Autogynephilia as something normal

I have spent quite some time discussing the autogynephilia theory as it has been developed by people like Blanchard and Lawrence.

In short they believe men fantasizing about having a woman's body are displaying a kind of disorder, where their sexual energy is misplaced. Instead of loving a real woman, they love the idea of themselves as a woman.

Their writings present it all as something extraordinary. Since Blanchard's study was based on responses from clients visiting his clinic looking for sex reassignment surgery, he never looked into the possibility that this may be a rather common fantasy, shared even by people who cannot be called transsexuals (and who do not seek sex reassignment).

When your read the discussions on forums for transgender fantasies like Rachel's Haven and Feeling Femme Sanctuary the discussants range from transwomen who have transitioned, to men but who feel well at ease with their male identity and would not like to become women. They still fantasize about what it would feel like.

These are people who have found the forums, signed up and takes part in the discussion. But it is a fair guess that there must be a very large number that have never gotten that far. How many, we don't know, but I guess it is much larger than the specialists believe.

The British-Australian psychoterapist Tracie O'Keefe has a very interesting discussion of 10 cases from her own practice, all men and women who reports that they have fantasies of having the body of the opposite sex, autogynephilia for the men and autoandrophilia for the women.

She says:

"It seems likely in light of this study that autogynephilia/androphilia is far more common than current literature depicts. Far from being solely a psychopathology or paraphilia it is likely that many people experience autogynephilia/androphilia as part of their ordinary everyday sexual fantasy lives.

"For some of those people the experience gave them great pleasure, for some it was confusing and for others it is even disturbing; but what is clear is that each case is bound up with the person's own individual psychodynamics. Those psychodynamics are undoubtedly, as with every person, the results of the person as a whole self and should not be viewed purely in isolation."

Most of her respondents did not experience "gender dysphoria" (i.e. a gender identity disorder, where they feel that they are the wrong sex). Instead they used the fantasies to enrich their sex lives or to handle other psychological pressures.

She tells about the married couple Robert and Clair where the autogynephilia and autoandrophilia "seemed to be a dance of role reversal and power brokerage that in some ways stabilised a relationship where both partners could be very dynamic and forceful personalities."

Then there is the man that has heavy responsibilities in his job, and that uses autogynephiliac fantasies to get a respite:

"In men fulfilling such subservient roles through autogynephilia it may mean giving up total control and being almost natal once again, having someone else make their decisions for them."

She makes some very good observations about how many in the Western tradition tend to sort sexual fantasies into "sinful" or "accepted" in the religious sphere or "pathological" or "healthy" in the medical arena.

"Blanchard's study was based on a strictly bipolar male/female paradigm to examine and explain human experience. To see the human condition and behaviour as only heterosexual, homosexual bisexual or asexual is unenlightened. People are sexual and clusters of sexual stimuli can be triggered by all manner of fantasies that would not be pathological except for narrow monocultural interpretations. In the case of Canada, to a large extent, it would have included a Judeo/Christian element that historically saw only heterosexual males as healthy men."

But what do we know about people's fantasies and sexual desires, really?

An autogynephiliac may think that other people are "normal", dreaming of having normal sex in the missionary position (after the required bonding through foreplay, of course). His girlfriend may actually be dreaming about being taken roughly from behind up against the wall. Not that she would like all sex to be like that, but her sexuality is probably not as "pure" as some would like us to believe.

The enormous amount of porn online, and the great variety of topics we find there should tell us something about the variety of sexual imagination.

It would help if we could stop looking at sexual desires and fantasies as "sins" or "perversions", and instead look at them as what they really are: variations of the strange and fantastic world of human sexuality.

Sin is about hate and hurting other people, not about gender roles.

Do read O'Keefe's paper: Autogynephilia and Autoandrophilia in
Non-Sex and Gender Dysphoric Persons!

Eroticizing the inner woman

I got one very helpful email recently, that included the following thought provoking paragraph.

(I am taking the liberty of quoting it in full):

"If you want anyone to take you and your writing seriously, you'll need to stop being so ashamed of who you are. Your shame and anxiety have led you down the path of compulsive fixation on the physical and sexual aspects of a gender change. The reason wannabe fiction is often about humiliation is because you have eroticized your fear of getting caught."

This is exactly the kind of advice that leads my thinking in new directions and that helps me get unstuck.

The writer looks at the erotic part of autogynephilia from the exact opposite position of Blanchard & Co. Blanchard & Co believe autogynephilia (men dreaming of having a female body) is caused by a misdirection of the sexual drive. The sexual drive is the starting point.

This writer also seem to believe that the excessive focus on sex you find in TG blogs and story sites is caused by a kind of "misdirection". This time, however, it is the underpinning female identity that is misdirected. The female identity is the starting point, not the end result.

If I understand her rightly, autogynephiliacs are full blooded women and M2F transsexuals, but they feel so ashamed about it that they channel their female life energy (?) into byroads instead of becoming what their truly are.

This means that there is no need to be ashamed of these feelings, being that the excitement of cross-dressing or of the erotic fantasies found over at fictionmania.tv. They are a natural consequence of our true identity, a side of ourself that does not get to express itself naturally.

This fits well with my own experience. In the fall of 2007 I was getting overwhelmed by the feminine side of my psyche. I had, fortunately, been through some psychological upheavals before in my life, and know quite a bit about psychology.

I knew that there was no point in trying to suppress these feelings anymore, and that I would do more harm than good by trying to deny them. In other words: It didn't matter how I felt about these desires, they were still a part of me. I knew that I had to integrate them into my life in one way or the other.

If you are in the midst of a psychological crisis, there are different ways of handling it, and they all include some way of expressing how you feel. You can talk about it to someone you trust: a friend, a family member or a therapist. You can express yourself through art. You can act it out.

I had no one I could talk to at that time, so I decided to express these feelings through erotic TG caps and stories. In a very short time I had produced a large amount of material, and by doing so I had relieved some of the psychological pressure. "My inner woman" had gotten a voice, although an eroticized one -- to use the term used by the email writer.

I knew that it was more to it than this, though, which was why I started this blog: To help both myself and others like myself to get one step further: to understand what this really is about, and to get beyond the erotic fantasies.

The theory that laughs at gender identity disorder

Here's a video posted by Karmatic 1110 over at YouTube. It is a passionate and intelligent argument against using the term autogynephilia and against listening to anyone using that term in the transgender debate.

Since the name of this blog contains the term, I guess I am one of those who should not listen to what she has to say.

The fact is, however, that I agree with her as regards the substance in her argument. Blanchard & Co is wrong in categorizing transsexuals as perverts (because this is in fact what they do).

But we should argue against this part of the theory, not because it is politically incorrect, but because they have not in any way proved their theory.

I find this tendency of demonizing Blanchard & Co disturbing, and even more so the attempts to silence everyone who find the term autogynephilia useful.

The concept is useful, because it helps those of us that do have erotic fantasies about becoming women. We do, and as you can see in the comments to the video, many transgendered need to be heard on this point.

See also My take on autogynephilia , a blog post by tg_captioner. She was the one that brought this video to my attention.

Beyond the Perversion

In my previous post I discussed why the theory underpinning the term autogynephilia (men loving themselves as a woman) can be so offensive.

Behind all the scientific jargon lies the idea that autogynephiliacs are in some sense sick deviates. In this post I will see how Lawrence and others try to solve this dilemma.

The compromise

First it should be said that I do not think Blanchard tries to solve this problem at all.

To him paraphilias are a fact of life like other (in his opinion) misdirected desires. There is pedophilia, there is autogynephilia and many more.

He has tried to describe the phenomenon. How to cope with it is another discussion altogether.

As a scientist he must be allowed to do that, even if he should happen to be wrong. Science is about finding the truth through sound methods and an open discussion. It is not about pleasing people.

Although Lawrence goes a long way towards accepting Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia being a paraphilia (i.e. a mistargeting of desires), she is open to the other models as well .

She quotes researchers like Langevin and Johnson and Hunt who argue that autogynephilia may be caused by "real" gender conflicts. Autogynephilia could be the effect instead of the cause of "atypical gender identity".

In normal terms: These men have -- in a sense -- had an internal conflict between their female and male side all the time. Their sexual fantasies of becoming a woman or behave like a woman is caused by the fact that they have some kind of female identity inside of them.

Lawrence puts it this way:

"Other commentators -- often transsexuals themselves -- suggest that some sort of gender dysphoria may be primary, and that autogynephilic eroticism may develop when gender dysphoria interferes with 'normal' sexual interests. I suspect that this latter explanation is true at least part of the time. It seems most consistent with my own experience, and with the reports of many others."

Indeed, in many of the case studies she presents, the respondents report that they have thought of themselves as girls since early childhood, before puberty.

"Keeping both models in mind can offer the clinician a more nuanced understanding of sexual motivation," Lawrence says. Precisely!

Masculine autogynephiliacs

That being said, in other places she goes out of her way to explain why Blanchard's approach make more sense.

"Why would men who have been successful fighter pilots, construction workers, or captains of industry -- men who seem not the least bit feminine, and who appear entirely comfortable being men -- want to undergo sex reassignment? Attributing this solely to some long-hidden inner femininity might implausible."

This is where I find it so hard to follow both Blanchard and Lawrence. What has the looks of these men to do with it all?

If there is a biological basis for autogynephilia, the same biology has given them a male body. There is no reason for this body to look feminine. If it is caused by hormonal disturbances in the womb, that migh cause different length in fingers, but surely not to a feminine appearance? If the cause is genetic, I doubt there is one gene for autogynephilia. The phenomenon must in that case be caused by a combination of genes, none of which need be connected to looks.

My point is that there isn't necessarily one to one relationship between how you look and how you feel. If the cause is mainly biological one set of genes may trigger feminine looks, another set feminine mentalities and yet another feminine mannerisms. And at this point we haven't even begum to discuss the roles of hormones or psychological development.

As for their success as men: Well, women may succeed as fighter pilots, so why not autogynephiliacs? Moreover, they have lived under a strong cultural pressure to act like men. They are rewarded for it.

And as for them appearing comfortable being men... ah, well, appearances can decieve. I appear comfortable being a man, but I am not!

On the other hand Lawerence has a point when she draws attention to the fact that sexual obsession can drive a man to do all sorts of things.

Let there be no doubt about it: the urges that follows autogynephiliac fantasies can be very strong, probably stong enough to drive some men to sexual reassignment even if they didn't have a strong "inner woman". That doesn't prove that there is no "inner woman", however.

Autogynephilia and other erotic interests

The strongest argument in support of defining autogynephilia as a parahilia (an abnormal sexual activity or "perversion" in laymen's terms) is the connection to other types of erotic interests.

If you read transgender erotica there are a large number of sex change stories that contain elements of for example BDSM, exhibitionism, and infantilism.

Lawrence refers to research that documents that there are many fetichists among transvestites and transexuals.:

"If transexualism and transvetism are purely gender-identity-based phenomena, then these associations make no sense," Lawrence argues.

It is a fair argument, although it may be that these fetishes are caused by the fact that the person has to struggle with his autogynephilia, and not that autogynephilia automatically leads to "other" fetishes.

If you have spent your whole life suppressing your true identity (which definitely undermines your self-esteem as a man) humiliation as a way of getting off may make sense. Fantasies where the man is forced into feminization solves the problem of having to chose a new life. The conflict is resolved by others.

Infantilism, i.e. regression to a child-like state, is a fantasy often used by people who live extreme conditions where it is hard to cope as an adult. Feeling that you are a woman in a man's body is at times completely unbearable. Regressing to a more care-free, innocent and pre-sexual state where others take care of you may give psychological relief.

Sex as a woman

Lawrence also points to the fact that "heterosexual" autogynephiliacs (i.e M2F transgendered men who love women) may fantasize about having sex with men. Yes, they may even have sex with men when dressed up as a woman.

I have myself had these fantasies, and again -- if you read transgender erotica -- you will find a lot of writers that find the idea of having sex with a man as a man revolting, happily writes captions about being taken from behind by a man.

Lawrence is absolutely right when she says that these fantasies are not like the fantasies of "genuine androphiles":

"...there is little emphasis on the specific characteristics of the imagined male partner. Often the imagined partner is faceless or quite abstract, and seems to be present primarily to validate the femininity of the person having the fantasy, rather than as a desirable partner in his own right (Blanchard 1991)."

She also refers to all the autogynephiliacs that start having sex with men after their surgery. This is not, she argues, because they have changed their sexual orientation: "Rather it is because they can finally actualize their fantasy of having sex with a male."

In other words: They are having sex with men not because they are sexually attracted to them, but because they use them as a kind of masturbatory props!

I see that the fact that autogynephiliac's fantasize about faceless men as opposed to real men requires an explanation, and I can see how this phenomenon strengthens Lawrence's belief in the paraphilia-angle.

The idea that someone should go completely against their sexual orientation to actualize some abstract masturbatory fantasy is hard to believe for me, however. As an experiment, maybe, but to take real pleasure from it over time?

Admittedly, fantasizing about men like this before the transition may feel "safe" for the autogynephiliac, but many of them establish stable relationships with real men after the surgery. It is hard to believe that they could do that without having changed their attitude to men. Unless they have been closeted homosexuals all along, of course. But the point here is that Blanchard & Co are convinced that they are not.

Are we all bisexuals?

One counter-argument could be that all human beings are born bisexual and that their gender identity is a social construct. When becoming women these autogynephiliacs just switch to another narrative.

However, i find that unlikely as well, because the theory does not explain why exactly these men have become autogynephiliacs. It is very unlikely that their parents have raised them as such!

Another narrative

I suspect there are other explanations that makes more sense, and I am working on one such possible narrative (although this is nothing more than an hypothesis at the moment):

Autogynephiliacs like myself do indeed have a strong inner woman, but we are also to certain degree men. After all, we all carry the genetic code for both sexes.

The man in us loves women and is sexually attracted to women. The woman in us love the idea of being a woman, but she may (i underline may) also be attracted to men.

The man and the woman are both heterosexual. Before the transition the male sex-partners are faceless, but after the surgery the woman gets free reins. Now she may approach men as a woman.

She could be lying, of course, both to herself and to the researchers. She may think that she has a normal heterosexual relationship with a man, while she is in fact using the man for pleasuring herself. Her relationship is in that case in no way similar to a normal female-male bonding.

This is where both Blanchard and Lawrence run into methodological difficulties, because it does not matter what their respondents reply to such questions. The "wrong" answers can always be interpreted as lies.

Some research indicate that as many as 50 percent of transsexuals change their sexual orientation as the result of hormone treatment. If the hormones are causing the change in sexual orientation before the sexual reassignment surgery has taken place, that may indicate that the change is caused by a change in "normal" biology, and not by some misdirection of sexual desire.

If they do change their orientation,the question that has to be asked is whether their relationship with men is "normal". Do they enter into stable, long-term, love based relationships or are they just fooling around? An answer to this question would in many ways help us ascertain whether they have become real women or whether they still are suffering from parahilia. I cannot see that Blanchard & Co has done this research.

I suspect that many post-op autogynephiliacs are perfectly capable of having real relationships with their partners after the surgery, also if they end up with a man.

I would love to hear from post-op transsexuals out there about your experience regarding this.

Yet another hypothesis

Another possible explanation is that the longing for submission and penetration is a genetic trait that normally belongs to females. I mean submission in the neutral sense here, as being the "catcher" instead of the "pitcher".

It could be that autogynephiliacs have this urge, in spite of their Y chromosome. After all, many "normal" men may display some traditionally feminine traits without being considered effeminate. You know: "He is a kind and patient man, a good listener."

There are lesbians who do not feel the need for penetration, which proves that the opposite may be true, as well.

If autogynephiliacs have inherited a submissive trait, the need to "mask" the male in their fantasies is quite understandable. Other autogynephilias "solve" this problem by imagining themselves penetrated by a woman with a strap-on or by a "shemale". There are a lot of "shemale" (pre-op transwomen) prostitutes out there that advertise the fact that they are "active". Maybe their customers are autogynephiliacs?

An oversimplified view of sexuality

I strongly believe that our traditional concepts of both sexuality and gender are to simple and binary.

If we instead of thinking in a binary way (as Blanchard does) - man vs. female, masculine vs. feminine, heterosexual vs homosexual, homosexual transsexual vs. autogynephiliac - we could think of this as a gradient, a mixture of a large number of genetic, biological, psychological and cultural variables, autogynephilia makes more sense.

I think an answer to that riddle will bring us a long way towards getting a better understanding of the autogynephiliac condition.

The truth is out there

So Blanchard and Lawrence are wrong then, are they? Their theories are politically incorrect, I can embrace my inner woman and accept the transgender narrative as my own?

There is a good chance that I will.

Still, when you are struggling with topics of this kind: sexuality, identity, strong cultural frameworks, it it easy to adopt the narrative that feels most comfortable.

I have lived for a few years now, and I know that people deceive themselves. I have done so repeatedly. I also now that psychological disorders do exist, and that there are ways of treating some of them. I have been in psychotherapy for other problems and that therapy has changed me -- to the better, as I understand it.

So, I cannot just dismiss the idea out of hand that my fantasies of being a woman are "wrong", "dysfunctional", "misled" or whatever.

If that is the case. If Blanchard and Lawrence are correct in their assumptions, I have three options as I see it:

1. I should find ways of redirecting my desires to its "proper object". They never say how this is to be done. Through psychotherapy maybe?
   
   
2. I will have to live with it, as a person with CP or MS will have to learn with his or her fate.
   
   
3. I can ask for sex reassignment surgery, knowing that I will always be a male autogynephiliac in a woman's clothing and never a proper woman

I can't say that I like any of these options.

I know for sure that Blanchard and Lawrence have given me something very important, though:

1. They have given me a language that gives a more nuanced view of what it is to be transgendered. They have given us more more terms and categories, which is very helpful when you try to find out who you are. Whether these term capture "reality as it is" or their explanation of these terms are correct is another problem.
   
   
2. They have killed this strange idea that gender is completely separate from sexuality. I know that especially American universities have been strongly influenced by postmodern philosophy and feminist studies where gender is seen as a social construct only. It cannot be, as I see it.
   

In my next blog posts, I will try to explore the alternative to Blanchard and Lawrence's explanation for autogynephilia.

[Comment of September 2010: Because of the association with the idea that "autogynephiliacs" are nothing but autoerotic narcissists, I am no longer using the term to describe people. Instead I call men harboring feminization fantasies for male to female crossdreamers.]

Further reading:

For Blanchard's view on the topic, see his article The Concept of Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male Gender Dysphoria republished at the All Mixed Up site, which also includes a well written crituque of his work.

An interesting article from a transsexual, Willow Arune, supporting Blanchard can be found here.

Beth Oren's article Autogynephilia, a mistaken model gives a sober rebuttal of the term.

There is an interesting discussion of autogynephilia over at the A.E. Brain blog.

See also links in the right hand column of this page.

Autogynephilia: The Dark Side

In my previous blog post I presented the concept of autogynephilia and what it means to me.

In this blog post I will try to explain why it has become so controversial in trangender circles, and what I personally find most disturbing about it.

Why the term is so controversial

The controversial part is the idea that autogynephiliacs are driven by sexual desire.

To quote Lawrence again:

"In 1989, psychologist Ray Blanchard made the controversial proposal that the “atypical” male-to-female transsexuals described above, and the heterosexual cross-dressers with whom they seemed to have so much in common, both experienced a powerful sexual attraction to the idea of being or becoming women. This unusual sexual interest, or paraphilia, he theorized, was the driving force behind their behavior. Blanchard called this paraphilia autogynephilia, meaning 'love of oneself as a woman' (1989a).

"He formally defined autogynephilia as 'a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female' (1989b). According to Blanchard’s formulation, heterosexual cross-dressers were men who were sexually attracted to women and who had a paraphilic sexual interest that made them want to episodically impersonate the objects of their attraction. Autogynephilic transsexuals, he theorized, were men who were also sexually attracted to women, but whose paraphilic sexual interest made them want to go farther and permanently change their bodies to become the objects of their attraction, or the best possible facsimiles thereof."

This theory caused an uproar in transgender circles. Lawrence find this, for some reason, surprising. I do not.

The sexless transgendered

Now, if you read the debate, it might seem that the main issue is that Blanchard argued that the driving force for these transgendered men is sexual desire.

It is argued that many transgender persons found that this undermined their legitimacy vis-a-vis the doctors, and that they would not get surgery if they admitted they found feminization to be sexually arousing.

Because of this, the story goes, many transgender activists opposed Blanchard because it would damage the cause of transsexuals. Some of them argued strongly that they were not driven by sexual desire; others admitted that you needed to keep the erotic component hidden in order to get the surgery.

I find it hard to understand transgenderism without the sex. To me the sexual drive and gender identification is strongly connected, and the fact that transgendered men get sexually aroused by imagining themselves with a female body is pretty obvious.

I mean, look at "genuine girls" biological women. Many of them spend hours shopping for clothes, dressing up, putting on make-up, looking at themselves in the mirror. Of course there is a sexual component in this behavior. Many of them like their own bodies and femininity. They are at peace with themselves. That is a good thing! Moreover, research indicate that most genuine XX girls (natal women) are autogynephiliacs!

Moreover, male autogynephiliacs are in a life situation where it is hard for them to have a normal sex life. They love women, but find themselves inadquate as men. This may lead to a lot of sexual frustration -- celibacy even. No wonder their sexaul libido is channeled into fantasies of this kind.

So why the idea that M2F transgendered fantasizing about being women get aroused should be offensive, I don't know. It is a sad fact, though, that the medical establishment used to frown upon these things, and that M2F transgendered kept quiet about it. They often pretended to be sexless women trapped in a sexless man's body.

The real reason why Blanchard's and Lawrence's theory is problematic

The real reason I find Blanchard and Lawrence's theory so problematic is another one.

What this theory says is that these men are suffering from "erotic target location errors”. They are supposed to feel desire for the women out there. Instead they internalize the object of desire. They want to become that woman.

The narrative here is that the autogynephiliac is really a normal heterosexual man that would -- under normal circumstances -- go out and find a woman to desire. But, because of some error (being that biochemical or psychological) he has "malfunctioned".

His sexual desire (or, as Lawrence expands: his erotic-romantic orientation, which also includes other forms of pair-bonding) is channeled inwards instead of outwards.

If we now for a moment drop the scientific jargon, what I read is the following message:

This man is not only a "freak" in the eyes of others. He is truly a dysfunctional person. Scientific words like dysphoria and paraphilia cannot hide this message. I am sure Blanchard and Lawrence do not feel this way, but unless you think this kind of self-obsession is a good thing the verdict is devastating.

Lawrence's solution to this problem is (in some places, but not in others) to define autogynephilia as a sexual orientation in itself (on par with heterosexuality I suppose).

She defends the rights of autogynephiliacs to have sexual reassignment surgery on this basis. She doesn't say as much, but I guess the underlying message is that since autogynephilia is a natural phenomenon the autogynephiliacs should be allowed to live out their obsession.

The problem is, however, that as the phenomenon is described by Blanchard and Lawrence the autogynephiliac does come out as a kind of narcissist, a self-lover, a person who wants to become the object he loves, and therefore wants to make love to himself as a woman. That does not sound particularly good to me.

The potential male partners in this narrative become mere props: large human dildos the autogynephiliacs can use to fulfill their fantasies.

Because of this is seems like Lawrence and Blanchard think that autogynephiliacs will be unable to enter into a normal love/sex relationship with another human being.

The controversy summarized

Here is a crystal clear summary of the Blanchard narrative made by Michael Bailey:

"Currently the predominant cultural understanding of male-to-female transsexualism is that all male-to-female (MtF) transsexuals are, essentially, women trapped in men's bodies. This understanding has little scientific basis, however, and is inconsistent with clinical observations. Ray Blanchard has shown that there are two distinct subtypes of MtF transsexuals. Members of one subtype, homosexual transsexuals, are best understood as a type of homosexual male. The other subtype, autogynephilic transsexuals, are motivated by the erotic desire to become women. The persistence of the predominant cultural understanding, while explicable, is damaging to science and to many transsexuals."

What this means is that M2F trangender men having undergone the transformations are not women at all. They are at best a category in themselves, or they remain men in spite of their appearances. There is no "feminine essence" that makes them women; they are an evolutionary blind alley.

The other transgender narrative

Now, compare this narrative to the one that is gaining acceptance in modern societies: A male to female transsexual is really a woman, truly a woman, a normal woman living "inside" her male body.

There is no denying that something has gone wrong in the lives of male to female transsexuals (also called "transwomen"). She is after all trapped in a man's body, even if her personality may be sound. But she is not a freak. What's needed is a sex reassignment therapy that gives her the body she should have had all along.

Note that in this narrative it does not matter whether she is heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. In the US and Europe at least, these sexualities are accepted as normal for both women and men.

So an autogynephiliac accepting this narrative can think of herself as a healthy woman that has become herself in body and soul.

An autogynephiliac accepting Blanchard's narrative in full will naturally think of himself as disturbed person even after having had the sexual reassignment surgery.

Is it possible to reconcile the concept of autogynephilia with a narrative we can live with, or do people like me just have to accept that we are perverts?

That will be the topic of my next post.

[Correction September 2010: I have replaced the term "geunine girls". Even if it was placed in quotation marks, some have interpreted this to mean that I do not believe transwomen are genuine women. Of course I do. I no longer use the term "autogynephiliac" to describe transgender people, exactly because of the argument made in this post. I now call men harboring feminization fantasies for male to female crossdreamers. ]

Autogynephilia defined

When I started this blog last year, it was to have a place for discussing a phenomenon so rare that I it is never mentioned in popular media.

There are men (like me) that fantasize about having a woman's body and get sexually aroused by this. If you met me, you would find no sign of this inner woman in my outward appearance.

I do not look particularly feminine (quite the opposite, actually). I dress like a man, and have many typical male interests (including science and technology). I love women and have a  girlfriend.

Gay or what?

It is more than a little confusing, because -- even if I cannot for my life think of having sex with a man as a man -- my female self has no such scruples. I could be a closet homosexual, of course, living in denial. Still, going down a busy city street, I have only eyes for the women and rarely remember the men.

Sometimes I wish I was a homosexual, because then I get out of the closet and start living a normal life. I live after all in a country where the male finance minister took his male partner to a royal reception and noone objected.

But I am not. Sometimes I also which that I could just come out as a transsexual, get gender reassignment and start a life as a woman. But my inner man protests and tells me that I am definitely "more than a woman".

The search for language

Given that the identity of modern man is so strongly defined by sexual orientation and gender, I have a huge problem, and it is hard to grasp this problem out of lack of words. For a long time I found no words for this condition, and you need language in order to understand yourself.

This is why I was so relieved when I found the term "autogynephilia" on the net: "to love the image of one self as a woman". If there is a scientific term for this condition, it means that I am not alone. And if I am not alone, there may be others I can discuss this with.

So I started this blog. Then I stopped writing, because it dawned on me that this area of research is very much in its infancy, and also very controversial.

Although I recognized much of myself in the descriptions given, there were also parts of the research that did not ring true to me, not so much the descriptions of autogynephiliacs as the explanation -- the underlying narrative. I needed to read more.

Anne Lawrence

In a series of blog posts I will try to sum up some of this reading. I will quote Anne Lawrence liberally. She is an expert in the field. Moreover she is male to female transsexual herself, and a self-confessed autogynephiliac.

Summary of autogynephilia

Anne Lawrence gives the following summary of what autogyenphilia is, referring to the researcher Ray Blanchard, who coined the term:

"Ray Blanchard proposed that these transsexuals have a paraphilia [i.e. sexual disorder] he called autogynephilia, which is the propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of oneself as female.

"Autogynephilia defines a transsexual typology and provides a theory of transsexual motivation, in that Blanchard proposed that MtF transsexuals are either sexually attracted exclusively to men (homosexual) or are sexually attracted primarily to the thought or image of themselves as female (autogynephilic), and that autogynephilic transsexuals seek sex reassignment to actualize their autogynephilic desires."

Two categories of male to female transsexuals
In another article, she makes the following summary:

"One category of MtF transsexualism includes persons who were overtly feminine as children, who are very feminine as adults, and who are exclusively sexually attracted to men; these individuals are usually referred to as homosexual MtF transsexuals (Cohen-Kettenis & Gooren, 1999). [called nonautogyephiliac by Lawrence].

"The other category of MtF transsexualism includes persons who were not overtly feminine during childhood, who are not remarkably feminine as adults, and who are not exclusively sexually attracted to men, but who may be sexually attracted to women, to women and men, or to neither sex; these individuals are usually referred to as nonhomosexual MtF transsexuals (Cohen-Kettenis & Gooren, 1999).

"Nearly all persons of this second MtF transsexual type have a history of transvestic fetishism or sexual arousal with cross-dressing (Blanchard, 1985; Blanchard, Clemmensen, & Steiner, 1987).[also called autogynephiliacs]"

Four types of autogynephiliacs

Autogynephilia denotes the propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as female. This imagening may take different forms. Blanchard operates with four types of autogynephilia:

1. Transvestic (fantasy of wearing women's clothing)
2. Behavioural (fantasy of engaging in typical feminine behaviour, let's say knitting together with women)
3. Physiologic (fantasy of pregnancy, breast feeding, menstruating)
4. Anatomic (fantasy of having a woman's body, including partial autogynephilia, where the focus is on a mix of male and female bodyparts, as in -- for instance -- becoming a "she-male".)

More autogynephiliacs take the plunge

The autogynephiliacs are, according to Lawrence, now dominating the group of men who undergo sex reassignment surgery:

"Most of the increase in MtF transsexualism can be accounted for by men who would have been considered atypical—and probably inappropriate—candidates for sex reassignment only a few decades earlier. These men are usually unremarkably masculine in their appearance and behavior, and they typically seek sex reassignment after having lived outwardly successful lives as men, often in male-dominated professions such as engineering or computer science.

"Most have been married to women, and many have fathered children. They invariably have a history of sexual arousal with crossdressing or cross-gender fantasy (Lawrence 2003, 2004). Most MtF transsexuals who undergo sex reassignment in the United States and the United Kingdom now appear to fit this pattern (Green and Young 2001; Lawrence 2005)."

Again: the reason I have found the term so useful, is because I recognize my own life in these descriptions.

That does not mean that I necssarily will accept the theories that lies behind these terms.

In the next blog post I will take a look at why this terminology has been considered so controversial.

[Note of September 2010: Due to the negative connotations following the world "autogynephiliac" I am no longer using it to describe men with feminization fantasies. Instead I use the term crossdreamers.]


[Note of August 2012: I realize now that new reader's who come to this blog and read this post only, may believe that I am a supporter of the autogynephilia theory. This is not the case: Although I know for a fact that crossdreamers (or "autogynephiliacs") exist, the theory used to explain their condition is seriously bad science). Take a look at the following blog post for an in depth discussion of the term and the theory:
Dr. Charles Moser's critique of the autogynephilia theory.
Julia Serano's critique of the autogynephilia theory.
On Blanchard and the DSM-5 discussion of perversions]

With friends like these...

I found an interesting post by Cathrine Platine over at TS-Si on "The Ten Most Common Lies (or being kind, misconceptions) About Transsexuality."

The message is clear: There is only one kind of genuine transsexuals and they are indeed women trapped in a man's body. This has, according to Platine, nothing to do with cross-dressers or other transgendered.

One myth she would like to kill is the idea that transsexuals are autogynephilic:

"I’m not going to be kind here.

Autogynophilia, while overly defined by Blanchard and then Bailey, is, in my opinion, a real psycho-sexual disorder that mimics classic transsexuality but has no other connection to it. It is the end stage of transvestic fetishism, it’s logical furthest extension, a literal crossdressing of the body."

So there you have it: Any autogynephiliac asking for sex-reassignment surgery is not a true transsexual and therefor not a true woman, either.

The hidden ring

I am not sure about this, but I do believe my fantasies about being a girl came with puberty.

In this way I do not follow the more "traditional" transgender story, where the man knows himself to be a woman at a very early age.

I remember a cosmetic box. It had been used for hand cream, I believe, and belonged to my mother. It was circular and blue.

It was a large NIVEA box, not the flat one made of metal, but a larger one made of plastic.

In this box I put a ring made of chocolate tinfoil wrappers. I used to fantasize that if I put on the ring, it would turn me into a woman.

From a psychological point of view the symbolism is clear:

The ring and the circular box refers to completeness (the ring never ends) and femininity (the curves and softness of women). The box is the womb, where my unborn self lays dormant.

The box is blue, which symbolizes the sea (the feminine side) and the sky (the masculine side).

There are two possible messages from this fantasy.

One is that I am truly a woman that expects to be born as a woman, into the world as a true transsexual.

The other one is that I am to unite the feminine and masculine sides and accept that I am both, regardless of whether my sexual organs point outwards or inwards.

This is a the most important question for me right now.

Dear fellow autogynephiliacs, can you remember when these feelings awakened in you?