No, Women Are NOT Autogynephilic!

For at least two decades, transwomen have been attempting to confuse the issue of the role of autogynephilia in the etiology of non-exclusively-androphilic transsexuality / gender dysphoria. Some have simply stated that it doesn’t exist. Other try to say that it only exists in transvestites, never in transsexuals. Yet other’s don’t deny it exists, but insist that it is not a unique paraphilia, but actually part and parcel with being women. That being autogynephilic proves that they are just like natal females because natal females are normally autogynephilic. A popular means of invoking this confusion is to deliberately misdescribe the phenomena as “female embodiment fantasy” insisting that women also experience such, as in their erotic imaginings they correctly relate that of course, being natally female, they see themselves as female.

This has been shown to be a clever semantic trick, invoking a classic cognitive error, in which one confuses the map for the territory. The words may be similar, but the concepts behind them are not. Autogynephiles deliberately imagine themselves as female because that is sexually arousing in and of itself. Natal women see themselves as female because they are only incidentally female. Natal women do not become sexually aroused to imagining, or contemplating their own femaleness.

Still, pointing this out has not been enough. The confusion sown by this silly insistence that natal women are also autogynephilic persists. Some have even tried to create “proof” that this is so by creating / editing instruments that bear only a passing resemblance to instruments developed to actually measure autogynephilia, questionnaires that have been carefully crafted to create positives that their crafters falsely declare is proof that natal women are also autogynephilic, and thus, non-androphilic transwomen are just like natal female women in their sexuality.

But now we have a study that is NOT gamed. Instead of creating such bogus instruments, Bailey and Hsu used Blanchard’s original. (The instrument is comprised of eight statements that one either agrees with or not and the score is found by simple counting those which received an agreement. That is to say, all items are equally weighted. Thus, the score may vary between zero and eight.) Further, in the study they validated that it can differentiate autogynephilic males from non-autogynephilic males, at the population level, an important step in showing that it can be used to determine if natal female woman look more like one group or the other, on a population level.

A comment here is needed. No instrument that asks people to be honest about such a sensitive topic as their innermost sexual longings has ever been devised that is 100% perfect at diagnosing individuals. People misinterpret the items. The items don’t perfectly match their experiences (even if they are similar and experience the underlying construct being measured). And because of Social Desirability Bias, some don’t answer fully honestly. And some just never answer honestly no matter what the question. But in research like this, we are able to use statistics looking at population responses to tease out the underlying truth. (Don’t try to quibble on this matter, we all know this is true.)

So, turning to Bailey and Hsu’s recent study, from the abstract,

“We compared four samples of autogynephilic natal males (N = 1549), four samples of non-autogynephilic natal males (N = 1339), and two samples of natal females (N = 500), using Blanchard’s original measure: the Core Autogynephilia Scale. The autogynephilic samples had much higher mean scores compared with non-autogynephilic natal males and natal females, who were similar. Our findings refute the contention that autogynephilia is common among natal females.”

Looking at a graph of the data, we can visually see just how different that the known autogynephilic sample groups scored than both the known non-autogynephilic males and natal female women. And how similar such women are to known non-autogynephilic men.

As well as looking at the graphs, we can also perform statistical analysis such as the Effect Size, a key measure of the difference between two populations: Cohen’s d. I chose Sample 4 to compare against Sample 9, a large known autogynephilic sample to a natal female sample and calculated that Cohen’s d = 2.8, a HUGE effect size (anything over 1.0 is considered large, and with such ample sample subjects, statistically very trustworthy). Conversely, comparing Sample 7, known non-autogynephilic males to Sample 9; d = 0.04, almost zero, essentially no statistical difference!

There can be absolutely no honest denial of the data and the natural conclusion. Natal female women are simply NOT autogynephilic.

Further Reading:

Autogynephilia Explained

Disingenuous Attempt To “Prove” Natal Female Women are Autogynephilic

Why “Female Embodiment Fantasy” Is Bogus

Reference:

Bailey, J.M., Hsu, K.J., “How Autogynephilic Are Natal Females”, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8

Bailey, J.M., Hsu, K.J., “Autogynephilia and Science: A Response to Moser and and Serano, and Veale”, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02482-6

Where Are All These “Detransitioners” Coming From?

Perhaps, as we begin Pride Month, we should talk about both the psychology and the politics of non-gender dysphoric / non-gender atypical people , mostly teenaged girls and young women, claiming a “trans” and especially now days, a “non-binary” identity.  It must be hard on lonely straight folks seeing LGBT Pride celebrations and wishing that they too could be part of something larger than themselves, where they can be accepted and feel ‘loved’ by so many others, all at once.  Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?  Oh, and add into the mix the frisson of being a rebel, joining a cause, resisting homophobia and transphobia?  It’s every teen’s dream; They aren’t just some dissaffected youth, they are special and have a right to be angry with the world.

But, here’s the rub.  If they claim to be lesbian, they can’t be with the cute guys w/o looking silly.  If they claim to be bisexual and aren’t… well then they might have to fend off girls, and that might be akward, though it might be easier than claiming to be lesbian.  If they claim to be “trans”… well… you don’t have to like girls to be “trans” right?  Lot’s of transmen are into men, right?  Then the awkward issue of people pointing out that they aren’t actually gender dysphoric nor all that masculine.  One might get labeled (correctly) as being “tucute” to be FtM transman.  No problem, just wear unisex clothes and chest bind on occasion at LGB and especially T events and support groups.

But wait, there’s this new category of “trans” where one doesn’t have to actually be “trans”; one can claim to be “non-binary”.  One can still date boys and still dress as femininely as one wishes, when one wishes; because to be non-binary doesn’t require one to be butch in any way.

So, we get more and more feminine heterosexual girls and young women “coming out” as “trans” and  “non-binary” to be one with the LGBT community.  Some LGBT, in an effort to be accepting and inclusive, openly accept and even celebrate these non-LGBT people as though they were.  After all, they aren’t hurting us, and the more that come to the political fight, the better, right?

Except, there is a danger for the transsexual community lurking just underneath.  These non-gender dysphoric “trans” are telling people that “trans” people don’t need or want medical interventions. They get used to “prove” that medical interventions like HRT and SRS aren’t needed by “trans” people! And what happens when these young women tire of LARPing as “trans” and “non-binary”?  Some will quietly stop.  But some will connect with “ex-trans” types, just like “ex-gay”, and claim a new identity, in another community that love bombs them, offering a new group identity that supports and assuages their loneliness: “desister” or “de-transitioner” (even if they never actually transitioned).  We are already seeing this coming about.

And as they become “detrans”, they become the darlings of transphobic political efforts, weaponized as “proof” that “transgender ideology” is “seducing” girls into believing that they are trans.

But actual transsexuals are NOT the villains here.  It is the young people who falsely claim these identities that are.

Consider that a recent claim was made that there are 28,000 “detranstioners” from the US on a single subreddit. How can that be when we know from solid data that there are only ~100,000 actual transitioners in the United States, and that detrans post-op regret is rare at less than 0.15%. That’s around 150 people in the US total, most of whom are “older transitioners”, MTF transsexuals who return to living as men as they find it too difficult to pass as women in a transphobic society. So where did these 28,000 people come from? Simple, only a tiny handful were ever trans to begin with. The rest were those described above, falsely claiming to be “trans” or “non-binary”, now falsely claiming to be “detrans”.

Further Reading:

Is The “Non-Binary” Fad Ready To Fade?

Models of Androphilic Transwomen Etiology

There are several models of how androphilic males become gay men or transwomen.  The three most common are shown above.  Homosexual Transsexuals (HSTS = androphilic transwomen) share many traits with gay men as populations.

Model 3 is very unlikely, but is very popular with autogynephilic transwomen because it allows them to claim that they are on the same “spectrum” as androphilic transwomen, they would just be on the far left, showing very little femininity.  The problem with that is that pesky autogynephilic sexuality which HSTS and non-transwomen don’t share, on top of the well documented issue of late onset of their gender dysphoria, or even awareness of any gender issues in most until adolescence or later.  There is no evidence that supports Model 3 in HSTS.

Model 2 is problematic given the very strong evidence of greater femininity, both in early adolescence, and in a range of adult sexual behaviors, that correlate highly with each other in gay men and that HSTS transwomen show up as being on the far feminine end of that spectrum.  So, a variance in femininity definitely correlates with the likelihood of being HSTS vs. a gay man.

This leaves Model 1 as being the most likely, with lots of evidence to support it.

I did not create this graphic and I’m not certain of its origin, though given the text, I suspect it comes from a sexologist.  Indeed, I must take exception to the comment regarding non-Western cultures.  We have evidence, data, that shows that even in Samoa, there are non-fa’afine androphilic males.  In southern Mexico, where famously, muxe who live as HSTS and are respected rather than stigmatized as in the Anglo-sphere, there are two forms of “muxe”… one that is HSTS and one that is essentially male identified, masculine behaving, to wit, gay men.  My point?  That when cultures are less femmiphobic and homophobic, both HSTS and gay men coexist.  Our own culture has been slowly coming to the same point.  While the line between HSTS and gay men may not be one that is strictly taxonic, it cannot be said that it is strictly cultural either.  The likelihood that one will self identify and take a cultural position as HSTS / transwoman may vary by culture – as individuals have to find a place in their given culture as best they can.  (Consider that in the US prior to 1961, homosexual or transgendered males were both criminalized and medically stigmatized in all fifty states, driving gays into the closet and HSTS underground, but both existed.)  But, even in the least to the most transphobic cultures, both gay men and HSTS transwomen coexist.

Further Reading:

Essays on Etiological Conjectures concerning HSTS

Essay on correlations in gay men and HSTS

Essay on “passability” of HSTS vs. AGP transwomen

 

Common Correlations In HSTS Transwomen & Gay Men

In learning about correlations between various behaviors and characteristics between exclusively androphilic transwomen and gay men, we may learn things that point to etiological factors that effect both.  An interesting correlation is that both gay men and androphilic transwomen, both populations exhibit the now famous Fraternal Birth Order Effect (FBOE) in which they have more older brothers than straight men.  That is to say, that the more boys that a given mother gives birth to, the higher the chances of a boy being androphilic, either gay or trans.  The FBOE strongly supports a biological etiology for androphilia in males.

But the really interesting thing about this effect is that it is stronger for androphilic transwomen than it is for gay men.  This opens up some interesting avenues of research.  Does this effect also mean that there is a correlation within the gay male population between meansures of femininity and the FBOE?  What about other characteristics that are more common in androphilic transwomen than in gay men?

The picture of androphilic transwomen is that of early and notable gender atypical behavior, hypomasculine appearance (even before medical intervention) and near universal preference for anal receptive sexuality, “bottom” as its called in the modern Western gay community.  Many gay men are just the opposite, preferring to “top” other gay men.  So, is there are a correlation between prefered anal sex role and FBOE, childhood gender atypical behavior, or hypomasculine appearance?  Are tops more like straight men in less FBOE, less gender atypicality, and more masculine appearance?  Conversely, are bottoms more like transwomen?

In the Wienrich paper they found a correlation between childhood gender atypicality and a preference for being a bottom,

“The connections between childhood gender nonconformity (assessed by the Freund Feminine Gender Identity Scale, or FGI) and adult genitoerotic role (assessed by a sex history) were examined. … Although other workers have cautioned against assuming a priori that childhood gender role is inherently related to adult preferences for particular sexual acts, our data suggest that there is at least a statistical association between these two concepts. In particular, the FGI (and many of its factors and items) are significantly associated with preferences for receptive anal intercourse and, less clearly, with oral-anal contact — but not with oral-genital intercourse or insertive anal intercourse. … The data also suggest that in sex research involving homosexual men, the correct genitoerotic role distinction is not insertive vs. receptive behaviors, or even insertive vs. receptive anal intercourse, but receptive anal intercourse vs. all other behaviors.”

Thus, like transwomen, bottoms are more likely to have been gender atypical than tops.

In Moskowitz, they found that physical traits, relative masculinity, was correlated with sex role,

“We surveyed 429 men engaging in same-sex anal intercourse to investigate the degree to which anal penetrative self-identity was concordant with actual penetrative behavior. Additionally, the roles of masculinity and physical body traits (e.g., penis size, muscularity, height, hairiness, and weight) were tested as correlates of anal penetrative identity and identity-behavior concordance. … Generally, tops reported larger penises than bottoms. They also reported being comparatively more masculine than bottoms. … Our study suggests that the correlates of gay men’s sexual self-labels may depend on objective traits in addition to the subjective pleasure associated with receptive or insertive anal intercourse.”

Thus, bottoms were more physically hypomasculine, just like androphilic transwomen.

In the Wampold paper he explores the correlation between sex role and FBOE,

“Bottoms had a significantly greater mean number of older brothers than did Not-Bottoms. … Thus, late fraternal birth order was correlated with receptive anal-erotic behavior among MSM.”

This same effect was found by Swift-Gallant,

“Only gay men with a bottom anal sex role showed evidence of a fraternal birth order effect. … These results suggest that the fraternal birth order effect may apply to a subset of gay men who have a bottom anal sex role preference and that this subgroup is more gender-nonconforming. “

Thus, we’ve come full circle.  There is evidence for a multivariate cluster of indicia in a subset of gay men that would appear to be very much like androphilic transwomen save for one behavior, social transition to being transwomen.  The question we then need ask, is this difference between tops and bottoms dimensional or taxonic.  It sure looks taxonic to me.  The next question is the difference between bottom gay men and androphilic transwomen dimensional or taxonic?  I’m betting it’s dimensional.

If this is the case, what makes the difference between bottom gay men and androphilic transwomen?  We have strong hints that it is cultural.  There are cultures where feminine androphilic males are granted greater latitude to express their native femininity and not be coerced into hiding in the closet, or attempting to pretend to be ‘straight acting – straight looking’ gay men like ours does.  Assuming this to be the case, as our Western society is becoming less transphobic and misogynist, we should see more young gender atypical androphilic males persisting and chosing social transition as transwomen.

Further Reading:

Essay on cross cultural expression of male androphilia

Essay on the Fraternal Birth Order Effect

References:

Blanchard, R., “Fraternal Birth Order, Family Size, and Male Homosexuality: Meta-Analysis of Studies Spanning 25 Years”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, (2017)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-017-1007-4

Weinrich, et al., “Effects of recalled childhood gender nonconformity on adult genitoerotic role and AIDS exposure” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1992)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01542256

Moskowitz, et al., “The Influence of Physical Body Traits and Masculinity on Anal Sex Roles in Gay and Bisexual Men”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, (2011)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-011-9754-0

Wampold, C., “The Association Between Fraternal Birth Order and Anal-Erotic Roles of Men Who Have Sex with Men”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, (2018)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1237-0

Swift-Gallant, A. et al., “Gender Nonconformity and Birth Order in Relation to Anal Sex Role Among Gay Men” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2018)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-0980-y

Baby Hunger…

Or, Rubbing Salt Into the Wound

A couple days ago, a young androphilic transwoman from Portugal, who has been a correspondent for several years, since her late teens, wrote to me asking my opinion of androphilic transwomen’s desire for children.  She, like me, definitely has always desired to be around and to mother children.  She had recently been employed as a caregiver at a children’s group home and had loved it.  She recently entered nursing school and looks forward to someday marrying a loving man and adopting children, preferably babies.  She thought it was be a good idea for me to write an essay on this topic.  So, here it is.

Stoller, in his 1968 book, Sex And Gender, described androphilic transwomen as ardently wanting children including mothering, indeed bearing, infants,

The ultimate progression for the transsexual … has not yet been reached in our society: he would not only like to have is body appear completely female but he would like to have his internal organs so changed (for example, by transplants) that he would now have is own functioning ovaries and uterus, ultimately to bear a child truly his own.

Stoller described a typical androphilic transwoman and concluded with “The patient is now married and hopes to adopt children.”

When I was first interviewed by Norman Fisk at the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic as a 17 year old in early 1975, I told him of my hopes and dreams of finding a husband and adopting children.  I recall telling him about how much I enjoyed the two summers I had spent as a swimming instructor teaching very young children and of the then previous summer employed as a nanny taking care of two boys, aged four and ten, from early morning to dinner-time.  I had of course, actively sought out babysitting jobs all through Jr. and Sr. high school, with a promise to all of my regular families that I would break any previous engagement for a job.  I don’t remember him making fun of me.

I achieved both of these goals, though it took a lot longer that I had anticipated.  There were many things that had to be achieved first and many pit-falls to avoid along the way.

There are many obstacles for androphilic transwomen to overcome before becoming an adoptive parent.  First, one must have the social stability, an excellent support network, and sufficient family income to afford to raise a child.  Many never reach that goal.  Having a husband with a good income is a dream that is often out of reach.  Second, one has to navigate a system that would much rather find a home for a child with non-LGBT parents, especially for newborns.  Adopting a newborn, even for middle-class non-LGBT families, is difficult as there are always far more prospective families looking to adopt a baby than there are babies available for adoption.  It is becoming easier in some locales for LGBT people to foster-adopt older hard-to-place children, but it still requires surviving an extensive vetting process.  That process will black-ball any who have even the most minor of criminal records.  One also has to have the temperament and above average parenting skills to take in a child who will come with emotional challenges and maladaptive behaviors from early life experiences in a chaotic birth home.  In many locales, in spite of recent legal and social advances for LGBT people, being transsexual will mean not being seriously considered as an ‘appropriate’ placement.

Kay Brown with her adopted daughter Liz

I first became a licenced foster parent in California in 1984, almost by happenstance when Cassandra, a 14-year-old lesbian, needed a supportive home of the sort that I could provide.  Now, 33 years later, she still calls me her Mom.  In the early ’90s while living in Oregon, I sought to become a foster, hopefully adoptive mom of a younger child and carefully researched the possibility.  I put out on the transgender social networks looking for any who had been able to do so.  I found exactly one androphilic transwoman on the east coast who was fostering her sister’s children while her sister was in prison.  (Children’s Services gives priority to relatives for placement whenever possible.)  That was it.  One family.  Special case.  I was breaking new ground when seven-year old Liz was placed in my household.  (There were several women living there.)  Liz was adopted on her ninth birthday.  I have since found one other androphilic transwoman who foster-adopted three siblings sometime after me.

There is always the possibility of surrogacy.  But that takes even more socio-economic status.  I have only one reference that may qualify as surrogacy.  Dawn Langley Simmons, who was white, married a black man then apparently faked pregnancy timed to the delivery of a mixed race baby.  The sire may have been her husband or the baby may have simply been unwanted.  We don’t have the details.

There have also been tales and hints that some androphilic transwomen have been aided by close relatives or friends volunteering to be gestational surrogates.  But those stories are kept very private for good and sufficient reasons.

There was a private effort in the transsexual community to develop ethical  biotechnology that would allow transwomen to carry a child to term in ways not too different from that prophesied by Robert Stoller… but that research did not reach our final goal.  Now, there are new developments regarding uterine transplants that may offer the final key.  Sadly, I’m too old now to participate, but I most certainly would if I were younger.

We have enough evidence here to show that at least some androphilic transwomen do have an intense interest in being mothers of both infants and small children.  But actualizing that desire is extremely difficult for most.

So, we see that though it is difficult for an androphilic transwoman to find a loving husband and build a family through adoption, it is not impossible.  But one wouldn’t know that from reading the literature on transsexuality when they discuss whether transwomen are interested in children, have maternal feelings.

In the 1974 paper describing psychiatric grand rounds at UCSD, “Gloria”, a 20-year-old androphilic pre-op transwoman already in a stable relationship with a straight man reported that she too hoped to adopt a new-born, to which an oh so ‘kindly and understanding’ physician throws shade on her coping skills, her character, and her motives for wanting to raise a child,

No matter which way this goes, Gloria is going to have trouble adjusting. A normal woman has trouble when she bears a child or adopts one; this new woman is going to have many more troubles.  At this point she wants a baby because that is part of her image of being a woman. And yet I do not know whether she really wants a baby or whether this is just the image, just as she stated that she doesn’t feel sexy if she doesn’t have a vagina.

But then we come to the most ugly of all comments coming from John Money in an abstract of a case series paper from 1968 in which we can easily discern that he is lumping together androphilic and autogynephilic transwomen together when he writes,

“All 14 patients desired adoptive motherhood, with a preference for small children, though not newborn babies. In general, the group appeared to possess a feminine gender identity, except for a masculine threshold of erotic arousal in response to visual imagery and an unmotherly disengagement from the helplessness of the newborn.”

Remember how hard it is for a post-transtion transwoman to become a mother, especially of newborns?  Remember how the clinicians made fun of “Gloria” for wanting to be such a mother?  Now, do you think it is possible that transwomen can pick up on that negative attitude, perhaps realize that if they state a desire for what is clearly unlikely to happen that it might be interpreted as having unreasonable life goals?  (One of the selection criteria that clinics used in the ’60s was whether their clients had reasonable expectations for their lives post-op.)  Further, is it in fact a good idea to pine for what can never be?  So… calling them “unmotherly” for looking to adopt hard-to-place children rather than hoping for that one-in-a-million chance to adopt a healthy baby was just rubbing salt into the wound.

So ingrained is our view that interest in children is a measure of womanly virtue it effects how autogynephilic transwomen attempt to portray themselves.  A few years ago, continuing my search for transwomen’s experiences regarding adopting children, I chanced upon an online forum where a number of transwomen were discussing how one could tell the difference between a “transsexual” and a “wannabe” [sic] by whether they noticed small children or not.  Of course, they all congratulated themselves on their interest in small children, telling stories of how they had noticed children in social settings, as did the women, while the men in their company, or even other (presumably “wannabe”) transwomen, had not.  Curious, I traced down each of these transwomen’s identities (people leave a lot of breadcrumbs behind them) and discovered that every one of them was in fact a late transitioner and more than one of them had very masculine occupations and interests.  They had not evinced any notable efforts to pursue being motherly, indeed, some had barely maintained contact with their own children from marriages prior to transition.  Their participation in this discussion was more in line with social desirability bias, impression management, and self-enhancement than in honest self-evaluation.  It fits with the well-known (to cognizant clinicians at least) phenomena of autogynephilic transwomen editing their history, experiences, and desires to more closely approximate those of “classic transsexuals”.

We need to conduct research on whether transsexuals and transgender people of all kinds are interested in being parents.  Interestingly Michael Bailey suggested a great instrument for this task in his book the Man Who Would Be Queen:

INTEREST IN CHILDREN
1. I greatly enjoy spending time with young children.
2. I get a lot of pleasure from holding babies.
3. I would enjoy taking care of a baby for a friend or relative.
4. I daydream about having a baby of my own.
5. Often when I see babies, I experience warm, positive feelings.
6. When I think about it hard, I have strong doubts whether the
rewards of raising an infant are worth the work and responsibility. (reverse scored)

This could be seven value Likert scored from “Definitely Do NOT Agree” to “Definitely Agree”.  Any interested in conducting the survey?

Further Reading:

Essay on Robert Stoller’s description of a “typical” androphilic transsexual.

New York Times Obituary for Dawn Simmons

Scientific American: How a transgender women could get pregnant

References:

Judd, et al., “Male Transsexualism”, (1974) Western Journal of Medicine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1130141/

MONEY, JOHN Ph.D.; PRIMROSE, CLAY, “SEXUAL DIMORPHISM AND DISSOCIATION IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MALE TRANSSEXUALS” (1968) The Journal of Mental and Nervous Disease
http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Abstract/1968/11000/SEXUAL_DIMORPHISM_AND_DISSOCIATION_IN_THE.4.aspx

 

Coming of (r)age in Samoa…

Or, The Fa’afafine in Context

It seems to me that research focused on the fa’afafine of Samoa has become all the rage of late, at least for those interested in feminine androphilic males / “homosexual MTF transgender” folk.  The interest has at its heart, the hope that it represents a culture that is closer to what we might have had before large-scale civilizations began, one closer to what humans may have evolved within.

First, Samoan culture is very collectivist.  Although we don’t have a formal Hofstede Individualism Index value for Samoa, most commentators I can find all agree that it would be very low, perhaps lower than just about any other on the planet.  They do everything in groups, traditionally even living together under one roof without walls.  Family and extended family are everything.  Thus, if we were to predict the ratio of androphilic vs. non-androphilic transwomen based upon the relationship between the Hofstede Individualism Index and the percentage of non-androphilic transwomen found by Lawrence, we would expect almost no non-androphilic transwomen.  And indeed, one never sees them mentioned in connection with Samoa.

In Samoa, there is almost no stigma attached to being a feminine male.  Feminine male children are not bullied.  Fa’afafine adults are not discriminated against in employment.  There is little to no stigma attached to masculine men finding Fa’afafine sexually attractive.  This is not to say that there isn’t any problems for them.  Christian missionaries and Western colonization has brought homophobic laws and attitudes.  But because there is little to no stigma attached, androphilic males are free to express as much or as little femininity as they find in themselves with little incentive to attempt to suppress it as occurs in many other cultures.

However, before anyone lauds the Samoan culture as being the transgender (or gay) paradise, consider one other factoid.  I can’t find any reference to any fa’afafine who is in a long-term relationship with a lover.  I’ve never seen any reference to their families celebrating a marriage to a man.  The fa’afafine may be called “in the manner of a woman” (as the term loosely translates), but they aren’t given that social status.  They are granted a status as what many anthropologists would call a “third gender”.  But that gender is not seen as equal to women in status and marital desirability.

Fa’afafine are universally androphilic and have sex with masculine men.  They don’t have sex with each other because they are attracted to masculinity which is not especially abundant in fa’afafine.  But those episodes with masculine men are typically “one night stands”.  I can’t believe that they wouldn’t choose to have long-term romance in a committed relationship.  Although not well publicized, and not nearly as common as we might like, such long term relationships do exist between masculine men and androphilic transwomen in Western cultures.  So I must conclude that it is the Samoan culture, non-fa’afafine family members and others, that in effect prohibits or discourages such relationships.  I would like to be proven wrong on this… I really would.

An educated reader will perhaps recognize my quip of a title from Margaret Mead’s 1928 book.  They may also know of how she was attacked by Derek Freeman.  Maybe I’m just biased by my friendship with Alice Dreger, since I don’t believe a word Freeman says… but the episode does offer a cautionary tale regarding the potential changes that Christian missionaries have already brought to Samoa.  I’ll leave it at that, since those who are better acquainted with the controversy will know what I mean.

One of the interesting aspects of androphilia in males is the question of evolution, to wit, if genetics play a role, and there is strong evidence it does, than why hasn’t it been selected out of the human population?  How can a trait that confers a significant reproductive disadvantage be maintained in the gene pool, should that allele(s) be under very high anti-selection pressure?  One hypothesis is the “Kin Selection” effect in which androphilic males are indirectly “fit”, reproductively successful, because they increase the resources available for their near relatives.  Paul Vasey has been testing this idea in both Western gay men and fa’afafine.  Interestingly, it doesn’t appear to be true among Western gay men, but does appear to be true among fa’afafine who exhibit strong materterally supportive behaviors toward the children of their siblings.  The speculation is that something about the suppression, the crushing, of the natural femininity of androphilic males in Western nations also suppresses this materteral behavior.  I would suggest that we also look at Western androphilic transwomen, being careful to sort by the quality of familial relationships.

Since the culture is presupposed to be closer to that of our pre-civilization ancestors, the question of who the fa’afafine are sexually attracting may offer other insights into the early evolutionary selection pressures on masculine men, specifically the notion of competition for mating opportunities between women and feminine androphilic males.  Lanna Petterson explored this in a study published as her thesis (also published in journals) in which she presented images of faces, men, women, and very plain emojis on a computer screen, asking her subjects to evaluate and report how sexually attractive they found them.  The images were limited only to the faces.  They were composites that had been digitally modified to enhance their sexual dimorphism.  (Frankly, of the two images she included in the appendix of her thesis, I personally found them disturbing, seeming to be slipping over a cliff into the uncanny valley below.  I can’t but help thinking that the results may have been influenced in part by this.)  Unknown to her subjects, the response time latency was also recorded by the computer.  Earlier studies have shown that people tend to linger over images that they find erotically rewarding.  From this data, she comes to the conclusion that the men who are having sex with fa’afafine are “bisexual”.

Sigh… Looking at the data, as well as what we know from other studies of men who seek out transwomen (chasers), I have to seriously question this conclusion.  First, very much like what androphilic transwomen experience in the West, 65% of the men had never had a sexual encounter with a man and 75% had not within the past year.  As Dr. Richard Green wrote about the men who dated Western androphilic transwomen,

“The men who fall in love with and perhaps marry women who are themselves former males, by and large, have known their partners only as women.  Their prior sexual experiences have been only with females.  They consider themselves heterosexual and their relationships heterosexual.  To varying degrees they are consciously and unconsciously aware of the biologic status of their partners, but it would be simplistic and would furthermore blur generally accepted definitions to call these men homosexual.  Rather they are men who respond to the considerable femininity of male-to-female transsexuals, ignoring the dissonant cues of masculinity.”

For many of the masculine Samoan men in Petterson’s study, I believe would fit this description as well.  Another portion of the men I believe would likely fall into the category of gynandromorphophilic (GAMP).  From a wonderful study by Hsu, we know that such men tend to be autogynephilic as well.  Although Samoan autogynephilic men are not likely to transition to presenting as women, that does not mean that they won’t seek out their prefered external sexual partners, women and feminine males, to wit fa’afafine.

From personal experience and hints from clinician and sexologist comments (e.g. Stoller and Bailey, separately), Western androphilic transwomen avoid gynandromorphophiles. One of the hallmarks of gynandromorphophiles is that they prefer pre-op and “functional”, that is, willing to allow these men to touch their penis, as Stoller remarked, “… she considered anyone who was not interested in her penis as normal…”

From reading between the lines of Petterson’s thesis, it appears that she made the assumption that sexual role “flexibility” denoted greater bisexuality.  I would argue just the opposite, that it is a signifier of potential gynandromorphophilia.  Also, I would predict that such men would have a different and “disturbed” response time when presented with faces to evaluate due to their underlying erotic target location error proneness.  While it is true that people tend to linger over images that they find erotically rewarding, they also tend to have trouble responding quickly to associations that reside further away from each other in their personal experience (e.g. implicit bias testing).  Indeed, this issue is shown in the data… that those who are willing to perform fellatio on fa’afafine had longer response latency, even to the crude emojis.

A minority of the masculine men having sex with fa’afafine are also only having sex with other masculine men, but not women.  This would suggest masculine presentation / identity exclusive androphilia, not bisexuality.  Not all fa’afafine present as extremely feminine as adults – some are fairly conventionally masculine, as average gay men would be in the West.  It would appear to me that not all androphilic males in Samoa developed an identity as fa’afafine as a child and that they are having sex with each other and to at least some of the fa’afafine, perhaps those who are less hypomasculine?

Although Petterson rejected the hypothesis that her masculine male subjects included both primarily androphilic and gynephilic subjects based on statistical tests of her response time data for normal distribution.  I believe that the effect of there being three different populations masked this fact.

Although Samoa and the fa’afafine culture seem so different than that of the West, I believe that the feminine androphilic subcultures in the West, that of feminine gay men, drag, and feminine androphilic transsexuals and our experiences very much parallel each other in important ways and future research will bear this out.

Further Reading:

Essay on relationship between Hofstede Individualism Index and non-androphilic MTF transsexual transitions

Essay on cultural influence on androphilic male presenation

Essay on Gynandromorphophilia

References:

Vasey, P. et al., “What can the Samoan Fa’afafine Teach Us About the Western Concept of Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood?”, (2007) Perspectives on Biology and Medicine,  http://muse.jhu.edu/article/222247

Vasey, P. “The Evolution of Male Androphilia” Personal Website:  http://people.uleth.ca/~paul.vasey/PLV/Evolution_Androphilia.html

Petterson, L. “Male Bisexuality In Samoa” (2012) University of Lethbridge Thesis  https://www.uleth.ca/dspace/bitstream/handle/10133/3745/PETTERSON_LANNA_MSC2015_THESIS.pdf

 

 

It’s Just Not Fair!

“Life just isn’t fair.”

That’s what I heard as a child and I learned deep down that it’s true.  Life just isn’t fair.

For years now, I’ve seen news articles, blog posts, and internet fora discussions around the issue of transfolk and of course intersex folk and athletics.  The word that keeps coming up, especially from those who oppose allowing them to participate in sports, is that it isn’t fair to women.  But as I hope to convince my reader, sports and athletics have never been about what’s fair.  And its not really about transfolk per se.

First, lets talk about “fair” and how life isn’t.  When I was nine years old, my mother, a serious jock herself, decided to enroll my brothers and I in competitive swimming.  We joined the Mountain View Dolphins coached by Mr. Tom Bottom.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because you may have read that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were also on the Dolphins.  But I mostly hung out with Patti Jobs, also on the team.  I tried for months to get faster.  But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t swim fast.  Heck, I couldn’t even keep up with the others during regular practice, much less a race!  Eventually, Coach Bottom told my mother that it was useless and I was asked to leave the team.  I never even entered an actual competition race.  I would never be an athlete.  My heart was in it, but my heart wasn’t.  Life just isn’t fair.

Yes, I know that sounds odd, but one has to understand, that my cardio-pulmonary system just couldn’t deliver.  I had severe exercise induced asthma and poor heart-lung capacity.  I was and remain chronically anemic.  I also lacked overall muscle strength.  I was poor at every sport.  I was a short, skinny slip of a thing that couldn’t run, couldn’t throw, couldn’t bat.  At school, I knew instantly which team I would be on the moment that they started to pick teams, since I would be picked dead last, after all of the girls (though two of the girls were near the top of the pick list many weren’t good at sports either, but all were better than me).  No one wanted me on their team and they made it very obvious, derisively so.  Children can be cruel and some adults aren’t much better.  Life just isn’t fair.

To make it even more cruel, my three siblings as well as my mother were good athletes.  My father had been keen on sports as well, active until a heart condition forced him to cut back.  My memories of family dinner table conversations are dominated with discussions of times and scores for swimming, volleyball and softball (our mother), gymnastics (my sister), water polo, and diving.  While I sat silent, not participating, as I was just not an athlete.  Life just isn’t fair.

The younger of my two brothers was an elite athlete.  He was winning swimming races since he was six years old.  Being an elite swimmer got him into Stanford University as an undergraduate upon the strong recommendation of the university swim coach.  (While I was disowned for being transsexual and unable to go to the state college because of lack of financial support.  Life isn’t fair.)  Eventually, he would compete in the Universiade and if Carter hadn’t insisted that we boycott the Olympics in Moscow, he would have competed there as well.  That had been his burning ambition for years.  He even had the number ’80 in big characters on his bedroom wall growing up.  But… Life just isn’t fair.

So what was going on?  Perhaps my family just won the genetics lottery and I lost.  Or it may have been a more complicated story… and interestingly, there are hints that it might have a deep connection with why I am transsexual.  It turns out there is a very strong connection between cardio-pulmonary capacity, 2d:4d digit ratios, and athletic ability, all influenced by testosterone exposure in utero and perinatally.  Those with high testosterone exposure in utero later develop larger and stronger hearts and lungs (as well as generally being stronger overall).  There is a statistical correlation between having a low 2d:4d ratio and athletic performance, especially for speed at running and swimming.

My 2d:4d ratio is very high, 1.06 which is quite literally “off the chart”, so one would predict that I would be a very poor athlete.  While the verdict isn’t quite in yet, there is also tentative evidence that high 2d:4d ratios are correlated with male androphilia and gender atypicality, including being an MTF transkid.  Life just isn’t fair.

Regardless of whether the above is true, opponents of transfolk, especially of MTF transwomen, competing in athletic events and sports, are right about one key fact.  Men, on average, do have greater physical strength and cardio-pulmonary capacity ON AVERAGE.  That is to say, that both men and women, boys and girls, vary in their natural athleticism on Gaussian curves that largely overlap but are offset from one another.  I don’t have the data handy so I can’t list the effect sizes.  But my point is that because of this offset, the elite men will beat the elite women, nearly every time, unless something about being female is privileged in a given event (e.g. figure skating advantages shorter, lighter women with a lower center of mass).  One never hears complaints about transkids like me who lose at every event to all of the girls.  We only hear complaints about the very tiny minority of transkids and especially adult transitioners who win at the elite level.  And yes, statistically, we do expect that for “late transitioners”, that at the elite level, such transwomen will have the advantage of having a long history of higher testosterone exposure that begins to privilege males begining in utero.  While HRT and SRS will reduce current levels of androgens and result in decreased muscle mass, it will not erase the advantage of earlier exposure, most especially upon cardio-pulmonary capacity.

But for MTF transkids, the story is very different.  Research shows that they (we) are smaller, lighter, and less muscular than gender typical males (including “late transitioners”) even before puberty blockers or HRT, but we are lumped together by the public and even by the so called “transgender community”.  Add in the recent move to treat transkids with puberty blockers until later adolescence to switch them to feminizing Hormone Replacement Therapy?  These transkids have NO advantage over natal female girls, but are being falsely treated as if they did.  Life just isn’t fair.

The real issue is something deeper.  One obvious reason is simple lack of empathy, the willingness to ignore how excluding transkids from athletics, especially team sports with their peers, is cruel and heartless.  But this has never been about being “fair” and certainly not about “sportsmanship”.

Here is where I change the subject a bit and introduce a conjecture that I have long been exploring.  I can’t really call it an hypothesis, since I don’t really know how to test it.  I don’t believe that athletics and sports in general are about “fair” in the ethical sense because if it was, we wouldn’t be so freaked out about “doping”.  I know, you think that makes no sense, but bear with me.

First, consider professional sports.  At the deepest level, these are entertainment businesses, first and last.  One would think that anything that increased the entertainment value would be encouraged.  After all, action movies aren’t anything like real life, they are pure entertainment.  So why does the fact that Barry
Bonds using medical advances to improve his performance on the field bother his fans, and thus his employers?  This can’t be about economics because the value of the entertainment is improved by his increase in the ability to hit home runs.  It can’t be about “fairness” because all of the other players could also have access to this technology which would further improve the entertainment value of their performances.  Yet, the public and thus the businesses collectively ban their use.  We actually do want Barry Bonds to have lots of testosterone fueled muscle.  But we want that testosterone to come from his testicles, not a test tube.

It always struck me as odd that in all sports and athletic events, the participants can use any and all crazy training and health regimes to improve their performance except for those that actually work.  We ban steroids.  We ban stimulants.  We ban blood oxygen carrying capacity enhancers.  Again, everyone could use them, so this isn’t about “fairness”.

No, something deeper is going on.  I believe that something is related to peacock feathers and deer antlers.  It is related to the deep-time evolutionary need to compete for mates and to evaluate the genetic fitness of potential mates.  We don’t want amazing athletic performance for its own sake.  We want the ability to stack rank potential mates on their genetically endowed performance.  In ancient times, the young people of a community would have had events which allowed comparisons with each other.  And it would be obvious who was the healthiest, who was most likely to sire or bear the healthiest and strongest children.  We evolved to have such contests and to observe such contests, to be rewarded for such participation and observation.  This explains why we don’t like ‘doping’ or transfolk and intersex folk winning these contests (again, no one complains about them losing).  On some deep level, we feel anger and disgust at anything that interferes with our ability to rate potential mates or allow others to so rate us, because our children will only carry 50% of our own genes, and we want those 50% to have the best genetic partners as we can find.  At this deep level, athletics is about having sex.

Since deep down, this is about sex, competing for mates, and evaluating mates, intersex and transsex people need not apply.  If this was truly about fairness, we would say, well… that intersexed woman (e.g. Caster Semenya) or that MTF transkid did win the genetic lottery… if in an unusual path.   But because we know that she can’t actually bear children, we feel disgust, revulsion, and tell everyone “it isn’t fair”.

Life just isn’t fair… and we instinctively want our children to have the best chance at success.  We don’t want our athletics and sports to be truly “fair”… no we want them to be as cruel as possible… to weed out the weak and inferior and reward only the strong, healthy genetic stock who will give us strong healthy children and grandchildren.  Life just isn’t fair.

Epilog:  Life just isn’t fair.

But life can bring surprising twists.  Less than a decade after I was kicked off the Dolphins by Coach Bottom, I would again see him nearly every day.   Mr. Bottom taught history at my second high school, he coached that school’s swimming and water polo teams.  He was also one of my saviors, as he approached me during my Senior year with an opportunity I sorely needed.  I had been diagnosed as transsexual at the Stanford Clinic.  I was coming out to friends, classmates, and a select few of my teachers.  I was getting ready to refuse to participate in boys’ P.E., stealing up my strength to face down officialdom about being trans… when Coach Bottom offered to let me teach the one and only student who didn’t know how to swim, instead.  Coach Bottom knew that I spent summers teaching little kids to swim.  He knew I knew how to be a strong and fast swimmer… but that I just couldn’t swim fast myself.  So, I spent the last term of my highschool years, as a swimming instructor, a P.E. teacher in effect, with one student.

Life may not always be fair, but it can sometimes be, in the end.

Further Reading:

Essay on 2D:4D Evidence Supports Role of Low Testosterone in MTF Transkids in Utero

Essay on 2d:4d Digit Ratio History

Further External Reading:

“First Female Wrestler Wins State Championship” against the BOY’S

“Reading the Body: Finger Length Ratio Predicts Athletic Ability” by Martijn van Mensvoort

“As We Rightfully Applaud Yearwood, We Must Acknowledge Many Questions Remain” by Jeff Jacobs

“Male Athletes with Higher World Rankings are Better Looking” by Sam Wong

“How Steve Jobs swimming failure became unlikely source of inspiration” by David Pierini

Mommy, Where Do Autogynephiles Come From?

Or, What Causes Erotic Target Location Errors?

Everyone who has an unusual quirk in their psyche asks one time or another what made them that way.  Most people in our modern society look to their past for psychogenic causal factors.  For example, people who are depressed look for events in their lives that were depressing.  This is likely the result of the pseudoscientific pontifications of psychoanalysts and their spiritual offspring, always trying to explain all behavior in psychodynamic terms.  As we shall see, these explanations don’t hold up when examined against the evidence.

Perhaps the most easily debunked hypothesis is that autogynephilia is caused by too much exposure to pornography.  Yes, I’ve seen this being seriously put forth.  It’s not totally a crazy idea in that autogynephiles often are interested in erotica, especially autogynephilic erotica.  But this is confusing cause and effect.  Interviews with a large number of autogynephilic men reveals that their autogynephilic ideation and interest began around puberty, before they had exposure to erotica or porn, and usually long before they had access to autogynephilically oriented erotica.  When they do find such erotica, their interest is rewarded by their previous experiences of cross-dressing or cross-dreaming associated sexual arousal and masturbation.

Interestingly, for both autogynephilic and autoandrophilic youth, certain genres of anime and manga offer a soft-core, romantic, erotica.  This too has been suggested as the source of their sexual interests.  One can well imagine coming across and finding such material interesting and rewarding viewing/reading before one becomes fully aware of one’s sexuality.  But again, it is the cause?  Would a young person with no underlying erotic target location error proneness find such material sexually arousing or romantically rewarding?  I sincerely doubt it.

We know, from direct observation and from parental report, that autogynephilic arousal can occur before puberty, before learning to read even.  Thus, exposure to material around puberty and subsequently seeking further material is likely to be a result, rather than a cause.

One of the most bizarre neo-freudian hypothesis that is fervently supported by a small minority of autogynephiles is that it is the result of “emasculinization trauma”.  In this model, sometime in a male child’s past, a little boy has his fragile masculine ‘feefees’ so badly hurt that he retreats to romantic and later sexualized fantasies of not only being female but being forced to be female or feminized.  This hypothesis seeks to explain both why they are autogynephilic, but also masochistic, combining the two.  It is true that “forced feminization” is a very common autogynephilic/masochistic fantasy.  However, the evidence for actual childhood trauma associated with autogynephilia is weak to non-existent.  Further, while it is well known that paraphilias tend to cluster, and that autogynephilia and masochism is one of the most well documented of such clustering, only 25% to 30% of autogynephiles also exhibit masochism, while the converse is also true, that only 30% of masochistic men are also autogynephilic.  But, for the rest?

Another problem with these psychogenic hypothesis is that they don’t explain the rather well known phenomena of familial clustering of both autogynephilia and autoandrophilia wherein if we find one proband in a family, the odds of finding another are very high.  For example, consider the Wachowski family with two siblings that are both “late transitioners”.  Considering all types of transgender etiologies, research has shown that when one individual transitions, the likelihood of a second in the same family is one out of a hundred-fifty (1:150).  Given that only 90,000 people out of over 300,000,000 people in the US transition, this would seem to be far above random chance, and it is.

Of course, the majority of autogynephilic transgender folk, from serious cross-dressers to post-op transwomen, reject the above hypothesis in favor of those they deem ‘gender affirming’.  There are a number of them ranging from the non-specific idea that somehow being gender dysphoric leads one to become autogynephilic in some unspecified mechanism to the odd notion that all women are autogynephilic, that autogynephila is just part of normal female sexuality.  Given that these obviously implausable hypothesis seem to be popular among autogynephiles themselves, when we see a minority of sexologists and transgender caregivers voice support for them, we naturally suspect that they may themselves be secretly autogynephilic.

Consider the notion put forth in the Nuttbrock study (which looking at the actual data otherwise fully supported the Two Type Taxonomy) that sexual arousal to cross-dressing is caused by finding cross-dressing to be “exotic”, invoking Daryl Bem’s “exotic becomes erotic” hypothesis.

Lawrence took exception to this misuse of Bem’s conception of the origin of sexual orientation that, “individuals can become erotically attracted to a class of individuals from whom they felt different during childhood’’.  I would take this a step further and point out that Bem’s idea is invalid on the face of it.  Same sex sexual orientation does indeed correlate with childhood gender atypicality, but is not caused by it.  Instead, they are both caused by an underlying common pathway, failure to neurologically masculinize the brain.

Although not a valid scientific nor logical argument, I do find it noteworthy to explore Daryl Bem’s career of proposing equally bogus hypothesis including his ludicrous support for psychic phenomena and violating accepting scientific research norms.  In short, Bem is a pseudoscientific crank that has led others to waste many thousands of research hours to debunk him.

But back to Nuttbrock, the idea that somehow an individual just happened to cross-dress one day and found it personally and/or culturally “exotic” leads to the obvious question… just how did this ‘just happen’?  How do pubescent boys accidently fall into their mother’s or sister’s underwear drawer and come out wearing some of them?  Seriously?  Of course, Nuttbrock is actually assuming that “late transitioners” cross-dress because of their “female gender identity”.  But this also fails to match the evidence.  Recall that nearly 5% of men find the thought of wearing women’s clothing potentially sexually arousing, 2.8% have actually done so, and that 0.7% “identify” as “transgender”, these men are NOT accidentally or incidentally coming to wear these items.  Further, by these very numbers, we know that the vast majority of these transgender people are not gender dysphoric nor have female gender identities (yet), so it isn’t the case that they chose to wear these clothes as part of a sincere effort to pass as female (as is the case for androphilic transsexuals).  The well documented case histories of hundreds of both non-dysphoric cross-dressers and gender dysphoric “late transitioners” includes voluntary private cross-dressing, usually in lingerie, as teens, accompanied by sexual arousal and masturbation, while “early transitioners”/androphilic transwomen do not have histories of such autogynephilic behavior.  One would assume that for these androphilic transwomen, wearing women’s clothing would have been just as “exotic”.  The evidence clearly shows that autogynephilia causes gender dysphoria in a minority of these males, not the other way around.  Thus, Nuttbrock’s hypothesis fails to fit the evidence.

Putting oneself into the shoes of those who experience these phenomena, one could vaguely sense why these hypothesis might feel right given the specific nature of their experiences.  But those on the outside must rely on evidence, not experience.  The evidence does not support the hypothesis.

So if all of these ideas fail to explain or match the evidence, what does?  Truthfully?  We haven’t a clue.

We haven’t a clue.

Further Reading:

Essay on autogynephilic sexual arousal in childhood

Essay on autogynephilia causing “late transitioning” gender dysphoria

Essay on Nuttbrock Study and cross-dressing as “exotic”

Further External Reading:

“Follow up on Bem’s Psi Research” by Steve Novella

 

Here Be Dragons

Or, Confusing The Map For the Territory

There has been a long tradition within the transsexual and transgender communities of trying to argue away the key role that autogynephilia plays in the development of late onset gender dysphoria.  Some simply deny it’s existence.  But this has lately fallen out of favor in the more realistic segments of the late transitioning MTF community in recognition of how obviously prevalent it is.  Though not new, it has become au currant to insist that it is either a normal part of female sexuality or that it is a natural consequence, an after effect, of gender dysphoria.  Both efforts confuse the map for the territory.  Both efforts ignore the logical consequences of their assertions and how they fail to match the evidence, the data collected over the years, concerning the phenomena.

First, there is the wonderfully creative, if fallacious, redefinition of autogynephilia, the softening of the language, more than simple euphemism, of calling it “female embodiment fantasies”.  How delightfully it allows one to then state that, of course, women naturally see themselves as female embodied as they have sexual fantasies.  See, women are autogynephilic too.  Or, as some twist it around, “Blanchard is defining normal female sexuality as a paraphilia!”

But this is confusing the map for the territory.  The phenomena being described are not the same, though they are deliberately described using the same words.  Women are not sexually aroused by, nor become romantically enamored with, their femaleness (nor the thought of, contemplation of, their femaleness or femininity).  But that is what autogynephilia is… sexual arousal and/or romantic attachment to the contemplation of becoming or being female in and of itself.  Where women only incidentally see themselves as female, because they are female, in their erotic imaginings, the autogynephilic individual is specifically and deliberately seeing themselves as female/feminine as that is a key element to which they sexually and romantically respond.

Just because someone labels a portion of a map, “Here be dragons” doesn’t mean there are.

If autogynephilia were an effect of gender dysphoria and a female gender identity, we would predict several consequences from that effect to show up in the data.  We would expect that those who were the most gender dysphoric from an early age, those who are the most naturally feminine from an early age, those who transition the soonest, to report the most autogynephilia.

But this is not the case.  Early onset / early transitioners have the lowest reported autogynephilia.  We can see this in study after study.  In Lawrence (2005), those who self reported being exclusively androphilic only 18% reported experiencing “hundreds” of autogynephilic episodes of erotic cross-dressing compared to 52-58% of non-androphilic, which division also showed correlations with age of transition and self-reported childhood gender atypicality.  In Nuttbrock (2011), those who had begun Hormone Replacement Therapy as teenagers only 14% reported having any autogynephilic arousal to cross-dressing compared to 82% of the gynephilic subjects (of whom only one had started HRT as a teen).

Just because someone labels a portion of a map, “Here be dragons” doesn’t mean there are.

Further, if it is an effect of gender dysphoria and of a female gender identity, we would expect that only those who experience gender dysphoria and claim a female gender identity, to experience autogynephilia.  But this too is not the case.  Post-transition people  only make up one in ten thousand male bodied people, yet studies have shown that 2.8% – 4.6% of men, that’s nearly five out of a hundred, experience autogynephilic arousal to cross-dressing.  That is to say, significantly less than one out of one hundred males who are autogynephilic develop gender dysphoria and a female gender identity.

Just because someone labels a portion of a map, “Here be dragons” doesn’t mean there are.

Can we please stop with the erroneous rationalizations?  It’s time to recognize not only the Two Types… but the underlying autogynephilic etiology of one of them.

Further Reading:

No, Women Are NOT Autogynephilic!

Essay on Statistical Reality of the Two Type Taxonomy using Lawrence 2005 study

Essay on Nuttbrock 2011 study

Essay on Autogynephilia in the general population

Essay on Census of Post-transition transgender population

Essay Showing Autogynephilic Causation of Late Transitioning MTF Transsexuality

…She Loves Me.

Are Autogynephiles also Gynandromorphophiles?

Are cross-dressers also tranny-chasers?  We had already seen a study that clearly demonstrated that transfans are more like straight men than like gay or bisexual men and that they are also at least somewhat autogynephilic.  But we have to ask, are all autogynephilic males also gynandromorphophilic?

In my personal experience, yes, both cross-dressers and “late transitioning” / “late onset” transwomen were in fact avid transfans.  I can’t tell you how often I saw that sexually admiring look from such transwomen, especially when I was decades younger than I am now.  There have also been a few who were hopelessly in love with me who sadly pined for what I could not return.  But that is all anecdotal; we need data.

Well, now we have that data.

In a recent paper following up on their earlier paper, Hsu, et Al., tested the sexual response of 27 known autogynephilic males, cross-dressers specifically recruited for this study, of whom 74.1% reported cross-dressing at least once a week, on average (M=5.26, SD=1.40). They also reported a high average degree of transvestic fetishism (M=4.11, SD=1.19). Consistent with their transvestic fetishism, these men reported a high average degree of autogynephilia (M=6.44, SD=2.47) on the 8-item, sum-scored Core Autogynephilia Scale, although two denied any autogynephilia on this measure despite reporting arousal from cross-dressing.

Using this same Core Autogynephilia Scale (0-8), the mean score of the gynandromorphilic (GAMP) subjects, recruited for their strong interest in transwomen (N=24), was 2.88 (SD=3.47) compared to the straight subjects (N=21) score of 0.35 (0.99) and that of the gay subjects (N=21) of only 0.06 (0.24).  Even more interesting is that when we further divide the GAMP groups into those who self-identify as “bisexual” and “heterosexual”, we see a difference between their autogynephilia scores of 5.20 (3.46) and 1.21 (2.42) respectively.  This is very much in keeping with other research that shows that autogynephilic (AGP) transwomen often exhibit “pseudo-bisexuality” (aka: pseudo-androphilia) in which their interpersonal autogynephilic sexual ideation includes fantasies of having sex with men, as women.  The data suggests that while most of the GAMP subjects were highly AGP, a few might be only mildly autogynephilic.

Again, our question is are all autogynephiles also gynandromorphophiles?  From the data we can see that, why yes, yes they are.  Note that the relative sexual response, using a ‘peter-meter’ is identical between the GAMP and Autogynephilic (cross-dresser) groups.  Both groups show higher sexual response to gynandromorphs (GAM – pre-op feminized MTF transwomen) than to females.  Interestingly, the cross-dresser group has a lower response overall.  This is very much in keeping with earlier work from Blanchard that showed that autogynephilia competes with gynephilia.  In this case, we now have data that shows that it also competes with their co-existing (greater) gynandromorphophilia.

Also, thanks to Veale, who showed that gynandromorphophilia is common in autogynephilic transwomen, we have yet more evidence that AGP transwomen are in the same etiological taxon as non-gender-dysphoric cross-dressers, further supporting the Two Type Transsexual Taxonomy.

Further Reading:

Essay on Sexual Response of Gynandromorphophiles

Previous essay on personal experiences with TrannieHawks

Commentary on the mutual gynandrophmorphophilic relationships between autogynephiles in my essay on transsexual marriages.

References:

K. J. Hsu, A. M. Rosenthal, D. I. Miller and J. M. Bailey, “Sexual Arousal Patterns of Autogynephilic Cross-dressing Men”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308036975_Sexual_Arousal_Patterns_of_Autogynephilic_Male_Cross-Dressers

K. J. Hsu, A. M. Rosenthal, D. I. Miller and J. M. Bailey, “Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women”
http://d-miller.github.io/assets/HsuEtAl2015.pdf

Jaimie F. Veale, Dave E. Clarke and Terri C. Lomax, “Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/bp2235t8261q23u3/

Anne A. Lawrence and J. Michael Bailey
Transsexual Groups in Veale et al. (2008) are “Autogynephilic” and “Even More Autogynephilic”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u473w370g11vx758/

Jaimie F. Veale, David E. Clarke and Terri C. Lomax
Reply to Lawrence and Bailey (2008)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/cm2531l3m3148377/