Crossdresser, Transgender, Bigender: In Search of an Explanation

A gender variant person explores their gender identity, their sexuality and what has made them who they are, with a special emphasis on being bigender.

By Guest Author Jemimah/Jeremy

Recently I bought my first reasonably lifelike wig. This, together with some good concealer I bought a little earlier, are my first steps towards creating an ‘en femme’ persona which is not laughable. Good – but is it taking me into a different world.

Two or three years ago, when I first realised that I was at least attracted by the idea of crossdressing, I wrote a rather wild note entitled ‘why me, why now’.

I now feel the need to do something more rational and try to work over the ideas which relate to where I am – which I think for the moment is bigender. Lots of wandering the web and reading books has provided lots of theories and opinions and probably most of it is covered somewhere on the Crossdreamers web site but I wanted to work it out myself.

Brain types

Also I wanted my understanding to be based on academic, or at least unemotional, sources.

Autogynephilia: An Illuminating, Gut-Wrenching Conversation with Ray Blanchard, Ph.D.

Alice Novic has discussed autogynephilia with Dr. Ray Blanchard. Here is her report.

Jack's introduction

This a blog for and about crossdreamers, people who experience cross-gender arousal. There is not much research on the topic, and much of what there is is based on the studies done by Ray Blanchard, a highly controversial figure in transgender circles.

I am very critical of his research. Even if I find his observations very useful, his explanations of them are problematic, to say the least. Still, I believe in the development of open learning arenas where everyone has a chance to be heard. This also applies to Dr. Blanchard.

Jack

Autogynephilia: An Illuminating, Gut-Wrenching Conversation with Ray Blanchard, Ph.D.

by Alice Novic, M.D.

Dear Jack,

After reading my August interview with you, a kind Canadian psychologist offered to put me in touch with Ray Blanchard. Planning to say more about this controversial scientist in part two of our interview, I seized the opportunity to become a whole lot better informed. And Blanchard was so forthcoming, in fact, that his email reached me before I could get one off to him. He was rather open and happy to talk over the phone.

I delayed, though, for a week, while asking him for some of his most important articles to read. I wanted to make my own mind up about his ideas, and I didn't want him to have to simply repeat them for me after he'd already spent years articulating them and making them public.

He let me pepper him with questions the following Sunday and handled each one head on. In the process, I was surprised to learn how his work extended beyond the parts I knew and admired.

To me, he is responsible for three major ideas. I've been well aware of one and mostly oblivious to the other two.

Idea #1: There are two types of trans women.

The one I've admired is that no matter how inconvenient it is for us, there just plain are two types of trans women, who differ in terms of arousal, orientation, effeminacy, personality styles, and career interests. He calls them androphilic and autogynephilic (or as I would say started-out-gay and started-out-straight trans women).

I asked him as a scientist whether one or another does better with transition. And he explained that the majority of both types find satisfaction with their new role in life, and perhaps autogynephiles slightly more than androphiles.

Idea #2: Crossdressers have some close relatives, and our whole family needs a name.

Perhaps because the name autogynephile had rubbed me so wrong, I never thought of the brilliance it took to come up with the concept. Before Blanchard, we only had the term transvestic fetishist (or its equivalent, crossdresser).

Through surveys and studies, he observed that there were at least three other groups of people who resembled crossdressers but weren't especially interested in dressing up: men aroused by the idea of dressing up, men vicariously aroused by men who were dressed up, and men aroused by transforming their bodies but not by dressing up.

Blanchard realized that it would be very misleading to refer to these three groups plus crossdressers all simply as crossdressers or crossdresser types, because that is not the behavior they have in common. What they share is that all of them are (or originally were) aroused by the idea of themselves as women.

Which leads us to that now-notorious name autogynephile. Phile as in aroused by. Auto as in one's self as. Gyne as in woman. Hence, autogynephile is a very sensible name for all those men (presumably) who are aroused by the idea of ourselves as women regardless of how we prefer to act that out.

Alice AKA Richard Novic is a refreshingly outspoken crossdresser, crossdreamer and psychiatrist who does not beat around the bush when it comes to discussing feminization fantasies. Nor does she hide the fact that she lives out her dreams in real life.

Some of you might have read her book, Alice in Genderland: A Crossdresser Comes of Age, or visited her site. Others will remember my post on her two type model of transgendered male to females: love-to-be-femme and act-femme.

If you have, you will know that she has taken the autogynephilia theory and given it her own unique twist.

Here's the first part of my interview with Alice.

On writing the book

Jack: I must admit I found your autobiography Alice in Genderland quite a revelation. Unlike many transgender men and women writing about their lives, you do not try to hide the sexual part of the motivation for what you do, in your case crossdressing.

I believe it is extremely important for male to female crossdreamers -- who you call "love to be femme transwomen" -- to see that there are others out there that share their dreams. Writing and publishing that book must have taken a lot of courage. What made you do it?

Alice: I guess two things really, Jack, the first is that I wasn’t satisfied with being just an average Jewish-American with a good career and a couple of kids. I had always stood out when I was young, so as an adult, I was looking out for something extra I might do.

When an opportunity to do neuro-imaging research at UCLA fell through in 2000, I looked to my transgenderism for inspiration. I was stunned by the fact that nobody had ever written the memoir of a crossdresser and that transsexual memoirists were just beginning to get real.

I thought we crossdressers could really use an honest, proud, and well-credentialed voice--I am, after all, a psychiatrist. I saw CD [crossdresser] after CD and many transsexuals wrack themselves with same kinds of confusion and self-doubt. I knew I could help them, and with a message that was much grittier and more thrilling than the standard stories we CDs and TSs use to comfort ourselves and our families. Alice in Genderland felt like a mission for me, and the courage for it came from a potent combination of compassion and ambition.

The two types of transwomen

Jack: You write and talk about the two types of transwomen: "love to be femmes", who include crossdressersand late transitioners, and "act femmes", who include early transitioners and drag queens. I can hear more than an echo of Ray Blanchard's "autogynephiliacs" vs. "homosexual
transsexuals" here, so this is a controversial point of view.

Could you say a little about how you ended up with this model, and to what extent it differs from the one of Blanchard's?

Alice: Sure. Quite simply I read Blanchard—and [J. Michael] Bailey, especially his The Man Who Would Be Queen. I was blown away by what they had learned about MTF transpeople; it totally explained all the disparate things I had seen and heard over the years.

Our landscape is not divided north-south between crossdressers and transsexuals; it’s split east-west between those who start out straight and those who start out gay. What a brilliant idea! I was kicking myself for not having seen it myself, but as a transperson I was still too attached to our own propaganda to realize anything that ran counter to it.

Maybe Blanchard and Bailey as non-trans people were free of such blinders? Not bloody likely if you’d ask me. I don’t think I’ve known of anybody who has an abiding interest in trans folk who isn’t one themselves deep down. So kudos to them for somehow being secure enough to see past their own blinders.

I felt like I was a physicist who had the chance to discover the Law of Gravity and missed it. But when I saw how Blanchard, Bailey, and TG physician Anne Lawrence were as harassed for their insight as Galileo was, I figured that missing out on the most radical and accurate theory of our time might have been agood thing. Nonetheless, I was happy to learn what I could from their work and thereby write a memoir that’s less self-serving and much better equipped to stand the test of time.

By the way, my love-to-be-femme versus act-femme model doesn’t differ at all from Bailey’s model, nor do I believe from your crossdreamers model. Only our terms are different, and I’ve even updated mine in my undying quest to be brief, descriptive, and hopefully not too offensive.

For the last few years I’ve preferred to speak of started-out-straight transwomenand started-out-gay transwomen. Starting out straight or gay is determined by who you longed for in adolescense. I prefer terms like yours or mine, Jack, because Michael Bailey’s terms make us sound perverted and could easily be used against us TGs.

Born like this?

Jack: I must admit that the hardest part of making sense out of crossdreaming and crossdressing, is that it seems to be caused by a very complex system of biological, psychological, social and cultural factors.What do you think? Are we born like this or do we become like this?

Alice: We crossdreamers, crossdressers, and started-out straight transsexuals have a certain mix of male tendencies and female desires. To me as a psychiatrist, that’s not so different from intersex people—or gay people for that matter. We know that most intersex conditions have developmental rather than hereditary, early childhood, or other environmental causes. So why should we be so different from them just because their gender differences are immediate and anatomical and ours are emergent and behavioral?

Because our transgender differences don’t show up until later, could family and social pressure be important causes? Possibly, but nearly all the families and cultures I know give kids a push in just the opposite direction, i.e. to behave more in line with the sex they were born into. In my opinion, family and social pressure don’t cause anything; they’re high walls that should fill us with awe for any human drives able to breach them.

Bisexuals

Jack: Blanchard argues that autogynephiliac's [M2F crossdreamers] are heterosexual (gynephilic) while what he calls homosexual transsexuals are attracted to men. As he is grouping all other sexual variants together with the autogynephiliacs, I guess there isn't much room for bisexuals in his model.

Alice: I believe you’re right about that, and I, though, very active sexually with both my wife and boyfriend must agree. Both in the confessions I hear at work and in my readings of the research, there just doesn’t seem to be nearly as much male bisexuality as Kinsey led us to believe, nor perhaps any true male bisexuality at all.

Men seem to come in the standard straight package or the standard gay package. There just doesn’t seem to be a continuum of fellows in the middle who aren’t just bi-capable but who really love men and women absolutely equally. For whatever reason, a small but significant number of women occupy this middle ground, and on the whole women experience more fluidity in their preferences over time.

Many of us bisexual started-out straight MTF types like myself would seem to be a big exception to this rule, and perhaps we are, though I’m inclined to agree with the view Blanchard would probably have of me. He’d see me as a transgender version of a straight man and see my sexual interest in men as fetishistic, i.e. that I use men as the ultimate prop in my autogynephilic imagine-I’m-a-girl fantasy. Ouch!

At first I was offended by such a notion, but, disturbing or not, in the end it just seemed true. I guess that’s a little sad, but again I can assure you as a medically sanctioned confessor of a thousand souls, whether TG or mainstream we all use each other in relationships and that’s . . . A-OK, as long as it’s mutual and well understood. It’s just called making a life with others in areal non-greeting-card or stump-speech way.

Sex with men

Jack: Still, there you are, biological male married to a woman, openly having a male lover on the side. Many crossdreamers or love to be femmes report that they are 100% into women. Still, in their fantasies they are having sex with men. What is your take on this?

Alice: I think sexual fantasies, especially recurrent ones, are meaningful. In my personal and professional experience, your fantasies represent the desires you’d pursue if you could design your own circumstances. Now, these circumstances might be bizarre and these desires deeply troubling, but they give an accurate read of your innards, nonetheless.

As a rugby playing Freshman at Harvard, for instance, I used to be plagued by the thought of being thrown into prison, forced into a dress, and having to submit sexually to another man. Of course, at the time that didn’t mean to me that I was in anyway bisexual . . . because I was entirely unprepared for the potentially devastating effects that could have on how I viewed myself and my future. Seriously, I might have committed suicide if I’d had to face the fact that I deeply and truly wanted to go to bed with man and get fucked like a woman.

I think the “I just fantasize about it but don’t really want it” crowd are in denial the way I was back then. Why own up to a desire that might break your wife’s heart and rip your family apart if you ever dare to satisfy it? Why? Really, why? So, I’m totally sympathetic with these people even though I don’t buy what they’re saying.

And most will never have to face the truth, not unless Mr. Opportunity comes knocking. And I hate to break it to you folks, but he doesn’t often come knocking, not with teeth and a job and reassuring things like that. Just because you’re out drunk and sloppy and ready to fall from grace, don’t expect sizzling things to happen to you. It takes a lot of work. You have to put yourself in the right place at the right time, have your act together as a woman, and hopefully be young and slender enough for anyone male to care.

Alas, most of you classic crossdressers in your forties aren’t gonna be confronted with the chance to act out your most toe-curling fantasies, and I’m sorry. But at least your illusion of being purely oriented to women won’t be put to the kind of terrifying test mine ultimately was. And the sexual offers you’re likely to see will come from other crossdressers . . .and they might not be so tempting . . . and you might not choose to count them as men.

To Be Continued.

Click under for Alice's regular book...

Anonymous 18 and autogynephilia

Questions from a young cross-dreamer.

I got the following email the other day:

"Hey, my name is [Anonymous 18]. Im an 18 year old kid and my whole life I have used the fetish that you talk about in your blog as a sexually arousing fantasy.

I am a regular guy (in my mind) and heterosexual but my whole life I couldnt shake the feeling that these sex dreams that I have are unhealthy.

Until recentlly I started doing research on the internet and was even convinced for a little while that I was a transgendered man and then I went a few weeks thinking that I would rather kill myself than have a sex reassignment surgery.

As soon as I found your site and other sites defining autogynephillia I was so releaved and surprised, however, that this term isn't spoken about amongst others who have it.

As a beginner in the A-G community I just want to know in your words how you feel about this term. What's your gender, age, lifestyle? Do you crossdress in public (which I think is weird)?Just to hear from someone else who has this and how they deal with it would be a relief for me. Thanks!"

I asked Anonymous 18 for permission to republish this email on the blog, for truth to be told, I do not feel qualified to be the only one giving him advice on such a tough topic. Those of you that have followed this blog, know that it is definitely more of an explorative nature than evangelical.

Love life of an autogynephiliac

Anyway, this is what I wrote back:

"It is great hearing from you! One of the reasons I started this blog was the fact that I found so little written by 'autogynephiliacs' out there, which made this so much harder to bear. The problem now is that the more I write and think about this the less I trust all the words we take for granted, words like fetish, unhealthy, perversions, unnatural etc. etc.

I believe that I have come to the conclusion that the basis for what we feel is quite natural. We are part of what Joan Roughgarden call 'Evolution's Rainbow' (good book by the way!). However, since most people do not know about the condition, nor how to understand it, we end up hiding us from the rest of the world, full of shame.

I believe that 'autogynephilia' is a useful term, even if I do not buy the explanations given by the people who coined it.

There seems to be two main types of 'autogynephiliacs': cross-dressers and what I call cross-dreamers (men who dream about having a woman's body). Many are both. I am a cross-dreamer. I tried cross-dressing. It didn't work for me, I am sorry to say (!), because cross-dressing is something open-minded women actually can understand and live with.

That is the good news for you at 18: There are many cross-dressers out there that live happily married lives with women they love. There are many women who are willing to live with a cross-dresser. And most of these cross-dressers live this way without going through a sex change. It seems to me that they often do not have to transition, as they get to know and accept their feminine side through cross-dressing.

For others, however, the urge to transition becomes so strong that they do it, maybe because they are classic transsexuals, "women trapped in men's bodies", or maybe for other reasons. I guess you yourself will have to find out what your needs are. It seems to me that you have already concluded that you feel no need to transition in real life, only in your fantasy life, which is fine with me!

I am in my early forties, living in Scandinavia. From the outside there is nothing to tell people that I feel what I feel, nor have I shared this with many of my friends. I suspect that I might have chosen differently if I lived in California, for instance. See Alice Dreger's book Alice in Genderland for an example of an autogynephiliac who has chosen another path (you can read the first chapters online for free) . Alice decided to search out the club scene in California and not only cross-dress in public, but to live a double life as a part-time woman dating men!

I guess my point is that even if this is a tough burden to bear, you have a lot of opportunities. You can turn this into something really good!"

Recommendations from a psychiatrist

Anonymous 18 has one great advantage compared to many of us "elders": He has grown up with the Internet and the possibility of discussing this strange phenomenon with others online. When I was at his age, I hadn't gotten my first computer yet, and the only thing I knew about transgender issues was the few articles I had read in the newspapers. They said, of course, nothing about autogynephilia.

Anonymous 18 has also taken the step of consulting a psychiatrist, which I think can be a sensible thing to do.

I know that many transgendered report about very bad experiences when it comes to psychotherapy. The reason for this is that there are as many bigoted and prejudiced people in that crowd as in any other. Still, if you find an open minded one, he or she may be of great help. The point is not to cure the autogynephilia, but to help the autogynephiliac come to terms with what this condition is.

The psychiatrist of Anonymous 18 is clearly one searching for an answer, as he or she recommended that A18 should ask people like us for advice!

The sex life of autogynephiliacs

Anonymous 18 asks:

"What's the sex life of an autogynephilliac like? I have never spoken to any and my psychiatrist recommended me to reach out to a few. This way I can clean myself of my insecurities. Are you heterosexual, homosexual? I have always felt attracted to women and have yet to have sex but I am beginning to think that these feelings may interfere in some way with my future sexual relationships.

The thing about sex that is real scary for me is that I am attracted to women's bodies but I can't 'get over the hill' unless the fantasy of myself becoming one is fantasies. So even in sex with a woman I would have to fantasies which would probably interfere with the sex."

This is where I need your help.

I think A18 and others like him would find it really helpful to get examples on how to live with this condition. When I read comments made on this blog and in other online fora, I know that opinions are divided on this issue.

Some argue that autogynephiliacs are too self-absorbed to make long term relationships work. Others report that they have managed to integrate this into their marriages. The other day I got a thank you mail from an autogynephiliac who told me had been reading from this blog to his wife. They are still together.

Here is my response:

"Yes, this is the case with autogynephiliacs. We are attracted to women (being heterosexual/gynephiliac), and can enjoy sex with women very much. However, the real turn on for an autogynephiliac -- even when being with a woman -- is the fantasy of being a woman yourself.

So the question is whether it is possible to integrate this fantasy life into a real sexual relationship with a woman.

Many autogynephiliacs report that they manage to do that, and there are as many explanations for this as there are happily married or partnered autogynephiliacs:

1. Some enjoy the role of the man as much as of the woman. They act out the role of the man with the woman and the role of the woman in privacy. The main problem here is that the cross-dressing or cross-dreaming may become dominant.

2. They integrate the role-playing into their sex life with their partner. I have heard of pairs where the man dreams of being the woman, and the woman of being the man! The woman takes the active role, and may even use a strap-on dildo on the man. Now, there may not be many 'androphiliac' women out there (we don't know), but there are many who wouldn't mind playing along -- at least from time to time.

3. They keep their autogynephilia secret, but fantasize about being the woman while being with their partner. This may be very frustrating in the long run.

4. It has to be said that a lot of relationships break up because of autogynephilia. Some therefore end up living alone. They cross-dress and cross-dream and leave it at that.

5. Some decide to go the whole way and undergo surgery. Many of them go on to live good lives together with a woman or a another transgendered. There is also a significant proportion that changes their sexual orientation throughout the hormone therapy/surgery and end up living with a man.

As for whether an autogynephiliac is truly heterosexual or homosexual, I have a feeling reality is more complicated than that. It seems most cross-dressers and cross-dreamers are heterosexual as men. Like you, they are attracted to women. In their fantasy-life however, when dreaming about being a woman, they may imagine themselves being with a man. I would say that they are heterosexual as women as well. However, the researchers that coined the term autogynephilia deny this."

To transition or not to transition

Anonymous 18 is worried that he would end up having a sex change. There are quite a few autogynephiliacs who would say that would be a good thing. A18 does not:

"The scariest thing about being autogynaphiliac and being aware of it at such a young age is that it seems like most 'happy ending stories' involve other autogynephilliac men who eventually have sex changes. And I have no desire to transition at all, however, it seems to be a 1 way road. I'm crossed between my real life where I am happy living my life as a guy and my odd sexual desire to be a woman. In the end it's like living two very different lives and it's just difficult to ensure that I am going to win the battle.

What is your sexual orientation as an autoginaphiliac?"
My response:

My sexual orientation is gynephilic male. In real life I am attracted to women and women only. And yes, I have been with the same woman for more than 10 years!

She doesn't know everything about my autogynephilia and since I am not a cross-dresser it isn't all that visible. But she knows that I am somewhat different than other men and doesn't seem to mind.

I believe my feminine side was what she found attractive in the first place.

It isn't easy to be an autogynephiliac, but don't let anyone tell you that you cannot have a fruitful love life! It is possible, if you find the right woman. Needless to say, you may be in for quite a few disappointments before you find her -- but then again, that is true for all men, not only autogynephiliacs."

Do you have any advice for A18?



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.