This is a very important post in my opinion. When completing my masters in social work program 30 years ago one of my semester long practicums was interning at a locked mental health facility that treated adult male sex offenders sentenced to prison for their crime. Most were in the program 9 months or longer and the key moment in their "treatment" was when they had to pass the "victim empathy" portion of the program. They had to write and then read a statement to the assembled group of fellow offenders and two therapists and then to answer questions about their own perceptions of very specifically how their sexually abusive behavior had harmed their victim(s). Those that failed to convince the group AND the therapists that they actually could feel and exhibit real "empathy" were sent back to prison. Those that passed were allowed to continue in the program to the next phase. The purpose of this critical segment of the program was rather simple - if a convicted sex offender could not see and acknowledge and show contrition for the damage he had done to his victim - he was clearly at a high risk to continue offending. Hardly a "rocket science" perspective. I can't imagine anything more dangerous to society than advocating the destigmatizing of the psychological and oft times physical damage done to victims by male sex offenders - be those victims children or adults. Thank you for sharing very important perspectives on this. I find the disintegration of my profession into the morass of amoral, post-modern gibberish and relativity to be completely Kafkaesque.
Thanks Gary. It was super long but I needed to document for documentation sake. So many women gat called names for pointing these things out and they are difficult to explain on social media. Cheers
Thank you for this writing. It clarified so many things for me, and confirms many of the conclusions I have come to over time regarding AGPs and pedophilia. I know women who had run ins with men and boys growing up, starting quite young, some as young as age 4 or 5. It's much more common and frequent than people realize. Especially with young girls that are unattended, and hence unprotected, for whatever reason.
Did any of them not pass this part of the "test"? I could see how a deviant could game the system on this one, so I'm curious if anybody failed, rendering this test "moot".
During the time I interned multiple people failed the empathy portion of the treatment program and were sent back to prison to serve their terms. Even completing the program didn't lessen the offender's time in prison, but it was certainly a plus for them when it came time for a parole hearing. The program tried to screen carefully because the two female therapist who ran it didn't want to accept men who were serial offenders as they were seen as poorer candidates for treatment. The men were of a wide range of personalities and circumstances. Those that were serial offenders and those with psychopathic personality traits stood out in my memory, and they had a very hard time convincing anyone they felt remorse and they were the ones who typically flunked out of the program on the victim empathy portion. These men all lived side by side with each other for many months on end, so the guys that reeked of psychopathy or anti-social personality traits in day in and day out interaction with their fellows - essentially fooled no one when they tried turning on the tears and histrionics for the victim empathy portion. I wonder if such programs even exist anymore? You're right Marta about the vulnerability of young girls unprotected. In both my work with offenders in treatment, and my work as a child abuse investigator - THE most common situation for the sexual abuse of a child that I encountered over and over occurred with either mom's boyfriend being allowed to babysit alone, or when allowing a teenage boy to babysit with no other adult present.
Thank you for your response Gary. I'm glad the serials weren't able to bamboozle. Today they'd all probably get a pass. It's expected as part of the "be kind" world that's kind to the perps, not the victims, from what I've read.
I agree Marta. The shift away from protecting and empathizing with victims of abuse - to protecting and empathizing with perpetrators of abuse is mind boggling to say the least. It was in fact all those just "be kind" trans activists issuing death threats and rape threats to J.K.Rowling that finally woke me up to the madness that had been unfolding.
Gary was that based on any of David Finkelhor's work? I studied with him back in the 90s when he and Murray Straus were directors of the Family Research Lab at UNH. If I remember, some of the serial offenders he worked with had something like an "average" of 600 victims before they were caught and prosecuted. Just appalling numbers. Dr. Straus passed away nearly a decade ago and I've since lost track of all the goings on at the FRL. But David's work is remarkable and should be required reading for everyone in the field.
Hello Carmine, The only research/theorist name I recall from that long ago period of my life (1992) is Nicholas Groth. The program I interned at was at a State Hospital in the SW and the two female therapists, one an MSW and the other a PhD psychologist, carefully screened during the admission process to do their best NOT TO ADMIT anyone that had multiple victims if that information was known or suspected. The idea being that that serial offenders with many victims were a rather different kettle of fish from the, for example, intoxicated male who offended on the 14 year old babysitter, but had no other known charges or allegations. It was commonly understood that we only were accepting into treatment the tiny fraction of offenders considered most likely to respond to an immersive form of CBT group and individual therapy. The focus of the program was on challenging the offenders "thinking errors" the primary of which were denial, minimization and rationalization. It was both fascinating and terribly disturbing work therapeutically. What I remember from this program is that the psychological surveys given to the men who were accepted did not show any significant deviation from "the norm." In other words these charged and convicted sex offenders who we worked with in the program - could never be "screened out" as a danger to children by means of psychological testing - and yet they were clearly guilty of at least one sexual offense against a minor.
Engrossing and comprehensive. One paragraph early on could be a book, it is so completely overlooked and underestimated in all this debate.
**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.**
Trans is a delusion from which an identity was fabricated (I like your idea) and continues to be strongly promoted by the psychological and medical community - psychiatric, endocrine, surgical.
It is promoted with complete lack of evidence of existence, and with obvious indication of harm in doing so. It is promoted as non-delusional in complete contradiction to psychiatric definition of delusion - a persistent belief which is contrary to reality, when it easily fills that definition.
It is the only mental illness which is treated by medieval level mutilation of a healthy body, and we are told by medicine the mutilation is therapeutic. Drilling holes in skulls in pre-historic and later societies was practiced to let out demons, and in 21st century drilling holes in genitals region is to assuage sexual possession.
Virtually all medical proponents of trans delusion affirmation are straight male psychiatrists and psychologists, with the entire WPATH control structure being made of delusional men who insist they and others aren’t. Virtually all of opponents of trans delusion are women and gay men. That isn’t an accident.
Until the fiction of sex possession is extirpated from psychology and psychiatry, it will continue to harm those who are deluded and all around them who are forced by coercion or weak intellect to participate folie à deux in a delusion.
I’ve had may debates about trans the last 45 years, but nobody has been able to refute the origin of trans in medicine, specifically psychology, and that it is the sex equivalent to medieval demonic possession, or contemporary alien mind possession, or telepathic mind possession.
Nobody has a body which is possessed of a sex-alien mind, there should be no laws recognizing the delusion as reality, and only psychology presents as an authority on minds to confirm the possession.
They are there certainly clinically, but none of leadership prominence like Michael Bailey, John Money. I think I saw a single woman at WPATH.
There are no male equivalents to the wildly prescient Janice Raymond and “Transexual Empire”. Book after accurate book (Shrier, Joyce, Hooven, Stock, Jeffreys) are by women and the fictions are inevitably by men.
Judith Butler has a lot to answer for, and Planned Parenthood's clinics are supported by many women even though they dispense testosterone to girls. See also de Vries, Olson-Kennedy, and Susie Green from Mermaids.
You are correct. My sense is that the original Harry Benjamin crowd, turned WPATH, were all men, but they began to welcome women into their perverted club. Reed Erikson, Louis Sullivan, Jamison Green were all welcomed into the club and allowed to 'transition.' These FTMs were huge in building momentum. I sense this was an effort to expand a patient population. And look where we are today.
I cannot read Michael Bailey's name without immediately thinking "fucksaw". He just does not like women, all his compassionate sympathies are reserved for men and especially sexually obsessive men.
Muddled, rambling, overly long comment. If you are not inteligent enough to understand go and read dumb people’s things. Go and read Stella. I don’t know what buttress people are
Thanks. No I’ve not heard of them. I don’t really follow psychology, or sexology. I think they are very dodgy friends and that’s from someone with a humanities degree
Whatever label you put on it, it’s just male pattern sexual deviancy. We don’t need a diagnosis just a sex based criminology profile. Could probably do that with a diploma in statistics.
This is where gender intervention started in the UK, with psychoanalytic criminologist Edward Glover founding the Psychopathic Clinic, later renamed to the Portman Clinic, where forensic psychiatrist Az Hakeem worked. Sexual deviance was considered a predictor of criminal behaviour. When people say 'the Tavistock' they should really say 'the Tavistock and Portman' because the clinics merged decades ago.
Wow thankyou Edie, you are so brilliant at constructing your case. I knew he was a bit shady, but not HOW shady. So many pedos are lurking at the bottom of ‘queer’ activism, like crocs in a billabong.
All this is one of the reasons so many (and I as well) are calling for the breakup of that acronym. There are three populations that keep getting conflated:
1) There are all the people who are LGB - every one with a sexual identity and sexual expression that is completely dependent on biological sex and same-sex attraction. Every person in the LGB community is either male or female and has a specific sexual orientation - either homosexual, or bisexual. Also, homosexuality has been observed in at least 1,500 species the last I checked, everyone from bugs to birds to mammals. It is natural and normal in the animal kingdom even if we are unable to explain it in any way.
2) There are the people with genetic disorders - DSDs (the intersex) which is comprised of people with about 40 different chromosomal disorders that occur in both male and female bodies and which comprise about 0.018 percent of human births. The three types of sexual orientation also apply here - every person is either male or female and is straight, homosexual, or bisexual regardless of whether their phenotypic expression matches their genotype.
3) Then there are those who have some form of paraphilia or a gender identity disorder (now called gender dysphoria), or both, and who are suffering from a severe psychiatric pathology. And yes I consider paraphilias to be pathologies, especially those that harm others. The key co-morbidities of these Cluster-B personality and character disorders are dissociation, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, disconnection, self-loathing, self-harm ideation, suicidal ideation, delusions, and identity disturbances.
This population and their "allies" are the most common supporters and proponents of gender ideology in its current form, who make the absurd claims that humans can change sex, that biological sex is a social construct, and who make an even more absurd claim that there are more than two sexes for humans.
Regardless of their beliefs about gender stereotypes, this population is also either male or female, and has the same sexual orientation as the rest of humanity - straight, homosexual, or bisexual.
But the main point is these three populations are not the same - they have very different needs - they are medically, psychiatrically, politically, and philosophically distinct from each other - they are each different and unique - and they should not be conflated or grouped together in any way, especially in the ways where they are politically and legally antithetical, such as we see with the intense homophobia and violent misogyny from the gender ideologues.
We really need to divorce the LGB from the multiple pathologies of the TQ+. Sooner is better.
Thank you for writing this, Edie. I knew none of this about Bailey but am very glad now that I did not sign up to participate in his current study with Lisa Littman and K Zucker. I’m left to wonder why Bailey thinks the way he does- as grim as it is, my first thought is that he or someone close to him has pedophilic tendencies.
Muddled, rambling, overly long article. Pls don't use expression 'old biddies'. Blanchard produced a theory which is clinical and therefore objective. It was not intended to be used against ppl to whom it applies.
Practitioners who work with sex offenders don't advocate sex offending, but are able to understand there is a serious behavioural problem that requires a solution.
Let's understand the fetishistic side of gender confusion. Judging and name calling just hurt and enrage certain groups, and solves nothing.
I am unsure how Focaud and sin help move anything forward.
As a gc Feminist I do actually want psychological and medical theories to help us solve the shouting, violence and misunderstanding that is going on.
If I have to change my views to accommodate new ideas then I will. I'm highly unlikely to do so around the need for women's spaces. Buttress ppl do need to pee somewhere too. Let's remember that.
Stella and Sasha are open to the question why and I fully support and love what they are doing.
Womens spaces are vital and must be fought for. 100%. But there are many other strands to the social ideas that are emerging around gender; and shutting our minds and criticising those who are trying to understand what is happening is not helpful.
I do not agree that a theory derived from clinical practice is necessarily objective.Foucault had some helpful ideas about the historical development of clinical ideas and practices in this regard. Although his lifestyle, language and attitudes have been rightfully criticised, strongly by my radical feminist sisters, there is much that is valuable in his ideas when they are not misappropriated negatively into valid criticisms of pomo relativism and vacuity. Have you read Birth of the Clinic for examples? And he made excellent predictions of the emerging psy sciences’ growth in the medical clinic (post Foucault, the ‘gender clinic’ is a good example as argued here be Edie. Another example is the genetics clinic, where his ideas helped my research into the growth of ‘nondirective’ genetic ‘’counselling’, that I see as a professional avoidance of the stigma of eugenics and of their capture by the state that aims to reduce public costs for the care of children with Down Syndrome as well as other genetic anomalies. Added to this is the use of technologies to predict the increasing risk of ‘advanced maternal age’ and that diagnose genetic anomalies but say little about the level of effects on the fetus or mainly negative predictions for the future affected person. Has it been any wonder that many women ‘choose’ to terminate a pregnancy when they are told they are at high risk because of their age and then their fetus is diagnosed with a genetic anomaly. The woman and her future child have been authoritatively condemned as imperfect, no matter how ‘kind’ or ‘clinically scientific’ the language used, with diminishing state funded support services to care for a child who is born with special needs. Well done, Edie.
I don't criticise Foucault for his language, but for his self-serving amoral framework which leveraged the privilege of men like himself to avoid justice. Saying that Foucault had some worthwhile ideas is like saying Harvey Weinstein produced some good movies. Both statements may be true, while entirely missing the point.
This is a very important post in my opinion. When completing my masters in social work program 30 years ago one of my semester long practicums was interning at a locked mental health facility that treated adult male sex offenders sentenced to prison for their crime. Most were in the program 9 months or longer and the key moment in their "treatment" was when they had to pass the "victim empathy" portion of the program. They had to write and then read a statement to the assembled group of fellow offenders and two therapists and then to answer questions about their own perceptions of very specifically how their sexually abusive behavior had harmed their victim(s). Those that failed to convince the group AND the therapists that they actually could feel and exhibit real "empathy" were sent back to prison. Those that passed were allowed to continue in the program to the next phase. The purpose of this critical segment of the program was rather simple - if a convicted sex offender could not see and acknowledge and show contrition for the damage he had done to his victim - he was clearly at a high risk to continue offending. Hardly a "rocket science" perspective. I can't imagine anything more dangerous to society than advocating the destigmatizing of the psychological and oft times physical damage done to victims by male sex offenders - be those victims children or adults. Thank you for sharing very important perspectives on this. I find the disintegration of my profession into the morass of amoral, post-modern gibberish and relativity to be completely Kafkaesque.
Thanks Gary. It was super long but I needed to document for documentation sake. So many women gat called names for pointing these things out and they are difficult to explain on social media. Cheers
Thank you for this writing. It clarified so many things for me, and confirms many of the conclusions I have come to over time regarding AGPs and pedophilia. I know women who had run ins with men and boys growing up, starting quite young, some as young as age 4 or 5. It's much more common and frequent than people realize. Especially with young girls that are unattended, and hence unprotected, for whatever reason.
Did any of them not pass this part of the "test"? I could see how a deviant could game the system on this one, so I'm curious if anybody failed, rendering this test "moot".
During the time I interned multiple people failed the empathy portion of the treatment program and were sent back to prison to serve their terms. Even completing the program didn't lessen the offender's time in prison, but it was certainly a plus for them when it came time for a parole hearing. The program tried to screen carefully because the two female therapist who ran it didn't want to accept men who were serial offenders as they were seen as poorer candidates for treatment. The men were of a wide range of personalities and circumstances. Those that were serial offenders and those with psychopathic personality traits stood out in my memory, and they had a very hard time convincing anyone they felt remorse and they were the ones who typically flunked out of the program on the victim empathy portion. These men all lived side by side with each other for many months on end, so the guys that reeked of psychopathy or anti-social personality traits in day in and day out interaction with their fellows - essentially fooled no one when they tried turning on the tears and histrionics for the victim empathy portion. I wonder if such programs even exist anymore? You're right Marta about the vulnerability of young girls unprotected. In both my work with offenders in treatment, and my work as a child abuse investigator - THE most common situation for the sexual abuse of a child that I encountered over and over occurred with either mom's boyfriend being allowed to babysit alone, or when allowing a teenage boy to babysit with no other adult present.
Thank you for your response Gary. I'm glad the serials weren't able to bamboozle. Today they'd all probably get a pass. It's expected as part of the "be kind" world that's kind to the perps, not the victims, from what I've read.
I agree Marta. The shift away from protecting and empathizing with victims of abuse - to protecting and empathizing with perpetrators of abuse is mind boggling to say the least. It was in fact all those just "be kind" trans activists issuing death threats and rape threats to J.K.Rowling that finally woke me up to the madness that had been unfolding.
Gary- really appreciate your insights. I’ve often wondered- can pedophilia be “cured?” It seems like opinions on that have varied over the years.
That's interesting.
Gary was that based on any of David Finkelhor's work? I studied with him back in the 90s when he and Murray Straus were directors of the Family Research Lab at UNH. If I remember, some of the serial offenders he worked with had something like an "average" of 600 victims before they were caught and prosecuted. Just appalling numbers. Dr. Straus passed away nearly a decade ago and I've since lost track of all the goings on at the FRL. But David's work is remarkable and should be required reading for everyone in the field.
Hello Carmine, The only research/theorist name I recall from that long ago period of my life (1992) is Nicholas Groth. The program I interned at was at a State Hospital in the SW and the two female therapists, one an MSW and the other a PhD psychologist, carefully screened during the admission process to do their best NOT TO ADMIT anyone that had multiple victims if that information was known or suspected. The idea being that that serial offenders with many victims were a rather different kettle of fish from the, for example, intoxicated male who offended on the 14 year old babysitter, but had no other known charges or allegations. It was commonly understood that we only were accepting into treatment the tiny fraction of offenders considered most likely to respond to an immersive form of CBT group and individual therapy. The focus of the program was on challenging the offenders "thinking errors" the primary of which were denial, minimization and rationalization. It was both fascinating and terribly disturbing work therapeutically. What I remember from this program is that the psychological surveys given to the men who were accepted did not show any significant deviation from "the norm." In other words these charged and convicted sex offenders who we worked with in the program - could never be "screened out" as a danger to children by means of psychological testing - and yet they were clearly guilty of at least one sexual offense against a minor.
thanks Gary :-)
Engrossing and comprehensive. One paragraph early on could be a book, it is so completely overlooked and underestimated in all this debate.
**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.**
Trans is a delusion from which an identity was fabricated (I like your idea) and continues to be strongly promoted by the psychological and medical community - psychiatric, endocrine, surgical.
It is promoted with complete lack of evidence of existence, and with obvious indication of harm in doing so. It is promoted as non-delusional in complete contradiction to psychiatric definition of delusion - a persistent belief which is contrary to reality, when it easily fills that definition.
It is the only mental illness which is treated by medieval level mutilation of a healthy body, and we are told by medicine the mutilation is therapeutic. Drilling holes in skulls in pre-historic and later societies was practiced to let out demons, and in 21st century drilling holes in genitals region is to assuage sexual possession.
Virtually all medical proponents of trans delusion affirmation are straight male psychiatrists and psychologists, with the entire WPATH control structure being made of delusional men who insist they and others aren’t. Virtually all of opponents of trans delusion are women and gay men. That isn’t an accident.
Until the fiction of sex possession is extirpated from psychology and psychiatry, it will continue to harm those who are deluded and all around them who are forced by coercion or weak intellect to participate folie à deux in a delusion.
I think I’ll copy and paste some of this into a book. This was just a bit of therapy to get my thoughts in order. Thanks for sticking with it
‚Sexual possession‘ is exactly the right framing of GD. Very catchy too.
I’m sure it’s an unreleased Marilyn Manson single.
Marvin Gaye, wasn‘t it? Oh, wait…
I was going to type that but he’s too smooth and nice
Yes, that one early paragraph is perfectly spot-on.
I’ve had may debates about trans the last 45 years, but nobody has been able to refute the origin of trans in medicine, specifically psychology, and that it is the sex equivalent to medieval demonic possession, or contemporary alien mind possession, or telepathic mind possession.
Nobody has a body which is possessed of a sex-alien mind, there should be no laws recognizing the delusion as reality, and only psychology presents as an authority on minds to confirm the possession.
Actually, female psychologists and doctors feature heavily in transgender affirmation as well as the gender-critical movement.
They are there certainly clinically, but none of leadership prominence like Michael Bailey, John Money. I think I saw a single woman at WPATH.
There are no male equivalents to the wildly prescient Janice Raymond and “Transexual Empire”. Book after accurate book (Shrier, Joyce, Hooven, Stock, Jeffreys) are by women and the fictions are inevitably by men.
Judith Butler has a lot to answer for, and Planned Parenthood's clinics are supported by many women even though they dispense testosterone to girls. See also de Vries, Olson-Kennedy, and Susie Green from Mermaids.
You are correct. My sense is that the original Harry Benjamin crowd, turned WPATH, were all men, but they began to welcome women into their perverted club. Reed Erikson, Louis Sullivan, Jamison Green were all welcomed into the club and allowed to 'transition.' These FTMs were huge in building momentum. I sense this was an effort to expand a patient population. And look where we are today.
Not to mention all of the 'cisgender' women who cheerlead for gender transition of others.
I cannot read Michael Bailey's name without immediately thinking "fucksaw". He just does not like women, all his compassionate sympathies are reserved for men and especially sexually obsessive men.
He appears to be very fond of the nonces
Muddled, rambling, overly long comment. If you are not inteligent enough to understand go and read dumb people’s things. Go and read Stella. I don’t know what buttress people are
Please don't apologise for the length of your article, this is what we're here for.
I have been listening to Stella and Genspect with the occasional doubts and scepticism, and I've gone right right off Baily now.
Do you read a Substacker called Orlando? He is ininvested in the topic of Autogynephilia and has some valid takes.
I cannot leave without saying how deeply sorry I am that you were abused.
We humans don't have a great track record in protecting children. Surely this is the ultimate reflection of our humanity. ❤️
Thanks. No I’ve not heard of them. I don’t really follow psychology, or sexology. I think they are very dodgy friends and that’s from someone with a humanities degree
Worth a quick look at. He's highly critical of the Cass report for deleting all their findings on AGP.
Whatever label you put on it, it’s just male pattern sexual deviancy. We don’t need a diagnosis just a sex based criminology profile. Could probably do that with a diploma in statistics.
This is where gender intervention started in the UK, with psychoanalytic criminologist Edward Glover founding the Psychopathic Clinic, later renamed to the Portman Clinic, where forensic psychiatrist Az Hakeem worked. Sexual deviance was considered a predictor of criminal behaviour. When people say 'the Tavistock' they should really say 'the Tavistock and Portman' because the clinics merged decades ago.
Yes, he is AGP and would agree with you.
😂
Wow thankyou Edie, you are so brilliant at constructing your case. I knew he was a bit shady, but not HOW shady. So many pedos are lurking at the bottom of ‘queer’ activism, like crocs in a billabong.
Good take down of how dangerous the mumblings on about pedophilia, AGP, and the like are.
Genspect plays a dangerous game by entertaining it.
All this is one of the reasons so many (and I as well) are calling for the breakup of that acronym. There are three populations that keep getting conflated:
1) There are all the people who are LGB - every one with a sexual identity and sexual expression that is completely dependent on biological sex and same-sex attraction. Every person in the LGB community is either male or female and has a specific sexual orientation - either homosexual, or bisexual. Also, homosexuality has been observed in at least 1,500 species the last I checked, everyone from bugs to birds to mammals. It is natural and normal in the animal kingdom even if we are unable to explain it in any way.
2) There are the people with genetic disorders - DSDs (the intersex) which is comprised of people with about 40 different chromosomal disorders that occur in both male and female bodies and which comprise about 0.018 percent of human births. The three types of sexual orientation also apply here - every person is either male or female and is straight, homosexual, or bisexual regardless of whether their phenotypic expression matches their genotype.
3) Then there are those who have some form of paraphilia or a gender identity disorder (now called gender dysphoria), or both, and who are suffering from a severe psychiatric pathology. And yes I consider paraphilias to be pathologies, especially those that harm others. The key co-morbidities of these Cluster-B personality and character disorders are dissociation, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, disconnection, self-loathing, self-harm ideation, suicidal ideation, delusions, and identity disturbances.
This population and their "allies" are the most common supporters and proponents of gender ideology in its current form, who make the absurd claims that humans can change sex, that biological sex is a social construct, and who make an even more absurd claim that there are more than two sexes for humans.
Regardless of their beliefs about gender stereotypes, this population is also either male or female, and has the same sexual orientation as the rest of humanity - straight, homosexual, or bisexual.
But the main point is these three populations are not the same - they have very different needs - they are medically, psychiatrically, politically, and philosophically distinct from each other - they are each different and unique - and they should not be conflated or grouped together in any way, especially in the ways where they are politically and legally antithetical, such as we see with the intense homophobia and violent misogyny from the gender ideologues.
We really need to divorce the LGB from the multiple pathologies of the TQ+. Sooner is better.
Thank you for writing this, Edie. I knew none of this about Bailey but am very glad now that I did not sign up to participate in his current study with Lisa Littman and K Zucker. I’m left to wonder why Bailey thinks the way he does- as grim as it is, my first thought is that he or someone close to him has pedophilic tendencies.
I agree
Muddled, rambling, overly long article. Pls don't use expression 'old biddies'. Blanchard produced a theory which is clinical and therefore objective. It was not intended to be used against ppl to whom it applies.
Practitioners who work with sex offenders don't advocate sex offending, but are able to understand there is a serious behavioural problem that requires a solution.
Let's understand the fetishistic side of gender confusion. Judging and name calling just hurt and enrage certain groups, and solves nothing.
I am unsure how Focaud and sin help move anything forward.
As a gc Feminist I do actually want psychological and medical theories to help us solve the shouting, violence and misunderstanding that is going on.
If I have to change my views to accommodate new ideas then I will. I'm highly unlikely to do so around the need for women's spaces. Buttress ppl do need to pee somewhere too. Let's remember that.
Stella and Sasha are open to the question why and I fully support and love what they are doing.
Womens spaces are vital and must be fought for. 100%. But there are many other strands to the social ideas that are emerging around gender; and shutting our minds and criticising those who are trying to understand what is happening is not helpful.
Nor is name calling.
I do not agree that a theory derived from clinical practice is necessarily objective.Foucault had some helpful ideas about the historical development of clinical ideas and practices in this regard. Although his lifestyle, language and attitudes have been rightfully criticised, strongly by my radical feminist sisters, there is much that is valuable in his ideas when they are not misappropriated negatively into valid criticisms of pomo relativism and vacuity. Have you read Birth of the Clinic for examples? And he made excellent predictions of the emerging psy sciences’ growth in the medical clinic (post Foucault, the ‘gender clinic’ is a good example as argued here be Edie. Another example is the genetics clinic, where his ideas helped my research into the growth of ‘nondirective’ genetic ‘’counselling’, that I see as a professional avoidance of the stigma of eugenics and of their capture by the state that aims to reduce public costs for the care of children with Down Syndrome as well as other genetic anomalies. Added to this is the use of technologies to predict the increasing risk of ‘advanced maternal age’ and that diagnose genetic anomalies but say little about the level of effects on the fetus or mainly negative predictions for the future affected person. Has it been any wonder that many women ‘choose’ to terminate a pregnancy when they are told they are at high risk because of their age and then their fetus is diagnosed with a genetic anomaly. The woman and her future child have been authoritatively condemned as imperfect, no matter how ‘kind’ or ‘clinically scientific’ the language used, with diminishing state funded support services to care for a child who is born with special needs. Well done, Edie.
I don't criticise Foucault for his language, but for his self-serving amoral framework which leveraged the privilege of men like himself to avoid justice. Saying that Foucault had some worthwhile ideas is like saying Harvey Weinstein produced some good movies. Both statements may be true, while entirely missing the point.
I don't agree with your first sentence at all. Because what you say is clearly untrue.