Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege

Strange post, but it underscores what is happening within academic circles. The free flow of ideas is only acceptable as long as they fall within certain narrow parameters:

In academic feuds, as in war, there is no telling how far people will go once the shooting starts.

J. Michael Bailey’s book about gender enraged some transgender women.
Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar, investigated the accusations against Dr. Bailey.

Earlier this month, members of the International Academy of Sex Research, gathering for their annual meeting in Vancouver, informally discussed one of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory. Read More.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, the hypocrisy!

It's OK to have a contrary opinion as long as it is politically correct and doesn't conflict with a political agenda. Its like one-way communication or the sound of one hand clapping.

Ron Ballew said...

Isn't that the truth.

OII: http://www.intersexualite.org/ said...

We are starting our own Satire provided to us by Shirley Spammer.

For information about the Baileyesque figure in the Intersex community
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html

I feel that Dreger and Bailey deserve NO serious response from most of us at this point. What Dreger has done in my opinion is use her social status and her normborn privilege to caricature me and in so doing it has been crafted into a genetic definition of me as
disordered sexually. This is a very dangerous caricature. What Shirley Spammer and Andrew Kerr have done in the following satire is simply mirror back what they are doing; but, of course, there is no real danger there because it is not to be taken seriously as a
scientific, truthful article. What Dreger and Bailey have done is very serious and even though it is a caricature, a perversion of what I am, it will end the lives of many like me in the future because of having a DSD or more precisely: a genetic birth defect suitable to be eliminated from the gene pool.

Dreger and Bailey are the only ones with the TRUTH. All others are liars or erroneous. That ends the discussion. Freedom of expression only applies to the ones doing the research and speaking about us and for us - never to us the actual subjects. Like Sophie Siedlberg has so clearly pointed out, when we the subjects object, then the objection is the subject of another clinical study of the squeaks of the labrats. By accident of birth, we have no access to their Ubermensch truth. This is our disclaimer. We don't pretend to have the truth. Only those who speak for us do.

The first two in ours series:
Professor Rike Mengele Fatbastard and Dr M. Alice Doormat De Vile Are Innocent!!
"When Professors are branded neo Nazi scum and liars"

Access to the articles in this series
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_68

Ron Ballew said...

Now this is an interesting comment. Seems like what the article has been talking about is true. The censorship of ideas. You may disagree with Bailey but that is what academic freedom is all about. He is entitled to his opinion as you are.