Post-election Crossdreamer Blues

After a really bad week I am pulling myself together. I am not going to sit still and watch the transphobes ruin the lives of a new generation of gender variant people. Here's what I shared with my friends over at Crossdream Life today:

I normally avoid discussing politics in trans fora, and plan to continue to do so in the future. Being pro-trans or anti-trans is not really a right wing/left wing conflict.

In Europe you will find right wing governments that change laws in order to help trans people (which recently happened in th UK and Norway). In other word: Both liberals, socialists and conservatives are supporting LGBTQA rights.

However, today I feel that I need to speak out.

The backlash against tolerance and diversity is real and it is clearly associated with the recent nationalist upsurge in countries like Russia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Britain and now, the United States. And it seems to be spreading.

I know that quite a few of my crossdreamer friends have had some really, really, bad days since Tuesday, trying hard to cope with the fact that the next US president has allied himself with some of the most homophobic and transphobic people in the world. He might wave the LGBT flag, but when his vice president believes in conversion therapy, we know we are in for a rough patch.

I have already talked about the way this election triggered childhood memories of hazing and bullying in me. The attitude expressed by many Americans right now also remind me of the kind of culture I grew up in: Where any form of femininity or female identification in male assigned people was considered degrading.

Why we need a new narrative for transgender sexuality and crossdreaming

I have been reading Felix Conrad's new ebook on crossdreaming and sexology. Well written, interesting and provocative, as always. This post will not be so much a review of the book as a commentary on what it covers. We agree that we need a new narrative that makes sense of the sexuality of crossdreamers and other trans people.

Felix' main point in Quantum Desire: A Sexological Analysis of Crossdreaming is that we need a new sexology for crossdreaming and transgender thinking.

We need a new model, a new narrative, a new way of thinking about sexual desire and gender variance, because right now we are far too busy reacting to the belief systems of old:

You know, the ones that sort gender variant people into categories like "effeminate gay men" and "autogynephiliacs", "real trans women" and "fetishists", people "trapped in the wrong bodies" and "sexual perverts".

We are lacking a new synthesis

The fact that we are arguing against the old is inevitable. This is how human thought evolves. To use the vocabulary of Hegel: We start out with one way of looking at the world (thesis), which is then challenged by another (antithesis) until the world moves on to a third position (synthesis).

What we are lacking is the synthesis. Felix does not provide us with that new model in the book, or at least not fully, but he gives as a pretty good idea about where we have to go.

If I understand him correctly we have to get to the point where we discuss the sexuality and sexual desires of queer and gender variant people freely and openly. We have to get to a point where we are able to make those fantasies an integrated part of transgender identities of all kinds (and I use the word transgender here as an umbrella term for all types of gender variance here).

Right now sexual fantasies of the crossdreamer kind are considered invalidating not only for transsexual women and men -- who have transitioned or who want to do so -- but also for non-transitioning transgender people (including those genderqueer, crossdressing, drag  and more).

A Short History of the Roots of Transphobic Science

Many of the cultural problems facing queer and trans peope have roots in one particular way of looking at sex, sexuality and gender, a view that has been abandoned by most serious researchers and trans activists, but which nevertheless shapes the way we think about queer and gender variant people.

Here is a short and simplified summary of my interpretation of this history. For references and alternative interpretations, see the list of books included below!

A real and decent Victorian lady (or so
we are meant to believe).

We need to understand history

I believe that if we are to liberate ourselves from the prejudices of old science, we need to know how we got into this mess in the first place.

We need to understand that there is nothing given or self-evident about the way psychiatry and psychology has presented crossdreamers and other queer and transgender people.  I believe historical studies can make us wiser in this respect.

Victorian prejudices

It seems to me that the most important historical change causing the stigmatization of trans people is rooted in new ideas about womanhood that arose in the late 19th century.

At the time, the men of power basically decided that real women, decent women, civilized women, were weak and intellectually inferior, with little or no libido.

Strong sexual desire was a masculine thing, something that drove real men to conquering passive women and prove themselves in the field of battle.

The women  therefore had to be kept in their homes with their children, protected by good men from lecherous men.

Curing hysteria

For a humorous look at the Victorian ideas about female sexuality I recommend the British comedy Hysteria from 2011.

On Quantum Desire and why we need a new sexology of gender variance

Felix Conrad pondering the sexuality of
gender variance.
(Photo: elwynn1130)

Felix Conrad, spiritual leader of the Transcend Movement and crossdreamer philosopher per excellence, has written a new book on sexuality and gender variance called Quantum Desire. 

Antonia has asked him a few questions.

ANTONIA: Is it really necessary you write another book on crossdreaming? What’s this...the hundredth?

FELIX: I’ll ignore that! Anyway..it’s the ninety eighth.. Yes...absolutely necessary. Most of my work has been about the seismic tremors of a transgender awakening: trying to understand why I feel that I’m a woman...how valid is that feeling... and how I can live with it? So, basically, they’re about transgender psychology. This book deals with gender variance as a sexological phenomenon.

ANTONIA: And why the change?

FELIX: It’s a question of survival really. The transgender crisis screwed with my mental health and I had to sort it out...and I sort my head out out by writing. Now that I’ve turned a corner with my gender issues I can write something that’s been on my ‘to do’ list for quite some time: a sexological analysis of crossdreaming.

Also, I think that one of the fascinating things I’ve discovered recently is that when I got on top of my gender issues I started to see my desire to change gender as more of a sexual thing. Now, I don’t want to overstate that...because I’ve been irrevocably changed by my transgender awakening - but something’s shifted. It’s this quality of gender variant sexuality that gave me the book’s title: Quantum Desire; as fucking crazy as this may sound...it seems that the way you observe our sexuality can change it.

ANTONIA: But come on Felix, don’t be shy...that’s not the only reason you wrote it...hasn’t there been a certain Spanish beauty who started off this quest?

Female to male crossdreaming - the Max Wolf Valerio story

Crossdreaming is often considered something that male to female crossdressers engage in only.

Dreaming of becoming Thor.
Drawn by Jack Kirby.

It is the sexual arousal that gives them away. Apparently regular straight women or trans men do not get those kind of feelings. It has been described as a kind of misdirected straight male sexuality.

I believe I have documented quite thoroughly on this blog this that crossdreaming -- i.e. getting excited by imagining yourself as "the other sex" or your target sex -- is quite common among a lot of transgender and queer people, including female to male transgender people, lesbians,  gay men and homosexual trans men (i.e. trans men who love men).

I am currently reading the fascinating book The Testosterone Files, by Max Wolf Valerio, a female to male heterosexual transsexual. Max started out presenting as a lesbian woman, and loves women.

The book gives a fascinating glance into his exploration of his male identity and how he has to handle both stereotypical and not so stereotypical male behavior.

The Crossdreamer Portal gets its own domain

This blog has several sister sites, one of which is the Crossdreamer Portal.

Photo: Photos.com

I have gathered links and feeds to a lot of blogs and sites that cover crossdreamers and transgender issues.

Unfortunately it has, for historical reasons, been presented under the rather unfortunate URL: autogynephilia.blogspot.com.

It made sense to use that address at the time, as most crossdreamers would find crossdreamer sites by searching for "autogynephilia".

However, I am no longer able to live with the fact that the URL refers to this toxic, transphobic, theory.

From today on you will find The Crossdreamer Portal over at crossdreamers.org!  

(The old URL will continue to work).