DiscussionThe Truth about Autogynephilia. Women’s attire was not the true object of such a man’s affections, he concluded: rather, the clothes were the means whereby a man gave life to that object, namely himself in female form. “Autogynephilia” means love of oneself as a woman.

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[–]censorshipment 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

I've already read this and responded to it in the GC sub. What I forgot to say there is that this is a form of autosexuality: attraction to yourself.

I'm an autosexual... I'm attracted to my own body and my own voice (I'm attracted to women with deep/husky voices). I think it is a sexual coping mechanism that I developed during childhood when I desperately wanted to have sex with other girls but was told I wasn't old enough, so I began masturbating at age 7 until I was allowed to date girls at age 14.

But I think autogynephilia is about straight white men getting off to being a marginalized group, as I said on the GC sub. They transform themselves from the least oppressed group to "trans women" in order to get aroused by being a hated minority group. It's a paraphilia.

[–]Chipit[S] 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

straight white men getting off to being a marginalized group

I disagree; it's very much a sexual fetish. It was a thing long before Critical Theory began awarding oppression olympics medals to the most identities.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Yeah even reading this article itself you see how they came to see what AGP is

At the same time I do think there is another different category of people which do fit that other description. Once the oppression Olympics started these other people jumped in looking for attention.

[–]Neo_Shadow_LurkerPronouns: I/Don't/Care 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Once the oppression Olympics started these other people jumped in looking for attention.

A lot of white incels like to do this: they transition in order to gain opression points to flaunt around.

Some white girls also do this for the same reason: today being a white girl on most contexts is nearly the same as being a white men, ao they cling to non-binary identities to gain some social capital in the woke circles they frequent.

[–]reluctant_commenter 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Just wrote a comment a couple that is essentially the same point as yours. There are multiple different reasons for why people choose to identify as transgender. AGP has been around for ages, but more people have begun identifying as transgender who have nothing to do with AGP/AAP. A list of such reasons that I wrote out ages ago:

  • Feelings of gender dysphoria

  • Moral (and political) beliefs

  • Gender-nonconformity without any gender dysphoria

  • Fetishism

  • Peer pressure

  • Government-mandated transition

[–]wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

At the same time I do think there is another different category of people which do fit that other description. Once the oppression Olympics started these other people jumped in looking for attention.

People with unhealthy narcissism. They are the group that is so grossly muddying the waters and making life difficult for people just trying to live their lives, whether they are LGB or some variety of trans. They are exploitative opportunists, always. And many people do not pick up on the red flags and don't understand they are getting played, and thus we get problems like woke homophobia and the slur "TERF." (ETA: Though, homophobia and misogyny generally have to exist in a person before these become meaningful to express, so the victim claims of TRAs with unhealthy narcissism have a natural companion in the homophobia and misogyny harbored by some onlookers who then become their enablers.)

[–]reluctant_commenter 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

But I think autogynephilia is about straight white men getting off to being a marginalized group

  1. AGP is not limited to straight men, and it's not limited to white men.

  2. I have not seen any evidence that people with AGP get sexual gratification from imagining themselves as part of a marginalized group specifically. Women are a marginalized group, but I don't think it's the marginalization status that is the turn-on for AGP men. Instead, it seems likely that viewing women as dirty/lesser/objects is a big part of the appeal-- that is, holding sexist beliefs about women.

edited to add: from a recently-posted article about AGP:

"Forced feminisation”—someone making a man cross-dress or undergo sex-reassignment surgery—is a staple of transgender erotica. Quite a few of Lawrence’s informants say they would find it shameful to be a woman, and that this turns them on. “Experiencing the daily humiliation and degradation of being a woman, forced to wear women’s clothes and lipstick, is extremely attractive to me,” writes one.

in order to get aroused by being a hated minority group

Source? I have never seen any evidence that "minority group status" is what does makes the thrill, for them...

I will say, some people who identify as transgender do seem to do so out of self-interest, and exploit the social currency they get from being seen as a member of a minority group. But that is not the mechanism of the paraphilia (of AGP).

[–]wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I will say, some people who identify as transgender do seem to do so out of self-interest, and exploit the social currency they get from being seen as a member of a minority group. But that is not the mechanism of the paraphilia (of AGP).

Yes. Those are two different things. The former is attention-seeking behavior on the part of people who feel insecure and want power and a voice and a platform. And the power they want regularly appears to be power over other people, especially women, and always people who disagree with them. Some of this likely comes from their own negative experiences in the past, given that some people who were abused go on to become abusive themselves. "Trans rights" is just a new context for them to play that out in public.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

" But I think autogynephilia is about straight white men getting off to being a marginalized group, as I said on the GC sub. They transform themselves from the least oppressed group to "trans women" in order to get aroused by being a hated minority group. It's a paraphilia."

Yeah I was a "straight white man" alright. Nah I was just using AGP fantasies to deal with my hatred of being attracted to men. While often the image is the AGP "lesbian" for me the vast majority are with men. I don't dehumanize them either I am attracted to them and it also kinda results from fears of being publicly with a man since if I was a woman I would feel safer engaging in a relationship like that.

There is no one cause or reason. Why sexuality develops or fascinations even non sexual ones is a complicated subject. There isn't some neat explanation for everyone even when looking at wider cases.

Men being attracted to pretending to be women or seeing other men pretend is pretty well documented through history even when women were seen as social inferiors.

[–]wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think autogynephilia is about straight white men getting off to being a marginalized group

Check out the video interview with Shupe that was also posted recently. It's very clear just from this one man's account of his experiences that AGP can be a thing unto itself that is separate from the desire for power and control that has been so destructively expressed by people who have other issues (such as unhealthy narcissism as I mention below).

[–]reluctant_commenter 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Fascinating article, thanks for sharing. An important piece of the puzzle. I'm glad Helen Joyce did an actual interview with Ray Blanchard, it looks like, and I really appreciate that the article does not seem to shame autogynephiles. I am constantly pissed off and sickened by the colonization and homophobic acts of AGP transwomen, but it's not their fault that they have this sexuality.

Those who reject Blanchard’s theories think he, and by extension Lawrence, fundamentally misunderstand the nature and meaning of autogynephilic fantasies. They argue either that the fantasies are perfectly natural because all women feel sexual about their femaleness, in which case autogynephilia is actually evidence that a male person is really a woman

Lol, mental gymnastics. And the very premise is ridiculous, many/most women don't feel sexual about their "femaleness" at all.

[–]wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Which is an interesting thing for men to posit, in any case. Perhaps they should stay in their experiential lane unless they have plausible studies to back up their claims about the inhabitants of bodies they don't possess.

I know many more women who have felt nothing or just awkward, insecure, or uncomfortable (hello, misogynistic culture (and also, hello rapid-onset gender dysphoria)) about their bodies than I know who have ever said their own bodies turned them on. I wouldn't think anything of it if they did say that, because that's their own business and not hurting anyone, but they haven't. And the women in my social circles are pretty comfortable with talking about sex.

[–]reluctant_commenter 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Perhaps they should stay in their experiential lane unless they have plausible studies to back up their claims about the inhabitants of bodies they don't possess.

Yuppppp. And that's unlikely to happen because a bunch of sex researchers seem to think that "wOmEn ArE tOo pUrE" to have the range of sexual feelings, experiences, and paraphilias that men do, so they refuse to investigate the possibility...

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It's interesting to consider AGP as an alternate sexual orientation.

[–]Neo_Shadow_LurkerPronouns: I/Don't/Care 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

It's more like a fetish than anything.

What they crave doesn't exist: they want full blown females, but with dicks. As MtFs are as close as they're going to get, they end up going for them.

This is the appeal of futanari, by the way: they aren't MtFs, but actual females, but with dicks.

In a way, it's no different to people who have a fetish for anthropomorphic animals, inflation, crushing and so on.

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah as someone who says I have AGP for me it means I have an AGP fetish. It's not a sexuality it's not an identity it is a fetish.

Now sure there are cases like Malo brought up but I think that has a deeper social, aesthetic or a variety of other reasons why children may be overly invested in how the other gender behaves and how that can morph into a sexual fetish as it doesn't always. In large from my observation it is one though most of the time.

Should people be incredibly ashamed of it? If you aren't harming anyone or infringing upon anyones rights and it's not inherently self destructive i would argue no.

The problem is many people in the trans community just have a fetish but are trying to conduct their entire identity around said fetish and involving unwilling participants. That or they have been gaslighted into thinking being GNC means they aren't a proper example of their birth sex.

In some ways for the less predatory types I just think they have severe depression, feeling like they have failed their birth sex and think transition offers them a new life or are ashamed of their fetish and are looking for legitimacy in the trans movement. Plus maybe not confronting they have an unhealthy porn addiction where they want to make their real life their fantasies.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

they want full blown females, but with dicks.

That's gyneandromorphophilia, attraction to "chicks-with-dicks," generally speaking, not autogynephilia.

Interesting thing I saw on /r/MTF: Somebody, who wasn't yet versed in the things you cannot say gave a textbook anecdote of their own autogynephilia and of course were questioning their own "transness." Some people from elsewhere swooped in and informed the poster that it was AGP and also, "just a fetish."

Here's the kicker. The poster, for whom AGP is more complex than a peculiar way or aid to obtain sexual gratification (most people's framing of "just a fetish,") then paid no heed to the people telling him that it was just that: a mere fetish. That complexity is a sexual axis, a romantic axis, and a companionate one to boot.

In the linked article, Philip was six years old when he tossed a coin into a fountain, wishing to be a girl. That's well before puberty. (Interesting things can happen when a child is integrating and trying to solve deep-seated desires, and take those thought processes through to adulthood--oft unexamined--when they have more cognitive capacity.)

Also consequent to that: Assuming I'm wrong, if it's just a fetish, then I think it is safe to say that at six years old, Philip was a fetishist.

I really don't think there is a thing as "just a fetish." I think there are different degrees of paraphilia you might find in a person. To a lesser extent of paraphilia, people can successfully "other" that part of their sexuality and pack it away into some conceptualization of the popular formation of "fetish" and convince themselves they're "normal." I also see complex identity formation processes insofar as how people decide whether or not or even how to integrate atypical sexual interests into their sexual identity. (Or even what constitutes atypical sexual interests, homosexuality included in that division.)

This isn't to eliminate a meaningful distinction between typical and atypical, just to highlight that the underlying nature of the atypicality is the same underlying nature of the typicality. It's not of a different character of desire, just different locus. Women "out there" vs the woman "inside." Same desire.

Either way, AGP isn't going back in the box. But you can see how the approach detailed above isn't really helping.

[–]Neo_Shadow_LurkerPronouns: I/Don't/Care 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's gyneandromorphophilia, attraction to "chicks-with-dicks," generally speaking, not autogynephilia.

Yup, I got confused with the terms there.

But then again, most GAMPs nowdays transition, so to associate the two is not as far-fetched as it once was.

Interesting thing I saw on /r/MTF: Somebody, who wasn't yet versed in the things you cannot say gave a textbook anecdote of their own autogynephilia and of course were questioning their own "transness." Some people from elsewhere swooped in and informed the poster that it was AGP and also, "just a fetish."

This literally happens everyday on r/traaaannsss

In the linked article, Philip was six years old when he tossed a coin into a fountain, wishing to be a girl. That's well before puberty. (Interesting things can happen when a child is integrating and trying to solve deep-seated desires, and take those thought processes through to adulthood--oft unexamined--when they have more cognitive capacity.)

Also consequent to that: Assuming I'm wrong, if it's just a fetish, then I think it is safe to say that at six years old, Philip was a fetishist.

A lot of kids express such desires only to grow out of it.

This could be just a coincidence or be rooted on other issues, like feeling out of place with their peers, for example.

Also, he's an unreliable narrator: this is not to say that he's completely lying, but that he could be embellishing some aspects of his infancy to sound more legit. Who knows?

I also see complex identity formation processes insofar as how people decide whether or not or even how to integrate atypical sexual interests into their sexual identity. (Or even what constitutes atypical sexual interests, homosexuality included in that division.)

The process of fetish acquisition is already well documented: the more a person engages with a certain fetish, the more likely they are of acquiring other fetishes in the process.

It's not uncommon for fetishists to try to paint their fetish in a romanticized way, which is nothing more than a way for them to gain sympathy from others.

Zoos and Pedos also love to do this shit: "You see, it's not about getting my rocks off, but love and passion". Aham...

If this was the case, then why is pedophilia linked with child abuse and zoophilia with zoosadism? How interesting...

Women "out there" vs the woman "inside." Same desire.

A "women' which is, for some reason, in some way or another, always linked with sex.

Again, how interesting...

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sorry, I have a raging headache, but also wanted to reply promptly, so I'll necessarily keep it terse.

I don't think classical or operant conditioning is a sufficient explanation to make somebody a transsexual: loose their job, family, undergo painful, expensive medical procedures; or even in extreme cases self-amputate their testicles, scrotum, and penis.

If conditioning explanations for paraphilia work, then we should be able to use conditioning for classical sexual orientation conversion therapy. People have tried it, often with sincere effort; does not work.