Biological reductionism meets gender diversity in human sexuality

Journal of Sex Research, August, 2005 by Walter O. Bockting

The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, by J. Michael Bailey. Washington, DC: The Joseph Henry Press, 2003, 233 pages. Cloth, $24.95.

The Man Who Would Be Queen is the most controversial book on transsexuality since Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire (1979) and is the latest challenge to what already was a fragile relationship between the scientific and the transgender communities. What is all the fuss about? What does the book say, why is it so controversial, and what does this controversy tell us about sex research with stigmatized populations like the transgender community?

What the Book Says

Bailey argues that there are essentially two types of male-to-female transsexuals who can be distinguished on the basis of their sexual orientation. The first type is homosexual transsexuals, extremely gender-transposed (feminine) men whose sexual object choice is toward men instead of women. According to Bailey, their primary motivation to change sex is to attract more men sexually: "Those who love men become women to attract them" (p. xii).

The second type is autogynephilic transsexuals, meaning paraphilic men whose sexual object choice is toward the image of themselves as women. For this group, the primary motivation for changing sex is to become the object of their desire: "Those who love women become the women they love" (p. xii). According to Bailey, the sexual attraction to men that this latter group may report is secondary to their idea of what it is like to be a woman (i.e., interested in men). The sexual attraction to women that autogynephilic transsexuals may report is deemed less than genuine; they envy, rather than love, other women. As Bailey explains, "Autogynephilic transsexuals might declare attraction to women or men, to both, or to neither. But their primary attraction is to the women that they would become" (p. 147).

By fitting all male-to-female transsexuals into this typology, Bailey attempts to fortify theory and research that postulates a biological link between gender identity and sexual orientation, between gender transposition (demasculinization and feminization) and homosexuality. As Bailey states, "Succinctly put, homosexual male-to-female transsexuals are extremely feminine men" (p. 146).

This is not a new typology. It was coined by Ray Blanchard in the 1980s and has been widely published in the scientific literature (e.g., Blanchard, 1987, 1989). However, Bailey's book is accessible to a lay audience through its non-academic style that, especially to the uninformed reader, makes a very convincing case that the gender diversity found within the transgender community can be reduced to these two types. The book contains eleven chapters divided into three parts. Part one is about childhood femininity among boys, part two about femininity and masculinity among gay men, laying the foundation for part three: the typology of homosexual versus autogynephilic transsexuals.

Unfortunately, the book fails to offer a balanced and well-cited review of the scientific literature that would have shown that the diversity found within this community cannot as easily be reduced to the two types. Bailey dismisses clinical experience and ignores research that provides evidence of much greater diversity in gender identity, gender expression, and transgender sexuality. For example, to explain accounts that do not conform to the typology, he states: "Autogynephiles who claimed to be homosexual transsexuals could account for the apparent cases of homosexual transsexuals who practiced erotic crossdressing" (p. 173).

Why the Book is Controversial

Bailey criticizes scholars who support a social constructionist perspective on transsexuality for giving ideology precedence over science. What he omits is that gender transposition theories have been challenged in the scientific literature on psychological, sociocultural, and biological grounds (Coleman, Gooren, & Ross, 1989). Bailey further limits his focus to male-to-female transsexuals. However, research on female-to-males attracted to men shows that they do not fit as easily into the reductionistic typology (Bockting & Coleman, 1991; Coleman & Bockting, 1987; Coleman, Bockting, & Gooren, 1993).

Another point of controversy is Bailey's portrayal of scholars and clinicians who provide transgender-specific health care and who provide access to sex reassignment services according to the Harry Benjamin Association's Standards of Care (Meyer et al., 2001). According to Bailey, these professionals are ignorant of the homosexual versus autogynephilic typology of transsexuals. Bailey offers several explanations for this. He argues that the two types of transsexuals rarely mix, that gender clinics only see heterosexual (i.e., autogynephilic) transsexuals because homosexual transsexuals tend to obtain their hormones on the black market, that clinicians take their clients' self reports at face value when they shouldn't, and that "sex researchers are not as scholarly as they should be and so don't read the current scientific journals" (p. 176).