Galileo's Middle Finger
Heretics, Activists, And The Search For Justice In Science
A historian and meticulous researcher specializing in intersex science, Alice Dreger chronicles her battle with trans activists. Thus my interest. With an introduction summoning Galileo in his battles with the Church and Catholic ideology, the book reads like a forensic detective novel. An action packed intellectual page turner in which she offers the story of several battles fought at the intersection of science and the society in which it finds itself.
Dreger’s grit and determination along with her arch sense of humor gives us a reliable and knowledgeable companion for our journey to truth. As a wrangler of scientific evidence the author’s opinion of these differences gives an ethical and moral edge to her story. And as a professor of bioethics she also explains these differences in plain language free of obfuscating gender theory.
Part memoir she describes how as a young researcher choosing the obscure topic of intersex to sink her teeth into, she is befriended by the intersex community. Together they attempt to educate the ranks of doctors who perform corrective surgery on babies who present with abnormal genitalia. In the process she explains how the intersex population and the transgender community are coming to gender from different philosophies. Intersex people largely want to adhere to the binary system while the latter want to blow it up into the plethora of gender identities now seeking legislation.
She meets another research scientist J. Michael Bailey. His crime was that he refused to bow down to the popular narrative that a person can be born in the wrong body and hence need corrective surgery. In 2003 he published a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen—The Science of Gender Bending and Transexualism in which he argues that sexual orientation and thus eroticism has more to do with gender identity than the simple binary narrative would imply. In his own research he too befriends the members of the community of his interest and advocates for their welfare which included helping them obtain the surgery they desired.
But because his work builds on the earlier work of Ray Blanchard he immediately becomes the target of trans activists bent on suppressing the information that there are two distinct types of transexuals. Those who as very young boys are feminine expressing and become homosexual and those traditionally masculine heterosexual boys who become sexually aroused by the idea of themselves as women and don’t transition until later in life. (Termed autogynophelia this is the hot potato designation that trans activist want to bury.) Bailey’s book emphasized the role of culture in the subjects ultimate decision to become transgender. In other words if it is culturally ok to be a femme gay man then there is no need to become a woman. It is this homophobic cultural piece of the picture that the current narrative also wishes to suppress because it would not get them the cross sex surgery and legal designation of the opposite sex that they desire.
As Bailey observes through his study, what it takes for a heterosexual man to reach satisfaction in realizing himself as a woman depends on his interaction with the culture and varies greatly from individual to individual with some opting for a part time female existence with no medical intervention, some with hormones and breast implants but keeping their male genitalia and finally for a very small minority of this population the desire for a complete sex change. Trans activists like the gay activists before them understood that the public was much more likely to accept a born-that-way scientific explanation before granting these populations acceptance and access to the benefits of society. Benefits such as marriage and medical treatment paid for by insurance.
The story of how two determined transgender activists who very likely fit the autogynophelia profile manage to ruin Bailey’s professional and personal life is the detective story part of the book. Dreger tracks down every last detail to make her case that this intervention by trans activists is intentional and manipulative to achieve suppression of inconvenient truths.
(In the past doctors would allow sex reassignment surgery only for homosexual men and would screen out heterosexual men. When gender affirming treatment came into vogue this changed and there was a notable uptick in number of middle aged men who likely would have been noted as autogynephelia before. It is these men now identifying as women who appear to be dominating the trans activist scene and are seeking access to women’s spaces and identifying as lesbians while telling actual lesbians they are transphobic for claiming a preference for natal born females and refusing to date persons with penises.)
In reviewing Bailey’s work she investigates every last claim about Bailey including that he had sodomized his own children. Publication of her investigation which resulted in her demonstrating his innocence brings her into the cross hairs of trans activists using all manner of tactics to intimidate and harass. These tactics worked for them. Sex scientists told Dreger that no scientists would touch male to female transexualism with a ten foot pole.
Having satisfied the reader that she has left no stone unturned as far as the claims of trans activists regarding Bailey, she devotes the rest of the book to other cases in other topics where the scientists who did the research were harassed by activists who didn’t like the inconvenient truths their research had revealed. Most of these studies having to do with human identity and human behavior that contradicted conventional wisdom. Cases included a study that revealed a primitive tribe to be warlike, competitive and abusive of women rather than docile and innocent. And a study that revealed that adults having sex with underage teens did not negatively traumatize those teens going forward. Or that rape involved a certain eroticism on the part of a rapist and was therefore a sexual act not an act of violence or control. Plus the case of false memory syndrome.
Dreger goes on to unearth all kinds of malfeasance on the part of not only activists, but gate keeping entities, doctors using drugs off-label to fulfill untested claims, lax public servants who are supposed to provide oversight but let things go and all sorts of people we put our faith into to protect our public interests and health.
She confirms for me that scientific study regarding gender is the target of harassment by trans activists, but I was surprised to learn of the other studies that garnered harassment. That in fact harassment was more the rule than the exception. Along with the cowardice of gatekeepers and universities and institutions who were cowed by popular opinion and refused to defend their own scientists and retracted published scientific studies. It made me even more suspicious of studies that seemed to conveniently affirm a popular social justice agenda. Especially those concerning the gay brain, the trans brain or women’s brains.
In her conclusion she reminds the reader that the founders of our country understood that freedom of thought and freedom of person must be erected together. That truth and justice cannot exist one without the other. And that if activists want justice they must engage in the pursuit of truth and base arguments in sound evidence. While scientists and scholars must take more responsibility for policing themselves and everyone for accuracy and greater objectivity.
Her book makes a plea for truth. She also makes it sexy and sometimes subversive. I am sold on such truth. It fortifies me to speak out on what I believe to be true in the face of what is given to be the proper narrative, the non-controversial one or the one that fits a politically liberal category. And if speaking out takes too much of me, I will still pursue the truth for my own satisfaction.
Galileo's Middle Finger
Heretics, Activists, And The Search For Justice In Science
A historian and meticulous researcher specializing in intersex science, Alice Dreger chronicles her battle with trans activists. Thus my interest. With an introduction summoning Galileo in his battles with the Church and Catholic ideology, the book reads like a forensic detective novel. An action packed intellectual page turner in which she offers the story of several battles fought at the intersection of science and the society in which it finds itself.
Dreger’s grit and determination along with her arch sense of humor gives us a reliable and knowledgeable companion for our journey to truth. As a wrangler of scientific evidence the author’s opinion of these differences gives an ethical and moral edge to her story. And as a professor of bioethics she also explains these differences in plain language free of obfuscating gender theory.
Part memoir she describes how as a young researcher choosing the obscure topic of intersex to sink her teeth into, she is befriended by the intersex community. Together they attempt to educate the ranks of doctors who perform corrective surgery on babies who present with abnormal genitalia. In the process she explains how the intersex population and the transgender community are coming to gender from different philosophies. Intersex people largely want to adhere to the binary system while the latter want to blow it up into the plethora of gender identities now seeking legislation.
She meets another research scientist J. Michael Bailey. His crime was that he refused to bow down to the popular narrative that a person can be born in the wrong body and hence need corrective surgery. In 2003 he published a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen—The Science of Gender Bending and Transexualism in which he argues that sexual orientation and thus eroticism has more to do with gender identity than the simple binary narrative would imply. In his own research he too befriends the members of the community of his interest and advocates for their welfare which included helping them obtain the surgery they desired.
But because his work builds on the earlier work of Ray Blanchard he immediately becomes the target of trans activists bent on suppressing the information that there are two distinct types of transexuals. Those who as very young boys are feminine expressing and become homosexual and those traditionally masculine heterosexual boys who become sexually aroused by the idea of themselves as women and don’t transition until later in life. (Termed autogynophelia this is the hot potato designation that trans activist want to bury.) Bailey’s book emphasized the role of culture in the subjects ultimate decision to become transgender. In other words if it is culturally ok to be a femme gay man then there is no need to become a woman. It is this homophobic cultural piece of the picture that the current narrative also wishes to suppress because it would not get them the cross sex surgery and legal designation of the opposite sex that they desire.
As Bailey observes through his study, what it takes for a heterosexual man to reach satisfaction in realizing himself as a woman depends on his interaction with the culture and varies greatly from individual to individual with some opting for a part time female existence with no medical intervention, some with hormones and breast implants but keeping their male genitalia and finally for a very small minority of this population the desire for a complete sex change. Trans activists like the gay activists before them understood that the public was much more likely to accept a born-that-way scientific explanation before granting these populations acceptance and access to the benefits of society. Benefits such as marriage and medical treatment paid for by insurance.
The story of how two determined transgender activists who very likely fit the autogynophelia profile manage to ruin Bailey’s professional and personal life is the detective story part of the book. Dreger tracks down every last detail to make her case that this intervention by trans activists is intentional and manipulative to achieve suppression of inconvenient truths.
(In the past doctors would allow sex reassignment surgery only for homosexual men and would screen out heterosexual men. When gender affirming treatment came into vogue this changed and there was a notable uptick in number of middle aged men who likely would have been noted as autogynephelia before. It is these men now identifying as women who appear to be dominating the trans activist scene and are seeking access to women’s spaces and identifying as lesbians while telling actual lesbians they are transphobic for claiming a preference for natal born females and refusing to date persons with penises.)
In reviewing Bailey’s work she investigates every last claim about Bailey including that he had sodomized his own children. Publication of her investigation which resulted in her demonstrating his innocence brings her into the cross hairs of trans activists using all manner of tactics to intimidate and harass. These tactics worked for them. Sex scientists told Dreger that no scientists would touch male to female transexualism with a ten foot pole.
Having satisfied the reader that she has left no stone unturned as far as the claims of trans activists regarding Bailey, she devotes the rest of the book to other cases in other topics where the scientists who did the research were harassed by activists who didn’t like the inconvenient truths their research had revealed. Most of these studies having to do with human identity and human behavior that contradicted conventional wisdom. Cases included a study that revealed a primitive tribe to be warlike, competitive and abusive of women rather than docile and innocent. And a study that revealed that adults having sex with underage teens did not negatively traumatize those teens going forward. Or that rape involved a certain eroticism on the part of a rapist and was therefore a sexual act not an act of violence or control. Plus the case of false memory syndrome.
Dreger goes on to unearth all kinds of malfeasance on the part of not only activists, but gate keeping entities, doctors using drugs off-label to fulfill untested claims, lax public servants who are supposed to provide oversight but let things go and all sorts of people we put our faith into to protect our public interests and health.
She confirms for me that scientific study regarding gender is the target of harassment by trans activists, but I was surprised to learn of the other studies that garnered harassment. That in fact harassment was more the rule than the exception. Along with the cowardice of gatekeepers and universities and institutions who were cowed by popular opinion and refused to defend their own scientists and retracted published scientific studies. It made me even more suspicious of studies that seemed to conveniently affirm a popular social justice agenda. Especially those concerning the gay brain, the trans brain or women’s brains.
In her conclusion she reminds the reader that the founders of our country understood that freedom of thought and freedom of person must be erected together. That truth and justice cannot exist one without the other. And that if activists want justice they must engage in the pursuit of truth and base arguments in sound evidence. While scientists and scholars must take more responsibility for policing themselves and everyone for accuracy and greater objectivity.
Her book makes a plea for truth. She also makes it sexy and sometimes subversive. I am sold on such truth. It fortifies me to speak out on what I believe to be true in the face of what is given to be the proper narrative, the non-controversial one or the one that fits a politically liberal category. And if speaking out takes too much of me, I will still pursue the truth for my own satisfaction.