-
- 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