Throughout his career, Professor J. Michael Bailey has grappled with others’ refusal to accept his ideas, but he has always been prepared with supporting facts and research.
But in February 2011, after a lapse in judgment involving a live sex act onstage during an after-class lesson, he had nothing to help him but morality, apology and tenure.
Bailey has been a professor and researcher in Northwestern’s Department of Psychology since 1989. Though his name has become synonymous with controversy, he says he hasn't cared much what people who don’t know him associate with or think about him.
“I think I've done a lot of research, some of it good, about sexual orientation, and I think that if you look at a human sexuality textbook you'll see my name in most of them,” Bailey says, explaining how his work matters to the authors. “There’s lots that we still don't know and hopefully I can shed some light.”
Bailey started off studying mathematics when he entered Washington University in St. Louis as an undergraduate, but he dropped the study of numbers in favor of psychology after taking the History of Freudian Thought class. Today, he is one of the most prominent experts on human sexuality.
After earning his doctorate from University of Texas, he became interested in gender nonconformity when he met a transsexual who introduced him to the transgender community. This inspired further research into transexuality, and led to his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen. The book details a theory that some male to female transsexuals are not actually women, but men motivated by an erotic condition or a fetish.
The book became Bailey’s first challenging interaction with the public, a small but vocal group of male-to-female transsexuals. Some opposed the book with verbal attacks, others with a charge at Northwestern’s Institutional Review Board claiming he was performing systematic, unlicensed research, while an article in The New York Times defended and vindicated Bailey.
“What happened was a smear campaign,” he says. But Bailey remained passionate about his study of transsexuals, noting the value of meeting them and speaking with them to hear their stories.
This face-to-face method translated to his Human Sexuality class at Northwestern, which he taught from 1994 until 2011. He invited panels of guests to give optional, post-lecture talks to his students.
Guests ranged from transsexuals to experts on childhood sexual abuse, from a heterosexual swinger couple to a dominatrix. Bailey says his goal was not about promoting any of the sexual practices, but also not to discourage them, “with the exception of becoming a sex offender.”
“It would not have been appropriate to do it during class because they weren't really about conveying serious content,” Bailey says, adding that he always had enough material to fill his three-hour classes every week. “My class is scientific, and these people were really not talking about the science. They were themselves.”
On Feb. 21, 2011, Bailey invited Ken Melvoin-Berg, owner of Weird Chicago Tours, to give a presentation on alternative sexuality. On his way to the stage, Bailey says Melvoin-Berg approached him, asking permission to host a live demonstration of female ejaculation performed an exhibitionist couple he had brought with him—with help from a motorized sex toy.
Bailey says he had some misgivings, but agreed in the heat of the moment.
He says he warned the class multiple times about what they could expect to see if they stayed, and he told them they had the choice to leave.
“As someone who teaches human sexuality, I am a lot more comfortable with sexual-related phenomena,” says Bailey, who describes himself as someone with unconventional opinions. “That was another factor that made me underestimate what a big deal this could be.”
In the weeks following the demonstration, Bailey made national headlines. Although he defended himself in a series of public statements, he says he now thinks he should have just apologized, rather than fighting a battle with those who disagreed with his judgment.
At the peak of the controversy, more than a dozen students emailed Bailey in support, including SESP senior Alex Straley, a former Human Sexuality student.“It wasn’t until I saw a news van on campus that I really heard any talks of it being wrong,” Straley says. “People who were there were fine with it, but then someone who wasn’t there finds out about it and tries to make a big deal about it even though it didn’t affect them at all.”
But what is appropriate for an academic setting remains open to interpretation, and the most lasting effect (besides the introduction of the word “fucksaw” into the Northwestern lexicon) is the administration's cessation of the Human Sexuality class. Although a new gender studies course, taught by Weinberg Dean of Freshmen Lane Fenrich, delves into sexual subjects and sexuality studies, Bailey says it cannot replace Human Sexuality, because Fenrich does not take a scientific approach to the subject. Still, Bailey says, the idea that having one course on human sexuality is all the University needs is mistaken.
Psychology and Education professor David Uttal says that even though he thinks it was a very important part of the curriculum, other professors “wouldn’t touch it,” given Bailey’s reputation in the field.
“I think the dean would allow us to teach it,” Uttal says, “but once you have Mike Bailey, this is a hard act to follow.”
Christopher Horvath, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Biological Sciences at Illinois State University in Normal, Ill., was the original member of the “Gay Guys” panel that was one of the after-class sessions every year since 1995. The two still interact as colleagues.
“Stars generally are controversial figures, and Mike certainly is that,” Horvath says. “But as long as I’ve known him he’s been nothing but a professional, a leader in the field, and behaved in ways that were ethical and above board.”
Bailey says the controversy has died down and the administration stays out of his way, not impeding his research or influencing his teaching, though he says the "repercussions of what happened will linger for a long time, perhaps until I retire." Although he is remorseful that he didn't think of how his choice may have offended not only students, but also alumni, administrators and others, and that he lost his class, he says he stands by his belief that his students who agreed to see the demonstration were adults, and that they were unharmed.
“The facts of what happened are available to anybody who cares,” Bailey says, “and I have expressed regret, and that's true.”