On lesbians who watch gay pornography and what it means for transgender crossdreamers

Did you know that many lesbians watch gay male porn?  

I didn't either, before I saw the movie The Kids are All Right with Julianne Moore and Anette Benning as a lesbian couple with kids.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as lesbian
mothers liking gay male pornography

In one scene we can see the two of them watch a movie with men having sex with men in order to get into the mood.

By accident, their son finds the movie later on, and in wonderfully akward scene we see how the two parents try to explain what this is all about.

In the name of fair use I have taken the liberty of embedding the relevant scenes here. (This is not office material.)

And yes, this has a lot to do with crossdreaming. Read on!

Female to male crossdressing among red deer

Another look at the lives of animals, and how biology may influence sex identity and sexual orientation.

I found this photo in a wonderful book called The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure.

It depicts a female red deer mounting a male stag in a frenzy of sexual rut.

The caption in the book reads:

"Red deer (Cervus elaphus), Richmond Park, London, England. As members of harem species -- in which the strongest and the fittest males amass a herd of does and try to prevent other bucks from mating with them -- deer are often portrayed as sexually agressive males and passive females. This amorous hind mounting a stag shows that the females are not as passive or indifferent as we are often led to believe. Photo: Elliot Neep."

My point is actually not that this is an example of a female to male crossdreaming deer (an "autoandrocervophiliac". You have to excuse me - the headline was just to tempting to write). I have, of course,  no way of knowing whether this female is dreaming about being the male  boss of her own harem.

But this instance show that there are no absolute clear cut boundaries between male and female sexuality and behavior among red deer, so maybe we should be a little bit more careful about what we call natural and unnatural among us humans.

Strange animals

As I noted in my series on Roughgarden, animals display a wide variety of sexual behavior -- behavior that seriously deviate from the "male conquers female to secure the survival of his genes" kind of narrative.

This week BBC presented new research on zebra finches, which shows that same-sex pairs of monogamous birds are just as attached and faithful to each other as those paired with a member of the opposite sex.

The cause of crossdreaming - the alternative slider model

I spend a lot of time presenting research on gender and sex in this blog, and some of it get pretty heavy. So, this time I have decided to write a popular presentation of what I believe crossdreaming is, without footnotes and Latin terms. You can find the references elsewhere on this blog.

I have previously compared the birth of a personality, gender orientation included, as a remix of humanity.

There are literally millions of variables that make up a human being: natural, psychological and cultural. Each and one of us is the end result of a particular mix of such traits.

Most of these traits are not gender orientated. And if you really look at the men and women you know, you will soon see that they do not adhere to the stereotypes of the movies and the adverts.

There are strong, aggressive, and power hungry women who run for public office. There was a time when they would be called "mannish", but not anymore.

There are shy kind, and compassionate men who love to play with their children. There was a time when a man would be found effeminate if he pushed the baby stroller. Now modern women find this a requirement in their partner. The Norwegian company Stokke and others now deliver a "masculine" stroller. Being compassionate has become a manly thing in my corner of the world.

It may be that there are some statistical differences as regards behavior between the sexes on an aggregate level, but it is weak and nothing like the one you see when it comes to -- let's say -- height and body mass.

In spite of this, there are times when even the diverse cultural language of the modern world is not flexible enough. There are men who find that they feel much more like women, and women who identify with men.

These are the transgender people, from crossdreamers who fantasize about having the body of the other sex to transsexuals who decide to step over the dividing line and become the one they are inside.

Two explanations

There could be at least two reasons for this:

The first one is that there is some kind of critical mass. In a male bodied person this point is reached when the number and intensity of his typical "feminine" traits reaches a critical mass, and he is no longer a man, but she is a woman. Some may live close to this tipping point. They are neither men nor women, or rather: they are a little bit of both.

The second one presumes that there is only one (or at least a limited number of factors) that determine gender identity. If this is the case it does not matter if a male bodied person has a large number of "feminine" traits. If the core trait that determines gender identity says "man", he will identify as a man.

I'll come back to what I believe is the case at the end of this article.

The one armed bandit

Allow me to simplify thing a bit to make this clearer.

Imagine a Las Vegas slot machine with a million wheels, one for each trait. Imagine conception as pulling the lever, and the resulting position of the wheels as a picture of your personality.

In the real world things are a little bit more complex. Some wheels are more likely to give a specific result than others. The position of the wheels may change throughout life as a result of external influences, but this picture should give you a rough idea of where I am heading.

Now, let's take away all those wheels that are not relevant to the formation of biological sex and gender identity.

Among those who believe men and women fall into two distinct compartments, the the perfect combination of symbols for a man would be the one to the right.

I guess we are talking about G.I. Joe here, the exact opposite of the hyper-feminine Barbie.

Barbie would be all pink Venus signs.

Now, how many real life Barbies do you know? Really...

No, I guessed as much. There can not be more than a Barbie per thousand women around, probably less. (Fortunately)

The fact is that in the real world we all come out with a mix of "masculine" and "feminine" traits.

The slot model

For the sake of simplicity I am going to reduce the number of gender relevant variables to seven. In the real world I would guess there are thousands, many of them overlapping, but this is for illustrative purposes.

Note that many of these traits are the end result of a large number of variables. The Human Genome Project has shown that we have far too few genes to couple traits like these to individual genes. The traits are the end result of a complex interaction between genes, proteins, hormones and more.

The fact is that factors in the surrounding environment man turn genes on and off. We now also know that you may inherit gene switch changes from your parents (epigenetics). Biology, psychology, society and the surrounding environment is constantly interacting in all directions.

The sex of the body

The first four variables (or slot "wheels") in my model are basic and instinctual. By this I mean that they are clearly determined by your biological make-up. You do not chose them. They chose you.
The first variable is the sex of the body. For most people this will be XX female or XY male.

This variable determines if your sex organs point outwards or inwards, whether your voice will drop when you hit puberty, or -- alternatively. whether your chest will start to swell. You know the drill.

I have used the traditional Venus and Mars symbols to represent the body sex.

The female and male copulation instincts 2

The discussion of the role of receptive vs. mounting copulation instinct and gender identity continues.

Read the previous post first!

A more complex model

I have tried to make a couple of figures that could make some more sense out of this. This one displays six alternatives for biological males that combines the sexual orientation dimension with the one of the copulation instinct.

I believe there are many more dimensions (cp. my sliders metaphor), but this is just to illustrate that adding another variable makes crossdreaming easier to understand.

Note that I, unlike Weinrich, has omitted the asexual and bisexual category in order to reduce the complexity of the figure. This is not unproblematic, as the asexual category may explain why some -- but not all -- gynephilic transwomen deny having ever had feminization fantasies. Bisexuality may explain why some gynephilic M2F crossdreamers transition and end up living with a man.

I accept that there are masculine and active gay men (if not, they are very good at pretending), as well as feminine passive straight men. The word feminine is here used in a broad sense, to include more than feminine looks and manners.

I have used the word "mounting" for the stereotypical masculine mating instinct and "reseptive" for the feminine (mount-receiving). I prefer these terms to "active" and "passive", as women may perfectly well can be active in spite of being the catcher and visa versa. Maybe proactive or reactive are better words, or maybe we should come up with some new terms. Some biologists use the terms "dominant" vs. "non-dominant".

Androphilic means attracted to men. Gynephilic means woman-loving.

Boxes without borders

There are no absolute borders between the categories. Some feminine gay men are more feminine than others. Some M2F crossdreamers love being the proactive player when having sex with a woman. A so-called feminine gay man may realize over time that he truly is a woman and transition because of that, and not for practical reasons.

A M2F crossdreamer may, after years of denial, come to the conclusion that she is a woman and become a transwoman. A masculine straight man can, after having had some hard real life experiences, understand that he has a feminine side after all and learn how to give in to a woman. A seemingly masculine gay man can, after having tried for years to adhere to the heteronormal view of masculinity, shave off his beard, sell his Harley and take up gardening.

You get my point. Not only are there overlap between the boxes. People also change over time, partly by through personal growth, and partly by discovering hidden sides of themselves.

Female to male crossdreamers

You can make a similar figure for biological women:

The F2M (female to male) crossdreamer ("autoandrophiliac") wants to take the active role when having sex with men. Many gynephilic transmen and masculine lesbians often make use of strap-ons when making love to their lovers. They identify their urge to mount with the practicality of having a penis. To what extent F2M androphilic transmen do the same to their male lovers, I don't know, but from what I hear and read I suspect so.

In alternative circles F2M crossdreamers are known as "girlfags". A girlfag is described as "a gay man trapped in a woman's body". The main difference between girlfags and my M2F crossdreamer category seems to be that the girlfag is exclusively attracted to gay men. From the discussion on the Girlfag forum, however, it seems to me that the main point is not to find a gay man, but a non-masculine one.

Some may be provoked by my use of the terms "Butch" (for manly lesbians) and "Femme" for the "feminine bottoms". Among some lesbians this is seen as submitting to heterosexual stereotypes.

I have heard many lesbians use the terms, though, so they do make sense to some of them. They definitely make sense to me, as they give us another example of how the copulation instinct may be decoupled from sexual orientation. From the life stories I have read, it seems clear that many gynephilic F2M transmen started out as a "Butch".

What is unclear to me in this figure, is the life of the androphilic transman. I know for a fact that F2M crossdreamers exist, but I have few concrete examples of any of them transitioning. It could be because F2M sex reassignment surgery is harder, or that society is slightly more tolerant of a masculine gender presentation among women. It could also be that as there has been no medical term for them, no one has been looking. They do exist, though, and there is even a slang term for them: "transfags".

The Urban Dictionary defines transfags as:

"A transsexual (Usually a [F2M] transman: a man whom happens to be transexual) whom is attracted to members of the same sex. (NOT the gender they were born with, but the gender they have become/are on their way to being). This means to a transman: he will date [natural born] biomen [cismen] and transmen. This means to a [M2F] transwoman: she will date biowomen and transwomen."

(I am sorry about all the added brackets. It is hard to think straight when you discuss these matters.)

This is a model, not reality

This is a hypothetical model. I have learned enough about the complexity of human sex, sexuality and gender to believe that this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And yes, gender identity is much, much more than a question of sexuality.

This is only meant to be another grid helping us to make sense if it all, a typology that widens the scope beyond the traditional male=asserive= gynephilic and female=reactive=androphilic.

I will come back to this in a later post, but I see now that my use of the words "masculine" and "feminine" may be problematic. By talking about a feminine gay man I implicitly say that his behavior naturally belongs to women, and not to men. In other words: I implicitly say that there is something "wrong" with him. And if I say that a M2F crossdreamer (or a gay man) has a "feminine" copulation instinct, I implicitly say that they should not have one - that only women should feel like this.

We probably need new words to describe complex sets of behavioral traits that our culture considers "masculine" and "feminine", but we have no such words, since both science and culture is caught up in the traditional gender binary. Or maybe using words for such gender typical complexes will be a lie, regardless of how you define them, simply because all men and women represent unique combinations of "masculine" and "feminine" traits, a large variety of combinations which ultimately makes the words "feminine" and "masculine" meaningless.

The female and male copulation instincts 1

This is a post about crossdreamers, biological men who fantasize about being women and biological women who get aroused by the idea of having a male body.

 

This post is a revised version of an entry posted over at Sex Gender Body.

I know that this is a very controversial topic. Ray Blanchard - the man who coined the term "autogynephilia" (men who get sexually attracted to the image of themself as a woman) and who most clearly has recognized the sexual part of the motivation of some transgendered people -- reduced all male to female transgender to sexual deviants. They have no inner woman, no femininity and no real female gender identity, according to him.

He does not recognize female to male crossdreamers ("autoandrophiliacs") at all, and the term "autoandrophilia" did not appear in the DSM-V proposal until a few months ago.

By reducing everything to sexual urges Blanchard and his followers miss out on the complexity of human life. The fact that men and women may get turned on by feminization and masculinization fantasies does not mean that these men and women do not have a true transgender identity. The feminization and masculinization fantasies may very well be a natural expression of their "inner woman" or their "inner man". Sexuality is a basic part of life. We have to look at it in order to understand the transgender condition or conditions.

I want to look into the male to female crossdreamer's longing for being the catcher instead of being the pitcher in the sexual act. From what I have seen, read and experienced one of the main reasons some men have feminization fantasies is that they look for emotional release for a female sexual instinct.

I will also argue that you find the same phenomenon among some biological women. There are female to male crossdreamers who dream about taking the active male role when having sex with men.

 

The female copulation instinct

I consider the female copulation instinct to be one of the important variables in what makes some men long for a female body and a female identity. It is definitely not the only one and it can not be seen in isolation from other instinctual and psychological traits, but it helps me understand crossdreaming in a better way.

I got the idea from a model developed by James Weinrich. I do not agree with his conclusions, and I will tell you why, but I find his line of thinking helpful.