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Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:469471 DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9324-2
PEER COMMENTARY
The Drama of Sex, Identity, and the Queen
Marta Meana
Published online: 23 April 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008
After years of following the developments surrounding the publication of TMWWBQ in real time, it was interesting to step back and read Dregers comprehensive reconstruction of events. The story that emerges is reminiscent of classical drama. It comes complete with a protagonist (Bailey), antagonists (Conway, James, McCloskey), characters caught in the crossre (Kyeltika), and a balanced and half-detached chorus (Dreger) explaining to the audience (the rest of us) the lessons to be learned from the melee. Mercifully, this drama did not end up a tragedy, but it shares signicant qualities with the latter. It features a well-meaning, though necessarily awed, protagonist with the requisite amount of hubris and a group of antagonists whose sordid means nullify any possible empathy the audience may have had with their perceived injury. The chorus seems open-minded and fair, although perhaps a little nave in her belief in the healing power of her narrative.
Our protagonist did not actually say anything new in TMWWBQ, but he said it differently. Bailey clearly intended to take the research on homosexuality and transgender to the people and to people that research with real, full, and palpable lives (Dannys and Chers and Juanitas). Unfettered by the restrictive conventions of scholarly writing, the disem-bodied voice of research became the very much personalized voice of J. Michael Bailey. An unintended consequence of the device was a loss of sensitivitya loss by no means requisite to the colloquial presentation of the science and his interpretation of it. As Dreger quickly points out, the cover is a perfect case in point. If an image ever communicated against the feminine essence hypothesis of transsexuality, this would be
it. But did it overreach? Did it have to communicate complete and total failure? An important part of the male-to-female transsexuals goal is to cosmetically approximate womanhood, whether she is autogynephilic or homosexual. Some may never succeed because they are not sufciently feminine to begin with, but a book cover that says they fail so miserably in that enterprise may have been excessive. My suspicion is that Bailey was so convinced of his...