J. Michael Bailey made headlines in March for his controversial sex toy demonstration at Northwestern University. If you don’t remember, there was a huge public outcry from students and the media and Bailey later apologized. This is not the first time Bailey’s behavior and work has caused uproar. Working under the umbrella of human sexuality, Bailey most commonly studies homosexuality, transsexuality and arousal patterns, publishing a number of potentially offensive articles and books. Here’s a little more about Mr. Bailey’s controversial psychological history:
--Twin studies. Bailey wanted to see if sexuality was genetic. In the early 1990’s, Bailey, along with Richard Pillard, designed an experiment to see how often twins had the same sexual orientation, searching for a “gay gene.” He called for twins and siblings in the newspaper. Among identical twins, 52% had the same sexual orientation, fraternal twins, 22%, adoptive and biological siblings of the same sex, 11%.
--Sex typical and atypical behavior in homosexuals. Bailey’s studies have argued that homosexual men and women recall being more gender nonconforming children than their heterosexual counterparts. Bailey’s studies have been called into question because there is a difference between what people remember about their childhoods, especially when they are homosexual adults and predisposed to certain perceptions of themselves, than what actually took place during their childhoods.
--Homosexual choice. Bailey has said that he thinks it’s morally acceptable for parents to choose their children’s sexual orientation, if there were methods to do so. He doesn’t advocate for killing gay kids or aborting gay fetuses, just changing the gay gene when and if it becomes possible to isolate it.
--Male bisexuality does not exist. Bailey’s studies show that men’s genital arousal was consistent with their sexual orientation, but women’s was not. He found that men were particularly influenced by female-only erotic stimuli, followed by heterosexual stimuli, but were not influenced by homosexual imagery. Alternately, women of all sexual orientations were equally stimulated by homosexual and heterosexual stimuli. In this same fell swoop, Bailey discredited male bisexuality. Bailey studied men’s penile arousal to sexual stimuli. 75% of bisexually identified men were only aroused by homosexual images and 25% were only aroused by heterosexual images—no men were aroused by both images equally.
--Transsexual women. In 2003, Bailey published the highly controversial book, The Man Who Would Be Queen. He makes two predominant claims about the nature of transsexual women in the book. The first is that transsexual women are gay men who underwent sexual reassignment surgery to have sex with more men. The second is that transsexual men are really only attracted to themselves as they would be if they were women. In essence, transsexual women transition because they can better get off when they look like women. The transsexual women Bailey used as research in this book claimed severe research misconduct. Under pressure, Bailey stepped down as chair of the psychology department at Northwestern in 2004, but remained a professor at the university.
J. Michael Bailey is no stranger to controversy. In fact, based on his recent exploits, it seems like he thrives on it. There’s no way he thinks that he’s really going to get away with orgasms in class and saying transsexuals are only attracted to themselves without pissing people off.