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Ray “man without a penis” Blanchard: I am not transphobic

  

Wow, that headline sounds like a personal attack, right? Pretty insulting, huh? Well, that exactly what Ray Blanchard said about me and women like me. But it’s OK, he’s a scientist.

Blanchard has the temerity to claim he is not transphobic and does not engage in attempts to modify people’s gender identity and expression or sexual behavior through coercive therapies, including aversion therapy and other techniques.

Maxine Petersen recently forwarded an email from Ray Blanchard defending his views. I’ll be dismantling his specious defense eventually, but a reader noted that Petersen (Blanchard’s coworker at CAMH) conveniently provided Blanchard’s CC list:

• Shelley McMain:  CAMH Clinical Psychologist and Head of the Borderline Personality Clinic of the Addictions Section in the Clinical Research Department.

Ken Zucker: CAMH reparative therapist who uses coercion therapy to deprive children of innappropriately-gendered toys and activities they love.

• Michael Torres: CAMH media relations spokesperson

Maxine Petersen: Bailey‘s “ace gender clinician” at CAMH who asserts “most gender patients lie.” A key proponent of the “male essence” narrative put forth by Blanchard et al. about “male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists.”

Alice Dreger: J. Michael Bailey defender, currently part-time at Northwestern University, who will undoubtedly be defending the other CAMH Clarke cronies.

• Jack Drescher: Reparative therapy critic, ran for APA president in 2005, openly gay, member of the APA DSM-V committee Zucker chairs.

• press @ psych.org: American Psychiatric Association media relations

• William Narrow: DC psychiatrist, associate director for diagnosis and classification in the APA Division of Research, will serve as the research director of the DSM-V revision.

It seems they understand they are facing a little public relations problem over at Jurassic Clarke. This list is mostly official and unofficial flacks for their reparative therapy clinic. Oh, and just for the record, Blanchard does support all kinds of reparative therapy to modify the behavior of “male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists” (Blanchard 1993).

In Blanchard’s worldview, transsexual women are males whose condition is on a continuum with the other groups he studies: “Male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists” are all part of the same nosological group in his worldview. (Blanchard 1993)

As for this post’s headline, I refer to Blanchard’s statement that a trans woman is in reality “a man without a penis”:

Toronto psychologist Ray Blanchard, one of Canada’s leading—and most controversial—gender experts, argues the transgender movement is rife with delusion. “This is not waving a magic wand and a man becomes a woman and vice versa,” he says. “It’s something that has to be taken very seriously. A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you’re creating.” (Armstrong 2004)

If that ain’t transphobic and bigoted reductionism, I don’t know what is. More classic Blanchard quotes about his aversion therapies and other outrageous views soon.

Source:

Armstrong J. The Body within, the body without. Globe and Mail, 12 June 2004, p. F1.

Erotic target location errors in male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists. Freund K, Blanchard R, Br J Psychiatry 1993 Apr;162:558-63

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Posted by Andrea James on 05/15 at 08:10 AM

I couldn’t agree more.  I’d add to my thoughts here, but I just got done with <a href="http://transpassage.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/a-guided-reading-of-ray-blanchards-open-letter/">a rant of my own</a> on his “letter” to the community to clear his name.

Who would have ever thought we’ve have someone so closely aligned in the Janice Raymond school of “transsexualism” on the working group, eh?

I hope we can successful fix this, somehow.

Posted by Moe  on  05/23  at  02:02 PM
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