J. Michael Bailey

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J. Michael Bailey : biography

July 2, 1957 –

The 2005 article and study were criticized by gay and bisexual groupsNational Gay and Lesbian Task Force (July 2005). (PDF) Retrieved July 24, 2006. and by FAIR.FAIR (July 8, 2005). Critics argued the sample size was relatively small, consisting of one hundred (100) men. Also, all of these subjects were "self-selected", from ads placed in gay and "alternative" publications. Then the researchers had to disregard results of thirty-five percent (35%) of this population, as non-responders. Agreeing with the author’s conclusion that bisexuality is a subjective experience, the late Dr. Fritz Klein, a sex researcher and the author of The Bisexual Option argued that "social and emotional attraction are very important elements in bisexual attraction."

Bailey’s sexual arousal work was attacked by The Washington Times and some socially conservative commentators as prurient and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Bailey and his defenders have responded that studying sexual arousal patterns is important in understanding human sexuality, especially sexual orientation. Recently, Bailey’s lab has begun to study sexual orientation and sexual arousal using fMRI.

Influence

According to the Web of Science, Bailey’s works have been cited nearly 2200 times and he has an h-index of 25.Web of Science, accessed November 7, 2009

Appearances in news media

Bailey and his work were featured prominently in a Boston Globe story by Neil Swidey entitled "What Makes People Gay?" That story was included in the 2006 volume of "The Best American Science Writing."

Bailey and his lab were also prominent in the CBS News 60 Minutes story "Gay or Straight?," which first aired on March 12, 2006 and was the most popular news story on the CBS News website the following week. This story provoked reactions ranging from "fantastic and fascinating" by gay author Jeremy Hooper at the Good As You blogHooper, Jeremy (March 13, 2006). Good As You to negative comments from gay author David Ehrenstein, who noted the show was "replete with the sort of clichés about gay men and effeminacy that haven’t been seen in a network news context since the 1967 CBS broadcast The Homosexuals."Ehrenstein, David (April 6, 2006). The Advocate Shari Finkelstein, the producer of the "Gay or Straight" segment, responded: "We were aware of the controversy surrounding Michael Bailey’s book, and we looked into all the allegations before we decided to interview him for the story…." She concluded: "We didn’t feel there was anything that disqualified him from being interviewed. And in fact, his work is highly regarded by all of the researchers in the field who we spoke with, and we felt that he was a very worthy person to discuss these issues."

In 2011, Bailey’s human sexuality class at Northwestern made the headlines of major news organizations after he allowed a female guest speaker and her male partner to perform an impromptu live mechanized sex toy demonstration using a "fucksaw"—a modified reciprocating saw converted into a sex toy by attaching a "phallic object" instead of a blade—to bring the woman to orgasm in front the audience. Students were advised beforehand of the nature of the demonstration in this optional after-class event on kinky sex and female orgasm. In the aftermath, Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro criticized Bailey for "extremely poor judgment" and launched an investigation. Bailey at first defended the demonstration, saying that students found lectures featuring guest speakers valuable, but subsequently issued an apology, saying he regretted the upset caused and its effect on the university’s reputation. He said there would be no repeats, but maintained that the demonstration had been relevant to the topic of his course, and said that the students who chose to attend were over 18, "legally capable of voting, enlisting in the military, and consuming pornography", and contended that the criticism he had received was poorly reasoned. The response among academics was mixed. Joseph Epstein criticized Bailey’s class as failing academic standards in a long piece for the The Weekly Standard, and ultimately compared Bailey with a pimp. In contrast, Laurie Essig, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, thought that the incident "triggered a national conversation about what we can and cannot look at". In a web-only feature for Esquire, Bailey’s former research assistant Paul Schrodt defended his teaching and research methods. Alice Dreger also defended Bailey’s class as being of high quality in general, but agreed with Shapiro that the demonstration "was a case of poor judgment, because it wasn’t worth it". Eventually, in response to the incident, Northwestern administrators removed Bailey’s human sexuality course from the following year’s curriculum. A year later, Northwestern reintroduced a somewhat differently themed sexuality class taught by Lane Fenrich, according to whom the new class emphasized "the major questions" and "the major thinkers" rather than being "geared toward sexual practices".

Other selected bibliography

Background and career

Bailey was born in Lubbock, Texas. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Washington University 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. Bailey continues to serve as a Northwestern professor.