Gender variation, normalcy, "autogynephilia" and the culture war

I was talking to the transgender blogger Joanna Santos on WhatsApp the other day and we made some observations regarding generational shifts regarding the role of transphobic theories like "autogymephilia" in the lives of trans and gender variant people.

If we allow ourselves to generalize a bit we may say that the older generations (boomers and those 50+) have had to face several challenges:

1. The oppression and shaming that is associated with such theories, when used in politics and public spaces.
2. The way these theories can be used by family and friends.
3. The way these narratives easily become internalized, leading to shame, suppression of transgender dreams, fear, anger and depression.

The younger generation, and especially Gen Z and the Millenials, more often face only one of these three:

1. The oppression and shaming that is associated with such theories, when used in politics and public spaces.

The right wing and TERF backlash against transgender rights makes this remaining bullet-point painfully visible right now, but as Joanna pointed out to me, young people today get their gender affirmed by those who matter: Friends and family. 

A new culture for the young

Younger cis people may not fully understand what being trans means, but are more likely to have grown up in a cultural setting where you respect and accept the identities of others, and where marginalized groups are to be included and not ostracized.

Joanna's conclusion: Transgender people are who they are because nature made them possible.

Today we know very well that being trans isn't a sexually fueled mental illness, however we still need to understand how the nature of wanting to be the other sex encompasses elements of sexual energy. 

Guest post by Joanna Santos

Since all of the trans people I know trace their gender feelings to before puberty, it would be far too simplistic to try and reduce feelings of gender incongruence to sexual dysfunction. 

Blanchard reducing gender identity to misdirected sexuality

However the now infamous Ray Blanchard did his best to do so and by the late 1980's was simply dismissing testaments of early childhood gender dysphoria by his patients as lying (hardly a scientific method) so they could fit a narrative aimed at transition. 

He eventually concocted a theory that attributed that desire as either a misdirected sex drive or wanting to attract heterosexual men as partners (in the case of patients attracted to men). He called the made up disease that supposedly drove those of his patients who were attracted to women "autogynephilia."

At this point let us simply state that some forms of gender variance exist primarily for the achieving of sexual arousal, which only adds confusion to the mix. 

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

 

Online surveys show that gender embodiment fantasies (called "autogynephilia" and "autoandrophilia" by transphobic researchers) are common among all groups of people: transgender and non-transgender, men, women and those nonbinary.

Anyone who follows the intense anti-trans propaganda of the day, will have made note of the way the "autogynephilia" theory is used to invalidate transgender women and other gender variant people. "Gender critical" TERFs love the theory, as it allows them to present trans women as perverted predators. 

The theory has been falsified and dismissed over and over again, both by scientists and those that truly know something about being trans: transgender people. The tactic of the theory's supporters is often to confuse and obfuscate, or they double down on the analytical basis for the theory, ignoring the fact that it is this world view that has been falsified. Moreover, there is always a small detail somewhere you can use to confuse readers that do not know the topic well, or you can simply lie. 

In this post I am going to present data from several online surveys, some of them quite extensive, that have not been part of the academic discussions about the "autogynephilia" concept, but which nevertheless provide a rich amount of data about gender, gender variance and sexualities.  

They document that erotic crossdreaming (as in imagining yourself being the "other" gender relative to the one assigned at birth) are quite common in all relevant groups of people, straight and gay, women and men, transgender and those that are not trans. The fact that such fantasies are so common, destroys the credibility of the "autogynephilia" theory, which states that only male assigned people who are attracted to women can have such fantasies.

And what is truly interesting is that these surveys look at erotic crossdreaming as part of a much broader phenomenon: Embodiment fantasies in general, where people get turned on by the idea of having a body of any gender, including the one they identify as. This proves that the erotic cross-gender fantasies found in some trans women and other MTF (male to female) gender variant people represent a subcategory of a common human trait.

From homosexuality to "autogynephilia": The American Psychiatric Association hasn't learned.

In an obituary about Charles Silverstein, Neil Genzlinger gives some interesting insight into how Silverstein helped remove homosexuality from the American psychiatric manual, the DSM,  back in 1973. 

Silverstein had pointed out how the  American Psychiatric Association had fallen into the trap of creating pseudo-scientific sounding terms for sexualities the psychiatrists did not understand. Yes, this is unfortunately relevant to the trans community community today.

I looked up the original interview from 2019. 

Silverstein was part of a delegation from the Gay Activists Alliance, and he said this about their meeting with the people behind the DSM:

Syphilophobia and other silly diagnoses

 "I wrote [my speech to the  Nomenclature Committee of the American Psychiatric Association]  the night before, after having studied diagnostic systems, other diagnostic systems. 

What I did was write a parody, a satire, of all the absurd things that the American Psychiatric Association had diagnosed, and some of them were embarrassing. There were silly things. [He mentioned illnesses like “syphilophobia” (irrational fear of syphilis).]

At the end, I said, "These are the mistakes that you made before. You're making the mistake. Now, correct it." It seemed to have impressed them, and this came back to us in a number of publications. That was in February. In December of that year, homosexuality, per se, was eliminated from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. 

The DSM-5 updates its gender/transgender vocabulary in a positive way, but "autogynephilia" remains

The American psychiatric manual, the DSM-5 (now called DSM-5-TR) has revised the chapter on gender dysphoria. The main changes reflects a more on target and respectful language for describing gender variance. 

• The term “desired gender” is now “experienced gender.“
• The term “cross-sex medical procedure” is now “gender-affirming medical procedure.”
• The term “natal male”/“natal female” is now “individual assigned male/female at birth.”

It seems to me that the doctors writing this chapter are both willing and able to have a constructive dialog with trans people.

I am not saying that the gender dysphoria  text is perfect. Why on earth they continue to use the term “disorders of sex development” for intersex people, given the history of “gender identity disorder”, is beyond me. They did at least include the term “differences of sex development” as an alternative.

You can read the revised introduction to the DSM-5-TR gender dysphoria chapter here. 

Autogynephilia remains

What they have failed to do is to remove the “autogynephilia” diagnosis from the paraphilia chapter. 

The inclusion of this pseudo-scientific term is extremely unfortunate, and reflects the influence of Ray Blanchard on the DSM-5 process. The term is actively used by anti-trans activists to invalidate trans women. Indeed, Blanchard himself is actively helping TERFs and right wing extremist spread their transphobic gospel.

Women's Health Debunks Transphobic Autogynephilia Theory

"Leading Women's Magazine Finds that Many Non-transgender Women are 'Autogynephiles'! Read all about it!!!"

Well, to be fair, Korin Miller does not say a word about the  "autogynephilia" theory in the recent piece "Here's What It Means To Be Autosexual, According To Experts."

But here's the thing: The "autogynephilia" theory – which says that many trans women  are suffering from some autoerotic perversion where they are attracted to themselves as women (looooong story) – requires that cis women never get turned on by the idea of being sexy.

Because if cis women feel this way, autoerotic fantasies in trans women can be seen as a confirmation of the gender identity and not an invalidation.

Feeling sexy

Sensible people have know for a long time that many cis women may feel sexy and like what they see in the mirror. Autoeroticism is part of human nature. 

But when Dr. Charles Moser pointed out that cis women had such fantasies, the transphobes did everything they could to discredit him.

Why are trans people trans? Part 2 ( A Look at Well Known Narratives)

In part 1 of this article I explained why we need to look into what makes transgender people trans. In this part I discuss some of the most influential theories and explain why I think one of them is better than all the others.

The theories attempting to explain trans identities

 I will focus on the four of the most dominant scientific models found during the last 150 years or so:

1. The Rainbow Model
2. The Body Trap Model
3. The Psychodynamic Model
4. The Two Type Inversion Model

There is also a wide research field addressing gender roles and gender identities in the social sciences and the humanities. Gender studies have, for instance, contributed greatly to our understanding of gender variance. 

But that tradition is most often based on a given acceptance of transgender identities, and is more interested in explaining the way social systems lead to oppression based on gender. It rarely considers the interplay between biology, culture and psychology, which I suspect is the primary concern of Tailcalled, who invited me to this discussion, so I will not describe it here. 

That sort of thinking has greatly influenced my reading of the science of gender and transgender identities, though.

The Rainbow Model

The dominant model for explaining transgender identities these days is what I will call the Rainbow Model. It is a non-reductionistic model, in the sense that it does not reduce sex and gender to a simplistic biological sex binary or one single factor of origin.

Modern research has uncovered a mind-boggling complexity as regards  the development of biological sex, both as applies to the development of the body (both prenatally and after birth) and the formation of a conscious gender identity.

Why are Trans People Trans?

What makes trans people trans? A lot of theories have been presented, and few of them survive the test of time. Currently the dominant model is what I have called the Rainbow Model, where a transgender identity is seen as the end product of a complex interplay of factors, some of them biological. In this three parter, I look at several approaches to explaining what makes trans people trans.

Tailcalled, who has been taken active part in the "autogynhephilia" debate over at reddit, has invited me to an online debate about what makes trans people trans. I can do that. We have agreed that we will both publish a blog post giving some pointers as to how see the "etiology" (cause) of transgender identities, as starting points for our discussion.

This is my blog post. Tailcalled's one can be found here.

So the question is: What makes trans people trans?

Sounds easy, doesn't it? All we have to do is to find some relevant scientific papers and take it from there. But it is not that easy. Not that I am dismissing the role of science in such a debate. I have been writing about this kind of research since 2009. 

The problem is that science is not a kind of platform where you can look at transgender lives with purely objective and disinterested eyes. Scientists are as human as the rest of us, and their preconceptions and prejudices directs their research questions and the way they conceptualize what makes trans people trans. 

Even the terms we use are fluid and ambiguous, because they have to be as we move through a cultural shift where traditional ideas about sexuality and gender are being questioned along a wide front. That is, as I see it, a very good thing, but it makes it harder for people to discuss this topic, as people from different communities have different life experiences and understand the relevant words in different ways.