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Comments, possibly informed.

Tim Wilson
Daytona Beach, Florida, USA
timatollah@mackandtim.net
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Cue the Prince

J. Michael Bailey is a professor and head of the psychology department at Northwestern in Chicago. His new book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, is pissing off the social-construction camp in the gay world (and beyond).

Controversy

Bailey follows what's primarily an evolutionary biology point of view, and he sees ample evidence that straight men and gay men have more in common than some would think. The book is primarily concerned with femininity among gay men.

Controversy

Bailey also see evidence that some if not many male-to-female transexuals have more in common with gay men than with straight women. Transexuals who were gay men transform to women because they love men; transexuals who were straight men become lesbians because they love women.

Controversy

The book is available online here in an ugly HTML setup. I read part of it online last night, and I didn't find anything that struck me as completely out of line, but then I tend to find evolutionary biology more compelling than social constructionism.

Controversy

This has been percolating around listserves and Usenet for a few days, seems to be reaching blog consciousness (scroll down, last paragraph of "Another Update"). Yahoo! is already carrying stories based on research reported in the book. Drudge will probably be along soon, in typically tittilating fashion, and then, within a few weeks, mass-market media will be doing badly-put-together pornography masquerading as feature stories about it.

Controversy

Because it's controversial, and controversy sells papers.

Controversy

Books, too.

Controversy

I'm gonna try to get ahold of a dead-tree copy and give it a real read. More as things develop.
posted by Tim Wilson at 9:19 PM