J.迈克尔·贝里

John Michael Bailey (born July 2, 1957) is an American psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and professor at Northwestern University best known for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation and paraphilia. He maintains that male sexual orientation is most likely established through biological influences.

Bailey wrote The Man Who Would Be Queen, a book about male sexual orientation and Blanchard's typology of transgender women, which generated significant controversy.

Education and career

Bailey was born in Lubbock, Texas. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1979 and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989, where he studied under behavioral genetics researcher Lee Willerman.

Bailey became a professor at Northwestern University in 1989. In the 1990s, Bailey published several papers that suggested a heritable component for sexual orientation. In 2003 he published The Man Who Would Be Queen.

In October 2004, Bailey stepped down as chairman of the Psychology Department, but continued to serve as a Northwestern professor.

In 2018, Bailey invited controversial evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa to Northwestern University as a visiting scholar. Many at the university protested, and more than 4,000 signed a petition in opposition to Kanazawa doing research there due to Kanazawa's claims regarding sexuality, race, religion, and feminism.

In December 2003, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported that J. Michael Bailey and Ray Blanchard were associated with far-right blogger Steve Sailer's Human Biodiversity Institute. In October 2018, the SPLC reported that Bailey and Blanchard had written an article for 4thWaveNow, which the SPLC characterizes as an anti-trans website in support of the controversial concept of "rapid-onset gender dysphoria".

Research and views

Bailey's dissertation research tested Günter Dörner's hypothesis that prenatal stress may cause homosexuality in male offspring, for which he failed to find evidence. In later research he also examined the phenomenon known as gaydar with Gerulf Rieger.

Bailey carried out early twin studies on homosexuality, finding higher rates of concordance for sexual orientation in identical twins than fraternal twins, suggesting genes or shared prenatal environment have influence on sexual orientation.

Bailey has argued that male sexual orientation appears unaffected by socialization. Bailey has written about cases of typical boys, including David Reimer, who were surgically reassigned and raised as girls from infancy, yet grew up to be attracted to females. In a 2016 review, Bailey reported on seven total cases of boys who were reared as girls, and all were strongly attracted to females. Bailey et al. describe this as a "near perfect quasi experiment" testing nature versus nurture on male sexual orientation.

Much of Bailey's research has examined sexual arousal patterns and their relation to sexual orientation in men and women. This research has focused on both genital and self-reported sexual arousal measures. For example, Bailey's lab showed that men's genital sexual arousal patterns closely tracked their sexual orientations, but women's did not.

In 2005, an arousal study by Bailey's lab found in a sample of bisexual identified males, "Men who reported bisexual feelings did not show any evidence of a distinctively bisexual pattern of genital arousal". The study was met with critique by the National LGBTQ Task Force and FAIR for its methodology and sampling. Bailey told The New York Times, "I'm not denying that bisexual behavior exists, but I am saying that in men there's no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men arousal is orientation". Bailey was later approached by John Sylla from the American Institute of Bisexuality, who provided funding for a 2011 study, which filtered participants more stringently, requiring at least two sexual partners of each sex and at least one romantic relationship lasting three months or longer; this study found both genital and subjective arousal. In 2020, a research team including Bailey combined a much larger data set of around 500 men, and concluded that male sexuality exists along a continuum from heterosexuality, to bisexuality, to homosexuality, after finding genital arousal measurements generally matched self-identification with bisexuality.

In 2023, Springer retracted a paper co-authored by Bailey on the rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) hypothesis "due to concerns about lack of informed consent", which had been published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The paper described ROGD as a controversial theory that "common cultural beliefs, values, and preoccupations cause some adolescents (especially female adolescents) to attribute their social problems, feelings, and mental health issues to gender dysphoria," and that "youth with ROGD falsely believe that they are transgender". The retraction followed an open letter signed by a number of researchers and LGBTQ organizations criticizing the journal's publication of the paper, stating that Bailey's paper did not have institutional review board (IRB) approval, and requested the journal's editor Kenneth Zucker be replaced. Critics also argued that the paper disregarded countervailing evidence and was based upon an unrepresentative sample of participants.

In 2024, Bailey served as witness in a legal challenge to Missouri's ban on gender affirming care for minors. He was questioned on his methodology in rapid onset dysphoria research.