Thursday, August 23, 2007
The New York Times has a piece on J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist best known for his rather controversial thoughts on sexual orientation. His book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, made him something of an internet celebrity (if that's the right word). A few paragraphs from the article pretty much sum it up:
In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women...Other scientists praised the book as a compelling explanation of the science. The Lambda Literary Foundation, an organization that promotes gay, bisexual and transgender literature, nominated the book for an award.These sorts of tactics are unsurprising (especially to some people here familiar with the One People's Project), but the juxtaposition of the fact that the book was nominated for an award by a group specializing in transgender literature with the following storm is particularly striking. The internet often acts as a echo chamber for people with similar views, which then tend to drift more extreme-- if a mob of people is insulted, somehow all-out character assassination becomes the obvious next step. |