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Comment by robjwells | Hacker News Reader

For those skimming, this is the controversy over J Michael Bailey's book The Man Who Would Be Queen. I highly recommend reading Dreger's article.

Conway (and others, particularly Andrea James) conducted a years-long campaign of harassment against Bailey. This included (among many other things) repeated attempts to get Bailey fired from his job at Northwestern, a series of vexatious complaints to an Illinois licensing board, and infamously posting photos online of Bailey's children suggesting that Bailey had raped them and asking whether his young daughter was "a cock-starved exhibitionist".

Much of this material is still on Conway's University of Michigan-hosted webpage.

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As far as I know the example you mention was the work of Andrea James, and not Conway, but Conway's continued collaboration with someone that cruel and unhinged is, I think, an aspect of her life that shouldn't be ignored.

(Does it cancel out her many unambiguously positive and praiseworthy achievements? No. People are complicated.)

I highly encourage not falling into Dreger's article or engage in what is generally dismissed and discredited theory(ies) that surrounded all this. The article reference ends up less about the evidence and scientific rigor and more about the underlying drama. It is problematic, and if you want what I would consider a better take on it (and the subsequent book), I would read this: https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/04/alice-dreger-and-ma...

The related contra points video on why the underlying theory, studies, and concepts are dismissed/problematic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6czRFLs5JQo

Serrano can’t accept that Andrea James went too far in posting online pictures of Bailey’s children with sexualised captions added (quoted from your first link):

> 3) points to instances where some trans activists have supposedly “gone too far” (in her mind, at least) in order to paint us as unreasonable and/or extremist

Given that, I can’t possible agree with your assertion that Serrano presents a “better take” than Dreger’s. At least in this (very important!) respect it is absolutely a worse one. Dreger is right to condemn James’s inexcusable behaviour, and Serrano is wrong not to

He's a man with a mission.

Worth nothing that J. Michael Bailey was eventually fired from his post at Northwestern for organising a spectacularly inappropriate sexual demonstration, put on in front of his students [1].

Bailey has, it must be said, worked extraordinarily hard to earn his negative reputation. Even beyond the sheer inappropriateness of this episode, I can’t say I disagree with Conway’s assessment of him.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/northwestern-university-p_n_8...

> Worth nothing that J. Michael Bailey was eventually fired from his post at Northwestern

He wasn’t fired, he is still there: https://psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/prof...

> [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/northwestern-university-p_n_8...

You are misreading that article from 2011 (13 years ago). It doesn’t say he was fired, it says he was “under fire” - which is journalistese for “being publicly criticised”. The article also mentions the university administration was investigating the incident - I don’t know what the outcome of that investigation was, but obviously it didn’t result in him being fired, because he’s still there.

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