So you are a man dreaming of having a woman's body. Yes, you get turned on by the idea of having breasts, a curvy bottom, long feminine hair and a vagina.You are probably not especially feminine in appearance, and none of your friends suspect that you have such fantasies. In fact, you may have a girl friend or a wife. Kids even.
Still, you cannot stop dreaming about having a woman's body.
Welcome to the world of the
A curse
Let's be honest. It is like a curse. Yes, homosexuals are becoming accepted in more liberal societies -- like in Scandinavia. Transsexuals even. More and more people seem to understand that some persons are trapped in the wrong body. This man is really a woman. His personality is female. His identity is female.
I am not ruling out the option that I am one of them, but it is not clear cut for me. I am too much of a man, as well.
Boyish childhood
I didn't play with dolls as a kid. I enacted World War II on the living room floor with soldiers and planes, fortresses and tanks.
I was not good at sports, but did take part in the rough and tumble games of the boys in the neighborhood. I loved playing both cowboys and indians. Did I ever play mother and father and kids? Probably, if the girls insisted, but that was not my main focus of interest. I normally played with the boys.
I didn't sneak into my sister's or mother's closet and borrow her clothes. I didn't find clothing interesting at all.
I never told my parents that I wanted to be a girl, because at that time, I didn't.
My feminie side
I do have a strong "feminine side" as well, though.
I used be a "good boy". I spite of all the wargames, I didn't get called in to the headmaster's office very often. Never, actually. Even now I am understood to be a patient and understanding man. A good listener. Never cruel.
As a young man I found it hard to make room for myself in social situations, to assert myself. After some therapy, I managed to get over that hurdle. These days I can make presentations to conference groups of hundreds of people, without breaking a sweat.
I have strong opinions and people do listen to me, when I talk. I even have a senior management job. But I don't feel much like an alpha male, and do not take advantage of it.
Boys or girls?
When I grew up I didn't get interested in boys. My first puppy love at 12 was for a girl in my class. I thought she was the most beautiful person in the world. I did not tell her, of course.
Given my condition I have often asked myself if I am gay. I wouldn't mind, anymore. Some of my best friends are gay.
Still, after having gone down main street, I only remember the girls and the women -- their walk, their bosoms, their hair, and their smiles; the way they dress even. I seldom remember the men, unless they wear a clown's costume or something.
I have seen a few attractive men in my life time, but boy are there few of them. Men seem to be to be exceptionally bland. They are bulky and hairy. Ugly even. At the same time I find nearly all women beautiful. I do! Really!
This is a problem of course, as I am a man. Finding men ugly means that I find myself unattractive. I am probably not especially bad looking in objective terms. Pretty average looking, I guess. But I find it hard to understand why my girlfriend seems to like my body.
Fish or fowl?
So what am I really? I love women. I want to be near them. I want to touch them and have sex with them.
But when it comes to the act itself, I get confused. I am supposed to be the assertive one. The dominant one that takes initiative. But I have so low esteem that I find that very hard.
I am the one with the penis. I am supposed to enjoy entering her, letting my body move by its own accord with strong manly thrusts.
Still, that is the part of intercourse that means nothing to me. My body knows how to do it. The erection is there, but I get no pleasure out of it. I don't feel my dick inside her, and I often get off by imagining myself in the other position, where I am the catcher.
I get my strongest orgasms when my girlfriend plays with me with her hand.
So I am gay after all, eh? "Imagining myself in the other position".
Well, although I can imagine myself in a girl's body being taken by a man, those men are unspecific, faceless, without substance. I cannot imagine myself being bed with a real man. But I do imagine myself being in bed with a real woman.
The power of words
The reason I got so enthusiastic about the term autogynephiliac is that it gave me a term, a word, a concept. I was not the only one out there feeling like this.
Moreover, language is an absolute essential ingredient in self-discovery, and I know that I have to come to the bottom of this if I am to find some kind of peace with myself.
This does not mean that I buy the theories that have been proposed as an explanation for this syndrome. I'll come back to that in a later blog post.
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".
I have changed the headline from "My life as an autogynephiliac" to "My life as a crossdreamer"
Click here for a discussion of the dark side of the autogynephilia theory.
