"I feel pretty!" (On the "Autogynephilic" Woman, Erotic Crossgender Fantasies and More)

"Oooh, I am such a sexy autogynephile!"  (Photos.com)

Is the crossdreamer dream of an attractive body really that different from what cis women experience?

One of the basic building blocks of Ray Blanchard's "autogynephilia" theory is that male to female crossdreamers and trans women who love women  are sexually attracted to their female selves. They get aroused by the idea of being a woman.

Blanchard and his followers  sometimes go as far as defining this as a separate sexuality, one that comes in addition to heterosexuality and homosexuality.

While gay men are attracted to men and heterosexual men to women, the "autogynephiles" are reduced to  narcissistic autoerotic wankers.

The self-admiring crossdresser

The proof is allegedly found among male to female crossdressers who get aroused when dressing up as women, admiring themselves in the mirror. It is the erection that gives them away.

And it all sounds so believable and common sense. After all, real men and real women do not get aroused by the idea of being a man or a woman, do they? No, they only get aroused by being with another man or woman, not by being (by) themselves.

Besides, real women do not get erections. They are hardly aroused at all.

Beyond the stereotypes

As is often the case in the gender and transgender debates, this whole argument rests on  ideas that become very problematic when you look a little closer.

There is, as far as I can see, no reliable research on such autoeroticisms  among non-transgender men and women. That is, there is a lot of research on autoeroticism (defined as "using your own body as a sexual object"), but most of it focuses on regular masturbation, which is no longer considered a mental disease.

Revised Reddit Crossdreamer Discussion Forum

Reddit logo

There was a time when digg was the hottest thing in social media. Not anymore. But one of the copycats, reddit, is thriving. It has become a very useful tool for sharing and exploring online information.

Users may add links for information and discussion or general comments. The entries are organized into areas of interest called "reddits." The front page is the main reddit, and other areas are "subreddits."

There has also been a very active forum or subreddit for crossdreamers, called the Autogynephilia sub, for sharing of crossdreamer resources and the discussion of crossdreamer and transgender topics.

This  sub has now been divided in two:

• Crossdreaming, which will focus on questions, discussions, support, and community for those with crossdreaming tendencies
  
• Genderotica, which  will contain captions, images, stories, movie recommendations, etc. with a focus on transgender elements