The Yaoi Culture and the Female to Male Crossdreamers

Typical yuoi manga cover.
From Houyou Hikken.
Note the German title: Your Heart! Yaoi is a
global culture.

What makes women, world wide, write and read comics about men having sex? Crossdreaming, of course!

There are scientists who deny the existence of female to male crossdreamers, that is female bodied persons who get turned on by the idea of being a man. As far as these scientists are concerned only men can be what they consider "paraphiliacs" or "perverts".

Ray Blanchard, who came up with the "autogynephilia" theory, belongs to these researchers.

I have through several blog posts documented that not only are there female to male crossdreamers among us now; we find them in a wide variety of cultures and they have most likely always been here.

In other words: This is not a purely cultural or psychological phenomenon.

The reason the researchers do not see the FTM crossdreamers, is that they do not look for them.

Today I am going to present to you the fascinating world of female to male crossdreaming, and prove to you that there are large numbers of girls who dream about being boys out there.

They have their own thriving crossdreamer and crossdresser culture, in which we find a lot of parallels to their male to female counterparts.

Welcome to the world of Boy's Love and yaoi!

Thanks to Uli Meyer

I am very grateful to the German researcher Uli Meyer. In her article "Hidden in straight sight: Trans'gressing gender and sexuality via BL" in the anthology Boys' Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre  she has managed to make the female bodied crossdreamer visible for themselves and for the rest of us.

She has put them within a framework that makes sense, not only for the people involved, but also for people like me. I am using that article actively in this post. Do read the original! Her work is going to change our understanding of what it means to be transgender.

Some words about words

When you try to write about female and male bodied crossdreamers at the same time, it is easy to get lost in the terminology, as the inter-gender dynamics are a bit unusual.

Rutta to Kodama, yaoi comic presenting
a male same sex relationship. Note that
both look quite feminine, but the
uke to the left more so than the
dominant seme to the right. In manga
large eyes might signify both
child like innocence and femininity.

In this post MTF refers to male to female, i.e. male bodied persons who dream about being women or -- in the case of transsexuals -- transsexual women who have realigned their female mind with their hormonally and/or surgically altered female body.

FTM means female to male, meaning people with two X chromosomes who fantasize about being men, male being their target sex. FTM crossdreamers might call themselves "girlfags" online, a word most of them  do not find offensive.

Some crossdreamers may identify with their target sex, living at the transsexual end of the transgender scale. Unless they have transitioned, these often experience gender dysphoria, a deep unease from not having a body that fits their "inner woman" or "inner man".

Other crossdreamers identify with their biological birth sex, arguing that their fantasies do not entail another sex or gender identity. Most of these do not report  dysphoria. Note, however, that there is a lot of denial and repression going around. The crossdreamer's journey may be a trip from  one end of the scale to another.

I consider all of these people transgender, in the umbrella term sense of the word.

The terms "inner  man" and "inner woman" are metaphors referring to whatever it is that seeks expression through crossdressing and/or crossdreaming. I truly believe there is a biological core to crossdreaming as well as the transsexual condition, but the terms are helpful even if there isn't one.

To avoid confusion as to what the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" refer to (birth sex or target sex), I refer to people who are predominantly attracted to women as "gynephilic" and people oriented towards men as "androphilic". Believe me, it is easier this way!

I refer to FTM crossdreamers as women if it is clear that they publicly identify as such, and as men if they tell us that they are men. Transmen are men in my book. End of story!

What is BL and yaoi?

An uke is the submissive receptive partner in a yaoi gay
male relationship.
From the blog Manga Freak.

Male bodied male to female crossdreamers have different ways of expressing their "inner woman".

Some crossdress. Some explore their female avatar in online gaming. Others write stories or TG captions (illustrations accompanied by ultra short TG transgender stories).

They are all trying to express a side of their own self that the society around them does not accept. These are men who not only dream about being women, but who even would like to have sex as women.

The FTM crossdreamer culture has had a different cultural trajectory and history. At this moment in history their main way of expressing their "inner man" is through Boy's Love and yaoi, which at its core is a genre of Japanese style comics.

Boy's Love,  BL  or yaoi comics contain stories about gay male relationships. They are written by women, though, and the readership is mainly female. Boy's Love female readers identify with one or both of the male characters in these stories.

On how American psychiatry persecutes transgender crossdreamers and crossdressers

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Finding love as a crossdreamer

Photo from Photos.com

My post on my life as a crossdreamer has generated several very interesting comments, both online and in emails.

Joanna sent me the text included at the end of this post as a response to my discussion of the crossdreamer and/or  crossdresser's dilemma when it comes to establishing steady love relationships.

Sexual orientation

It seems to me a majority male to female (MTF) crossdreamers, whether they are crossdressers or not, fall in love with women. In the same way, female to male crossdreamers seem to be primarily attracted to men. Like most human beings they long for love and someone with whom to share their lives. 

But many MTF crossdreamers feel like they are wired like women sexually, which is one reason for why they often fantasize about being women when having sex. Needless to say, on the long term it may be hard to "play" the role of the man in bed, when what you desire is another role entirely.

It may be slightly easier to be a female to male (FTM) crossdreamer taking the proactive role in bed. In the dark undercurrents of our cultures being an aggressive man is still considered more admirable than being  female. Still, for a female bodied person not to live up to the gender stereotypes of the day is definitely not a walk in the park. There will be feelings of confusion, shame and guilt.

Establishing a relationship

Normally this has not stopped  crossdreamers from going steady or getting married. One of the reasons for this is that many crossdreamers truly believe that a regular heterosexual relationship  will cure them of their crossdreaming.

The Trans “Sense of Community” Survey

Cristan Williams has put up a trans community survey to study the way gender variant and transsexual people understand the notion of a trans community.

Those who have followed this blog know that this is not a simple questions. There are, for instance, crossdreamers and crossdressers who are clearly transsexual at heart, while others argue strongly that they are not even transgender.

They are all invited to take this survey, however.

Like Cristan, I mostly think of the trans community of a community of interest. The members of this community is a diverse bunch, but they have one thing in common: They violate the cultural mores of their own society by overstepping the borders between male and female in one way or the other.

This applies to crossdreamers and crossdressers, who commit the cardinal sin of dreaming or fantasizing of being the other sex, and it applies to transsexuals whose sex identity is clearly and indisputably misaligned with their birth sex. They therefore have an common interest in making society more tolerant towards those who find themselves on the outside.

Besides: The border between crossdreamers and crossdressers on the one hand and transsexuals on the other is blurred. Some transsexuals start out as crossdreamers, which tells me that there is much to gain and learn from interaction and collaboration.

UPDATE: Note that the survey seems to be targeting US citizens. I guess non-Americans may enter the name of their country instead of the ZIP-code. The survey also seems to be oriented towards "off-line communities", i.e. organized meetings of people in the local community. Again, I suppose you may add "online" as a location, if your main interaction with the trans community is online.

UPDATE 2: The survey is for Americans and is not anonymous. See comments below.

Cristan has more about the survey here.
You can take the survey here.

The Other Side of your Transgender Soul -- Body and Mind

Here is my final post on Jung and a transgender psychology.

The starting point for this series is the idea that the subconscious psyche compensates for what the conscious ego considers taboo and therefore denies.

For instance: All male bodied persons have psychological traits associated with culturally defined feminine values, but they find it hard to admit to these feelings and therefore suppress them.

Among many transgender people these suppressed feelings find a way to  the surface through crossdreaming and crossdressing.

The anima and animus becomes one

As I noted in my post on the anima and animus archetypes, the anima and arnimus archetypes may be understood in at least two ways.

The traditional way is to think of the anima as the underdeveloped feminine side of man and the animus as the primitive man in the woman.

The second explanation is to think of the anima and the animus as the gateway to the unconscious. In this sense they are parallels to the persona, the "mask" we show the people around us. The persona helps us interact with the world outside. The anima/animus helps us to interact with the world inside.

In order to function as a gateway to "the other side" the anima/animus compensates for what is lacking in the persona and the ego. If the persona is hypermasculine the anima appears as hyperfeminine in dreams, fantasies and projections. If the persona of a woman is emotional, her animus becomes quasi-intellectual.

I add the term "quasi" to signify that this intellectual side is underdeveloped, for the simple reason that this particular woman has never been encouraged to develop that side of her psyche.

The anima  of a male bodied person does not have to express culturally defined feminine traits only. Nor does the animus of a female bodied person have to be symbolized as a man in dreams and fantasies. It all depends on to what extent "the other side" has been integrated into the ego and the persona.

If the cultural ideas of what it means to be a man or a woman changes, the anima and animus are also likely to generate different content. If a woman is allowed to explore her aggressive and dominant side, her animus is less likely to express this part of her psyche in dreams and fantasies.

Murray Stein's interpretation

There are Jungians who have reinterpreted Jung for a the contemporary age, somewhat in the same vein as I have done here.


Murray Stein asks the same question in the highly recommended book Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction:

"But what about women who are not very feminine and men who are not very masculine in their personas? Does a not-very-feminine woman have a nonmasculine animus, and a not-very-masculine man have a nonfeminine anima? Jung would be obliged to follow this line of thought, given his premises."

My life as a transgender crossdreamer

Photo from Photos.com

Most crossdreamers are confused.

They are confused about who they are, what they are, why they feel the way they feel. What is wrong with them? Why do they get excited by the very idea of having a body of the opposite sex? Are they transsexual? Are they freaks? Or are they just a normal variation of the diversity of life?

Yes, most crossdreamers are confused. Very confused.

Many of them -- this one included -- therefore spend a lot of time reading and discussing, trying to find thinkers, friends and theories that may help them makes sense of their lives.

In this respect, they -- we -- are no different than other groups who find themselves on the outside of what "normal" people consider "natural" behavior.

I readily admit that I might have focused too much on the theory and too little on my lived life on this blog, making some blog post a bit too dry for comfort.

In this post I will draw upon my own life and show you how my own understanding of crossdreaming is very much anchored in my life experience.

Life narratives

Children start making up stories about how the universe works at a very early age. They rarely get it right at first, and they find it often hard to reconcile their own life experience with the "truths" of others (the "stork" model is, for instance, a tough one). But in the end they manage to develop a theory of their own self that makes sense within the context of their own culture.

 "I am a man. That is why I like cars!" "I am a woman! That is why I like kids." A man that find cars boring, may seek comfort in his love for soccer, and a woman that find children icky, will focus on her ability to keep them clean, and in this way their identity as a man or a woman is not threatened.