I don't think it's normal but I think there is some overlap on the extremes.

It's like I'm a crossdresser and it's partly erotic. It's both identity and eroticism. I want to express it and it puts me in the mood for sex play.

How do I rationalise that?

I think there is some "trans" component in me. I can feel like there is some desire for "female sexual display." I know gc would find this offensive and disgusting but I'm trying to rationalise it and the wider world. In that sense I have that component but I don't think I'm female.

It seems reasonable to me that there is natural sexual orientation and sexual display in a dimorphic animal.

That sexual dimorphism can also produce sexual variation at the edges which has dynamic effects. In that sense I am essentialist and also essentialist about the small percent of gender variant people.

For example gay men and straight women are attracted to men. However that attraction to men does not manifest in exactly the same way. They have more sex partners and use more visual porn. They also are probably attracted to more divergent gender expression, and even the strong masculine expression is more "fetishistic."

There are women who express their attraction to me in a similar way but they are rarer.

I think human sexual display might have a similar pattern.

To me this makes more sense than the Blanchardian model which has too many holes. But I could of course be completely wrong :)

So I don't think male and female sexuality is a perfect mirror. So the mirror muscle flex isn't going to be identical. What populations find attractive about men is not the perfect mirror of what they find attractive about women.

I know a lot of this disgusts gc and I can see the reasons. But I don't think disgust is a good arbiter of morality. Homosexuality of men and women still triggers disgust in right wing people. The science might be debated but the pattern looks strong to me. People who disapprove of gay people often use disgust and moral disapproval interchangeably.

I know gc finds the idea of men in dresses with erections in female areas especially...well everything. I'm certainly not here to justify that and I don't think crossdressers in general approve of these people.

I know trans people often find crossdressers disgusting too. Which is another topic.

Do I think men are more fetishist, prone to paraphilias? Possibly. But why? I don't think there an be genes or hormones for all the paraphilias. That's absurd. There might be one natural trigger. For instance higher "sexual drive" that triggers a higher rate of manifestation.

And yet if you look at mainstream popular erotic for straight women you will find lots of things associated with paraphilias. This is often coming from women and with mass appeal.

I am essentialist but I think the triggers of differences have to be a small number and also likely to manifest in both sexes, even if the rates are different.

Another issues here is "essentialism."

The autogynephilic theory comes from the Blanchardian model. Which is very essentialist.

So it is odd to see it casually used by gc at times because in its model men are naturally masculine and women are naturally feminine. Only some gay men can be naturally feminine and some gay women naturally masculine. There isn't much room for dismantling gender in that.

As I discussed with another commenter here recently, gc often finds it impossible to justify femininity at all without invoking men as the cause, while not using the same rule for masculinity. Femininity in straight women is to please men, femininity in gay men is to please men, femininity in straight men to please the same men. Which argues into a position that everyone ought to be masculine.