August 5, 2003:
 
Anjelica Kieltyka challenges Dr. James Cantor
of the Trans-Notorious Clarke Institute
regarding his Glowing Review of Bailey's Book
 
 
 
The American Psychologial Association's Division 44 2003 Summer Newsletter contained a review of J. Michael Bailey's book by Dr. James Cantor of the notorious Clarke Institute (now known as the Center for Addiction and Mental Health) in Toronto, Canada. (A copy of the review is included below).
 
In July 2003, selected quotes from Cantor's review appeared on the National Academy Press website. To our amazement these quotes suggested that the American Psychological Association was endorsing Bailey's book and considered Bailey to be sympathetic and respectful of his research subjects - all this at a time when Cantor well knew that a storm of controversy had erupted regarding Bailey's defamatory writings:
 
"...the first scientifically grounded book about male femininities written for a general audience. ...Bailey sympathetically portrays these peoples' experiences and explores the roots of their development. · Bailey's respect for the people he describes serves as a role model for others who still struggle to accept and appreciate homosexuality and transsexuality in society."
-- Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues (American Psychological Association) newsletter, summer 2003
 
 
Upon reading this endorsement, many trans women realized that Bailey and Cantor had pulled a fast one by using Division 44's good name to create the impression that the APA itself endorsed Bailey's book - endorsing it as scientific and transfriendly when in fact it is unscientific and transphobic. The book is in fact one of the most insidious literary attacks on trans women ever created.
 
Trans women have known for years how Blanchard, Cantor, Zucker, Bradley and others at the Clarke Institute classify and caricature transsexual women as two types of "transsexual men", just as Bailey does in his book. For example, consider this report from a trans woman who attended a July 9, 2003 presentation on transsexualism by Cantor at the Clarke Institute:
 
"A most striking and disturbing issue was raised at the very beginning of Cantor's presentation. Like Blanchard and many members of the psychiatric community, Cantor refers to transsexuals based on their birth gender. Therefore, what any modern, reasonable person would refer to as a transsexual woman (a woman who was assigned the gender "male" at birth), Cantor and the CAMH refers to as a "transsexual man", or even, later, a "male homosexual transsexual." - in TransHealth.com Issue 1, Volume 3 Summer 2003
 
Upon seeing Cantor's DIV 44 book review exploited in the National Academy website as an apparant APA endorsement of Bailey's book, and realizing how defamatory are Cantor's own views towards trans women, a group of senior academics wrote an open e-mail letter to the Division 44 membership on August 5, 2003, alerting them to this misuse of their good name to promote Bailey's transphobic book.
 
 
In the meantime, Anjelica Kieltyka was shaken by Cantor's detailed discussion of her story yet again in his review, with its new tangles of innuendo about her life. Cantor disingenously calls her "a star" and warmly honors her there. Why did he do this? He knew full well that a big controversy had already erupted. He and Baily must have been concerned about what Anjelica might do. Just a few weeks later, Bailey made a special effort to bring this review to Anjelica and show it to her - right at the time she was challenging him and bolting from her long-term collaboration with him - right when she was reaching out to the trans community for help. Bailey and Cantor hoped this review would please her and keep her "on their side"! But it didn't work.
 
Anjelica instantly recognized that it had been designed to keep her in Bailey's camp. And it was too late for Bailey anyway. Anjelica had already realized the horrible manner in which Bailey had exploited their years of collaboration together, how he'd taken anecdotes from her life story totally out of context and used them to paint a prurient caricature of her in support of his theory. It was too late for Cantor too, now exposed by Anjelica as being a devious and disingenuous accomplice to Bailey in his efforts to spread Blanchard's malignant and noxious theory into the A.P.A. and D.S.M.
 
In her letter below, Anjelica challenges Bailey's and Cantor's veracity as supposedly well-meaning, compassionate friends of the trans community, and positions them instead as insidious enemies of trans women everywhere.
 
Lynn Conway
 
 
 
Illustration by Anjelica Kieltyka, © 2003
 
 
 
 
Date: Tues, 05 Aug 2003
To: James Cantor <james_cantor@camh.net>
From: Charlotte Anjelica Kieltyka <c-kieltyka@northwestern.edu>
Subject: Open Letter To James Cantor......From "Cher", a.k.a. Anjelica Kieltyka
 
 
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them...So let it be with Caesar..." - from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
 
Sir:
 
You claim to have met me. You have not. The "Cher" that you "met" by way of J. Michael Bailey and his book is a figment of his imagination.
 
You claim in your review of his book that it is grounded in science and is divided into three sections. Whereas the first two sections ( as you said "devoted respectively to gender atypical boys, [and] adult gay men" ) may be grounded in science, the third section about "those MtF transsexuals who are attracted to men, and then fetishistic cross-dressers and those MtF transsexuals who are not attracted to men (autogynephilic transsexuals)" is not grounded in science......It is grounded in science fiction and pure unadulterated BULL SHIT.........
 
I will not mince words with you, Sir...( you may be as good at that as Bailey and whoever else helped him write this JUNK )...If you think this book understands any or all transexuals, especially MtF TRANSEXUAL WOMEN and is sympathetic to their plight, then I suggest you have your head examined by one of your colleagues at the A.P.A.; I suggest someone who specializes in "Transphobic" Insensitivity In Adult Psychologists Who Claim Understanding And Sympathy For Transexuals, .....
 
If you suffer from this Insensitivity Syndrome, as does Dr. Bailey, I suggest you meet the real "Cher", Anjelica Kieltyka. The real Anjelica, the only one Bailey ever met is, in the preface of his book:
 
"Anjelica Kieltyka introduced me to the Chicago transsexual community and taught me a great deal by being honest and open."
 
I will be honest and open with you.....Bailey's book is a slam, a major derogatory expose of transexuals. I , as well as a number of transexual women who had been interviewed by Bailey have filed misconduct charges against him at Northwestern University. The Michael Bailey we knew is not the same person who wrote that awful insensitive book.....The cover alone speaks volumes as to the pejorative nature of the book as it relates to all transexuals....Those included in the book and those conveniently excluded.
 
Bailey had been a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in his dealings with each and every transexual woman depicted in the book. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing in his duplicity and deception toward us.
 
I challenge you to meet the real women behind Bailey's deceitful and patronizing words. I challenge you as someone who seemingly cares about the plight of transexual women to re-examine your praise of Bailey and his book.
 
If you do not realize that you have also been duped by him then I must conclude that you are part of his duplicity....A wolf in sheep's clothing, preying on the lives of transexual women....I pray that I am mistaken.....I apologize for my misunderstanding of you if that is the case....Something that Bailey seems incapable of doing concerning his own misunderstanding of us......
 
Sincerely, openly and honestly yours,
 
Charlotte Anjelica Kieltyka, a.k.a. "Cher"
 
Charlotte Anjelica Kieltyka
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. USA
c-kieltyka@northwestern.edu
 
P.S. "Grandma, What big teeth you have..." - Little Red Riding Hood
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The following review appeared on page 6 of the Summer 2003 American Psychology Association Division 44 Newsletter, and is being used by the National Academy Press and Joseph Henry Press in PR for The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey.
 
 

page 6

Division 44 Newsletter Summer, 2003
 
BOOK REVIEW
The Man Who Would Be Queen
by J. Michael Bailey
The National Academies Press, 2003
Review by James M. Cantor
 
 
J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would be Queen represents the first scientifically grounded book about male femininities written for a general audience. In three sections—devoted respectively to gender atypical boys, adult gay men and those MtF transsexuals who are attracted to men, and then fetishistic cross-dressers and those MtF transsexuals who are not attracted to men (autogynephilic transsexuals)—Bailey sympathetically portrays these peoples’ experiences and explores the roots of their development.
 
Readers seeing these topics for the first time will come to understand these mixes of traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics, free from the sensationalism they receive in the popular media. Readers more familiar with these areas will come to appreciate that none of these human conditions—hetero-/homosexuality, cross-dressing, gender non-conformity, and transsexuality—can be fully understood on its own. Human sexual behavior must be understood in its entirety, if it is to be understood at all.
 
In introducing us to vivid and engaging people, Bailey takes us on a tour that would leave few readers unchanged. Just as interesting, however, were the hints about how Bailey’s own ideas became changed by his experiences in working with these issues. He notes he “became less skeptical, if not yet convinced” of the idea that the correct intervention for gender atypical children is to change society (rather than the children), a philosophy he learned from thinkers including “Clinton Anderson, scientist Simon LeVay, and journalist Phyllis Burke” (p. 26). Likewise, he notes having become more openminded about the veracity of transsexuals’ memories of desiring to change sexes even in childhood, after discussing it with Ken Zucker (the head of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at C.A.M.H. in Toronto). Watching the evolution of a scientist’s thinking is particularly welcome in a field where so many other authors on these topics polarize and entrench.
 
Bailey’s engaging style and clear fondness for the people he describes invite all readers to appreciate these peoples’ experiences better, on both scientific and human levels. Although respectful, Bailey describes his subject matter warts and all. He unapologetically includes potentially controversial topics including the strong preference in the gay male community for masculine sexual partners and against effeminate men, the well-established finding that highly gender atypical boys nearly always become gay men in adulthood (and the shame many adult gay men experience in recalling their own childhood femininity), the frequency of sex trade work among androphilic transsexuals, the difficulties many MtF transsexuals experience in passing as women, and the challenges to the politically correct idea of MtF transsexuals literally being “women trapped in men’s bodies.” Yet, Bailey notes specifically that there is nothing objectively shameful in, for example, childhood femininity or sex trade work. It is the combination of Bailey’s willingness to challenge ideas based only on prejudice as well as ideas based only on political correctness that establishes the book as an even-handed introduction, rather than as a mouthpiece for either the socially conservative right or academic left. Writing as an openly heterosexual and non-transsexual man, Bailey’s respect for the people he describes serves as a role model for others who still struggle to accept and appreciate homosexuality and transsexuality in society. In the following passage, Bailey writes about Cher, an MtF transsexual:
 
Cher has been having a rough time lately. She has fallen out with Amy, a homosexual transsexual who used to be her closest friend. Cher thinks that once Amy got her surgery, she no longer needed her, and she feels used. When she goes out with Juanita, who has become her best friend, men are constantly approaching Juanita (who is 15 years younger and very sexy), but they approach Cher cautiously, if at all….She is also broke, and is being sued by her relatives for her father’s inheritance. Despite her troubles, she continues to visit her circle of (primarily transsexual) friends, helping them plan their transition, listening to their boyfriend problems….She is a good friend to them, although her advice is not always appreciated or heeded. I think about what an unusual life she has led, and what an unusual person she is. How difficult it must have been for her to figure out her sexuality and what she wanted to do with it. I think about all the barriers she broke, and all the meanness that she must still contend with. Despite this, she is still out there giving her friends advice and comfort, and trying to find love. And I think that in her own way, Cher is a star.” I think she is too, and I am grateful to Bailey for having introduced her.
 
POSTSCRIPT: As I write this postscript, it is has been four weeks since The Man Who Would Be Queen has been released. Of all the ideas Bailey presents, only the meaning of autogynephilia appears to have drawn any controversy. Although his book is unapologetic in its accuracy, Bailey notes quite distinctly which ideas are well-established scientifically and which are hunches and suspicions to help readers tie the data together. It is unfortunate that a vocal few (vocal over the Internet, anyway) do not actually address Bailey’s points, referring only to rumors about the content of the book and to assumptions regarding Bailey’s motives. I can recommend only that readers refer to the content of the book itself (available to read on-line, free of charge at http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084180/html/ ), explore Bailey’s own webpage (http://www.psych.nwu.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/controversy.htm#campaign ), and decide for themselves.
 
 
Division 44 Newsletter Summer, 2003
 
 
 
Postscript:
 
As if the misuse of Cantor's review in the National Academy Press website weren't enough, Stephen Pinker of M.I.T. (another APA psychologist who knows nothing about transsexualism, and yet who is a strong Bailey supporter along with Cantor) posted a short review of Bailey's book in the Guardian in June 2003. Pinker, Bailey and Pinnel (the NAP publicist) then extracted the following words from Pinker's review, and posted them on the National Academy Press' website in July 2003:
 
"J Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen is an engaging book on the science of sexual orientation. ...highly sympathetic to gay and transsexual men..."
-- The Guardian (London), June 28, 2003
 
Read those words again. Here we have Pinker, Bailey and Pinnel deliberately referring to all trans women as "transsexual men" right on the National Academy Press website, long after this controversy had erupted and they had been told many times to please stop doing this. These are not the Guardian's words. These are the psychologist Pinker's words, taken straight from Bailey and Blanchard. They are not words used anywhere else in the world other than at the Clark Institute and in Bailey's book. In our time this is HATE SPEECH! It is speech designed to have a corrosively cruel emotional impact on trans women. It is HATE SPEECH. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet there it is, right on the National Academies' website.
 
 
 
 
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"