Transsexuals Misrepresenting Their Sexual Orientation
I continue to see transwomen vehemently denying that pseudo-androphilia exist, demanding that since there are exclusively androphilic transwomen that report autogynephilic sexual arousal to wearing women’s clothing, etc. means that the Two Type Taxonomy is wrong. But those of us who care about evaluating the evidence carefully and completely see a different pattern. First, many of us have seen first hand, in personal relationships, examples of such pseudo-androphilia in older transitioners, transwomen who claim to be exclusively androphilic, but we know have a history of sexual conduct that focused primarily on women, NOT men. so we KNOW it exists and can’t ignore the evidence of our own eyes. But the plural of anecdote is not data.
Yesterday, I had a dialog, argument really, with a denialist. (She attempted to paint herself as a reasonable “skeptic” and me as the obsessive pseudo-science zealot, but gave herself away when she used the term “Blanchardian”, which is code in the autogynephilic community similar to that used by religious “Creation Science” / “Intelligent Design” advocates, evolution science denialists, of calling biological scientists, “Darwinists”.) She insisted that although recent evidence proved that natal female women are NOT autogynephilic, as so many transwomen were claiming, some of them were. She based this on a claim that what is in fact “noise” (false positives) in the data was REAL evidence that SOME natal female women were just as autogynephilic as non-exclusively androphilic transwomen. After a while, it became clear that she self-identified as “androphilic” and was insisting that since “some” natal female were autogynephilic, it was “normal” for women to be autogynephilic and that true androphilic transwomen could be and “some” were also autogynephilic. But I countered, these transwomen claiming to be exclusively androphilic were misrepresenting / misreporting their actual sexual orientation. She never came out and said that she was autogynephilic, but her demand that the two type taxonomy was wrong and that it was normal for “some” natal female women to be autogynephilic strongly supports that conclusion.
I then realized that I did have lots of proof of that many transwomen were misrepresenting their sexual orientation in my essays, but that they were scattered all about. Thus, my motivation for writing a new essay to pull together the data, the evidence. Evidence, not vehemence; data, not denial.
First, a bit of history. Multiple studies have shown that the vast majority of non-exclusively-androphilic transwomen admit to various autogynephilic experiences and behavior while exclusively-androphilic transwomen do not. I recommend a quick review of what constitutes and how autogynephilia presents in my essay (listed below). We have data that strongly supports the assertion that ALL such non-exclusively-androphilic transwomen are in fact autogynephilic and in the same taxon, while exclusively androphilic transwomen are not autogynephilic and are in a separate taxon. See my FAQ for an introduction and links to essays that lay out this evidence. However, because of transwomen misrepresenting their sexual orientation, there is a great deal of noise in the data, though we can still see the evidence that there are two (and only two) separate taxons, one autogynephilic and non-exclusively-androphilic and one that is exclusively androphilic and NOT autogynephilic.
This issue of misrepresentation was addressed by Lawrence when she considered the sexual history of subjects in a Netherlands study. She saw that many of the subjects who claimed to be exclusively androphilic had in fact been married to women! She then found that if she considered them to not be exclusively androphilic, the signal strength for sexual orientation vs. autogynephilia went up. Most notably the number of putatively exclusively androphilic transwomen reporting autogynephilic arousal went down:
Sort: Old New
AGP 18 (31%) 5 (15%)
Not 40 (69%) 29 (85%)
Sorting, filtering out those who claimed to be exclusively androphilic but had a clear history of marriage to women is useful, but not perfect, since not every transwoman who may be falsely reporting their sexual orientation would have such a solid legally traceable history of their true sexual history and orientation. Note that Lawrence demonstrated that at least 24 of the original 58 (41%) putatively exclusively androphilic subjects had misrepresented their sexual orientation.
The folks at the Netherlands clinic, in a later study, compared self-identification with clinician evaluations of their patients’ sexual orientation (presumably using sexual history, marriage records, family interviews, and personal interviews). The also categorized on “early” vs. “late onset” of their gender dysphoria.
Type: EOT LOT
N= 35 44
Women (self) 15 (43%) 8 (18%)
Women (clinician) 14 (41%) 17 (39%)
Men (self) 13 (37%) 23 (52%)
Men (clinician) 14 (41%) 4 (9%)
Bisexual (self) 2 (6%) 10 (23%)
Bisexual (clinician) 5 (15%) 22 (50%)
Asexual (clinician) 1 (3%) 4 (9%)
Note that in the above study that one of the early onset transwomen failed to represent herself as exclusively androphilic who the clinicians believed should have. But that of the late onset (most often “older transitioners”) 19 of the 24 (79%) who claimed to be exclusively androphilic were misrepresenting their sexual orientation. If this study had looked at autogynephilia and used self-report, the non-exclusively androphilic group would have at least one who shouldn’t have been, likely pulling down the autogynephilic score, and the exclusively androphilic group would have had at least nineteen (out of 36 = 52%) that should not have been, likely pulling up the autogynephilia score.
These studies led to the realization that asking transwomen to report their “current” self-identification was insufficient. Later studies began asking not only their current orientation, but their prior orientation. This gives the subjects an opportunity to be a bit more honest about their sexual orientation via their sexual history, by allowing them to claim to have had a “change of sexual orientation”.
Lawrence used such a technique in one of her later studies.
| Attraction before SRS/Attraction after SRS: | F/M | F/F | M/M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participant characteristic | (n = 30) | (n = 50) | (n = 17) |
| Mean age at SRS (SD) | 45 (8.4) | 44 (9.1) | 34 (9.2) |
| Mean age at living full-time in female role (SD) | 42 (11.3) | 42 (9.6) | 28 (8.8) |
| Very or somewhat feminine as a child, in own opinion | 41% | 45% | 76% |
| Very or somewhat feminine as a child, in others’ probable opinion | 21% | 24% | 76% |
| Autogynephilic arousal hundred of times or more before SRS | 52% | 58% | 18% |
Note that had she not done that, it is likely that 30 out of 97 subjects may have been falsely categorized as exclusively androphilic. Or put another way, 30 out of 47 putatively androphilic transwomen would not have been correctly binned in that category. But… and here is the sad, but telling part. Although Lawrence did NOT recategorize on known legal history of marriage, she did report,
“six participants classified as homosexual based on their pattern of sexual partnering before SRS reported experiencing autogynephilic arousal before SRS. Two of these participants, both of whom reported “hundreds of episodes or more” of autogynephilic arousal before SRS, had been married to women and had been biologic parents before SRS, suggesting that their reports of no female sexual partners before SRS were inaccurate. Two other homosexual participants, both of whom also reported “hundreds of episodes or more” of autogynephilic arousal, had not been married and had not been biologic parents; one, age 33 at time of SRS, reported only one male partner before SRS; the other, age 44 at time of SRS, reported multiple male partners before SRS. The remaining 2 homosexual participants, both ages 38, reported autogynephilic arousal only “once or twice” before SRS; both reported multiple male partners before SRS and one also reported MtF transgendered partners. Seven other participants who were classified as homosexual based on their self-reported pattern of sexual attraction before SRS but not on the basis of their pattern of sexual partnering before SRS also reported autogynephilic sexual arousal before SRS. Four of these 7 participants had been married, and 2 of these 4 had been biologic parents; only 1 reported any male sexual partners before SRS. Of the remaining 3 participants, 2 reported no sexual partners before SRS, and 1 reported multiple male, female, and MtF transgendered partners before SRS.”
Some of these self-identified androphilic individuals who were clearly having sex with female partners before SRS, are just as clearly STILL having sex with female partners after SRS. Someone is not being honest here. So, even with the opportunity to admit that that were non-exclusively androphilic in their past, some of them still chose to misrepresent their sexual orientation, both in the past, and currently.
In a more recent study in Europe, they looked at this phenomena of “changing sexual orientation” during transition, comparing their self-reported sexual identity at their intake interviews/survey and later. The same shifts occurred with another interesting bit of data, that six of eighteen of those who had originally reported to be androphilic later confessed to have not been.
So what’s really going on? As Auer, et al explains it,
“Self-reported sexual orientation studies have further been reported to be interfered by the fact that some persons do not answer the question truthfully. Some transsexual people for example may want to present themselves as particular feminine (MtF) or masculine (FtM) and thus ‘‘classical’’ transsexual persons. Participants in the present study might have biased their reports on purpose or unwittingly towards a more gender-typical presentation.“
This misrepresentation is sufficient to explain the number of “androphilic” transwomen who report autogynephilic arousal.
Getting back to my interlocutor of yesterday. In arguing against the idea of pseudo-androphilia, she was ignoring the evidence of the reported shifts in sexual orientation with transition. Why would this occur? As Auer, et al explain,
“Autogynephilic MtF transsexual persons often report the fantasy of sexual intercourse as a woman with a man, that was repeatedly described as faceless and abstract. Yet this pseudoandrophilia has to be distinguished from genuine androphilia or homosexuality in MtF, or as Blanchard points it: ‘‘the effective erotic stimulus, however, is not the male physique per se, as it is in true homosexual attraction, but rather the thought of being a female, which is symbolized in the fantasy of being penetrated by a male. For these persons, the imagined – occasionally real – male sexual partner serves the same function as women’s apparel or makeup, namely, to aid and intensify the fantasy of being a woman’’. Similarly, one of our participants that formally reported a change of sexual orientation from gynephilia towards androphilia stressed that ‘‘I always wanted to experience sexual intercourse as a woman but I did not know what to do with my male body before the hormone treatment. I hated male bodies in general before’’. In this case a reported change in sexual orientation from gynephilic to androphilic can be attributed to autogynephilic fantasies.”
Before I cut off the dialog, which which was becoming vituperative, with false claims that I was being derisive (attempted tone policing), she doubled down on the “female embodiment fantasy” meme by mischaracterizing reports of sexual fantasies of “early transitioners” as evidence that such were autogynephilic. This is when I realized that she was misrepresenting her sexuality, because no actual exclusively androphilic transwoman would have made that mistake. Androphilic transwomen KNOW that their attraction is to masculine men, not to autogynephilic fantasy.
This latest science denialism is complete bunk.
Further Reading (w/ citations):
No. Women Are NOT Autogynephilic!
Netherlands Study Comparing Self vs. Clinician Evaluation of Sexual Orientation
Lawrence Orientation Shift Study
European Study Of Change of Self Identity of Sexual Orientation
On the Science of Changing Sex 
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