On evolution, autogynephilia and Anne Lawrence 2

I my previous post I presented Anne Lawrence's argument for why male to female trans women who are attracted to women  (referred to as "autogynephiliacs") must be classified as mentally ill.

Or, to be more precise, she asked if the desire for sex reassignment in some men is  to be understood as a mental disorder in terms of a particular classification system of psychiatric conditions.

Her answer is yes; mine is no.

Lawrence's comment,  "Do Some Men Who Desire Sex Reassignment Have a Mental Disorder?", was originally a response to a paper by Dr. Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg of Columbia University.

Dr. Meyer-Bahlburg was kind enough to give me a copy of his own response to Anne Lawrence's text, and I am going to give you a summary of his main arguments here.

A summary of Lawrence

Meyer-Bahlburg gives the following summary of Lawrence's paper (the  text in  brackets [...]  are my comments):

"1. In line with the original sex assignment on the basis of genital appearance at birth, the young child forms a core gender identity (as ‘‘biologically male’’)."

[Actually: Basically both Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence say that a man is a man if he has a penis. Period.]

"2. Later development includes the activation of erotic heterosexual interest, which involves a mental mechanism responsible for locating erotic targets (females) in the environment external to the self (Freund & Blanchard, 1993). This mechanism is 'natural,' i.e., was developed by way of evolutionary selection. However, in the particular men under discussion, this mechanism fails its natural function; these men become autogynephilic instead of gynephilic, or both, and, thereby, experience a powerful erotic interest in turning their own bodies into facsimiles of their preferred erotic targets (females), thus generating the desire for sex reassignment. This desire to transform the body is an epiphenomenon to the primary mental dysfunction, namely the malfunctioning erotic-target location mechanism."

[In other words: Autogynephilia is the result of a masculine sexuality, not a feminine sex identity.]

On evolution, autogynephilia and Anne Lawrence 1

Dr. Anne Lawrence tells us that "autogynephiliacs" must be considered mentally for evolutionary reasons. I argue that this make no sense.

Some how you have wondered why I keep writing on "gay" and "transgender" animals, arguing that these phenomena are of little relevance to a discussion of crossdreaming or "autogynephilia" (sexual arousal from the idea of having the body of the opposite physical sex).

I have argued that the presentation of "autogynephilia" (AGP) as a mental illness in the autogynephilia theory of Ray Blanchard, J. Michaels Bailey and Anne Lawrence is at least partially based on evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. 

This means that the categorization of crossdreaming as a paraphilia (perversion) is ultimately based on the idea that it represents a trait that hinders procreation. 

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Note that the use of the term "autogynephilia" in this article must not be understood as an endorsement of Ray Blanchard's two-type model of male to female transgender people. Moreover, when I refer to erotic cross-gender fantasies, I normally use the much wider term "crossdreaming", a term that is not dependent on Blanchard's theory.

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The sanctity of sexual selection

According to this type of thinking sexual selection provides organisms with adaptations related to mating. For male mammals, this theory holds, sexual selection leads to adaptations that help them compete for females. A behavioral adaptation that does not lead to them breeding with females is therefore harmful, and an illness.

They argue that "heterosexual transsexual men" (which is an impolite  reference to people I would call lesbian or gynephilic -- woman loving -- trans women), are mentally ill.  The underlying argument is that "autogynephilia" represent a maladaptation. The natural heterosexual longing for a woman out there has been internalized  as a "erotic target location error".

I believe this explanation for crossdreaming is the end result of reductionistic evolutionary thinking. Their basic model cannot encompass the idea of gynephilic male bodied person wanting to be women, for the simple reason that in this theory sexual orientation equals sex identity. It cannot be otherwise in a theory that argues that sexual selection, and sexual selection  only, explains the survival of the genes of the individual and -- ultimately -- of a species. 

Nature disagrees

I have presented alternative research on the sexuality and gendered behavior of animals to show you that this basic understanding is wrong. A lot of the sexual behavior found among animals (and humans) does not have procreation as a goal. It is, for instance, used as a tool for socialization or for comfort.

None of these alternative theories dismisses the concept of evolution – far from it – but they argue that the survival of a genetic line relies on much more than mere sexual selection.

This research also shows that the social and sexual dynamics of  animals does not  necessarily adhere to the simplistic strong, aggressive, male conquers coy and passive female paradigm. And if the basis for the paradigm is wrong, the conclusions based on this basis are also most likely to be wrong.

Anne Lawrence presents the evolutionary argument

The reason some of you have questioned my interpretation of the basis of the "autogynephilia" theory is that Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence rarely make such evolutionary arguments. The most important exception has been Blanchard's sibling theory on homosexuality, and that one is not about "autogynephilia" at all, but adaptive advantages to homosexuality.

Well,  Anne Lawrence has let the cat out of the bag. She has written a paper, "Do Some Men Who Desire Sex Reassignment Have a Mental Disorder? Comment on Meyer-Bahlburg (2010)," where the argument is solely based on an evolutionary argument. "Autogynephiliacs" are mentally ill, because their condition does not lead to procreation:

On Moser's critique of Blanchard's autogynephilia theory Part 2

The presentation of Charles Moser's critique of Ray Blanchard's autogynephilia theory continues.

Read part 1 first!

Ray Blachard argues that there are two types of transwomen: homosexual transsexuals (androphilic transwomen) and autogynephiles (gynephilic men who erotically loves the idea of themselves being a woman). In a recent paper Charles Moser does his best to debunk the theory.

The two groups

Moser denies that the data Blanchard uses can be used to prove that there are two completely separate groups of transwomen: (1) autogynephilic "non-homosexual" MTFs and (2) androphilic "homosexual transsexuals".

"Blanchard (1989a) demonstrates that there is a statistically significant correlation between reported autogynephilic interests and a non-homosexual sexual orientation, suggesting that one can distinguish homosexual from non-homosexual MTFs on this basis. This approach is equivalent to distinguishing men from women by finding a statistically significant correlation between the presence of a Y chromosome and gynephilia (erotic attraction to women), which obscures the very real existence of gay men and lesbians."

The point here is, I believe, that although there is a statistically significant correlation between having autogynephilic fantasies and being a non-homosexual MTF, the dividing line between the two groups is not absolute. There will always be people who fall outside this binary system, in the same way there are men and women who are not heterosexual.

What is lacking in Moser's discussion is a discussion of the positive value of making such a distinction. There is a correlation between sexual orientation and reported autogynephilic fantasies. Why is that and what does it mean?

Furthermore: The fact that only a minority of transwomen are androphilic is interesting and requires an explanation. Among genetic XX women it is the other way round: the majority is androphilic. Why is that?

The love of others

If you have followed this blog, you will know that one of my deepest felt arguments against Blanchard & Co is that he denies me the ability to love another person. Autogynephiliacs are in love with themselves and cannot love others. My long time girlfriend can tell you otherwise and I get a lot of reports from crossdreamers who love their significant other deeply. The fact is that many of them give up on their dream of transitioning, because they do not want to lose the one they love.

Moser makes the same argument:

"Blanchard (...) states, 'autogynephilia is clinically significant because it interferes with normal interpersonal sexual attraction and because it is associated with gender dysphoria' (1993a, p. 301). There are no data to suggest that autogynephilia actually interferes with interpersonal sexual attraction or that homosexual MTFs do not experience problems with interpersonal sexual attraction or gender dysphoria (i.e., 'discontent with one’s biological sex, the desire to possess the body of the opposite sex and to be regarded by others as a member of the opposite sex' [Blanchard, Clemmensen, & Steiner, 1987, pp.139–140]). Most MTFs, autogynephilic or not, report both interpersonal attraction toward the partners of their choice and gender dysphoria."

My point exactly! Note that there is no data that shows that androphilic transwomen or ciswomen and cismen are more capable of developing lasting relationships.

Man as a dildo

I have mentioned the man as a masturbatory prop theory earlier. Given that crossdreamers or autogynephiliacs are considered gynephilic (they love women), the fact that they fantasize about having sex with a man becomes problematic. It threatens to destroy the neat division between heterosexual and homosexual. Blanchard does not allow for true bisexuality in his theory. The bisexuals are grouped together with the gynephiles in the "non-homosexual" category.

Blanchard suggests the male partner of a non-homosexual MTF “is usually a vague, anonymous figure rather than a real person and probably has little excitatory function beyond that of completing the fantasy of vaginal intercourse in the female role” (1989a, 1991).

Anne Lawrence suggests that the androphilic interests of “nonhomosexual” MTFs are focused upon an imagined partner who, “ 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” (2004, 79–80).

I must admit this is one of the most puzzling parts of being a crossdreamer, and also the strongest argument for the target location error theory.

I think Blanchard's and Lawrence's observations are close to the mark. The male partners in feminization fantasies among crossdreamers are very often faceless, unlike the fantasy partners found in women and gay men's fantasies. I find this in TG erotica, I find it in the conversations I have had with fellow crossdreamers and you can see it in some of the comments made on this blog.

But you might also argue that a man masturbating to the picture of a sexy model is as far removed from real life as the fantasy of a MTF crossdreamer. Cis women also report fantasies of being taken by generic, faceless, men. Sexual fantasies are fantasies. They do not necessarily reflect what people do in real life.

Stable relationships

Moser does not go into the fantasies themselves, but puts up the following hypothesis: If M2F "non-homosexual" MTFs uses males as props in fantasies, you would see them use men in the same way after transitioning.

The Blanchard theory would imply that non-homosexual MTFs attracted to men would have multiple male partners and no stable male partnered relationships. The data given by Anne Lawrence, a strong Blanchard supporter, says otherwise, according to Moser:

Ray Blanchard

"Of the MTFs who had exclusively female partners before SRS and exclusively male partners after SRS, 71% reported at least one stable partnered relationship post-SRS in comparison to the 64% of MTFs who had exclusively male partners before and after SRS (Lawrence, 2005). The MTFs with female partners before and male partners after SRS reported a mean of 2.8 male partners after SRS, in comparison to the 8.4 male partners for MTFs with exclusively male partners before and after SRS (Lawrence, 2005). "

Moser argues that androphilic MTFs are less likely to form stable relationships than the "non-homosexual" ones -- not that this in any way implies that they are more "autoerotic" than the autogynephiliacs.

Are we wrong about sexual orientation?

The fact that "autogynephiliacs" are as likely to form stable relationships as others is a good point. But it does not answer the puzzle of seemingly gynephilic M2Fs getting male partners.

I wonder if we are barking up the wrong tree here. The word "non-homosexual"makes sense in this context, but not for the reasons Blanchard intended. The phenomenon we are describing is a journey from one form of heterosexuality to another. The biological male starts out as gynephilic (heterosexual) and ends up as an androphilic woman (heterosexual).

Given Blanchard's starting point (that there are only two types of normal sexual orientation), some explanations cannot be considered by him. The following three are, for instance, out of the question:

1. The gynephilic crossdreamers who become androphilic were bisexual all along, but given the fact that they have tried to live as men, they have suppressed their desire for men. As women it makes much more sense for them to approach men. The gynephilic crossdreamers who were truly gynephilic only, remain gynephilic after the transition.
2. Some gynephilic crossdreamers do indeed change their orientation from loving women to loving men, as sexual orientation is not unalterable, but is the end result of a complex set of natural and psychological factors, some of which may be changed when transitioning (for instance due to hormones or psychological realignments).
3. Sigmund Freud was right all along: All men and women are basically bisexual. However, the surrounding culture and their basic copulation instinct (catcher/pitcher) lead them to preferring one sex and suppress the longing for the other. When they change sex, they are allowed to -- yes, even encouraged to -- turn to the other sex, which allows them to do what their natural instincts asked for all the time.

During my exploration of my own crossdreamer psyche, I have slowly come to the point where I can see that it actually might be possible for a crossdreamer to switch allegiance in this way, i.e. the point where the male body actually becomes physically attractive, but I must admit that I do not understand how this happens. I suspect there may something inherently wrong about the way we look at sexual orientation. We oversimplify a complex phenomenon. This is definitely a topic for further study.

Cohabitation and erotic-romantic identification

As for Moser dismissing the man as a prop theory using cohabitation statistics: Well, the data are interesting, but these data say nothing about how these trans women experience their sexual relationship with men. There may be friendship, there may be love, but if this is anything like the attraction a cisgendered ("normal") woman feels for a man, or a gay man feels for another is unknown.

Anne Lawrence has a highly speculative theory about the MTF crossdreamers ("autogynephiliacs") being romantically in love with the image of themselves as women. She says:

"Moreover, it seems obvious that erotic-romantic orientations involving erotic target location errors would contribute especially strongly to personal identity, because they define one’s ideal self: the person whom one wants to become or wants to change one’s body to resemble. It is easy, then, to understand why becoming what one loves would feel like an identity-driven process. It is also easy to understand how the erotic feelings that putatively contribute to the creation of identity in nonhomosexual MtF transsexuals could seem relatively unimportant, especially if they had diminished with time or were never strong to begin with." (Lawrence 2004)

The reason why autogynephiliacs imagine faceless men, according to Lawrence, is that they are not attracted to men, but to the idea of being a beautiful woman lusted for by men.

Moser's argument quite efficiently destroys Lawrence's idea that autogynephilia represents some alternative kind of erotic-romantic orientation - an alternative to heterosexual and homosexual love. Moser demonstrates that crossdreamers are perfectly capable of having long lasting relationships with real people. However, the fact that they do so, does not in itself prove that their condition cannot be caused by some kind of erotic-romantic identification with the other sex.

Personally I think there may be such a erotic-romantic identification. However, that does not in itself prove Lawrence right. If crossdreaming or autogynephilia is inborn -- i.e. these biological men have strong "inner women" -- it would only be natural for them to identify romantically with the idea of being a woman. They love women, they are partly or fully wired as women, and many of them therefore identify as women. If this is the case it would be close to impossible for them to differentiate between these types of love in their subconscious. A erotic-romantic identification with "womanhood" does not therefore stop gynephilic trans women from being "real women".

Maybe it does not matter. Maybe this is all part of the wonderful variety of life.

Androphilic with autogynephilic fantasies

Moser says that he cannot find reports of any substantial differences between the gender dysphoria (psychological discomfort) of homosexual and non-homosexual (autogynephilic) transsexuals. Nor does he find any differences in their post-op life experiences.

He also dismisses the idea that androphilic transwomen cannot have autogynephilic fantasies. Since Blanchard argues that 90 percent of the autogynephiliacs have also been aroused by the idea of wearing women's clothes, Moser makes use of research on crossdressing among androphilic MTFs:

"Blanchard (1985b) found approximately 15% of his homosexual MTFs reported a history of cross-gender fetishism. Bentler (1976) found 23% of his sample of homosexual transsexuals admitted sexual arousal by cross-dressing. Leavitt and Berger (1990) reported almost 36% of their androphilic transsexuals had a history of sexual arousal by crossdressing (using an item from Blanchard’s [1985b] inventory to measure this cross-dressing fetishism). It is hard to dismiss all these studies as systematic distortions and misrepresentations."

We know that there are androphilic crossdressers. Some of them use their crossdressing on stage, exploring their femininity as drag queens. The arguments is that a drag queen differs from autogynephiliacs in that she is (1) androphilic and (2) she "is dressing like a woman, not because it turns them on, but because it is a fun character and a form of entertainment."

But why? If we use Blanchard's methodology and allow ourselves to suspect a cover up, this might be one of them. I for one find it strange that no drag queen will get a tingling of erotic excitement performing as a sexy woman in a bar, even if her spectators are all gay men. We are definitely missing something important here. Maybe I will have to look into the sexuality of gay men as well.

Blanchard and his followers will of course argue that if a drag queen admits to getting turned on by performing as a woman, she cannot be androphilic at all. She must be a "non-homosexual" autogynephiliac, which brings us back to square one: If you don't like what they tell you, they are liars.

No feminization fantasies

A significant proportion of the non-homosexual group does not follow the rules laid down by Blanchard & Co. They do not report autogynephilic arousal, Moser says:

"There are non-homosexual MTFs who do not report any history of autogynephilic arousal. Lawrence (2005) found approximately 10% of her non-homosexual MTF sample reported that they never experienced autogynephilic arousal prior to SRS. Blanchard (1985b) reported that almost 27% of his sample of non-homosexual transsexuals did not acknowledge a history of

sexual arousal while cross-dressing.

"Blanchard et al. (1987) classified 82.2% of their heterosexual male transsexuals to be fetishistic (autogynephilic), suggesting that 17.8% were not. Bentler (1976) noted only 18% of his 'Asexual' MTF group and 50% of his 'Heterosexual' MTF group indicated that crossdressing was sexually arousing presurgery, suggesting a majority did not find it sexually arousing. Again, it is difficult to dismiss all these findings as systematic distortion and misrepresentation."

Moser makes the same point I have been making. Moreover, if this is all caused by mistaken or deceiving respondents, all the data must be disregarded. That would mean that the methodologies used are useless and will have to be abandoned. This would mean that all of Blanchard's research is bogus. It is not!

Moser does not have any good explanation for why there is a significant difference in the proportion of people having autogynephilic fantasies in the two groups, though, and he really needs such an explanation to kill the Blanchard theory once and for all. Why are gynephilic trans women more likely than the androphilic to have had feminization fantasies?

I suspect it has something to do that the androphilic  trans women may use gay male culture as a place for exploring their sexuality while the gynephilic ones cannot. But that discussion requires a separate post.

Autogynephilia as a paraphilia

Moser's paper is clearly an intervention in the DSM-V debate, which I have covered elsewhere. Moser argues that autogynephilia does not belong in the Fifth Edition of the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, not because autogynephilic fantasies do not exist, but because they cannot be the main cause for the desire to transition.

Moser says:

"If the impetus for gender transition is a paraphilia (autogynephilia), then reduction of the sex interest should decrease the desire for the transition. Low testosterone, either due to anti-androgens or other causes, is associated with decreased sexual interest in individuals with or without a paraphilia. Estrogen acts to decrease testosterone levels, but most transsexuals are prescribed anti-androgens to reduce further their testosterone level, often to the undetectable range. The result is often decreased sexual interest, as expected, but this rarely causes any discomfort or regret. Most MTFs report their drive for gender transition is unabated; Blanchard (1991) also observed this same phenomenon."

In other words: the hormone treatment given to them to feminize their body should cure them of their autogynephilia and stop them from transitioning. It does not.

He also points out that many individuals diagnosed with a paraphilia [like pedophilia, I guess] and treated with anti-androgens [which is a form for chemical castration] report a significant decrease in their desire to act on their paraphilic interests. This is not seen with MTF transwomen. This is a strong indication for autogynephilia being a symptom of a deeper gender dysphoria and not its root cause.

A very useful contribution to the debate

Moser does not say anything new in this paper, but he makes a coherent and convincing argument for why Blanchard's theory is too simplistic and too weak to be the foundation for a classification in the DSM.

He also undermines the idea of all "non-homosexual" transgendered being motivated by sexual desire only. Instead he opens the door to an explanation where the sexual fantasies as well as other expressions of femininity among crossdreamers, is caused by an unknown underlying factor.

He does not give an alternative explanation for crossdreaming (autogynephilia), but then again, that was not the objective of his paper. What we really need now is for some researchers outside the Blanchard tradition to take a look at crossdreaming and what it means. Maybe Moser can take a shot at it?

Postscript

Moser's paper is not available for free online. I had to pay 30 USD for it, and they printed my name on every page to stop me from sharing it with you. I do understand that the publishers need to secure some revenue, but this kind of policy is stifling debate outside the scientific circles. I'll see if can be possible to find a way of making the article accessible to you. Fortunately there is a process in both the US and other countries towards open access, where publicly supported research is made available to all.

"Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique"

Charles Moser MDa

Journal of Homosexuality, 57: 6, 790 — 809

Online publication date: 24 June 2010

See also: Julia Serano on the concept of autogynephilia
The Massey University study of transgender people (with data that debunks Blanchard)

Blanchard debunked: Surveys show that all kinds of people experience "autogynephilia"

What brain science says about MTF transsexuals

Is there a biological basis for the gender identity of transsexuals and crossdreamers? It turns out there might be.

Even if there has been no proper research done on the causes of crossdreaming ("autogynephilia"), there are many scientific papers on the etiology (cause) of transsexualism.

Given that a significant proportion of MTF (male to female)  transwomen are gynephilic, it is reasonable to believe that some of them have or have had erotic fantasies about becoming women as well. The research on trans women could therefore give us some insight into the etiology of crossdreaming (sometimes referred to as "autogynephilia", in reference to Ray Blanchard's transphobic theory).

General conclusions regarding the cause of gender identity

Jaimie F. Veale, David E. Clarke and Terri Lomax have made a review of recent research in the paper "Biological and psychosocial correlates of adult gender-variant identities: A review" (Personality and Individual Differences Volume 48, Issue 4, March 2010, Pages 357-366).

These are their conclusions:

"There is evidence that biological factors, especially prenatal androgen exposure, play a significant role in the etiology of gender-variant identities. While there is also evidence for other biological correlates, this does not necessarily imply more than one biological factor plays a role – it is likely that they are related and share a common precursor. For instance, it is entirely plausible that there is a causal pathway from genes causing atypical prenatal hormone levels causing neuroanatomical differences and an adult gender-variant identity.

"We know from studies of individuals with intersex and related conditions that it is not uncommon for an individual to have a male-typical prenatal environment (including androgen levels), to be assigned a female sex at birth, and develop a female gender identity. Therefore, psychosocial factors also have a role to play in the etiology of gender-variant identities.

"There is evidence that a poor or absent parental relationship, childhood abuse, and parental encouragement of gender-variance are more common amongst gender-variant populations. It is unclear whether these are a cause or effect of gender-variance. It is likely that any psychosocial variables that play a causative role in the development of gender-variant identities are complex and work in interaction with biological variables."

In short: psychological and social factors may influence the development of gender identity, but there is most likely a biological basis.

On the innate femininity of male to female crossdreamers ("autogynephiliacs")

Is the the femininity of male to female crossdreamers ("autogynephiliacs") genetic or is it just an erotic target location error?

Image: Tanyarat Jirapatpakon, a kathoey or Thai transsexual woman.

One good online friend asked me the other day why I was so critical towards Ray Blanchard. It was a good question. After all, I have bought his idea of there being a distinct group of heterosexual men fantasizing of becoming women (as opposed to classic transsexuals). Some of them crossdress, and minority of them even end up transitioning, getting hormone treatments and sex reassignment surgery.

Since I am a crossdreamer  myself, I know that we exist. 

On terminology  Note of 2013: Since this blog post was written I have stopped using the word "autogynephiliac" to refer to people who get turned on by picturing themselves as their target  sex.  The word entails an explanation for the condition that is not only wrong, but also highly stigmatizing. I am now using the word crossdreamer, which has no such connotations.

Erotic target location error

I guess my main problem is with his explanation for this condition. He argues that the reason "autogynephiliacs" get turned on by imagining themselves as women, is because they have internalized their natural object of attraction, i.e. women, into themselves. This is an "erotic target location error".

Basically, he argues, the "autogynephiliacs" are heterosexual men, but somehow, something has gone wrong. Instead of focusing their desire on real women out there, they are attracted to the idea of they themselves being women. It is a kind of self-obsessed narcissism (although he doesn't use those words).

His follower Anne Lawrence has gone as far as suggesting that this can be some kind of alternative sexuality: homosexuality is same sex attraction, heterosexuality is between-sex attraction and autogynephilia is a kind of inside-yourself-sex attraction.

Evolution

I can see why Blanchard has come to this conclusion. It is partly because of his ideology. He is grounded in traditional evolutionary biology, where the basic pattern of sexuality is oriented towards procreation. In evolutionary terms only heterosexual sex makes sense, as only that can lead to the transmission of genes. (For an alternative view, see my posts on Joan Roughgarden).

Blanchard and his supporter Bailey have spent a lot of time trying to make sense of homosexuality in evolutionary terms. That is hard enough. The "autogynephiliacs" make it all even more complicated, and by clearly defining them as "normal", although perverted, heterosexuals they avoid further complication.

His explanation is supported by the fact that many "autogynephiliacs" seems to display a kind of narcissistic behavior. Some of them get so obsessed with their secret fantasies and practices, that it gets hard for them to develop normal love relationships with another person. The idea of them being in love with themselves therefore seems to make sense.

In denial?

You could argue that the reason I am reluctant to accept this, is that the thought of being labelled a fetishist or paraphiliac (in essence a dysfunctional pervert) does not appeal to me. And that could be true. I may be living in denial. I have done so before.

Still, I have a deep gut feeling telling me that this explanation is too simplistic. Blanchard may be onto something, but this hypothesis does not ring true. There is much more to this phenomenon than this. The fact is, for instance, that many male to female crossdreamers do manage to establish good and loving relationships with women.

Moreover, his isn't really an explanation. He or his supporters have not really told us how or why this internalization takes place.

Crossexualism leads to autogynephilia

To help myself think more clearly about this, I have started to distinguish between erotic crossdreaming as a condition and a hypothetical cause for erotic crossdreaming. I have called the hypothetical complex that underpins crossdreaming "crossexualism". I am using the cross-prefix as it is already used for crossdressing, and in my own term "crossdreaming".

Crossexualism is the cause, autogynephilia is the effect.

Depending on the individual's biological/personal/cultural or social basis, the crossexual can develop different symptoms. Some end up crossdressing. Others start exploring transgender erotica about men being changed into women (erotic crossdreaming). Some seek pleasure in behaving like women (crossenacting).

It could also be that crossexuals may develop other conditions, like gynemimetophilia (transsensuals, men who are attracted to pre-op transsexuals). Maybe some crossexuals become transgenderists, i.e MTF transsexuals who keep their original genitalia. But this is pure speculation on my part.

AGPs are unfeminine

Blanchard and Bailey deny that "autogynephiliacs" have an innate femininity. They believe that classic transsexual women (who they call homosexual transsexual men) are "effeminate", but the "autogynephiliacs" are not. They and several other researchers base this understanding on observations.

Let's for a moment forget about the methodological problems related to defining who look and behave femininely and who don't. Let us forget about the fact that male to female crossdreamers in general transition later in life than classic transsexuals, and that this may influence the observer's ability to distinguish between the feminine and the unfeminine (older women may look less feminine than younger ones). Let us also disregard the fact that even natural born genuine girls may look less feminine than many transsexuals.

Let us for the sake of argument accept that "autogynephile" men in general look more masculine than effeminate homosexual men, and that "autogynephile" transsexuals on average are more manly than classic transsexuals. The male to female crossdreamers -- on average -- find it harder to pass as a woman than the classic transsexuals.

Do AGPs have an inner woman?

If this is the case, does this prove that the male to female crossdreamers have no innate femininity? Or to put it in other terms: Does this prove that the "inner woman" of the crossdreamer is something that has been introduced into his/her psyche from the outside, while the "inner woman" of a classical transsexual is inborn?

(Just to make sure: Blanchard does not believe that androphilic, man-loving, transsexuals are women, but he does believe that they are more feminine that other biological born men, so I guess you could say he does accept some kind if innate femininity. To me they are women.)

The reason Blanchard & Co couple the looks of these people with their potential femininity, is most likely because he believes that the femininity of homosexuals and androphilic transsexuals is hormonal. A demasculinisation of a man may bring about both feminine looks and feminine manners. The looks, manners and psychological femininity are interconnected.

A different approach from Thailand

This brings me over to an interesting discussion taking place on this blog. There are now more than 80 comments on my Beyond the perversion post, encompassing a large number of useful exchanges. One of these discussions was initiated by a sexologist working in Thailand.

Natalie points to an article on the femininity of homosexuals [this link is now redirecting to another site. Here's a copy of the original] and argues that the genetic condition that causes the femininity of gay men is the same as causes the femininity of "autogynephiliacs".

She argues that the main difference between gay men and "autogynephiliacs" is their sexual orientation, not that the femininity of the homosexuals is essentially different from the one of the AGPs.

Gay gene vs. camp gene

She simplifies this by talking about two genes: "the gay gene" and "the camp gene". The feminine gay man has both, the "autogynephiliac" has only the latter.

I don't believe that one gene can cause homosexuality or a complex phenomenon as autogynephilia, but let's say that there are specific complexes of genetic and hormonal factors that cause both of these phenomena. If this is the case, would Natalie's line of argument make any sense?

If it did, you would have an alternative explanation for autogynephilia that fits the obervations made by researchers like Blanchard and Lawrence, but that do not reduce "autogynephiliacs" to fetishists or paraphiliacs.

Jack in Will and Grace

I voiced my scepticism in this way:

"I am no expert on gay men, both I know a few. Few of them are very effeminate (you know, like Jack in Will & Grace), but some are. Still their femininity is not like anything an XX woman would display, especially not if you move into the realm of flamboyant exhibitionism (like the one of drag queens). Truth to be told, I do not know how to understand this type of homosexuality. I like them, but I do not 'get' them!

That makes it hard for me to decide whether the cause of effeminate display among homosexual men is the same as the one for AGP [autogynephilia].

My first reaction is no, because very few AGPs displays the same mannerisms as Jack in Will & Grace. Quite the opposite, actually, we often seem very masculine, both in the way we look and the way we move.

I have clear feminine traits, but they are found in my personality and in my interests, not in any form of 'campness'. I am as far away from camp as it is possible to imagine. Really :-)

But that does not exclude the possibility that there is a factor X that causes both effeminate behavior among gay men and the dream of becoming a woman among AGPs."

My point was that there ought to be a connection between the outward expression of femininity and the inner femininity.

Natalie did not agree.

Gender identity is different from gender expression

Here is her response:

"I wouldn't say 'camp' is a form of behavior which is unwomanly. It is just that women normally don't intend to display it as it has no purpose whatsoever in their ordinary lives. However quite a lot women do engage in that, especially, when it comes to earning fame through glamour and beauty in fashion, film and music industry.

And the very same goes for drag queens. Most drag queens perform it as a form of art, to impersonate females or create an effect parallel to the glam females and hence get a lot of spotlight, attention and wider fame on stage. For them, finding sexual partners or having stable family isn't as essential as their need for media spotlight. Same goes for many XX women from the fashion industry too who are rejecting all traditional female roles for fashion.

But does that rule out they are women and feminine?

Camp is just an outward display or affectation but the genetic makeup which causes it has to be nothing but XX feminine.

Gay males, on the other hand, don't appear femme in the first place but still most are, or at least have been, at a certain stage of life. Fashion may be an area of interest to them or not, but, to form stable relationships and to become potentially attractive clients in the homosexual market, they masculinize themselves and try to avoid every shred of that femininity their problems started with.

But I do suspect that had they not found [in] their early childhood [that] unmanly behaviors were inviting censure from Western society, they would have become more feminine or camp as well. I say this as in my country, just 42% of the kathoey [Thai transsexuals] report they have the mind of a true girl though all of them report feeling different from manly men and also feel they are quite feminine.

Which leads me to conclude that many of these are just feminine gay men who have been put into kathoey category by the Thai society just because they are feminine. Yet they happily grow up as girls.

So, I would say, femininity is present and is the same for all of them- gay and bigender males, drag queens all the way to homosexual transsexuals. The degree of femininity displayed depends on which part of feminity they like most and which serves their purpose of survival provided they are not forced to repress it. But their basic genetic makeup or combinations of genes have same underlying base of femininity.

And so, finally, if autogynephiles are also feminine in some way, they must be having the same combination of genes which make them unmanly. They aren't camp just because they aren't drawn to it and they don't need it as any accessory tool."

Survival strategies

My interpretation of what Natalie says is that homosexual men have two choices:

(1) To suppress their feminine side in order to attract gay men (which is more common in Europe and Northern America), or

(2) to accentuate their feminine side to attract heterosexual men (which is more common in Thailand). These gay men teach themselves feminine mannerisms. According to Natalie the mannerisms are not inborn.

Male to female crossdreamers may be equally feminine at heart, but they do not display their feminine side outwards, as they are not rewarded for it. They are attracted to women, and women like masculine men. Or, at least, the "autogynephiliacs" believe that women are attracted to stereotypically masculine men only. Because of this they never learn feminine mannerisms.

Note that Natalie used the term "homosexual transsexual". I don't use this term myself because it may lead you to believe that the classical transsexual women are in fact gay men. They are not, as I see it. But you could, even if you follow Natalie's line of argument, say that the "classic transsexuals" are complete women as this femininity is inborn. It is not a result of a free choice or cultural conditioning. The kathoeys that report they have "the minds of a true girls" are classical transsexuals, because they do have the minds of true girls.

According to Natalie, there is another group of kathoeys that are not classic transsexuals, but feminine gay men. Even if male Thais take part in a kind of macho culture, the Thais are fairly tolerant towards the kathoeys. The feminine homosexual male may therefore adapt the role of kathoey with success.

The same may apply to some Latin and Middle Eastern countries, where a man is not considered homosexual if he takes the active part in the sexual act. Feminine gay men may therefore find active heterosexual male partners. Acting feminine pays off.

Identity and mannerisms

I remained skeptical. I argued that this requires that there is no biological causality between genetically based femininity and mannerisms. I.e.: their femininity is biological, but their "campness" is an act.

Some report that many (but not all) "autogynephiliacs" find it especially hard to pass after transition, simply because they do not appear feminine or behave in a feminine manner. Natalie's point, though, is that there is a difference between gender identity and gender expression (cp. Betty's comment).

Gender identity is your fundamental and personal experience of being a man or a woman. Gender expression is how you present this identity to the world. There are natural born women who identify as women, but who nevertheless do not appear very feminine in public. In the same way a feminine man can appear masculine in public.

Looking at girls

Natalie again:

"I guess there is a certain difference in how homosexuals and heterosexuals look at girls. Homosexual men, more specifically, in most places outside Europe or North America, look at females just like ordinary girls do and try to imitate them as far as possible for presenting their beauty, as their primary purpose is to appear pretty.

They have not much difficulty in imbibing the campness and feminine behavior with just a bit of practice on a highly subconscious level.

However, heterosexuals usually look at women sexually. And so do the autogynephiles although they themselves have a feminine component inside.

So, while these homosexuals would go on making their inner feminine persona presentable and so would concentrate on their outward mannerisms, autogynephiles go on to eroticize this inner woman due to their sexuality. And because they don't see women that way, they fail to behave feminine too.

But that does not mean they are not feminine. I have heard many AGPs have felt different from other boys in childhood and also have had a strong femininity. It's that they haven't noticed their femininity like other girls and homosexuals or Classic transsexuals, because they simply did not need to pay attention to it and also worse, they were obviously made to believe they are boys.
In a way, they were more blind to their female component until their sexuality in puberty showed them...."

Repressed femininity

What Natalie does here is to turn the traditional story upside down: Male to female crossdreamers have, for some reason or the other, repressed their inner femininity. Following your basic dynamic psychology this would mean that this suppressed part of their personality needs to find another outlet, and in the case of "autogynephiliacs" this is through sexual fantasies.

If I understand Natalie correctly, there is another reason for this as well: Gay men imitate women because they share the same objective: to attract men. "Autogynephiliacs" cannot do that, because their objective is to attract women. In our culture a man who behave like a woman is automatically labelled as effeminate and gay, and the "autogynephiliacs" need to avoid that label if they are to succeed as woman-loving males.

This does not have to be a conscious choice. Early attempts at feminine behavior would have been punished - if not by parents, so by play mates.

So: according to Natalie the autogynephilic eroticism is the effect, and not the cause as it is with Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence.

Childhood femininity

In order to prove this, you would have to prove that male to female crossdreamers have this feminine component from childhood on. The research does not indicate this. In fact, on an aggregate level the pattern is that classical transsexual M2F women identify as girls at a very early age (younger than five years old), while the "autogynephiliacs" do not become aware of their condition until puberty.

I suspect that MTF crossdreamers do become aware of their condition long before puberty. In my case I had childhood fantasies of becoming a girl as early as the age of 10 or 11, while puberty started at around 15 (I was damned late!). My dreams of becoming Supergirl was not explicitly sexual in nature.

(Lawrence actually agrees that autogynephilia may appear before puberty, but she argues that it is sexual in nature, all the same).

I cannot remember having dreams about being a girl at the age of five. Natalie may still be right, though. This innate femininity may express itself in many ways in childhood, and not necessarily as a dream of being a girl at that stage.

The outsiders

Natalie argues that many "autogynephiliacs" report that they felt different from other boys in childhood. I get the exact same reports: Even if they do not express feminine behavior, they do display what I -- for lack of a better word -- would call non-masculine behavior.

I hated rough and tumble play, I hated sports, I was the quiet one, and throughout life I has kept this "feminine" approach to life: being the integrator and the peace maker, rather than the aggressor.

Like classic transsexuals, male to female crossdreamers report of school days where they were being bullied and persecuted for being different. Like classic transsexuals many of them were called sissies and faggots, in spite of their budding love for girls.

Parental conditioning

It could also be that MTF crossdreamers do want to be girls at an early age, but that they have been forced to suppress this longing because of parental conditioning. If that is the case, we will have to explain why this kind of repression is less likely to occur amongst classic transsexuals.

One possible answer could be that there is both a gradual and a dynamic dimension to the innate femininity of all these various types of biological men.

By gradual I mean that some men are more feminine than others. As I have noted before, I feel like I have a mix of typical masculine and feminine traits. I have a strong inner woman, but I do not think that I am a woman trapped in a man's body. I also have a strong inner man. That makes me different from a classic transsexual woman.

That would mean that what I have called crossexualism above (the unknown cause of autogynephilia) could be a subcategory under the broader inner femininity concept of Natalie.

By dynamic I mean that the femininity of men can unfold throughout time, as may other psychological traits. For some reason androphilic feminine biological men become aware of their femininity at an earlier age than the gynephilic ones. This could be an effect of their sexual orientation. They are programmed by nature to attract men and that force is so strong that it defeats the many suppression attempts made by family and friends.

(And yes, in case you wondered: Children are sexual beings. They are training for adulthood, and start flirting before they can walk.)

I am not going to conclude on this in this post. This is a work in progress. But I must say I find this discussion very interesting, and I will definitely explore Natalie's ideas in more detail.

I would like to thank Natalie and the rest of you for all these fruitful interventions. Keep'em coming!

[Update for new readers February 2014: I no longer use the words "autogynephiliac" or "autogynephile" to describe transgender persons, as the words themselves refers to the stigmatizing erotic target location theory of Dr. Ray Blanchard (meaning love of oneself as a woman). There is absolutely no evidence to support this theory, and it is predominately used to invalidate the identity of trans people. I have coined the neutral term crossdreamer to describe both female bodied and male bodied people who get aroused from the idea of being their target sex. I have made a few edits in this post to reflect this change.]

Beyond the binary

Note that this article was written at a time where I still thought it was possible to use the word "autogynephilia" to describe erotic crossdreaming ofr what Julia Serano calls "female embodiment fantasies". That was a mistake. The term is so closely connected to the transphobic theory underpinning it that any use of it can be read as support of the explanation given by Ray Blanchard. I did not support that explanation then (as this article reflects) and I do not do so now.

As I have noted in previous blog posts, the autogynephilia concept grew out of a theory developed by Ray Blanchard. He operated with two different and unrelated types of male to female transsexuals.

Group 1: Nonhomosexuals or autogynephiliacs

Blanchard supporter Anne Lawrence writes the following about the autogynephilia category: "For heterosexual men, the preferred erotic target is mature women, an erotic preference called gynephilia. According to the model proposed by Freund and Blanchard (1993), some heterosexual men who experience erotic target location errors for their preferred erotic target are also sexually aroused by wearing women’s clothing or by otherwise temporarily attempting to resemble women..." Lawrence presents a table of "target location errors" (click on it to enlarge): It is a fascinating table. Pedophilia (attraction to children) is as "uncomplicated" as gynephilia (the desires of normal straight men), while autogynephiliacs are grouped with those who desire to amputee one of their limbs (!).

Group 1, the autogynephiliacs, consist of mis-directed heterosexuals, according to this theory. They get aroused by the idea of having a female body, because they internalize what should have been an external "object", a woman in flesh and blood.

Group 2: Homosexual transsexuals

So what about the other group of transsexual?

Personally I find their description of this group hard to understand. It is as if these researchers have taken the stereotype of the feminine queen or fairy and turned it into a scientific category.

The homosexual M2F transsexuals are simply feminine gay men.

At times it looks like Lawrence and Blanchard accept this group as "true" women. After all, they do not try to acquire the body type of their object of desire. Lawrence again: "Homosexual MtF transsexuals are not sexually aroused by the idea of being women, but instead seek sex reassignment because they are, as previously noted, naturally very feminine on many physical and behavioral dimensions (Blanchard et al., 1995; Whitam, 1987, 1997), resulting in the prospect of greater social and romantic satisfaction and success after sex reassignment than before. Natural resemblance to the status they want to attain (i.e., womanhood) thus provides an obvious explanation for homosexual MtF transsexuals’ desire to undergo sex reassignment." In one way you can say that they change into women to get laid.

However, at the same time these are persons who do not experience sexual arousal out of getting female genitalia, and who in many cases are indifferent or even hostile to their new vaginas.

I fail to see how these can be less "dysfunctional" than the autogynephiliacs -- if we accept this way of thinking. It seems to me that Blanchard and Lawrence accept neither homosexual transsexuals or autogynephiliacs as women. They remain men in their view, both before and after the surgery.

The evolutionary narrative

I believe much of the reluctance of Blanchard & Co to accept the narrative of autogynephiliacs being women, and not mis-directed men, is that they are deeply rooted in evolutionary science.

That is in itself not a problem with me. I believe we have a lot to learn from evolutionary science, also from so-called sociobiological research, i.e. research that tries to explain social and cultural phenomena as the result of biological evolution.

There is clearly a biolgical foundation for some of the differences between the genders. After all, the hormonal balance is different, and we know that both testosterone and estrogen influence the way we behave.

It may be, however, that Blanchard and Lawrence have gone into a trap that is not uncommon in this research field. They oversimplify a complex sociobiological phenomenon.

Evolution is about the transfer of traits via genes. Traits that benefits the survival of a genetic lineage will help those genes survive in the battle for survival. Traits that may harm the organism are rooted out. In simple words: They die out because the individuals that carry those genes die and fail to get viable offspring.

The normal way of understanding this arms race is via the mixture of genes between male and female. In normal terms: Men and women have to get together to produce kids, and only those that get children can transfer their genetic heritage to posterity.

In this narrative, the traditional male/female bonding becomes the norm. Everything else is a deviation. This explains why both Blanchard and Lawrence continue to call autogynephilia a paraphilia, a misdirection of sexual desire. The phenomenon does not make sense in evolutionary terms.

(Interestingly enough Blanchard and Lawrence seem to accept homosexuality as a natural behaviour, even if it makes as little sense in evolutionary terms as autogynephilia.)

The error of their way is, I believe, that they fundamentally think of the feminine and the masculine as two mutually excluding complexes of traits or sets of looks and behaviours, because they believe this division is necessary for procreation and the dissemination of genes. 

Man: a complex set of variables

We all know that what makes us masculine or feminine is a mixture of traits, and that no man and no woman are completely masculine or exclusively feminine. After all, all men have the genetic code for woman and visa versa. We are not two separate species.

The end result of the merger between the sperm and the egg is a human being based on a large number of genes. However, there is not one gene for each behavioural trait. Most of the traits are caused by a combination of genes. Different combinations may give different behaviour. Here's a relevant quote from the New Scientist: "Everyone knows tall parents tend to have tall children, and recent studies of the genomes of 30,000 people identified about 50 genes associated with being tall or short. Yet together these genes accounted for only about 5 percent of the inheritance of height." If the genetic causes for height are this complex, it is reasonable to believe that the causes for sex and gender are equally complicated.

And that is not all: We also know that the genes make proteins that are used to tell the cells how to behave. There is a proteom as well as a genome. The complexity of this system is mind boggling and the number of possible combinations of genes and proteins seemingly endless. The proteom may even be influenced by your surroundings: what you eat and what you experience (stress).

On top of that our personality and our sexuality may be influenced by the hormonal balance in the fluids in the womb, toxins in our environment as well as social and cultural factors and -- dare I say it? -- free will.

Given all this variation, why should we expect human beings to fall exclusively into one of two mutually exclusive categories: male or female? They clearly do not.

The pure existence of homosexuals prove that the Y chromosome does not necessarily a "normal" man make. And homosexuals exist, even if they are at an evolutionary disadvantage (they are less likely to get kids).

There are clearly combinations of factors that bring forth autogynephiliacs in the same way as there are combinations that produce homosexuals.

Beyond the binary

A possible alternative narrative can therefore be the following:

Yes, autogynephiliacs are in a way women trapped in men's bodies. In the lottery of genetic combinations, they clearly won some very strong feminine traits, as well as some basic feminine instincts.

But you can also say that they are men trapped in a woman's mind. They have man's body, and love women as other heterosexual men do, but the woman stops them from having a more traditional love life.

To this Blanchard and Lawrence may say that yes, this is exactly what they have been arguing all the time. Autogynephiliacs are the outcomes of an unfortunate mix of genes that stops them from becoming "normal men".

All right, but there are two important differences between my story and theirs:

(1) For me there is nothing normative in any of the genetic cocktails called men. Men fantasising about having a woman's body are not necessarily suffering from a mis-directed libido. They are not necessarily less capable of loving others than other men or women. Their condition is no more pathological than homosexuality. They are what they are. Sure, we have problems making our love life work -- maybe bigger problems than many -- but no one finds love easy.

(2) Autogenphiliacs may not be women trapped in men's bodies. That narrative is, after all, as traditional and conservative as the one of Blanchard and Lawrence.

Maybe autogynephiliacs are more than mere women, and more than mere men. Maybe they have something of both. This applies to all human beings, of course, but in the autogynephiliac this is more acute than in most, precisely because of the conflict between sexual desire, the body and the surrounding culture.

A curse and a blessing

If that is the case this condition will be a curse as well as a blessing.

It is a curse, because at the moment there are few that accept the legitimacy of this type of combination of feminine and masculine traits. Blanchard and Lawrence have given us a category, but has also labelled us as freaks. Some other transsexuals insist that this combination is unnatural as well: M2F transsexuals are really women and only women, so get that surgery and find yourself!

It can be a blessing, because we, more than many others truly bridge the genders. It should be easier for us to understand both women and men, than "normal" women or men (or homosexuals for that matter). Blanchard would disagree, and argue that being men we know nothing more about women than other men. Many transsexual activists would in one sense agree with Blanchard on this one: only women know how women feels, and the only real women of the transgender community are the genuine transsexuals: women trapped in men's bodies, not fuzzy borderline people like the autogynephiliacs.

Be that as it may: I think you will find that autogynphiliacs often get along better with women than the majority of men. They have greater empathy, simply because they recognize themselves in the other sex.

Anyway: Thanks to Blanchard and Lawrence as well as the many transsexual activists out there many of us have the opportunity to choose our way of life: mostly male or mostly female. Surgery is a possibility, if your family life and professional life allows it.

To sum up

Is autogynephilia a well defined sub-category of humanity? I think not. Not in a scientific sense, no.

I find no absolute boundaries between the sexes or the genders or whatever it is that define us. Statistically speaking the variations tend to conglomerate around some larger groups ("traditional heterosexual men and women") but the borders seem fuzzy or porous.

As a term used in a discussion of gender identity it is very useful though, which is why I am not joining those that accuse Blanchard and Lawrence for crimes against humanity.

They believe in what they do and they truly believe that they are doing us a favour. They have definitely helped me understand myself a little better, even if I cannot agree with all they have to say.

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."

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UPDATE ON TERMINOLOGY

Since this blog post was written I have stopped using the terms "autogynephilia" and "autoandrophilia" to describe people. The reason for this is that the terms implicitly communicates an explanation for why some people get aroused by imagining themselves as the opposite sex . This explanation, that this is some kind of autoerotic paraphilia,  is both wrong and stigmatizing. Instead I use the neutral term "crossdreamers".

Click here for a discussion of the dark side of the autogynephilia theory.

---

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 MTF erotic crossdreamers ("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!

See also: What the sexual fantasies of non-transgender people tells us about the dreams of those who are trans

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.

[Update: The original August 9 2009 version of this blog post is available here. I normally do not change blog post after publishing them, as this makes the comments harder to read, but my choice of terms in this one has clearly caused too many misreadings.] 

Why the term is so controversial

The controversial part is the idea that "autogynephiliacs" (male bodied persons who get aroused by the idea of being women) 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 transgender

Now, if you read the debate, it might seem that the main issue is that Blanchard argued that the driving force for these male to female transgender people 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 transgender conditions without the sex. To me the sexual drive and gender identification is strongly connected, and the fact that male to female transgender persons get sexually aroused by imagining themselves with a female body is pretty obvious. This does not mean that sexual desire is the only expression of gender variance, far from it! But it is one of them.

I mean, look at non-transgender 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 non-transgender women experience "autogynephile" sexual fantasies!

Moreover, male assigned crossdreamers (called "autogynephiliacs" or "autogynephiles" by Blancahrd and his followers) are in a life situation where it is hard for them to have a normal sex life. They love women, but find themselves inadequate as men. This may lead to a lot of sexual frustration -- celibacy even. No wonder their sexual libido is channeled into fantasies of this kind.

So why the idea that male to female (MTF) transgender people 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 MTF transgender 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 (or transsexual women, if they identify as such) 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 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. 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 male to female crossdreamers should be allowed to live out their obsession.

The problem is, however, that as the phenomenon is described by Blanchard and Lawrence the male to female crossdreamer 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 male to female crossdreamers can use to fulfil their fantasies.

Because of this is seems like Lawrence and Blanchard think that crossdreamers 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 MTF 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 represent 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 is different in the lives of male to female trans women compared to the ones of non-transgender women. There has after all, been a misalignment between her physical sex and her inner gender identity.  Her life experience is different. But she is not a freak. What's needed is a gender confirmation 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 a male to female crossdreamer accepting this narrative can think of herself as a healthy woman that has become herself in body and soul.

A male to female crossdreamer 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.

Click here for a discussion of the dark side of the autogynephilia theory.