Blanchard wasnt on the dsm board because of agp, he has other works
I do understand why transphobes and the uninformed cling to AGP, and the framing of the denial being proof it exists, its all daft!
No medical establishment has ever given a diagnosis of AGP certainly not in this country.
As for the brain studies, yes I accept they are imprecise because of sample sizes, but they do show trans people can bend away from natal sex in certain circumstances, but there are no bigger sample sizes that conclude the opposite either however it shouldn't be a basis for diagnosis or gatekeeping anyway, and thankfully it isn't.
Trans rights are only going in one direction, and I have no doubt self-id will be passed as it is elsewhere in the world.
And it has no impact either way on sex-segregated spaces.
This thread has been derailed by bowlofbabelfish wittering on about AGP, and I should have spotted that soone, after all 90% of the threads on here do the same...
So I'll leave one last write up on blanchard for those who stumble along and may be interested in the counterview to the propaganda, then I'll leave it there....
On November 4, 2003, Ray Blanchard resigned from HBIGDA, the association of clinicians and researchers working in the area of gender dysphoria, transgenderism and transsexualism.
Blanchard's resignation came in response to dissemination of open letter from HBIGDA regarding J. Michael Bailey's book on transsexualism, which among other things said that:
"trust and mutual respect between the scientific and the transgender communities is essential . . . to promote the health and well-being of transgender and transsexual individuals and their families. It is felt by many of our members that this poorly referenced book does not reflect the social and scientific literature that exists on transsexual people and could damage that essential trust."
- HBIGDA Officers and Board of Directors, October 20, 2003
Well now, just who is Blanchard and what does his resignation from HBIGDA mean in the overall context of the Bailey fiasco? We'll explore these questions here (for more details about Blanchard and his work, see Andrea James "Ray Blanchard" page).
Blanchard is a sexologist who in the late 1980's coined the word "autogynephilia", mostly as a replacement for the words "transvestic fetishism". He then went on to claim this word-invention and the Freudian speculations behind it as a deep scientific discovery of the cause of most transsexualism.
An "expert in addiction and sexual paraphilia", it was no surprise that Blanchard discovered that transsexualism is caused by, you guessed it: sexual addiction and sexual paraphilia. Blanchard then used a stream of mostly indigent and thus captive clients at his gender clinic (the infamous "Clarke Institute" in Toronto, Canada) to get the answers he wanted in order to prove his new theory of transsexualism.
In the late 1980's, Blanchard began teaching that all transsexualism is either (i) an extreme form of homosexuality, in which men acquire female physicality in order to be able to have sex with large numbers of other men, or (ii) a sexual paraphilia ("autogynephilia"), in which men acquire female physicality in order to heighten their masturbation experiences (by being in love with their own bodies). In a sweeping claim of having discovered the cause of transsexualism, Blanchard eliminated inner gender identity or gendered feelings (GID) as factors or mechanisms in transsexualism, replacing them with a model of transsexualism as a pathological male sexual disorder.
A rat psychologist by training, Blanchard always wanted to be a famous scientist. (Bailey even talks about Blanchard's science-fame ambition in his book on pages 157-158 in his book). As is common knowledge in the sexology community, for many years Blanchard used his highly developed alpha-male dominance capabilities in efforts to force his so-called "discovery" on his sexology colleagues and into the sex textbooks. He may have hoped that this approach to doing science would make him famous, even though his ideas have never been taken seriously by the majority of clinicians and researchers knowledgeable about transsexualism.
And then along comes J. Michael Bailey's book, which teaches the old Blanchardian theory of transsexualism and in parallel extols the supposed scientific genius of Bailey's hero Blanchard (without revealing the mainstream GID understanding of transsexualism within the larger research and clinical communities).
The Man Who Would Be Queen (TMWWBQ) must initially have been a glorious sight for Ray Blanchard, published as it was by the National Academy Press. Especially since Bailey was successful in obtaining a properly stigmatizing and pathologizing cover art and title - all quite in accordance with the Blanchardian views of transsexualism as pathology. Blanchard must have thought: "this will become a best-selling sex-science book! It's success will insure my scientific fame...!"
Blanchard and Bailey were inextricably linked together as mentor and protege, and both of their scientific fates were put on the line, when Bailey published TMWWBQ. For more insight into the deep connections between Blanchard and Bailey, see Andrea James excellent "Bailey on Blanchard" webpage, in which she explores how pop psychologist J. Michael Bailey expresses profound admiration for his mentor, considers him a role model, and worked to explain and popularize his theory.
.....Nor does he want others to know other key facts: Namely that it is the clique of Bailey's close intellectual colleagues and friends, including Ray Blanchard, Anne Lawrence, James Cantor, Steven Pinker, David Buss, Kenneth Zucker, John Derbyshire, Dan Seligman and Steve Sailer who have made their own presence felt, in interventions behind the scenes - in their strong support for Bailey with the Northwestern administration, in a series of staged reviews of Bailey's book, in shill uses of selected clips from those reviews in the National Academy website, in right-wing targeted articles in media such as the National Review and Forbes Magazine - all in rather obvious efforts to affect the outcome of the investigation and save Bailey from the well-deserved 'Rekerian fate' of total scientific obscurity within an increasingly marginalized intellectual circle of aging men who live in the past.
....In a way, Blanchard's resignation from HBIGDA marks the end of an era - an era in which sexologists constantly pathologized transsexual people, and did so without any remorse whatsoever. Blanchard rose to the top of the sexology heap by conducting relentlessly pathologizing scientific forays against trans people and then forcing his "results" onto his field.
Unfortunately for Blanchard, he and Bailey went "one book too far" in their arrogance - and in their total ignorance of the increasingly successful and powerful community of people they were defaming. Unable to scramble back across that fallen bridge, they're now cut themselves off from the larger scientific community. Exposed for all to see as the trans defamers they are, they're falling into well-deserved ignominy, thus ending an era...