TS-Si discussion on crossdressers

I am taking part in a discussion on the relationship between crossdressers/crossdreamers and transwomen over at TS-Si that might interest some of you.

I am putting up this post to provide references of relevance to the discussion.

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.

Invitation to take part in a transgender/gender identity study

I got the following request for  transgender to part in a study on gender identity via the Trans-Academics mailing list. The research is done by Andy Bauerband, a graduate student at Towson University in the US.

He is in specifically looking for individuals who identify along the transfeminine spectrum (i.e. who identify as female.)

Hi Everyone,


I am a member of the transgender community, and graduate student in experimental psychology at Towson University. I am conducting research on thoughts about gender identity for my Master’s thesis, and currently recruiting people to take an online survey. To participate you must be 18 years or older and identify as transgender (this includes anyone who considers themselves on the transgender spectrum).


Study information:

Study on differences in mental health between homosexual and heterosexual transsexuals

Are gynephilic (woman loving)  transwomen more likely to suffer from mental illnesses than the androphilic (man loving) ones? And what about transmen? 

The question of whether there are different types of transsexuals is one of the minefields of transgender research, not at least because there is a long tradition to consider transwomen who love women fakes or perverts. The idea that transsexuals can be gay or lesbians too, seems to be hard to understand.  Both doctors and many "classic transsexuals" have considered the other kind to be fetishistic crossdressers and perverted "autogynephiliacs". 

An underpinning assumption has been that gynephilic (woman-loving) transwomen are mentally ill, while the the androphiles (man-lovers) are either "real women" ("real women love men") or -- as in the teachings of Ray Blanchard -- mentally healthy feminine gay men.

This debate is also of relevance to non-transsexual transgender people, especially if you believe there are common traits between crossdressers and crossdreamers on the one hand and transsexuals on the other. I believe there are, given that so many transsexuals have been  crossdreamers and/or crossdressers before transitioning.  

The MMPI-2/MMPI-A study

A  new Dutch study,"Comparing adult and adolescent transsexuals: An MMPI-2 and MMPI-A study",  looks into the mental health of transsexuals and presents some very interesting findings.

As always, remember that research is a work in progress, and that gender research is doubly so, given all the difficulties stemming from the cultural context, methodological problems, the prejudices of the researchers etc. etc. In this post I consider the findings as they are. 

Cause and effect, causality and correlation

What makes such studies hard is that it is hard to distinguish between cause and effect: 

Are transsexuals mentally ill? 

If they are ill: Does the mental illness cause their transsexual condition or is it their transsexual condition that makes them ill? 

If their their illness is caused by their transsexuality, is this for inborn reasons or because of the way people treat them?

The social and cultural context of transsexuals shape their life trajectories

I have previously put forward the following hypotheses:

An autoandrogerontophilia prank

It is summer in my part of the world, and time for something completely unserious:

Infidelity gender equality: They myth about the chaste women

New research throws doubt on fundamental gender stereotypes: Women are as likely as men to be unfaithful, given the same power and resources.

One of the aspects of the gender debate that is hardest to get a grasp on is the discussion on what is innate and what is caused by culture.

The traditional dichotomy of men being aggressive, sexually driven, leaders, while women are passive, emphatic followers, is so deeply ingrained in out culture, that even feminists fall for it (arguing that women are for peace, while men are war mongering beasts). 

Real life experience

I have known too many aggressive, outspoken, and dominant women to believe in this myth. 

I grew up in a part of Scandinavia that used to rely on fishing and whaling. The men were out, the women ruled at home. In nearly all the families I knew when growing up the women dominated conversations and  made all the important decisions regarding the family. This led to a double set of stereotypes: The traditional one of men being in charge (as they seemingly controlled the revenue) and a parallel one of men being under the heels of women.

Over and over again I found that  my male friends dreamed more about establishing a family with kids, than "nailing" the best looking girl at the party. They tried to behave according to the stereotype of the manly Casanova -- that is true -- but their main objective was love, not sex alone. 

That did not stop them from repeating the stereotypes in their conversations, however.

Transgender confusion: What does it mean to be a man or a woman?

It is interesting to see that so many crossdreamers report a psychological profile that is similar to what the cultural stereotypes tell us to expect from their target sex. 

To give one example: A significant portion of M2F crossdreamers taking part in the discussions over at Crossdream Life seem to be introvert and reactive. Their identification with their ideal of the  female sex goes far beyond the realm of sexual arousal. 

In spite of this I constantly hear, from the crossdreamers themselves, that their sexuality is far from female. The problem, it seems, is that they are too easily sexually aroused. 

Their argument is that "women do not have such fantasies", if they have any sexual fantasies at all. That is: Many male to female crossdreamers have a vision of XX women as chaste, asexual beings, who rarely masturbate, who never take the initiative sexually and who are not promiscuous.