Bailey Brouhaha NWSA Panel Post-Mortem

Dateline: Cincinnati

Event: the 2008 National Women’s Studies Association Conference

At this moment: I’m a weeeeeeeeeeeeeee bit sleepy after a very eventful day here at the conference (and, for me, several days of researching prior to the conference.)  I crashed almost immediately afterward and now find myself awake at 3:15 AM (EDT).  To recap - here is why I find myself in WKRP-land (I’m still looking for the flying turkeys; do they only come out at Thanksgiving?) for the first time:

THE BAILEY BROUHAHA: COMMUNITY MEMBERS SPEAK OUT ON RESISTING TRANSPHOBIA AND SEXISM IN ACADEMIA AND BEYOND

The publication of J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would be Queen provoked a fire storm of controversy upon its publication in 2003. The book, claiming to be based on “science,” outraged members of the transgender community, who quickly mobilized to expose the book and its transphobic content. The controversy was reignited in 2007 when Alice Dreger published a lengthy apologia in which she exonerated Bailey and castigated transwomen activists for attempting to “ruin” Bailey’s career. These papers examine the transphobic backlash caused by Bailey/Dreger and document the academic and activist projects of trans community members to speak truth to power.

Katrina C. Rose, University of Iowa 

Andrea Jean James, GenderMedia Foundation

 

Élise R. Hendrick, Cincinnati, OH 

Moderator: Joelle Ruby Ryan, Bowling Green State University  

A PDF of the paper I presented can be found here.  It is an update of the paper I first put together in the aftermath of Alice Dreger initially unleashing her indefensible defense of J. Michael Bailey. 

I’m guessing that Andrea James will have some thoughts of her own on how the panel went over at her website, so check there; she and Lynn Conway videotaped the panel - and I recorded the audio - for purposes of wide distribution so, in some form, it should be available on the Net relatively soon.  And, when the audio and/or video pops up, I’ll let what happened speak for itself.  Here, however, are a few random 3AM thoughts:

First: It was nice to meet folks like Andrea, Lynn, Joelle and Elise in person finally (also, Gordene MacKenzie was at the conference and, despite my having appeared on Gender Talk several times over the last decade, this was the first time I’d bumped into her in 3-D since the 1996 Texas T Party.)

Second: I was impressed at the amount of trans-specific and trans-related panels.  Of course, here are two panels that took place at the same time as our Bailey-Dreger panel:

RESISTING NORMATIVE AND EXCLUSIONARY HEGEMONIES IN THE LGBTQ MOVEMENT 

This roundtable explores the failure of some aspects of the LGBTQ movement to resist dominant hegemonies, which in some cases has resulted in the installation of queer hegemonies or homonormatives. Our speakers will address topics including welfare politics and the LGBT movement, the controversies surrounding the Human Rights Campaign’s exclusionary homonormativity, “sex positive” as form of resistance, LGBT politics and controversies in Cincinnati, the effect of the hetero/homonormative media on youth, a critique of heteronormativity in Jennifer Baumgardner’s Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, and an exploration of the complexities of the marriage rights focus of the LGBT movement for anti-marriage individuals.

AND

STRATEGIES OF TRANSSEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER IDENTITY: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY CONVERSATION 

This panel examines transgender and transsexual identity deployments in philosophical, literary, and legal contexts. Focusing on the intervention of trans-identities into hegemonic gender discourse conceals that these identities are strategically forged as a matter of life and survival. By examining presentations of identity in specific moments, this cross-disciplinary panel hopes to shift the focus from debating the subversiveness and political potential of identities to recognizing the strategic nature of identity in context.

 

Third: Dreger herself was in attendance (recall her efforts against our panel), setting forth her lame position earlier in the day Saturday as well as sitting in the audience at our panel.  She sat silent, but there was one rather curious trans-self-identified defender in the audience.  Once the audio and/or video is up, I’ll let what transpired speak for itself but, give that its getting close to 4 now, I’ll close by saying: You certainly don’t need to be a lawyer to talk intelligently about the Constitution and the law, but being able to utter the words “First Amendment” does not translate into having any clue about the actual scope of free-speech protections.