EXPOSED, 7-21-03:

Bailey is NOT even a member of HBIGDA!!!

 

 

 

In one of the more startling developments in this investigation, we just learned on July 21, 2003 from a member of the board of directors of HBIGDA that J. Michael Bailey is not a member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA).

 

HBIGDA is THE international organization of researchers and caregivers to transgender and transsexual people, and those who are not members do not have access to the very large body of emergent knowledge that is communicated interactively in this association's meetings and networks of mutual interest groupings.

 

For Bailey to claim to be an authority on transsexualism without being a member of HBIGDA, without actively attending their meetings, and without referencing their latest thinking is patently ridiculous. For him to not be the least bit curious about their work would be like a physicist to claim to be an "authority on physics" without ever knowing or even interacting with anyone who belonged to the American Physical Society. To not be in HBIGDA means Bailey is an "outsider" to the worldwide community of professionals concerned with transsexualism - an outsider who doesn't even know the right terms to use for things. It is no wonder his terminology and thinking is so confused, old-timey and defamatory - he is simply unaware of the main stream of current knowledge regarding transsexualism.

 

It now seems that Bailey work was never presented to, scrutinized by or critiqued by HBIGDA members prior to its publication, and it shows it.

 

We never thought to even check whether Bailey belonged to HBIGDA. That he would not be a member seemed inconceivable. We simply assumed that he was a member and that many HBIGDA members must have supported his work! That is why we did not issue our HBIGDA Alert till later on (7-14-03), after we'd began to build a strong case for research misconduct against Bailey and thus thought that maybe HBIGDA would finally become concerned.

 

Instead we found that Bailey was not a member of HBIGDA and that the HBIGDA leadership were stunned at was he was doing as pointed out in our Alert.

 

Note that instead of belonging to HBIGDA, Bailey belongs to an obscure group of "professional sexologists" in general sexological practice - a group named the International Academy of Sex Research (IASR). Very few members of IASR know anything about transsexualism, so Bailey can get away with being an ignorant researcher outside of the HBIGDA mainstream when presenting his "research results" to that group.

 

 

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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"

 

 

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