Two transsexual woman featured in Northwestern psychology Prof. J. Michael Bailey’s latest book about sexuality have filed complaints with NU, alleging that Bailey did not ask for their consent before using their stories.
Anjelica Kieltyka, who is mentioned in Bailey’s “The Man Who Would Be Queen” under the pseudonym “Cher,” sent a complaint to NU’s Vice President for Research C. Bradley Moore on July 3 asking for a formal investigation of Bailey’s research methods. Another woman featured in the book filed a claim July 14 supporting Kieltyka’s letter, but an addendum to the claim keeps her name confidential.
Kieltyka, a psychology student in NU’s School of Continuing Studies currently on a leave of absence, said she met Bailey while working as a transsexual women’s advocate. Between 1994 and 1998, Bailey agreed to interview the women and write letters they needed to qualify for sex reassignment surgery, which Kieltyka had in 1991. Kieltyka said Bailey did not tell the women they would be featured in his book or ask them to sign consent forms.
“We didn’t even know we were guinea pigs,” Kieltyka said.
Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations, said NU administrators are aware of the women’s claims and have begun acting according to research misconduct policies.
“The university is responding to the complaints we’ve received and will follow the procedures outlined in the guidelines,” Cubbage said.
Moore will be out of town until Monday, but Cubbage said that will not affect how the university responds to the claims. Cubbage would not cite any specific progress in NU’s response.
“Once the procedure starts, we obviously don’t discuss the steps publicly,” he said.
Bailey refused to comment, calling the matter “very stressful and private.”
The issue has received some publicity through the Web site of Lynn Conway, a professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan who transitioned to being female in 1968. In a June 23 letter, Conway advised NU officials to begin investigating Bailey’s research methods.
The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition has issued a press release regarding Bailey’s book and four transsexual supporters, three of them professors, have written to the National Academies to protest the book being published on the Academies’ press as scientific research.
“All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of the rapidly escalating response of the trans community to Prof. Bailey’s incredibly defamatory junk science book about ‘the science of transsexualism,'” Conway wrote in a July 9 e-mail to The Summer Northwestern.
Bailey’s book upholds psychologist and sex researcher Ray Blanchard’s theory of two types of male-to-female transsexuals — homosexual and autogynephilic. Autogynephilia “is sexual attraction to, and love of, the idea of oneself as a woman,” Bailey wrote on his Web site.
Kieltyka said Bailey used her as the book’s only example of autogynephilia, even though she sees herself as a lesbian woman. She worries her case study will be “used to abuse all my brother and sister transsexuals.”
Both Kieltyka and Conway said they expect more claims to be filed in the coming weeks.
