Transsexual Road Map Notes

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Lambda Literary Foundation’s “complete overhaul” in wake of Bailey book

In 2006, Lambda Literary Foundation emerged from the disorganization and lack of standards that led to their 2004 nomination and eventual revocation of J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen. In January, new LLF Executive Director Charles Flowers initiated a complete overhaul of Lambda’s process.

Nevertheless, the 2004 incident has become a centerpiece of Bailey’s evidence that his book was well-received. After the New York Times‘ Benedict Carey wrote a piece citing Bailey’s version of the LLF incident and omitting the revocation, Flowers moved to set the record straight:

To the New York Times,

In your recent article on J. Michael Bailey and his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen (“Criticism of a Gender Theory, and Scientist Under Siege” by Benedict Carey, August 21, 2007), your journalist reported, “The Lambda Literary Foundation, an organization that promotes gay, bisexual, and transgender literature, nominated the book for an award.”

Mr. Carey failed to disclose that the Foundation later withdrew the award nomination in response to our judges’ assessment of the book, which they ultimately considered transphobic and inappropriate for a Lambda Literary award.

Further, the Bailey incident revealed flaws in our awards nomination process, which I have completely overhauled since becoming the foundation’s executive director in January 2006. Any book with LGBT content may be nominated by its publisher or its author, but the selection of the book as a finalist for an award is in the hands of the category’s judges. Trans writers now serve as judges in our awards process (both in the Transgender category as well as other categories), so that a book such as Bailey’s could be nominated for an award by the author/publisher but not selected as a finalist or recipient by the judges. In addition, we have expanded many of our categories by dropping the “gay” and “lesbian” designation, in favor of “men’s” and “women’s,” to better represent and embrace the literature of bisexual and transgender writers.

Our judges spoke for the foundation in 2004 when they withdrew Bailey’s book from consideration of a Lambda Literary Award, and the foundation’s position remains the same. With the help of the transgender community, we have improved the integrity of our awards, by making them more inclusive and our methods more transparent.

Sincerely,
Charles Flowers
Executive Director
Lambda Literary Foundation

The New York Times refused to correct this error.

It’s likely that Bailey and his allies will continue to omit inconvenient facts about the LLF revocation, as part of their pattern of distorting science and history in service of personal agendas. Though this matter is considered resolved by all but Bailey’s most partisan supporters, I’ll continue documenting their attempts at revising history.

Related information:
* Lambda Literary archives

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Jelly lubrication, not liquid, for postoperative vaginal dilation

A reader notes:

Hi Andrea.  This is a really great site and a great benefit to the community.  I appreciate your work, and have included a link from our vaginal stent manufacturer site.
I noticed that you recommend the use of Astroglide as a dilation lubrication as an alternative to KY.  You should know that Dr Meltzer has reported that the use of liquid lubes has caused granulation of the vaginal lining.  He recommends that such lubes not be used until at least three months post-op.
I have no reports either way from the other surgeons at this time, but I have asked them for clarification.  Sometimes they take a while to answer the mail.

My reply:

I’ll make changes to my lubrication info next time I’m working on that section. As a personal report, I can say that switching from Astroglode to KY seemed to make things less tender internally.

Related information:

* Vaginoplasty: Dilation

Monday, September 24, 2007

Gunter Dorner and preventing gender variance through peace?

A reader notes:

I spoke to a group of grad students a few nights ago in a Human Sexuality class.  I mentioned the Hamburg (Germany) studies that I’ve heard of, but never actually viewed source data.  Briefly, Hamburg (sp), Germany was devastated by Allied bombers in WW II.  The bombers targeted arms, munitions, and other war machine production facilities.  The bombings were long termed.
The studies, as I’ve heard, followed the children born in Hamburg during and shortly following the bombing.  The studies continued for several decades and, I understand, found an increased incidence of transsexualism and homosexuality.  One of the conclusions, I believe, was that increased stress levels may impact the incidence rate of each.
One of the students was interested in locating the source studies or other articles about the studies.  Unfortunately, I’ve only heard of these findings, but have never read anything authoritative on them. I’ve searched the net, but so far it seems I’m finding tens of thousands of hits for the city, but the studies remain hidden from view.
Would you possibly be able to direct me to some source reports or articles on these studies?  I would very much appreciate any assistance you could give.

My reply:

Gunter Dorner is a prolific author on issues of endocrinology, especially as it relates to homosexuality and sex differences in the brain (I included the abstract for one of over a dozen major papers he’s done on the subject).
You’d be well-served to read some of his work if you are pursuing this as a new career.
His “Hamburg theory” was controversial and has been challenged by some thorough investigations since (see the Schmidt abstract below). The Schmidt paper will give full references to the Dorner studies. I recommend ordering it.

J Homosex 1995;28(3-4):269-75
Does peace prevent homosexuality?
Schmidt G, Clement U
Department of Sexual Research, University of Hamburg, Germany.
This study attempted to replicate a series of investigations by Gunter Dorner and his associates that concluded that more homosexual men are born in wartime than in times of peace. That conclusion is based on Dorner’s belief that war induces stress in pregnant women and that stress causes a drop in fetal androgen levels which in turn leads to the development of a homosexual “orientation”. The replication not only failed to support the Dorner conclusion but also found that even those cities that suffered the most severe bombing during World War II showed no evidence of increased numbers of homosexuals. The authors conclude that homosexual men can go on loving peace and getting involved in the peace movement.
PMID: 7560931, UI: 96028457

Laud Humphreys, Steven Pinker, and other attention-seeking pseudoscientists

A reader notes:

Is anyone familiar with the “Tearoom Sex Study” by sociologist Laud Humphreys?  There was a mention of it in today’s NYT as being one of the first and most notorious examples of unethical social science research.  I found the following (excerpts) in a quick web search:

He stationed himself in “tearooms” and offered to serve as “watchqueen” - the individual who keeps watch and coughs when a police car stops nearby or a stranger approaches. He played that role faithfully while observing hundreds of acts of fellatio. He was able to gain the confidence of some of the men he observed, disclose his role as scientist, and persuade them to tell him about the rest of their lives and about their motives. Those who were willing to talk openly with him tended to be among the better-educated members of the “tearoom trade.” To avoid bias, Humphreys secretly followed some of the other men he observed and recorded the license numbers of their cars. A year later and carefully disguised, Humphreys appeared at their homes claiming to be a health-service interviewer and interviewed them about their marital status, race, job, and so on....

There were also social costs. The research occurred in the middle 1960s before institutional review boards were in existence. The dissertation proposal was reviewed only by Humphreys’ Ph.D. committee. Only after the research had been completed did the other members of the Sociology Department learn of it. A furor arose when some of those other members of the department objected that Humphreys’ research had unethically invaded the privacy and threatened the social standing of the subjects, and petitioned the president of Washington University to rescind Humphreys’ Ph.D. degree. The turmoil resulted in numerous other unfortunate events, including a fist fight among faculty members and the exodus of about half of the department members to positions at other universities.

There was considerable public outrage as well. Journalist Nicholas von Hoffman, who was given some details of the case by one of the angered members of the Sociology Department, wrote an article about Humphreys’ research and offered the following condemnation of social scientists: “We’re so preoccupied with defending our privacy against insurance investigators, dope sleuths, counterespionage men, divorce detectives and credit checkers, that we overlook the social scientists behind the hunting blinds who’re also peeping into what we thought were our most private and secret lives. But there they are, studying us, taking notes, getting to know us, as indifferent as everybody else to the feeling that to be a complete human involves having an aspect of ourselves that’s unknown.” (von Hoffman, 1970).

http://web.missouri.edu/~bondesonw/Laud.html

There are a number of articles commenting on the controversy from a contemporary standpoint in the Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 24, 2004.  However, it costs $25 to read this issue and I haven’t decided yet whether to cough it up.

Also, I recently read a criticism of Pinker’s The Blank Slate by Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy of Cambridge University, in which he analyzes the technique (attention-seeking through adoption of sensational and extreme positions) favored by many of the last ten years’ crop of pseudoscientists.  One excerpt is:

So if you wish to demonize theorists on the nature side, present them as genetic determinists, holding that there is no more to growing up than following a formula written in the genes. These dangerous fools think that iron is programmed to rust wherever you put it, as if oxygen and damp had nothing to do with it. And if you are demonizing theorists on the nurture side, then portray them as holding that human beings have no characteristics at all except those that are inscribed by environment and culture. These dangerous fools think that the chemical nature of iron has nothing to do with whether it rusts.  (There is also a second-order or meta-demonizing move to make. Not only have the dangerous fools got themselves into an extreme position, they also have the gall to paint people like us as ourselves extreme. They are not only blind to their own extremism, they are blind also to our moderation. The things they call us! They must be doubly demonic.)

The irony is that having satisfactorily trashed the other side, people tend not to stay in the reasonable middle that they claim to occupy.  The fig-leaf of moderation is very quickly discarded.  Just as in football a defeat for one side is a victory for the other, and in politics a defeat for the left is a victory for the right, so here a defeat of the others is a victory for whichever extreme appealed in the first place. We want simplicity, and our binary thinking is not hospitable to compromise or to pluralism. George W. Bush can woo the people by saying that you are either with us or against us. He cannot do so by saying that you are either with us or against us or somewhere in between. It appears that only fitfully and with effort can we keep it in our heads that iron rusts owing to a number of factors. In our hearts, we are pulled one way or the other.

If you wish to read the entire essay ("Meet the Flintstones"), it’s available at:
http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/reviews/Pinker.htm