Clinical Discourses

The problem with Mike Bailey.

Almost 50 years ago a book called “The Birth of the Clinic” by Michel Foucault was published.

In Birth of the Clinic (1976), Foucault talks about the “clinical gaze” as a way of isolating sickness in our bodies through discourse. Foucault saw that as the secular state was leaving behind the language of the mystical connection between disease and sin, ways of talking about diagnosing our bodies in clinical ways became culturally dominant.

Foucault thought that this public chit-chat, (“vernacular discourses”, as we would have called it in cultural studies) was becoming less religious and more clinical, where rational scientific discourse “opens up the source of a language that unfolds endlessly in the void left by the absence of the gods”.

Disease, Foucault observed, was being removed from the religious language of sin, and our relationship to sickness and death would be taken over by the diagnostic language of the clinic.

In the 80s Donahue and Oprah Winfrey came into our homes providing us with a range of pop psyche discourses, mixing medicine and science with speculation and fashionable thinking about health, sex and relationships. As Foucault observed modern discourses were leaving the paradigms of sin and virtue behind, and replacing it with diagnostic language for human weakness.

As a young person I remember being happy that alcoholism was explained as a disease. My mother was an alcoholic, and I was drawn to the compassionate approach, that it wasn’t her fault, and that she had a disease she couldn’t control. If there was a diagnosis, there could be a cure. This was a help and a comfort to me.

But then we went from alcoholism to kleptomania and sex addiction. Thieves and adulterers were able to replace “the devil made me do it” with scientific explanation of why they infringed on social norms and overstepped the personal boundaries of others.

And so, it has gone for decades. Clinical discourse have flooded our world in relation to things that are placed in the clinic when we could argue, should be reassigned to the world of sin, or to the other object of Foucauldian inspection, the asylum.

I know the concept of a “slippery slope” is not popular, and probably it is rightly maligned. I don’t think we had to go down a slope from applying clinical analysis to harmful human behaviour to the situation we have today, where women’s bathroom are provided as a panacea to men who are distressed by their sex.

I think slopes have been greased by all the wrong people, using clinical discourse to cover behaviours that are best kept in the closet or within a locked facility, and this is not limited to the left side of politics.

Firstly, let me address the sexuality that does a lot of heavy lifting in this debate, homosexuality. Homosexuality was pathologized and a type of moral and clinical sickness and it is now considered just an ordinary orientation that humans have, nobody knows why, but we accept it as a normal part of human society.

Depathologising and destigmatising homosexuality hasn’t created more homosexuals, because homosexuality is a stable human trait. Destigmatising homosexuality hasn’t proliferated any social problems, and has made life better for homosexuals. Homosexuality is an orientation, it is not a paraphilia, it is not a sickness, and it doesn’t belong in the clinic or the asylum, it is not a problem to be solved.

But the appropriateness of depathologising and destigmatising homosexuality is being used to broaden the prescription of depathologising and destigmatising to a range of diagnosed sexual paraphilias that have been included in the LGBTIQ umbrella by the kind of professions we really shouldn’t be listening to anymore. Or we should listen to them a little more closely, because what they are saying is truly ghastly, and has real world political consequences for women and children.

In 2013 the clinical diagnoses of Gender Identity Disorder was scrubbed from the world’s premier diagnostic manual for psychiatric disorders the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). In its place, an entry was made for Gender Dysphoria (GD). Most of us did not notice the change, which effectively depathologised the mental distress people feel with their sex, in the same way homosexuality was depathologised, but with extra steps.

What the diagnosis of GD did, was claim that the distress people feel in being in the wrong sex, is caused by societal minority stress. The diagnosis moved away from the problem of the person’s inaccurate self-perception, and toward the way society rejects the persons claim of cross sex identity. The disease was removed from the person and put on the society.

The DSM5 invented “gender dysphoria” as a social rather than clinical disease in May 2013, and in august 2013, the Australian Labor government under Prime Minister Julia Gillard included gender identity into the Sex Discrimination Act. Using human rights law as a curative device to a clinical diagnosis.

When questioned about the change to the SDA recently, in relation to the consequences it has had on women, Ms Gillard said that “there are a number of people who genuinely believe that they are trapped in the wrong body and they want to be recognised as the gender that their mind and soul have always told them that they are”.

Gender Identity became the first protected characteristic to come into our human rights law in response to a psychiatric medical diagnosis rather than grass roots action.

After many court cases including Tickle V Giggle in the Federal Court, it has now been proven beyond doubt, that gender identity in women’s rights law makes it unlawful for women to make a single sex space that excludes males who pretend to be women, even if those males perform femininity for sexual reasons, and even if the female only space is intended for lesbian dating. Other consequences we see are the destruction of women’s sport, scholarships, bodies and rights to political assembly.

Many of us have joined in grass roots movement to have gender identity removed from the law, because it is harmful. This is a diverse movement that includes some genuine whistle-blowers in the psychiatric field like Queensland paediatric psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer, and academic psychiatrist Dr Andrew Amos.

And yet others have come into the gender critical movement who profess to be professionals in the area of psychology, psychiatry and its dirty cousin, sexology, purporting to blow whistle on the “trans agenda”, and help us in our aim to get this infection of gender identity out of our law.

Experts like Kenneth Zucker, Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey have been introduced to the gender critical world as dissidents to the political capture of their profession. They are here to help, we are told and will re-assert rigorous academic scholarship to the profession that has brought women so much pain.

The biggest contribution of this group, is the admission that a very large percentage of men who claim a trans identity, do so for sexual reasons. Many trans-identified men are trans identified because they have a sexual fetish that has been labelled autogynephilia (AGP). They are not trapped in the wrong body, they are literally prolific wankers.

AGP was originally penned by Ray Blanchard, and the gender critical world took notice because it was clinical confirmation that men identify into the female sex because of a fetish, and not because they have a trapped woman’s soul. This is information women already had anecdotally, through testimony and life knowledge as women about men, but it is not insignificant that parts of the psychiatry and psychology profession are telling the truth.

To be clear, feminists like myself are not interested in the psychological research because we want to fix these men, but because we want to protect women and girls from them. They may be “nice” men, they may be broken men, but they are men, and they signal a sexual fetish with female clothing, and we want to be able to say this out loud, without being arrested. We want to expose these men and get them out of our spaces, sports and feminist discourse. Our interest is ultimately political.

As organisations like Genspect and podcast bros have platformed these men, and as they have started to talk openly on X, we are hearing a clinical discourse that Foucault spoke of, unfolding “endlessly in the void left by the absence of the gods”. But the clinical discourse around AGP and other paraphilias, is not just absent gods, but it is absent basic human morality, appropriate safeguarding and respect for women.

Let me present to you Michael Bailey, a man Stella O’Malley from Genspect has called a “respected researcher in the field”, a guest on the podcast Genspect sponsor, that is run by Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad.

On Wikipedia Bailey is described as “an American psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and professor at Northwestern University best known for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation and paraphilia”.

So, what is wrong with Mike Bailey?

Well, in one light, Bailey concentrates on the patient as his study subject, and in this context some of what Bailey says is fair enough, if he wasn’t engaging, like he is, in a political space.

Bailey has publicly said that the “radical feminist” element of gender critical are “the worst” and that radical feminism is “dumb”. By “radical feminist” Bailey has made it clear he means TERFs, which is clearly me (even though I’m not a radfem). So we can say that Bailey has made himself fair game for critique politically, and in regard to the political consequences of some of his claims.

Two paraphilias Bailey talks a lot about, one is AGP and the other is pedophilia, he treats neither with moral distain and obviously considers it inappropriate to do so, not just for him, but for other people.

For Bailey pedophilia is a paraphilia with a clinical diagnosis and should only be talked about in that context, it should be removed from the moralising of middle-aged biddies and CSA survivors like me, and my safeguarding activist feminist friends, whom he clearly holds in the highest of contempt.

Bailey lamented on X in December that he has been left “frustrated and sad by the tendency of some in the gender critical space to demonize AGP and deny its relevance to male ROGD. Just now I found this exceptional exception from @SashaLPC [Sasha Ayad]. Wise, informed, and kind (unsurprisingly knowing her).” Sasha is one of the Genspect founders who Bailey is claiming is a personal friend.

Foucault said “the clinician’s gaze becomes the functional equivalent of fire in chemical combustion; it is through it that the essential purity of phenomena can emerge”. The clinical gaze of the sexologist finds the essence of the phenomenon innate to the body, like homosexuality, and seeks to apply treatment based on research methodology, treatments that include prescriptions for societal norms

The link casually made by psychiatrist, psychologists and sexologist between the paraphilias and homosexuality is problematic, not just to homosexuals but to the entirety of society, because homosexuality as an “orientation” is protected in law in all western nations that I am aware of.

The linking of orientation to paraphilia is an ugly turn in a slippery slope to a dark place for women and children and men who care about women and children. If paraphilias are protected in law in the way homosexuality is, discrimination law will prevent criticism of and discrimination agaist particular types of men by women in defence of their own safety and that of their children from men. As we see with the protection of the category of “trans” that we know includes men with sexual paraphilias, fed by pornography.

Bailey is an avid defender of Alfred Kinsey and calls critics of Kinsey’s grossly unethical research methods, “nuts”. He claims that although Kinsey was a poor researcher and probably wasn’t responsible for the “pedophilic interactions” in his research, he has been falsely demonised.

By “pedophilic interations” Bailey refers to the actual pedophilia that formed the basis of much of Kinseys research into developing sexuality in children. I won’t go into it, you can look it up, it’s gross and disturbing.

In a bizarre take, Bailey lamented that the methods of Kinsey would not be allowed anymore, because observing pedophilic interactions has now been shunned by a “moral panic” around pedophilia.

Bailey claims that child sex abuse is the topic most likely to cause moral panic and “too often, hysteria has led to false accusations”. The harm these accusations cause, Bailey seems to argue, are worse than the cumulative effects of child sex abuse in society. This is shocking analysis, and therefore I know I must give receipts, of which there are plenty.

Bailey claims that gender critical activists are “obsessed with pedophilia” but he seems to talk about it quite a bit more than most of us do.

On his claim that the harm of child sexual abuse is overestimated due to a moral panic in our society, Bailey sites a book by Philip Jenkins, that looks at moral panics through the ages, and points out that in other ages. pedophilia was not subject to the same taboo that it is today.

This is a common postmodern argument technique, borrowed from anthropology, where the academic or clinician will show that certain attitudes were different in the past, or cross-culturally, and therefore, the moral value is proved to be subject to cultural variation and therefore, not absolute or pure in its essence. That last step is not anthropological but critical pedagogy.

So, it’s back to the clinic, where we can put our white coats on, and no women are being hysterical about rape.

Just for fun, I searched the word “hysterical” on Bailey’s X profile, because that’s what men like Bailey call women like me.

I found that Bailey claims that Milo Yiannopoulos was cancelled by the Right for violating their hysterical taboo. Milo, Bailey claimed had “said that as a young gay kid he wasn't harmed (and indeed benefitted from) having sex with an adult man. Given that he was reporting on himself, why was this incorrect?” Milo later said he only made the comments in jest to cover his shame and embarrassment and that, in truth, he had been harmed by the sexual abuse.

The takeaway from this is that the “hysterical taboo” that Bailey is talking about, is sex between a man and a minor. The framing of opposition to child rape as “right wing” morality is also interesting.

Bailey is framing himself in opposition to the Right, to conservativism, and against the nannies and scolds, but almost all the political opinion he shares, is from the right, but in the guise of the clinical gaze of the postmodern educated “moderates”.

Bailey has been critical of Chris Hansen, who traps pedophiles predating on the internet and reports them to authorities, as part of a reality TV show called “To Catch a Predator”. Bailey doesn’t think it is right to use the word “predator” to describe the pedophiles Hansen entraps. He tweeted, “Sure they were up to no good. But still, he [Hansen] ruined their lives. I can imagine other approaches”.

Bailey seemed to indicate that the shaming of pedophiles on “To Catch a Predator”, was reflective of a “hysterical overreaction to pedophilia” in society.

Bailey claims that pedophilia should be destigmatised, but not made desirable. He uses the improbable analogy of cancer, and claims that when he was a child “cancer was stigmatized—people were ashamed to have it. That was dumb And harmful. But nobody thinks having cancer is desirable.”

Again, the sickness is taken away from moral and brought into the clinic. Pedophilia for Bailey is simply a sickness to be studied and managed with discourse.

But Bailey does position himself in a moral framework of sorts, where he frames destigmatising pedophilia as a type of responsible citizenship and good parenting. “I’d never want my son to be a pedophile (I.e., attracted to children)” Bailey claims “but if he were, and if he still lived a good, decent life, I’d be proud of him and angry at those trying to harm or shame him.”

Pedophilia under the clinical gaze of Bailey, is a diagnosis of a born state of person, as much as homosexuality is. If there is a pedophile gene, I wonder why it is given predominately to those born male, while homosexuality is represented in both sexes. We are also not given any examples of societies where pedophilia is destigmatised, and utopia ensues for children, like we may expect from someone proposing an academic thesis on such a thing.

Academic rigour is merely the façade of the sexologist, and this is no more obvious than in Baileys claim for the rights of “virtuous pedophiles” (ie pedophiles living “child celibate lives”) to public association. Bailey openly defends “the Virtuous Pedophiles right to have discussions about their feelings with people who want to hear them (typically, other pedophiles who may be struggling not to offend and who may be helped)”. Experts in the criminal behaviour of child sex offenders would rightly say that supporting groups of pedophiles is a bad idea, that will lead to obvious harm to children.

Since 2021 Bailey has made dozens (43) of, frankly, unhinged tweets defending the innocence of convicted serial child sex offender Jerry Sandusky.

Sandusky was arrested in 2011 and charged with 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15-year period from 1994 to 2009 following a two-year grand jury investigation. Sandusky was found guilty by a jury of his peers on 45 of the charges.

Bailey insists on X that anyone who thinks Sandusky is guilty of the charges he has been convicted of, is stupid and uniformed. For evidence he provides a podcast and a Medium article.

This may be a reasonable and nuanced opinion, but the way Bailey repeatedly cites the case on X, over and over again, as an example of why we should not consider the harm of child sexual assault too seriously, compared to the “moral panic” around pedophilia, that leads to wrongful charge, is frankly disturbing.

In 2022 Bailey tweeted that the “ exaggerated harmfulness of child-adult sex (which I'm not at all advocating for) has had really bad consequences: false memory syndrome, multiple personality disorder, and the false convictions of many a person, including Jerry Sandusky.”

Sandusky remains in prison and is a convicted sex offender, Bailey’s claims that all the witnesses in the trial lied for money are not substantiated.

When Bailey was told on X that “adult-child sex” should be universally considered “wrong”, Bailey brings the issue again under the clinical gaze, saying that “wrong” is moral, and we should be looking at harm instead, and of course, he thinks the harm of adults having sex with children is grossly exaggerated, subject to moral panic, and that legal penalties should “reflect harm rather than moral outrage”

The harm that child sexual abuse cases to victims is not just diminished and overlooked by Bailey, it is actively argued against. Bailey tweeted that he was a critique of the trauma fad and shared an article from the right wing Aporia Magazine on the issue of trauma The article tries to discredit the link between trauma related illness and child sexual abuse. This is relevant because Bailey is an activist for the law and policy around child sexual abuse to change and considers that “penalties should reflect harm rather than moral outrage”. So if he doesn’t think CSA causes the kind of trauma that is represented in life long mental illness, that’s a salient political issue.

At this point, in the political space we occupy, we can call Bailey an activist, not just for “virtuous pedophiles”, but for predators who are actively seeking children to sexually abuse to be judged less harshly, and also for convicted pedophiles to not be sentenced as harshly.

As a CSA survivor and a feminist I have, not just a right, but a responsibility to highlight the political implications of people in the gender critical movement embracing Bailey and his “clinical” approach.

On a personal level I have experienced lifelong trauma related injury from CSA. Family sexual violence made me homeless as a young woman, and it had dramatic effects on my education, life chances and material wellbeing. That I have overcome the challenges, does not disprove the reality of the harms of CSA.

I was able to take my case to the criminal justice system, where the perpetuator of the abuse on me was given an 18 month prison sentence. So, people advocating for reduced prisons sentences for child sex offenders, on the basis of the evidences of harm, is very much my business.

This has been a long article and I thank you for being patient, let me sum up. Michael Bailey is a recognised expert by Genspect, an organisation who claims authority in the gender critical space in relation to opposing corrupted gender focused medicine.

Bailey openly advocates for pedophilia to be destigmatised, he thinks the harm of child sexual abuse is over estimated, and he claims that the topic of child sex abuse is subject to a moral panic that overestimates the harms of what he calls “child-adult sex”. Bailey also believes that claims that CSA causes life altering trauma are a “fad” and that our “current penalties are too harsh” in relation to “child-adult sex”

We sometimes get caught up in the left/right dichotomy, which postmodern forms of analysis skew. I personally still use traditional western political frameworks quite a bit, in order to be understood, but it is difficult for characters like Bailey because of the guise of the clinical discourse.

But Bailey and similar characters do seem to be part of the new masculinist right, that rejects conservatism and embraces selective use of clinical discourse to bolster a narrative that is just old fashioned male sexual entitlement.

On the topic of women Bailey’s tweets reveal an old-school sexist. During a GC politics scandal, where Genspect platformed a openly AGP man, Bailey said that in regard to the matter “women’s complaints should be reserved for bad behavior regardless of what they speculate is going on in someone’s mind. That would exclude, for example, Phil Illy at Genspect.”

Women are not to speculate about what may be going on in a man’s head, not even when the man is openly displaying a paraphilia. Women are not allowed to speculate on the motives of an organisation accused of platforming pedophilia apologists. I hate to be so blunt, but the fuck we won’t!

The shame that TERFs are subject to in the gender critical world for telling the truth about men is a massive problem. I pointed the problem out a little over a year ago when I told Stella O’Malley that it was not appropriate to shame women for having sexual boundaries in their politics. She blocked me, as is her absolute right. I don’t want anything to do with Genspect, but Genspect are positioned as an authority in the politics I swim in, and as a CSA survivor I think I’m well within my rights to air my concerns.

We don’t need to destigmatise pedophilia, keep that shit stigmatised, even, or especially in teen boys. Let boys know that if they engage in pedophilia or in the pornography related to it, they will be shamed and pushed to the margins of our society. Boys should know that pedophiles belong at the margins of our society and in locked facilities. Boys should know that pedophiles garner no sympathy from the majority of society, who consider them predators and want them away from their children and they don’t want to be friends with them.

What we need to destigmatise is people speaking about the impact of abuse on their life and on their emotional system. We need to destigmatise women entering into the political arena and identifying as feminists or as TERFs. We need to destigmatise women standing up for their rights and the rights of their children and their rights to protect their children from human predators.