Gender-Critical Profiles

Previously, I’ve presented a handful of profiles of those sponsoring gender ideology. I plan to continue that series, but would like to take a pause to focus on the other side. There is another kind of people. It is worth reminding yourself that they exist as encouragement to stick in the fight.

The value in knowing the following individuals is far greater if you follow up and read their works. It is largely reading those sources that turned me from a ‘girl’s brain in a boy’s body’ somnambulist toward a gender-critical viewpoint. Much value from the below sources comes from the fact they precede the politicisation of ‘gender’. Hence, their authors cannot be accused of having ideological axes to grind or being conservative bigots on the wrong side of history. In fact, one is actually ‘trans’.

Before commencing, a word about the terminology. Gender-Critical can have two meanings, a specific and a general one. The term originates from the Radical Feminist community, and is the label used for anyone holding a philosophical opposition to gender-essentialism upon which trans rights arguments stand. If any friendly RadFems wish to clarify the exact meaning, I’m happy to be corrected.

I am using the term in a generic way – signifying disagreement with the claims of gender ideology, but not necessarily doing so out of RadFem-specific ideological positions.

Ray Blanchard (USA/CAN, Sexology/Academia)

This is probably the most relevant name in the entire trans saga, but have you ever seen it in print? The gender industry has tried very hard to suppress him and his work. That is because his research contains very uncomfortable truths for the trans rights activist (TRA) movement, centred around the Blanchard Typology. Prior to the ascent of gender ideology, this was generally the accepted etiological description of transgenderism, but found itself on the wrong side of history since it treated trans-(vestism/genderism/sexuality) as a sexual pathology. The reason for the suppression is rather obvious: no rational society would accept sexual fetishism as a basis for civil rights.

Blanchard has worked in multiple clinical and academic posts, peaking as Professor of Psychiatry at the University Of Toronto. The trans-relevant work comes from his tenure at the Torontonian Center For Addiction & Mental Health.^[1] There, after working with hundreds of patients he formulated a theory about the causation of trans-sexuality as it was called then. Basically, he noticed there were two basic types of men who want to be (or pretend to be) women: labelled HSTS & AGP. The former (HomoSexual TransSexual) were effeminate gay males who were gender-nonconforming from earliest childhood; the latter (AutoGynePhile) were heterosexual men with a paraphilia or fetish to use common parlance.

These concepts were formalised in the early 1990s, although there were still a few arguments about the theory (such as whether women can conversely be autoandrophilic). The theory also dived deeper into AGP paraphilias and enumerated them into subtypes.^[2] Familiarity with these is valuable as it allows easy identification of the myriad of AGPs parading proudly all over the internet. This view of transgenderism was backed by scientific origins rather than political ideology, and was validated by inclusion of autogynephilia in DSM-V. This inclusion has been reversed in subsequent editions, obviously due to TRA influence.

By all accounts, Blanchard was actually very humane and caring to the participants in his research, even submitting references in legal processes. This did not spare him from the vengeance of the TRA contingent. He was subjected to some truly dirty attacks on his character. Since the mainstreaming of gender ideology, Blanchard has made some attempts at defending his position, including enunciating the distinction with newly emergent Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.

Anne Lawrence (USA, Medicine)

Let’s start with getting the pronouns right: Lawrence is male, an out and proud ‘trans-sexual’, as he would describe himself. I see no reason to first acknowledge this fact, then spend the rest of the article engaging in polite fiction of referring to him by feminine terms. Therefore, I’ll be using male pronouns.

Psychologist, sexologist, anaesthesiologist…Lawrence is one of the most interesting personalities to emerge from the gender wars. He is also a very rare bird, no pun intended: a self-admitted autogynephile, with the personal integrity to be honest about it and even use his experience to contribute to knowledge about the condition. Lawrence has an incredible insight into the phenomenon, and has had the intellectual honesty to actually describe it in objective terms. To his even greater credit, he has also gone out of his way to denounce TRA behaviour and call them out for it – see the linked article and notice it dates to 2008! Yes, they’ve been nasty for a rather long time.

Professionally associated with Blanchard and Bailey, Lawrence’s views generally concord with the former’s typology. The main thrust of Lawrence’s work is demolishing the ‘feminine essence’ explanation of MTF (male-to-female) transgenderism and solidly confirming it as a sexually-driven phenomenon. The men commonly referred to as AGPs are labelled nonhomosexual autogynephiles in his writing.

Lawrence’s view of autogynephilia can come across as too benign and self-exculpatory, as evidenced by the expression becoming what they love toward his fellow AGPs. Whether this is self-serving bias is up for speculation. This doctor is the most undeniable evidence that transgenderism is predominantly a movement by paraphilic men to establish the legal right to practice their fetish under the guise of civil rights. Lawrence had for a long time maintained a website dedicated to the subject, but it has gone into hiatus.

J Michael Bailey (USA, Psychology/Academia)

Like many of his peers, Bailey has a very impressive intellectual CV, including tertiary study of mathematics and genetics. His relevant credential to the subject of gender is a professorship of psychology at Northwestern University. Bailey’s greatest contribution to the field of transgenderism is not so much accumulating an original research base, but making Blanchard’s work more widely accessible to the public.

He did it through the popular-science oriented book The Man Who Would Be Queen (free PDF copy linked below). This text was rather controversial, and Bailey was subject to significant retaliation, largely due to the fact that it supports classifying male transgenderism as either a variant of homosexuality or a paraphilic disorder. This book demolishes the trapped-in-a-woman’s body transwoman narrative, also known as the ‘feminine essence’ argument. This is crucial to the gender-critical argument, as the legal rights the TRA movement has accrued are largely based on that narrative being valid.

Bailey has suffered for his good work. The TRA movement really did try hard to sabotage his career with false accusations of misconduct, and more. To really showcase what this movement is capable of, a particularly vicious man (with a three-letter acronym you can guess) actually obtained his family photos, doctored those of Bailey’s children and captioned them with sexually inappropriate statements, to post online. The individual was then rewarded with his own TV show by HBO…

Make this man’s suffering worthwhile – and add to your knowledge of the trans phenomenon by reading his book.

Alice Dreger (USA, Academia/Activism)

Dreger shares an equally impressive academic CV as her peers, and was a colleague of Bailey’s at Northwestern. She is primarily a bioethicist, but also holds a doctorate of HPS. Furthermore, she has spent a career advocating for intersex individuals, so it is clear why she has such a stake in the gender war. Her contribution to the understanding of transgenderism is not through original research, but rather as a documentor of others’ work, and significantly a documentor of what treatment they have been subjected to for that work.

The centrepiece of her work in this field is the book Galileo’s Middle Finger, subtitled Heretics, Activists And The Search For Justice In Science. It is a book exactly fit for its time. We are living in a technocratic era, where decision-making is notionally based on evidence and expertise. However, when that evidence clashes with moral and political prerogatives which one gives way? The TRA movement, of course, wants objective science to kowtow to political demands. The book predominantly describes instances where researchers were subjected to harassment and professional degradation by activists for engaging in controversial research – or, more accurately, for not coming up with the desired conclusions in that research.

Galileo’s Finger dates from 2015, but the corruption of scientific research by gender ideology has continued as documented recently by Jesse Singal’s critique of SBM.^[3] Having stuck out her professional neck for people like Bailey and Blanchard, the usual parties made her a target. Sadly, Dreger has succumbed to academic censorship and left Northwestern following yet another instance of it.