Dear graduate students:
The widely respected Southern Poverty Law Center has now come forward on the realities and causes of the terrible wave of hate crimes against transgender and transsexual women now rampant in many U.S. cities.
The Winter 2003 SPLC Intelligence Report (Issue 112) directly links these acts to the parallel historical legacy of discrimination against people of color, alternative religion, and lifestyle. The Intelligence Report also exposes the role played by academic bigots and right-wing pundits in their attempt to legitimize and promote their pseudo-science and thereby justify and intensify the prejudice and hatred of transgender people.
With this letter we wish to inform you that the Intelligence Report identifies J. Michael Bailey, Chairman of Psychology at Northwestern, as a key figure in an elite reactionary group of academics, pundits and journalists now especially active in a noxious "scientific" and "scholarly" pursuit of institutionalized bigotry and defamation of transsexual women:
We are socially assimilated trans women who are mentors to many young transsexuals in transition. Unable to bear children of our own, the girls we mentor become like children to us.
These young women depend on us for guidance during the difficult period of transition and then on during their adventures afterwards - dating, careers, marriages and sometimes adoption of their own children. As a result, we have large extended families and are blessed by these relationships.
Through our extended families we know first-hand how Bailey's junk science is hurting young trans women. Struggling to transition in a society already dangerously hateful towards them, they must now face officially sanctioned stereotypes and defamations heaped onto them by this "sex scientist" - and watch in shock as his pseudo-science fuels the social hatred of them.
We see the reality of the pain being inflicted by this pseudo-science on these innocent young women. We know firsthand of cases where it is destroying their relationships with families and friends, limiting or even ruining their chances for employment, and causing deep emotional angst. One woman wrote to us describing how her mother came running into her bedroom after reading Bailey's book, and threw the book at her shouting "Now I know what you are!"...
You may wonder why hundreds of successful, assimilated trans women like us, women from all across the country, are being so persistent in investigating Mr. Bailey and reporting his misdeeds. Now you have your answer: We are hundreds of loving moms whose children he is tormenting!
In conclusion:
Only by reading the SPLC Investigative Report, and then stepping back and grasping the tragic realities of the social context into which Mr. Bailey launched himself, ingratiated himself, surreptitiously conducted research studies, and then published his "results" - only then can one see the exploitive and predatory nature of his work, the true dimensions of the misconduct, and the horrific impact of the resulting pseudo-science on vulnerable young lives.
Sadly, the present generation of psychologists has thus failed us, and failed us most terribly. As graduate students you represent a different future. We hope that you will be more mindful and careful to serve the best interests of the future generations of diverse and variant children.
As you go forward, think of questions now on our minds: Can we trust you to raise the standards of care, compassion and understanding in your role as "Guardians and Trustees of the Psyche"? Will your young and creative minds serve well other young minds - some fragile and broken? And most importantly, can we trust you with our children...with their future?
Future generations of children, diverse and variant, yours and ours, must be made safe from prejudice and hate, on the streets and alleys of our cities and in our school and college classrooms. Our children must no longer be exploited, victimized, and made to look pathetic and ridiculous by fraudulent and dubious researchers, academics and yes, even some who are your colleagues and "friends". It has to stop here and now.
We urge you to suspend disbelief. Read the SPLC Intelligence
Report for yourselves, and explore the further information
below. Then contemplate the role that some psychologists, including
your Department Chair, are playing in fostering hate and violence
against young transsexual women.
Respectfully,
Anjelica Kieltyka
Transsexual Advocate and Mentor
Berwyn, Illinois
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Anjelica.html
Lynn Conway
Transsexual Advocate and Mentor
Ann Arbor, Michigan
http://www.lynnconway.com
Andrea James
Transsexual Advocate and Mentor
Hollywood, California
http://www.tsroadmap.com/
Calpernia Addams
Transsexual Advocate and Mentor
Hollywood, California
http://www.calpernia.com
For more about us, see our webpages (above) and also the attached photos (below):
Among other things, you'll learn of our advocacy and mentoring of young trans women. Many of the women we've worked with have experienced hate and violence of the kinds reported in the SPLC Investigative Report. All of us have been touched by violence against those we know and love, most especially Calpernia:
Calpernia's boyfriend Pfc. Barry Winchell was the Army Airborne soldier who was murdered in 1999 by his Army buddies simply for loving her. Barry's buddies murdered him in a rage over their perception that he himself was "homosexual", when all he'd done was fall in love with a beautiful transgender woman. That tragic story is told in the recent Showtime movie "Soldier's Girl", now available on DVD:
http://www.calpernia.com/index.html?soldiersgirl/index.html~mainFrame
We ask you as aspiring psychologists to watch that DVD, and then reflect on the role that a handful of psychologists are now playing in fueling widespread hatred of gender variant people. Only then will you gain an appreciation of the national implications of "queered sex-research" such as that done by Mr. Bailey at Northwestern.
Attachments:
Photos (p.4), "Bailey on Homosexuality": a related issue to examine (p.5), References (p.7).
p.5
Bailey on homosexuality:
Bailey's thoughts about eugenics solutions to the "evolutionary paradox" of homosexuality:
Direct quotes from The Man Who Would Be Queen, by J.
Michael Bailey
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/
(p.114) "What would make avoiding gay children wrong?"
(p.114) "For example, some of the people raising the spector of "murdering gay babies" were the same people who insisted that abortion is no one's business but the woman's..."
(p.114) "Instead, the real question is whether parental selection in favor of heterosexuality is acceptable. To focus on this question, we have to assume that whatever means parents will use to do this are, in themselves, morally acceptable"
(p.115) "So the next question is whether selecting for heterosexual children would cause any harm?" Certainly being straight rather than gay doesn't harm the child itself."
(p.115) "Homosexuality might be the most striking unresolved paradox of human evolution.
(p.116) "Homosexuality is evolutionary maladaptive."
(p.116) ""Evolutionary maladaptive" sounds like an insult, but it isn't."
(p.116) "The desire to have sex with members of the opposite sex helps people have sex that might result in offspring. The number of healthy offspring one leaves if perhaps the best indicator of evolutionary success."
For an example of Bailey's thinking on the topic of "sexual-orientation
eugenics", see:
"Parental Selection of Children's Sexual Orientation",
Aaron S. Greenberg and J. Michael Bailey, Archives of Sexual Behavior
30 (4): 423-437, August 2001
Abstract: As we learn more about the causes of sexual orientation, the likelihood increases that parents will one day be able to select the orientation of their children. This possibility (at least that of selecting for heterosexuality) has generated a great deal of concern among supporters of homosexual rights, with such selection being widely condemned as harmful and morally repugnant. Notwithstanding this widespread condemnation, and even assuming, as we do, that homosexuality is entirely acceptable morally, allowing parents, by means morally unproblematic in themselves, to select for heterosexuality would be morally acceptable. This is because allowing parents to select their children's sexual orientation would further parent's freedom to raise the sort of children they wish to raise and because selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm.
Keywords: homosexuality, sexual orientation, genetics, abortion, eugenics, genetic selection
http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=301061
p.6
Bailey is active in the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), where he expresses concern about the "evolutionary paradox" of homosexuality:
At the Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
5 June 1999, Bailey organized a
Symposium entitled: "Constraining evolutionary hypotheses
of human male homosexuality" (10.4)
Symposium abstract Human homosexuality is an evolutionary paradox. Homosexual people would seem to be at a substantial reproductive disadvantage, yet they exist in nontrivial numbers. These facts have motivated intense evolutionary speculation.
Bailey also presented a paper on "Empirical tests of two
evolutionary hypotheses of male homosexuality" at that Symposium.
It is at this same 1999 HBES conference that Bailey organized
and presented Gregory Cochran's "pathogen theory" of
Homosexuality in a forum comprised of many of Bailey's fellow
members of Steve Sailer's HBI "Think Tank" and/or are
the alleged neo-eugenicists and race scientists mentioned in SPLC's
"Queer Science" report - Kevin MacDonald (HBES sec./archivist
-1998); Rushton (HBES - 1998, 2002, 2003); Buss (HBES - 1998,
1999, 2000, 2002, 2003); Pinker (HBES - 2000)
http://www.hbes.com/HBES/abst99.htm
Attached is an e-mail Anjelica Kieltyka received from Riki Conrey, a grad student at NU, re the SPLC report.
The letter provides significant evidence regarding the state of mind and reactions of the psychology graduate students at Northwestern concerning the investigation of Mr. Bailey's research misconduct and to the recent SPLC revelations about Bailey's involvement with hatemongers and eugenicists in HBI and VDARE.
In her e-mail, Conrey says "As a student and friend of Michael Bailey, I have remained out of the largely ignorant debate over his latest book".
Translation: "I have remained uninformed regarding the debate about Michael Bailey's book, because I am his friend and can't face hearing bad things about him. Nevertheless, I am sure that the debate is largely ignorant".
Even though ignorant about the actual debate, she accuses SPLC and Bailey's critics of intentional and blatant misrepresentation:
"As a social psychologist, I find it disturbing that
this debate largely hinges on what I can only hope is an intentional
and blatant misinterpretation of science; theory; the scientific
method; and, most distressingly, evolutionary theory."
This student must sense what the Bailey investigation has already
demonstrated, namely that Bailey has made intentional and blatant
misrepresentations of science in his theory, his scientific method
and his application of evolutionary theory...however, Conrey projects
those motivations onto SPLC and onto Bailey's critics.
She then reiterates Bailey's frequent but totally unfounded charge that his critics are trying to censor his important scientific work:
"I find the attempt to silence meaningful attempts to understand biological and psychological components of sexualities, especially minority sexualities reprehensible."
Of course she ignores the fact that it is Bailey who has been the censor: He has for years worked feverishly to prevent any evidence counter to his theory from being made visible amongst his colleagues - especially evidence that the vast majority of transsexual women do not fit into his strange classification scheme. If this student doubts this, she should study the case studies of over 130 women in the following pages, and ask herself: "Has Bailey ever presented all these case studies and explained how his theory explains them?. Did he even show any curiousity about these many cases? Or has he instead censored this important evidence?":
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSsuccesses.html
In order to inflate her own position and disqualify Bailey's critics, Conrey then appeals to her status as an "expert" authority, indicating that only expert psychologists (such as her) are qualified to criticize Mr. Bailey:
"Fortunately, as professional psychologists, all of the graduate students to whom you sent this are experts in making such criticisms, and I can assure you that the genuine debate on this book is taking place despite your efforts."
However, Conrey's "professional psychologist" e-mail is itself powerful evidence that many psychology students and colleagues of Michael Bailey at Northwestern University are deliberately choosing to remain uninformed about the debate about Bailey's scientific misconduct.
Nevertheless, such persons still feel qualified by their status as "experts" to totally dismiss anyone who dares complain about Bailey's research misconduct; after all, those critics are not "experts". Such is the state of graduate education in psychology these days, at least at Northwestern University.
Even though uninformed about the actual debate, and unlikely to have even read the SPLC Intelligence Report, this student concludes:
"As a former financial contributor to the SPLC, I expected better from this organization"
Translation: "Don't confuse me with facts and evidence, and shoot any messengers bearing bad news."
Then, in her PS she says: ""Eugenics"? Please."
Translation: "Especially don't confuse me with all that evidence that Bailey is involved in science discussion groups concerned with "the gay germ" and eugenic solutions for parents who do not want gay children..."
The Northwestern University psychology graduate student's e-mail follows:
----- Original Message -----
From: <f-conrey@northwestern.edu>
To: <CherAngelCat@aol.com>
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Intelligence Report
on
Transgender Hate Crime
Dear SPLC,
What a terrible shame that you sent this to me. As a student
and friend
of Michael Bailey, I have remained out of the largely ignorant
debate
over his latest book. As a social psychologist, I find it disturbing
that
this debate largely hinges on what I can only hope is an intentional
and
blatant misinterpretation of science; theory; the scientific method;
and,
most distressingly, evolutionary theory. As a lesbian, I find
the attempt
to silence meaningful attempts to understand biological and psychological
components of sexualities, especially minority sexualities reprehensible.
In this case, I believe that silence will certainly not protect
us.
While there are genuine and meaningful criticisms of the science
and
statistics associated with this work, your e-mail did not include
any.
As a former financial contributor to the SPLC, I expected better
from
this organization. I suppose we are all disappointed in small
ways every
day. Please refrain in future from sending me propaganda.
Thank you,
Riki Conrey
Northwestern University
P.S. "Eugenics"? Please.