases a Press Release condemning Bailey's book.
7-03: Complaints of research misconduct are filed against Bailey at Northwestern by a number of former research subjects.
Summer 2003: During the summer of 2003, many additional transgender organizations condemn the book.
Summer 2003: Wide notice given to the controversy by the gay media, academic media and mainstream media.
Fall 2003: Widespread condemnation of Bailey's book spreads through the trans community; evidence also accumulates of harm done to Anjelica
 
10-07-03: Evidence (an audio CD) is filed with the OPRS at Northwestern University documenting Bailey's showing of the interview video at UCLA
 
 
 
1994-95 (date TBD):
 
Not long after they'd began working together in 1994, Prof. Bailey made a videotape recording of an interview of Anjelica Kieltyka in his office. We call this tape "Bailey's Research Interview Tape". [ Note: Anjelica Kieltyka does not have a copy of this tape. The tape is now in Prof. Bailey's possession. Northwestern's ORSP should obtain a copy of this tape as evidence. ORSP should also obtain from Prof. Bailey the date on which this tape was made.]
 
In this research interview videotape, Anjelica presented her thoughts on the topic of fetishism. She did this by reflecting on her own transition and recalling symbolic uses of fetish prior to her transition.
 
Bailey had asked her to bring a variety of fetish items to the interview and to discuss them there. She agreed to do this, hoping that by discussing the use of fetish as "identity transformative", perhaps that would help Prof. Bailey and other psychologists see such fetish items in a different light. One of her motivations at the time was wanting to see the "disorder" called "transvestic fetishism" removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (widely known as the "DSM").
 
Thus Anjelica brought a female mask, a wig and various other body-image fetish items to the interview. She showed these items on camera, and explained how the items in her experience went beyond sex, and had the power to confer identity, i.e., that they were "transformative" to a pretransition person - much as masks, feathers and powerful animal-spirit fetish items related to eagles and bears were to Native Americans, whose use of identity transformative fetish items Anjelica had deeply studied over a period of years (Anjelica had done extensive reading and research into the Native American berdache and two-spirit traditions, and the ways in which transgender people were accepted and honored in many Native American cultures, and she had even traveled to meet with Native American people). When talking about these items, Anjelica tried to explain the process of self-discovery she had gone through, and how those fetish items were part of that passing phase in the larger context of her overall transition.
 
When Bailey asked if he could record this interview, Anjelica assumed he would use the recording to teach other researchers about her ideas on this aspect of gender identity and transsexualism. She never signed any release for Prof. Bailey to use this tape, and never ever gave him any authorization to use the tape publicly. The things she discussed on the tape were of a personal and intimate nature, and could easily be misconstrued by people other than dispassionate researchers who were used to reports on sexological topics. Anjelica assumed that Prof. Bailey was a responsible professional scientist, and that any uses he made of the tape would be ethical ones within the scientific community. She had no knowledge of IRB regulations or rules for the protections for human research subjects. Instead she was implicitly trusting of academic research, and she assumed that the people she was dealing with were honorable and ethical.
 
At the time this tape was made, Anjelica also felt that she was a sort of budding colleague of Bailey's. Although she didn't have a university degree, she had very extensive experience with transsexualism in the real world. She knew many, many transsexual women, from advantaged suburban upper-middle-class women to disadvantaged Hispanic immigrant women. She was someone who could teach Bailey (who was then doing research in homosexuality, but who had no background whatsoever in transsexualism) something about transsexualism. Bailey knew that Anjelica was uniquely qualified to teach him about transsexualism, and even acknowledged this in his later book.
 
What Anjelica did not know was that although Prof. Bailey treated her as if she were an intellectual colleague, he did not visualize her as a colleague at all. Instead he saw her and began systematically using her as a research subject. He observed her, recorded her interview, and used her as an ongoing source of considerable anecdotal information about transsexualism. In a very real way, Anjelica became a kind of ongoing "informant" about transsexual life experiences for Prof. Bailey.
 
On the other hand, at the time of the video interview, Anjelica thought she was engaged in teaching. Instead she was being documented by Prof. Bailey as a research subject, especially regarding her discussion of the fetish items she had brought to the interview at his request. In Prof. Bailey's mind, he had discovered a "classic autogynephile", a type of sexual paraphilic, who by her existence and her willingness to talk on videotape about fetish behavior, somehow "proved" the "theory of autogynephilia".
 
1996:
 
By 1996, Anjelica was routinely giving several lectures each year in Prof. Bailey's courses, giving overviews of transsexualism and telling about her own life and gender transition (several of Bailey's other transsexual research subjects were also participating in these lectures, telling their own stories). Anjelica noticed how Bailey was using a variety of videotapes in his course on human sexuality to teach various things, so she decided to make a similarly candid, evocative video that she could use in her lectures in Prof. Bailey's course when teaching about transsexualism and about her own transition.
 
Anjelica compiled this video from fragments of her video files dating from 1985 on to several months after her SRS surgery in 1992 (when she was 41 years old). We call this tape "Anjelica's Transition Tape".
 
This videotape is not self-standing (for example, not all scenes include audio). It was meant for use in lectures by Anjelica in which she spoke while the tape was running, and/or paused the tape at intervals and lectured on the contents to come.
 
The video includes scenes of Anjelica when she was still "Chuck". It also includes a scene in which she appears to be a woman who is masturbating in a squatting position while using a mounted dildo for penetration. This scene was also made while she was still Chuck, with Chuck wearing a facial mask, a wig and other female body-image items, thus appearing to be a woman. Angie uses this scene to describe how she used those fetish items to explore her female sexuality when she was still Chuck. As an artist and visually oriented person, it was natural that she would do such explorations as a part of trying to figure out how to resolve her gender condition.
 
Anjelica's video also includes very beautiful, sensual scenes of her as a now-postop woman playing in Bailey's Falls in LaSalle County, IL (an ironic coincidence of naming). We see her romping in the nude with an attractive man underneath the waterfall. Later in the tape we see a very feminine and sexy Anjelica at 41, discussing her transition and her happiness at being a woman.
 
I have seen this videotape. Taken as a whole, it is a very beautiful one, especially when presented and narrated by Anjelica. If readers of Prof. Bailey's book were to see Anjelica's videotape being narrated by her, most of their negative reactions to Prof. Bailey's descriptions of her in his book would disappear. People would realize that Prof. Bailey has greatly misrepresented her - by focusing in on her fetish activities and thus overemphasizing and caricaturing those activities, and by calling her "masculine" when in fact she is not (as this tape makes only so clear). A picture is worth a thousand words. And a few words can conjure up very strange and misleading images if their is no "picture of reality" to go along with them.
 
Over the next few years, Anjelica showed her tape during her lectures on transsexualism at Northwestern. Her lectures were very well-received and she was given many compliments for her ability to convey the profound nature of her pre-transition angst and her transitional experiences. Never were her video clips seen as prurient, bizarre or shocking, given the context in which they were presented and the student audience to whom they were presented.
 
[ Note: The fact that Anjelica showed her own "Transition" tape as part of her lectures in Bailey's classes by no means suggests that she had given away her rights of research protection or her own control over her personal privacy, nor that other tapes of her could be shown willy-nilly by Bailey without proper authorization ].
 
1998:
 
Sometime in (late?) 1998, Prof. Bailey mentioned to Anjelica that he was writing a book. Anjelica thought he must be writing a textbook that would include many of the things she had had been explaining and teaching to him over the years since they began working together in 1994, and looked forward to working with Prof. Bailey in hopes that some of her teachings might find their way into his book.
 
1999:
 
In February 1999, Megan Gibson published an interview of Prof. Bailey in the Daily Northwestern in which she mentioned that he was working of a book on sexual orientation. Anjelica noticed this mention of a book, recalled Prof. Bailey's earlier mention of writing a book, and again thought that maybe it would also include material on transsexualism. However, she didn't talk to Prof. Bailey after the interview was published so as to find out more about it.
 
Then, sometime in (late?) 1999, Prof. Bailey sent Anjelica a hardcopy "draft" of most of the transsexual chapters of what would later become TMWWBQ.
 
This draft was entitled "Women Who Were Once Boys" (which we abbreviate as WWWOB). The material was almost word for word what is now contained in Pages 139-194 in TMMWWBQ (Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of Section III). In this early draft, Prof. Bailey identified Anjelica by her real name, Anjelica Kieltyka.
 
Upon reading the draft, Anjelica was stunned. She immediately realized that this was not an essay or publication about their collaborative work and discussions on transsexualism. Instead she discovered that Prof. Bailey was pathologizing her as an "autogynephile", whatever that was. She told him that she was "not going to be the poster child for autogynephilia", and further told him "You can't use my story!"
 
Anjelica reports that Prof. Bailey responded that he was going to use her story, but that he would make a concession by changing her name to a pseudonym. He also said "This is my book. You should write your own book".
 
Anjelica had no idea that she might have some recourse or means to keep Prof. Bailey from using her story this way. She assumed that he could do this whether she liked it or not and without her permission, and that there wasn't anything she could do about it.
 
From this point forward, Anjelica's perception of her intellectual relationship with Prof. Bailey changed from one that of a teacher and collaborator to that of an intellectual sparring partner. She now sparred with him often, in efforts to get him to understand the transitional nature of the fetish explorations that some trans women experience, hoping to change his mind about fetish activities and thus change what he had written about her in that "draft". To Prof. Bailey however, such fetish activity marked a transsexual woman as being in a permanent state of sexual paraphilia (i.e., "autogynephilia"). And his "draft" was hardly a draft at all - for it was carried forward almost word for word into his later book, as we shall see.
 
2000:
 
Sometime in early-to-mid 2000, Prof. Bailey posted "Women Who Were Once Boys" in his website at:
http://www.psych.nwu.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/transsexualism.html
 
In the draft Prof. Bailey posted on his website, Prof. Bailey made one small change: He changed Anjelica's name to the pseudonym "Cher".
 
Although Anjelica had a computer by now, and was beginning to use e-mail in her university interactions, she never discovered or learned that Bailey had posted this draft on his website. Nor did she know about the quietly simmering controversy those pages began to trigger out on the web: Over the next two years a long sequence of transsexual women individually came across those pages. Many of them contacted Bailey to alert him that their own personal cases did not fit the two "types of transsexuals" he described there - only to be dismissed by Prof. Bailey as story fabricators or outright liars [Prof. Bailey's numerous rejections of case studies of transsexual women whose profiles did not fit his classification scheme will be the subject of a later investigative report ].
 
[Note: Prof. Bailey deleted his "WWWOB" page from his website soon after the controversy broke out surrounding his book. However, you will find that this page was cached on a number of dates in the Internet Archives at http://www.archive.org (simply enter that page's URL in the archive search and you'll see the stored pages. The first caching of Prof. Bailey's page by the Archive was on 8-15-00; thus the page was likely posted on Prof. Bailey's site in the spring or early summer of 2000. The latest version in the Internet Archive was cached on 12-15-02. All these versions appear to be virtually identical.]
 
 
2001:
 
All during 2000 and 2001, Anjelica thought that there was every hope of changing Prof. Bailey's mind about how to interpret her story, and about the transitory role that fetish rituals may play in some transsexual women's early transitional explorations. In her lectures in his human sexuality classes at Northwestern and in many interactions with Prof. Bailey, she kept on trying to teach and explain her point of view to him and his students.
 
5-11-01:
 
In an e-mail interaction with Prof. Bailey (available as evidence) we see that he is treating her in ways that keep her thinking she has a chance to convince him of her viewpoints regarding autogynephilia as not describing her past and present situation. These e-mails kept her seeing herself as a "colleague" involved in intellectual sparring with Prof. Bailey. She had no clue that Prof. Bailey had already posted WWWOB on the web, that he had never made any changes in his portrayal of her in those chapters, and that he was now building a book around these chapters - for publication in early 2003.
 
 
2002:
 
Sometime in 2002, Prof. Bailey approached his research subjects Anjelica and "Juanita", and asked if they'd be willing to make an interview tape "for a textbook" (he didn't say what textbook). Anjelica agreed to doing this interview, hoping upon hope to have a further chance to teach about the dynamics of transition and modify Bailey's views (or at least reach other psychologists beyond Bailey). She convinced Juanita to also participate in the interview. The video was recorded in a hotel in Chicago. We call this Bailey's 2nd Tape.
 
In this tape, Anjelica explained her ideas on the role of fetish in gender explorations in more detail, and Juanita talked about her transition, her romance and her marriage. No names were used in this taping.
 
Anjelica and Juanita thought that these interviews would be used for some kind of medical textbook with their identities kept confidential. They both trustingly gave written permission to Bailey to use this tape (his 2nd tape). However, we doubt that Northwestern University gave Prof. Bailey permission to make this tape of these research subjects. It's hard to imagine how there could have been such permission, since neither Anjelica nor Juanita knew that they were research subjects. Although they had no clear idea why Prof. Bailey was asking them to participate in this video interview, they trustingly went along with him. He was the authority figure, and even though Anjelica was experiencing growing angst over her inability to open Bailey's mind to her teachings - she nevertheless did what he asked her to do.
 
Remember also that Anjelica still didn't know that WWWOB was on the web, nor that that material was about to emerge a chapters in Prof. Bailey's new book about "the science of transsexualism", soon to be published by the National Academy Press (JHP).
 
[Note: Anjelica has no idea what happened to this 2nd tape made by Prof. Bailey: She has never seen it herself, nor heard of it being used anywhere. She reports that her "teachings" on this tape may have been uneditable into another caricature of her as an autogynephile; maybe that's why we haven't heard of any uses of it.]
 
Early April, 2003:
 
Bailey's new book The Man Who Would Be Queen (TMWWBQ) emerged out onto the market and was posted on-line on the National Academy Press website.
 
Bailey does NOT tell Anjelica Kieltyka that his book had been published and was now on the market, nor did he tell any of the other transsexual research subjects whose stories are also caricatured in his book. The women were left on their own to find out about it from others many weeks from now, after the controversy broke out over the transphobic contents of the book.
 
4-10-03:
 
Lynn Conway learned about the new book, and read through it online. She began alerting close friends about the bizarre contents of the book, and they all jointly confirmed the inflammatory and defamatory nature of the contents. They all also realized that by being published by and thus given credibility by the National Academies, this book represented a very serious emergency for the transsexual community.
 
A small group of key trans women (Lynn Conway, Andrea James, Joan Roughgarden and others) then began an intensive analysis of the book, and began to spread a web-alert about the contents of the book. Being well-known in the trans community for their positive, informative and supportive websites, Andrea James' and Lynn Conway's e-mail alerts were widely forwarded by many trans women. Thus the news about Bailey's book began to spread ever further and faster.
 
4-23-03:
 
Lynn Conway and Andrea James posted new websites specifically aimed at collecting and disseminating community information about the Bailey controversy, as transsexual women from all over the world began forwarding information and ideas to them:
 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/LynnsReviewOfBaileysBook.html
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/bailey-blanchard-lawrence.html
 
A great deal of information and many detailed analyses of the book began to rapidly accumulate on these new websites. As a result, the alert about the book took off like wildfire in the trans community: More and more trans women read portions of the book on the web, learn how defamatory it is, and begin to help in the overall investigation. The participation expanded rapidly as more women joined in the collaborative effort, sharing information on the web about what they are finding, and working together to take on various aspects of the investigation.
 
5-2-03:
 
Julie Ann Johnson, a member of the Chicago Gender Society and also Chairperson of the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE)), telephoned Anjelica and asked "Anjelica, what have you done?" This phone call alerted Anjelica for the very first time that Prof. Bailey's book was already out there, that she'd been caricatured in the book, and that the transsexual community was already in an uproar about the book. Up to this very moment of this phone call at this late date, Anjelica had no clue whatsoever that this book had come out. She was still operating under the impression that she'd be able to teach Prof. Bailey away from his strange views before he published his book, and assumed that as he came close to publishing it would show her more drafts. This phone call from Julie Ann left her shaken and in a state of high anxiety about what this news all meant.
 
5-3-03:
 
Today, 10 days after the controversy had burst out openly on the internet, Anjelica received a copy of TMWWBQ in the mail. It had been sent by Prof. Bailey, but was not signed and there was no note with it. Why did Prof. Bailey send her a copy of the book at this late date? He must have known by now that she'd soon learn of the controversy. He must have begun wondering how she would react and how he could "keep her on his side".
 
Upon seeing and reading the book, Anjelica realized that Bailey had published almost word for word the material she'd read in his draft way back in 1999. He'd changed nothing in response to her heartfelt pleas back then to not use her story, other than to change her name to the pseudonym "Cher". Worse yet, he'd completely outed her by using the real first name ("Chuck") she'd had in her previous life right next to the name "Cher". There was now no way to hide from the shame that would come her way, including from the transsexual community itself.
 
Anjelica was shattered. She now realized that Prof. Bailey had intended all along to publish that old version of her story and to use her as his centerpiece "poster child for autogynephilia". He had merely been humoring her for the past three years with "intellectual discussions", keeping her thinking that he was open to new ideas and open to making revisions in her story.
 
5-4-03:
 
As this all sank into her mind, Anjelica frantically began web searches to learn about the controversy now swirling around the book. She quickly learned that she was being defamed in the transgender community as the "poster child for autogynephilia", and that Prof. Bailey's caricature of her in the book was being used to defame other trans women as being "autogynephiles like Cher".
 
During her frantic searches, Anjelica came across Andrea James' and Lynn Conway's websites. She quickly realized that these sites were the key ones that were coordinating the trans community's responses to the Bailey book controversy. She immediately e-mailed Andrea and Lynn, pleading for their help in clearing her name. Lynn Conway responded by e-mail right away and then got in touch with her by phone. She learned many details of Anjelica's situation over the next week. Importantly for the overall investigation, Conway learned that Anjelica would lead Prof. Bailey's investigators to his other transsexual research subjects.
 
5-11-03:
 
Lynn Conway posted Anjelica's e-mail on the web in a new home page she hosted for Anjelica. As a result, Prof. Bailey quickly became aware that Anjelica had "turned on him".
 
Up to now, there had never been any public link between Anjelica's real name and the name "Cher" in Prof. Bailey's book. However, it was now clear that Cher's true identity was obvious to members of the Chicago transgender community, not only because the book used her old male-name "Chuck:, but also because Bailey's book revealed key details of her life history and her real name itself was used in acknowledgements in the front matter of the book. Prof. Bailey's book had outed Anjelica as being "Cher", and had already revealed many intimate details of her personal life out into the world at large.
 
Therefore, the publication of Prof. Bailey's book forced Anjelica to come forward and via her website attempt to explain to the community how the book was presenting an incomplete and totally misleading caricature of her life. She felt that she had to come forward and plead for help in clearing her name, even though doing so meant facing ridicule as a result of the way Prof. Bailey presented her "story".
 
5-19-03:
 
 
Prof. Bailey called Anjelica to ask if she would come to his office for two reasons: (i) to look at the video of his interview with her in 94/95, and (ii) to meet afterwards with a close colleague of his named Joan Linsenmeier, whom he reported as being upset about the controversy (Prof. Bailey apparently wanted to put peer pressure on Anjelica to stop criticizing his book by showing how the controversy was hurting his colleagues).
 
Anjelica reports that in this meeting Prof. Bailey was anxious to understand why she was so upset with him and with the book, and that he especially mentioned the cover. She reports that he was polite and friendly and appeared to be trying to make amends, and that during the conversation, he casually mentioned that he'd like to continue using the old videotape of her.
 
Anjelica had no clue that Bailey might show that tape in public, and she never gave any authorization whatsoever for any such use. In this meeting on the 19th she thought that maybe he was referring to showing that old taped interview of her to other psychologists and researchers, as was her original understanding, and that maybe now he wanted to show it to students in his human sexuality class.
 
Even now at this late stage in the events, with the controversy having already broken out into the open, Anjelica believed that the 94/95 interview tape would speak on her behalf to other scientists, and that it would be viewed as a rebuttal to Prof. Bailey's perspective - so she didn't sense anything strange in his mentioning of that tape.
 
But she never imagined what he'd actually do with it within less than two weeks (see 6-02-03, below).
 
Anjelica never signed any form of release for showing this tape, even for professional scientific uses. She simply assumed that Prof. Bailey was abiding with whatever rules there were for using research interview tapes among researchers. All along she simply did what he asked. He was an eminent authority figure, and she trusted that everything he was doing was ethical and appropriate for doing science. She still felt this way (and for just a little while longer), even though she was shocked and stunned by his open use of a gross caricature of her life story in his book.
 
After the meeting, Anjelica met with Joan Linsenmeier, a lecturer in Psychology at Northwestern, and tried to console her about the controversy. Although clueless about transsexualism, Linsenmeier had been called upon by Bailey to play a major role in the editing of the book (and had been credited for that in the Preface). Linsenmeier had done the editing without having the common-sense to recognize how terribly offensive the book would be to transsexual women. Thus she never raised any questions about the defamatory writing in the book - and was apparently blind-sided upon learning that the book was now being perceived as very hateful and harmful by the transsexual community.
 
Later in 5-03:
 
We have considerable evidence (e-mails, eyewitness reports, etc.) that during the rest of this month Prof. Bailey was increasingly on the defensive against the rapidly spreading condemnation of his book in the trans community. He began frequently defending himself against the growing criticisms by telling his colleagues that the criticisms were coming only from a small handful of "hysterical transsexuals" who didn't like what his sound science said about them.
 
At the same time, Prof. Bailey postured as being a friend of many disenfranchised transsexuals who'd relied on him for mentoring and help. His colleagues at Northwestern had known about and seen Prof. Bailey with the several trans women who over the years had been friendly with him and had lectured in his courses (Anjelica and several other young research subjects). However, his colleagues had no idea that this wasn't an ongoing stream of many, many transsexual women , but only the same tiny group of research subjects over and over again lecturing in his classes. Thus his colleagues gained the impression that Prof. Bailey was very well-connected throughout the trans community, which he most definitely was not.
 
There is clear evidence of this deception of his colleagues by Prof. Bailey: He never told any of his those young transsexual research subjects that his book had come out!. Now why is that? If they loved him and he was in great favor with him, you'd think the first thing he'd do would be to share his new book with them and perhaps give each of them copies of his book.
 
Ah, but he knew what their reactions would be and how shocked they'd be by the book. By not telling them that the book had come out, he prevented them from realizing what had happened for a while - and he prevented them from joining in on the immediate trans community response to the book.
 
The silence of the local trans women who'd been his research subjects was then spun by Prof. Bailey and taken by his colleagues as an indication of the ongoing support of Prof. Bailey by the "many trans women he knew".
 
The other research subjects (other than Anjelica, who'd gotten a copy of the book in early May) didn't know about the book until well into June, when Anjelica met with them and showed it to them. As you might predict, they were totally shocked just as Anjelica had been, once they saw how Prof. Bailey had caricatured their stories and lives (in their cases calling them homosexual men - even though they were postoperative transsexual women).
 
But by now Prof. Bailey had created among his colleagues and the faculty members in his department the illusion that he was besieged by a small handful of hysterical "anti-science" transsexuals, while being widely supported by the large number of inner-city disenfranchised trans women he'd claimed he had befriended and helped. This was an illusion and a calculated deception: He knew full well that the entire transgender community was outraged by his book, and that he had tried to keep the few trans women who'd been his research subjects from even knowing that the book had been published so as to insure their silence at this critical stage of the controversy.
 
On the other hand, this was a small consolation, and he must have been feeling besieged by the dramatic and unexpected scope of the response to his book and to the theory of transsexualism within it. Only something like that would explain what he did next in his efforts to "defend his theory".
 
6-02-03:
 
On this day, Prof. Bailey showed selected excerpts from his old 94/95 research interview videotape of Anjelica in a public book-promotional lecture at UCLA. He showed only that part of the videotape during which Anjelica talks about using a facial mask and other fetish items in an episode in her earlier life.
 
Prof. Bailey then cut the tape short, before Anjelica had explained how fetish items were transformative and how such episodes earlier in her life helped her think through and visualize and explore her female identity and sexuality prior to transition. By cutting her off in mid-sentence at a crucial point in the tape, Prof. Bailey kept Anjelica from "speaking for herself" via this interview tape. Instead he censored the key parts of her narration, enabling him to reinterpret the contents in such a way as to support HIS theory.
 
[ These events can be confirmed by listening to the audio CD evidence, by obtaining and viewing the 94/95 interview tape, by having Anjelica synchronize and point out things in the CD audio and the interview tape, and by contacting and interviewing the eyewitnesses to the UCLA lecture. We are submitting a copy of the audio CD evidence to Northwestern University's Office for the Protection of Research Subjects for their use in their investigation of Prof. Bailey. ]
 
 
Viewers of the selected excepts in that interview tape were left with the totally incorrect impression that the woman in the tape (who appears to be a rather normal woman after her sex change) is talking about still using these fetish items - i.e., putting on masks and fake breasts and a fake vagina - even after her transition.
 
The effect on the viewers is clear: You can even hear one woman in the audience burst out saying "she's psychotic"!
 
In his lecture Bailey publicly identified the research subject on the tape as being "Anjelica Kieltyka", and said that Anjelica is the "Cher" in this book. Anjelica never gave Bailey permission to use this tape, much less show selected excepts from it, much less name her as Cher in public. Remember, Prof. Bailey's book had publicly outed her, and she had come forward on the web in order to try to clear her name - but she had NOT at this point in time come out to the general public as being "Cher". She had only reached out into the transgender community thus far.
 
Now, why would Bailey make such a huge breach of research ethics by showing a research interview videotape without authorizations from his university's Institutional Review Board (IRB) and from the research subject involved? What on earth would motivate him to do this?
 
There is only one area of motivation that we can imagine:
 
By this time, Prof. Bailey was undoubtedly feeling that his "science" was under severe attack, in particular his theory that many/most transsexual women are sexual paraphilics (i.e., "autogynephiles"). He must have thought that this videotape would prove the existence of "autogynephiles" (especially the way he excerpted it) by openly demonstrating what he was claiming to be a classic case.
 
We also sense another parallel motivation for showing this tape: By publicly stigmatizing Anjelica as an "autogynephile", and a psychotic one at that (given the manner in which it was used), Prof. Bailey greatly reduced Anjelica's future credibility as a critic of his research. He could now claim that she simply didn't like his scientific research conclusions, because they painted her in a bad light as a sexual paraphilic.
 
In addition to using that old research interview videotape as a tool to support his theory and to malign Anjelica's credibility as a critic, Prof. Bailey also used it as a tool for intimidating her and other trans women into silence in the future.
 
In fact we are now documenting considerable evidence that Prof. Bailey has used the label of "autogynephile" as a weapon to defame and attempt to silence other trans women who have also recently criticized his book, including Prof. Deirdre McCloskey of the University of Illinois at Chicago. [ We will report on that line of investigation in a later report ].
 
6-04-03:
 
Two days after this lecture, Prof. Bailey sent an e-mail to Anjelica (which is available as evidence). The e-mail is written in a disarming and friendly tone. In among other things in the e-mail, he casually says:
 
"I show your videotape in my lectures, and it is a powerful effect. I always say you don't agree with me, and that we are friends." - Bailey, 6-04-03.
 
Why would Prof. Bailey send this e-mail to Anjelica, and at this particular time? Especially since Anjelica had no clue that he had just shown that old videotape in a public book-promotion lecture at UCLA?
 
We surmise that he was trying to establish, by (and hoping for) a lack of any e-mail response from Anjelica, that by such inaction she might later be made to indirectly appear that she had "given him permission" to openly show that tape at UCLA. He'd just shown the tape, and was probably getting worried about what might happen if news of these events got back to Anjelica.
 
However, remember that Anjelica still had no clue as to what Prof. Bailey really meant by "show the tape", other than her earlier impression that he might show it to other researchers, at research seminars, etc. She reports having no clue that he has already shown it publicly to support his theoretical position against her, and to simultaneously diminish her credibility as a critic of his book. Thus she made no response to his e-mail, figuring that he was just trying to reassure her that he was generally telling people that she disagreed with him.
 
By such tactics of deception against Anjelica, Prof. Bailey became increasingly successful in defaming her, even within the transgender community itself (see evidence of this below). Many trans women were in attendance at the public UCLA lecture, including prominent transgender advocates who went there to gain firsthand exposure to Prof. Bailey and his activities. The comment "she's psychotic" must have had a great impact on them.
 
As the backlash against Prof. Bailey's book spread rapidly throughout the transgender community over the next couple of months, so too did defamatory images of Anjelica - via the book itself and via fast-spreading word-of-mouth news about Prof. Bailey's lecture at UCLA.
 
6-21-03:
 
Based on evidence accumulated from many sources, including Lynn Conway's Bailey Investigation Website, Andrea James' BBL Clearinghouse, and NTAC's leadership observations of Prof. Bailey's behavior at UCLA, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition released a Press Release condemning Bailey's book.
 
This NTAC Press Release was an unambiguous signal that TMWWBQ was being widely rejected as defamatory and as harmful junk science by the transgender community. Prof. Bailey could no longer contend that "the protest was merely by a handful of activists who didn't like his scientific results".
 
7-03:
 
A number of complaints of research misconduct were filed during July 2003 against Prof. Bailey at Northwestern (including complaint by Anjelica Kieltyka). Several complainants charged Prof. Bailey with research misconduct by using them as research subjects without ever telling them they were research subjects, and that he then revealed intimate details of their personal lives in his book without their permission. As a result, they (and those details about their lives) were outed into the trans community (where many people could identify them, even though pseudonyms were used). Furthermore, trans women in general were defamed by the way these research subject's stories were caricatured in Bailey's book:
 
Anjelica Kieltyka files formal complaint with Northwestern University, 7-03-03
Second research subject, "Victoria", files misconduct complaint, 7-14-03
A third research subject files research misconduct complaint, 7-23-03
Deirdre McCloskey and Lynn Conway file a formal complaint, 7-29-03
A fourth research subject files a formal complaint against Bailey, 7-30-03
 
Summer 2003:
 
During the summer of 2003, many additional transgender organizations took negative positions on the book. The International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) also began studying the controversy and began preparing reviews and commentary regarding the book for it's Fall and Winter issues of the Journal of the IFGE.
 
During this same period, wide notice was also given to the controversy by the gay media, academic media and mainstream media, as news of the controversy swirled world-wide in and beyond the trans community.
 
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6-20-03,
Story on J. M. Bailey - aka 'Dr. Sex'
 
National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC)
Press Release about J.Michael Bailey's book; 6-21-03
 
Diverse City Magazine, July 2003:
"To Call a Woman a Queen: A Northwestern psychologist’s
sex theories ignore experiences of gender dysphoria"
 
The Daily Northwestern, 7-17-03:
Subjects question NU prof's research
Women say Bailey used stories in recent book without consent
 
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7-17-03:
2 Transsexual Women Say Professor
Didn't Tell Them They Were Research Subjects!!
 
Chicago Free Press 7-23-03:
Writing in the Midwest's #1 Gay Newspaper, Paul Varnell exposes
"BAILEY ON GAY FEMININITY"
 
Chicago Free Press 7-23-03:
Weird Science: J. Michael Bailey's “The Man Who Would Be Queen”
By Kim McNabb
 
The Daily Northwestern, 7-24-03:
"Third complaint filed against sex research"
 
Associated Press, 7-25-03:
"Transsexuals accuse professor of research misconduct"
 
Articles on the Bailey controversy appear in
Science Now.com and Science magazine
on July 18th and 25th, 2003
 
Chicago Tribune, 29 July 2003:
"Author is ripped for transsexual research"
Northwestern professor taken to task over his book's findings
and whether he informed people he met that they were being studied
 
Chicago Tribune, 30 July, 2003
Associated Press Story in the WOMAN NEWS SECTION:
"Transsexuals file complaints over book"
 
The Daily Northwestern, 7-31-03:
Transsexuals file 2 more claims against Bailey
 
Fall 2003:
 
As we entered the Fall of 2003, evidence accumulated of the very deep and widespread condemnation of Prof. Bailey's book by the overall transgender community. Evidence also began accumulating that the book had damaged Anjelica Kieltyka's good name in the transgender community - just as she had feared would happen.
 
For example, two reviews of Bailey's book appeared in the Fall Issue (#103) of Transgender Tapestry: The Journal of the International Foundation for Gender Education. The first review, by the Editor, is short and to the point. The second review contains a detailed analysis of the book by Christine Beatty. Both reviews are well-reasoned, damning critiques of Bailey's book and of its terrible impact on trans women.
 
In the second review in this Journal, you will find the following lines:
 
On page 167 he bluntly states that "autogynephilia is not primarily a disorder of gender identity" and instead, several pages later, labels it a "sexual preference." He suggests it is a paraphilia, lumping it in with sadomasochism, exhibitionism, necrophilia, besitality and pedophilia! Then, while he "hesitates" to link autogynephiliac transsexualism with these others, he believes them to have causes in common: paraphilias occur almost exclusively in men and they tend to go together. The implication is that autogynephiliacs may also be pedophiles, etc. As if this isn’t enough he spends six entire pages recounting the tale of a "research" subject he named "Cher" who, before transition, had conducted her identity quest with the aid of fetish wear. Bailey turns Cher's story into a prurient one, and then, admitting he “never met anyone like Cher before,” calls her a “wonderful example” of autogynephilia.
 
 
This segment of the review makes an important point by showing an example of the oft incredible inconsistency in Bailey's logic, in this case taking one research subject of a type he'd never met before, and extending a caricature of that case to define and defame an entire class of people.
 
However, we also see in this segment how Prof. Bailey has reduced Anjelica Kieltyka's life to nothing more than bizarre sexuality presented out of context. This is direct evidence of how damaging his book has been to Anjelica out within the transgender community. Prof. Bailey has indeed turned Anjelica into the "poster child for autogynephilia", whatever that is.
 
This happened to Anjelica because she was open and trusting and poured her heart out to Prof. J. Michael Bailey. She tried to teach him that for many trans women their pretransition sexual explorations are a natural passing phase in the complex process of sorting out their inner nature and making sound decisions regarding transition. And after transition and assimilation as women, the pre-transition experiences of these women have no more meaning in their lives than the bizarre teenage masturbatory misadventures of adult men like Bailey have in their lives now.
 
However, Prof. Bailey never listened to any of that. All those years when Anjelica thought she was Prof. Bailey's colleague and collaborator, he surreptitiously studied and documented her as a research subject, preparing to characterize her and classify her in a defamatory way - in direct opposition to everything she'd been trying to explain to him.
 
Instead of writing in depth about her advocacy work with young disenfranchised trans women, and about how she helped many of these women through their transitions, and how she is still their friend and mentor today - instead of writing about her own success in transition, even though she herself was disadvantaged by circumstances in many ways - instead of writing about her thoughts about how sexual explorations are a natural part of the transitional experience - he wrote about and reduced her to a bizarre sexual ritual, a ritual which many readers mistakenly presume that she engages in to this day.
 
Even worse, Bailey did this to a research subject whom he knew was suffering from life-long depression, who was unable to work, who was living on disability income, and thus whose feelings, well being and indeed physical health were very vulnerable. Anjelica's advocacy work, her intellectual interactions with Prof. Bailey and her lecturing in his classes at Northwestern had been a big part of her post-transition life. Her outlook and her life were much improved after her transition, even in the face of ongoing episodes of depression. But all of this collapsed when Prof. Bailey's book came out.
 
When Anjelica realized that she had been defamed in this way by Prof. Bailey's book, she tried to save her good name by openly coming to the transgender community for help via her webpage on May 11, 2003.
 
And what did Prof. Bailey do? He turned on her: Just three weeks later on June 2, 2003, he began showing without the University's or Anjelica's authorization that old research interview tape of her from 1994-5, selecting and showing only the part where she talks about fetish artifacts and experiences, leaving out the part where she explains the meaning of those experiences - as if this would "prove that Anjelica really was an autogynephile" and thus prove the existence of autogynephilia.
 
It is ironic that the review reported here was published by the same IFGE that had awarded Anjelica a $1500 scholarship in 1999. She received that scholarship for being an open and proud transsexual woman student, so that she could study a service-related curriculum (psychology) at Northwestern University. It is even more ironic that the scholarship was supported by Julie Ann Johnson of Anjelica's local Chicago Gender Society (CGS). This explains why Anjelica was so disturbed when she heard the news of Prof. Bailey's book from Julie Ann. Anjelica reports that she suddenly feared that she was now viewed as a psychotic autogynephiliac and a defamer of the trans community for collaborating with Prof. Bailey on his awful book - even though she'd tried so hard the past few years to teach Prof. Bailey the error of his ways.
 
It is hard to imagine how terribly Anjelica has been harmed and how much she has suffered on account of these events. She wonders how she can function as a psychology student at Northwestern University, in the very department now Chaired by J. Michael Bailey. And how can she get her good name back in the trans community? How can she ever restart her volunteer work as a mentor to young trans women? And how can she recover emotionally, at age 52 and already on SSI, from the anxiety and added depression she is suffering because of Prof. Bailey's book?
 
I myself have seen her physical and emotional health steadily decline since June 2003. Ever since she learned about the book coming out, Anjelica has been unable to sleep regularly due to intense anxiety about what it is doing to her good name and to her future prospects in life.
 
All this happened because Anjelica Kieltyka became a trusting research subject of Professor J.Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, thinking that she could do some good for transsexual women by helping this "famous scientist" learn about our lives.
 
10-07-03: Evidence in the form of an audio CD of Bailey's complete lecture at UCLA was filed with the Office for the Protection of Research Subjects at Northwestern University, for their use in their investigation of Prof. Bailey's research misconduct. This audio CD documents Bailey's showing during his public lecture at UCLA of the specially selected except from his old 94/95 research interview video of Anjelica. The CD clarifies the nature of his usage of that tape, as can be confirmed by listening to audio CD evidence, by obtaining and viewing the 94/95 interview tape and having Anjelica synchronize and point out things in the CD audio and the interview tape, and also by contacting and interviewing the eyewitnesses to the UCLA lecture.
 
 

Evidence supports extremely serious charges of research misconduct:
 
Whatever anyone thinks of transsexual women, it seems likely that fair minded people everywhere will find that Prof. Bailey's conducting of surreptitious "research" on people who did not know that they were research subjects is a very serious violation of research ethics.
 
Fair-minded people will also find Prof. Bailey's public showing of clips from that old research interview videotape of a research subject (Anjelica Kieltyka), without ever having received any authorization to show that tape, is also a very serious violation of research ethics.
 
It also seems likely that fair minded people will have even harsher reactions to Prof. Bailey's misuse of that tape once they fully grasp his motivations for showing that tape: He deliberately showed the tape and, openly using her real name, defamed his research subject by caricaturing her as an "autogynephile".
 
Why on earth would he do this? The only explanation that makes any sense is that he was trying to defend against that research subject's complaints that his interpretations of her behavior in support of his theory were erroneous, and to defend against her complaints that she was being defamed by his book.
 
It's as if Prof. Bailey is applying the following amoral logic: "I gotcha Anjelica! That videotape excerpt proves to everybody that autogynephilia exists and that you are an "autogynephile", so now you can't complain anymore about me defaming you as an autogynephile in my book!"
 
What's wrong with this picture?
 
It's called research misconduct, in this case in the form of gross inhumanity towards and defamation of a human research subject.
 
 


 

 
This page is part of Lynn Conway's
"Investigative report into the publication of
J. Michael Bailey's book on transsexualism
by the National Academies"