One’s Job or Education Do NOT Define Either HSTS Nor AGP Transwomen
— Just as one’s job or education do NOT define men nor women.
For over a decade, I’ve been writing on the Science of Changing Sex, explaining how the science supports the Two Type Taxonomy. This after spending years researching, teaching, and writing about our history. (Trivia: many of the current texts on our history have borrowed rather heavily from that earlier work. No, I’m not upset by that, but pleased it has become so well known.) That after having worked as an early transsexual rights activist, including joining with several other transsexuals to form the ACLU Transsexual Rights Committee in 1980. This early work almost certainly set the stage for later activists to join in that work.) Sadly, while there has been progress in understanding the nature of the Two Type Taxonomy, there is a continuing denialist opposition to it. That opposition has not restricted itself to respectful scientific arguments, but often descends into personal attacks, calumny, and character assassination.
Please Read “What The Next Wave of Transgender Activists Need To Know”
One of the silliest of these is based on mistaken sexist stereotypes about the differences between the two types, sadly started by several of the top sexologists that researched the taxonomy and support further research and education, to wit, that Autogynephilic (AGP) transwomen are very likely to be “geeky” and become scientists, engineers, and technologists while Homosexual (HSTS) transwomen are not. This is based on the totally erroneous idea that straight men are more interested in these careers than either women or gay men, by nature. The other false stereotype is that HSTS are too stupid to have such careers, having lower IQ than average. This too was started by an offhand personal obsersation by a sexologist.
Please Read “Stereotypes Are Dangerous” and “The Right Stuff”
The reality is that women are just as likely to be interested in such educations and careers as men, when given the chance and not discouraged from doing so. And HSTS show the same average IQ as the general population, though very rare, there are HSTS with very high IQs.
Please Read “Tech Bros and Silicon Valley’s Misogyny Problem”
From the graph, we can see how women, when the sexist limits on their enrollment in the physical sciences, legal, and medical fields were reduced, the percentage of women seeking degrees in those fields climbed and now has reached near parity with men. Computer Science is the only field where the enrollment initially climbed, then fell off. It was NOT that women didn’t like the field. It was and remains a problem of a toxic culture in computer programming where immature, misogynistic, young men make studying and working in the field a hostile environment for women.
Women have long wanted to be scientists and technologists. Consider these women: Ada Lovelace who worked with Babbage on the concepts of computer programming before computers existed; Maria Sklowdowska Curie who was awarded, not one, but two Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry; her daughter Irène Joliet-Curie who also won a Nobel prize in chemistry; Lise Meitner, who should have won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of atomic fission that led to nuclear power. The list is long. Although these are extraordinary women for their accomplishments, they are not unusual for being interested in science.
I would argue that gay men are also just as likely to be interested in these fields, though we don’t have as much documentation to prove it. But consider Alan Turing, one of the most celebrated mathematicians and computer pioneers of the 20th Century, was gay. Today, we have Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc., one of the most successful Silicon Valley companies. The most amazingly brilliant technologist who ever reported to me was an undergraduate summer intern from MIT in the early ’80s. When he later came out, he asked me if I knew he was gay before. “I knew the day I hired you!”. He later earned a Ph.D., published a textbook on robotics, and became a Silicon Valley executive.
The stereotype of autogynephilic transwomen being geeky also fails to hold water when we look at them and note how many have careers that are not at all “geeky”, but are stereotypically male/masculine coded like law enforcement, military, construction, transportation, etc. Then there are the number who are living in poverty and squalor because they have no marketable skills acceptable to (accepting of) women post-transition.
Thus, women and gay men like and pursue education and careers in the physical sciences and technology just as much as straight men. But straight men will avoid fields that are coded as “women’s work” or feminine/”gay”. Autogynephilic transwomen notoriously have the same aversion pre-transition. So, while we can NOT use pursuing an education in the sciences or working in technology as a useful marker for autogynephilia, nor as exclusionary of being homosexual (transsexual or not); we can use female coded careers and jobs, especially those pursued before transition, as likely exclusionary of being autogynephilic and also increasing the odds that such an individual is homosexual (transsexual or not).
Back to the issue of what does define and differentiate the two types of transwomen. Very simply, their sexuality. One is gynephilic and autogynephilic, the other is androphilic (homosexual w/ respect to their natal sex). Nothing else defines the two types.
However, there are indicia that highly correlate with the two types. In my years of examining the science literature I have found seventeen independent lines of evidence that correlate and supports the two type taxonomy. None of them are educational / career interests. Some of these correlates can only be used at the population level, but several can be used at the individual level: gender atypical behavior as a pre-adolescent, age of onset of gender dysphoria, age of social transition, and of course, definitionally, sexual history (showing actual sexual orientation).
Please Read the first few entries in the “FAQ on the Science of Changing Sex”
The Personal Is Political
Back to the problem of the denialism and of the calumnious attacks, specifically, those attacks on me. In an ironically revealing, one might even say, self-own, they simultaneously claim that there is no two type taxonomy and nearly in the same breath tell me to shut up because I must be AGP as well because of my interest in the sciences and my long career in Silicon Valley! But as I showed above, that does NOT define nor differentiate the two types. But if one examines my bio, one can find all the indicia needed to determine which etiological type I fall into.
Please Read “About”
Consider this section to be an expansion of my bio, focused on those indicia. As I said in my bio, the only honorable defense against lies is the truth.
My mother, during an interview with Dr. Fisk at the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic, complained bitterly about my early gender atypical behavior, under the false impression that he would be attempting to “cure” me. I was but 17 years old at the time.
“I have known for years that he wanted to be a girl. But I thought that was [morally] wrong. He was very different than his brothers. All their friends were boys. His were always girls,” naming several of my friends over the years, starting with those when I was five and six years old, but couldn’t remember my friend who had been my only guest on my tenth birthday. “Marian,” I interjected for the only time during the whole interview. “He was always very prissy. He would walk clear around even the shallowest puddles. When he was little, I would put him in clean clothes on Monday and on Friday they would still be clean.” She confirmed that I had been sent to a therapist about my behavior when I was ten years old and again when I was 15/16.
When I was nine years old, at the end of 4th grade, our elementary school was planning one of those embarrassing shows where students perform for their parents and friends. I’m sure you know the type I’m talking about. I was cast for a part but when told the details of the part, I had a total emotional melt-down, tears, loud drama, refusing to take a male role. It set off a chain of interviews and behind the scene discussions with my parents that I only learned about years later. The next school year, I was required, by the school district psychologist, to be sent to a very special therapist some miles from our home, to “play” and talk with Dr. Peters every Friday afternoon. Interesting thing about the playroom. It had only boy’s toys, which held zero interest for me. Sometimes, we played chess, but otherwise, we only talked. Why?
Please Read, “Shameful History of Reparative Therapy of Transsexual and Gay Children”
I’ve already disclosed a few details about how in Jr. High, I spent my time at the library reading about girl’s fashion, make-up, etc. I also practiced putting on make-up, borrowing my mother’s, given that we had the same coloring, etc. I was always careful to put everything back exactly as I found it and to wash my face carefully, but she knew I was doing it. She just couldn’t catch me at it.
One of the stories my mother would tell other mothers, often in my presence to try to embarrass me, was about the day she was sitting out on the lawn pulling weeds when she saw me at a distance walking home from school. When I saw her, I discretely adjusted the stack of books I was carrying (female style, books against my chest, if you must know), sadly not discretely enough. She would tell her listeners that she was convinced that I must be bringing home and attempting to hide, pornography, so she later searched my room. What she found instead was a book on manners and etiquette for teenagers, mostly for girls.
When I was fourteen, my freshman year in high school, Debra asked me to the Sadie Hawkins dance. I loved dancing and she was one of my friends so I agreed. A couple weeks after the dance, she invited me over to her house. Her mother wasn’t home as I had expected her to be. Debra went into her bedroom and changed out of school clothes and into a very revealing, slinky dress. She literally draped herself across me as I sat on the front room couch. Disturbed, I pushed her off of me and jumped up off the couch. She tried to cajole me into rejoining her on the couch but I refused, as I paced the floor. She gave up and changed back into more modest jeans and top. The next day, as school ended, she again invited me over to her house, but I turned her down. Debra broke into tears and ran away. We never spoke again.
During the next summer, just after I turned 15, I took square dancing classes with one of my female friends. I paid special attention to the girl’s part, intending to attend square dances as a girl, and dance with the cute boys. My friend supported this plan and lent me one of her square dancing outfits. My mother discovered the plot and forbid me to attend any more lessons and forced the return of the outfit.
Another girl, who was in the square dancing crowd freaked out and cut me off when I came out to her. Thank goodness we didn’t go to the same school. But I hated losing friends.
We moved to a new house in a nearby suburb a couple months after that and I transferred to the local high school. I joined up with a crowd of kids that included a boy, Greg, I had known in Jr. High. He now lived with his mother and new stepdad, while his brother Jeff (Not my husband Jeff) lived with his dad and attended my old high school. Thus, my circle of friends doubled as I kept in touch and occasionally met with my old friends. One of those old friends, Dennis, would meet me half-way, at Cassie’s house. Dennis was very comfortable being affection with me, often letting me massage his back or just sitting close. One day, at Cassie’s, the two of them started making out hot and heavy right in front of me. The green eyed monster joined us and took over. I stormed out, slamming the door as hard as I could. For the next week, Dennis tried calling me several times a day. I just hung up on him as soon as I heard his voice. After a week, Cassie called. I wasn’t mad at her. She could make out with any boy she wanted as far as I was concerned. Cassie said to me, “You have punished him enough.”
So, with that we agreed that I would go to Cassie’s and talk to Dennis, to patch things up. But I had a plan. Cassie agreed to let me come early and borrow her clothes. She was two inches taller and a bit bigger, but her dress size was close enough to mine. I met Dennis wearing a cute blouse with a jumper dress over it, panty-hose and nice shoes. Dennis and I talked pleasantly, never once making any reference to how I was dressed. I was trying to let him see that I was attracted to him, etc. He didn’t reject me, but wasn’t going to be dating me either. Oh well… I tried. Skipping forward three years for just a moment. Dennis visited me right around graduation. During a walk around the block, away from other’s ears, he asked, “You going for that sex change?” I answered simply, “Yes.” Upon which he said, “Good luck.” and hugged me.
That same year, aged 15, my mother decided it was time she dealt with me and my “homosexuality”. She first took me to our family doctor for a physical and a consult about it. There didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong, save that I was “underdeveloped” (and stayed that way, thank the Blessed Goddess… At 15 I was perhaps at Tanner stage 3, I never reached stage 5). He recommended a therapist, Dr. Kanski, who I had to see once a week to “talk about my problem”. I would talk very pleasantly about almost any subject, but my sexual orientation and gender dysphoria / identity. Dr. Kanski later told my mother that I was “uncooperative”.
Around this time Jeff introduced me to his best friend Kevin. I had a huge crush on him for the rest of my time in high school. Jeff and Kevin occasionally came over to our house. My mother would notice that I got excited each time they did this, but thought it was Jeff that I had a crush on.
Later that year, as I was helping Cassie with her homework (I was often asked to help others and gladly did so), she reached under the table and grabbed my genitalia, saying in coquettish voice, “My mother won’t be home for hours.” I was horrified! I pulled her hand away from me and pretended nothing had happened. She started to slide her hand to my crotch again but I grabbed it and held it tight against her leg, while continuing to explain the homework problem. I was hurt and angry. She knew about my transsexuality. Why would she should do this?
The summer, just after I turned 17, I got a job as a full-time nanny taking care of two boys, ages ten, and four. Their mom later wrote a letter of introduction and recommendation using my new name and gender. The family also gave me some of her older, but stylishly appropriate for a teenager, clothes that would fit me.
Our house was next door to our community pool. We often had friends over for a swim, including Cassie and Barby, among others. One day, I picked up Barby from her house in our family’s spare car to go for a swim. She was wearing a skimpy bikini and nothing else. As we were going down the street, she grabbed my hand and pulled my hand to her crotch. (You just know that a straight boy would have loved it and also be having ‘trouble’ with his own.) I was never more grateful that I was driving a car with a manual transmission as I removed my hand back to the gear shift knob.
It was past time I came out to Barby.
My senior year I called our family doctor and asked for female hormones. His reply was, “You can do anything you want with your life, but I won’t be any part of it.” Soon after that I found a reference to the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic. On the phone, they said I needed to have my parents make the appointments, etc. After some serious family drama, my Dad did. After the intake interviews with Dr. Fisk, I filled out their required paperwork at school, with friends looking over my shoulders, offering comments. Both of my parents tried to talk me out of transition.
Please Read “Cognitive Dissonance…”
A few months before graduation rolled around, I was out to all my close friends and word was getting around. Of course, the fact that I was often seen around town or at the mall with friends dressed as a girl helped that. But, I still had to present as a boy in class. I openly hung up my new wardrobe in my closet, earning silent glares of disapproval from my mother, but gave her a ‘I dare you’ look back. But after graduation, I was living full time as a girl.
At one point my father strongly suggested, “Have sex with a girl. I’m sure that will change you. What about one of your friends, Barby, or Cassie? Wouldn’t they do it to help you?” I replied angrily, “I’m sure they would. But that won’t change me and I DON’T want to have sex with them!”
I turned eighteen a week before graduation. My dad came over to wish me happy birthday and give me a present, the only one I got from anyone, a nice clock radio. I would need it as he also told me I was being evicted from my mother’s house and not allowed to move in with him.
I won’t go into details, that’s not anyone’s business; I dated several boys/young men from my circle of high school friends starting then and for the next few years. But one of my boyfriends, Jordan, from that time, later introduced me to his wife as his “first girlfriend”. Think about that, a straight man was proudly telling his wife that his first relationship was with a pre-op transwoman! Of the others, my mother had accused Jeff of being my lover. Wrong, he had rebuffed me… his brother Greg on the other hand… The one that really created family drama was Don, my brother’s best friend.
Barby complained, bitterly and unkindly, that I was “boy crazy”.
The relationship that lasted the longest was Bob. His mother was an engineer, president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Society for Women Engineers. I was a welcome guest at their family dinners. She strongly encouraged me to study engineering. When he was away at Rensselaer, back east, we handwrote letters often and occasionally talked long distance on the phone. I learned from one of his housemates on the phone that when Bob was lonely, he would open the drawer where he kept my letters, just for the waft of my perfume I scented them with. When he was home… we dated on and off like that for several years. in the end though, he married my best friend Jan and raised two girls with her. But we remained friends. In fact, Bob attended my wedding to Jeff.
I remained friends with several female friends, most especially Jan and Robyne, occasionally sleeping over in their bedrooms. Think about that for a moment. Their families had known me for years…Robyne’s since Jr. High, do you think for one moment that they would let me be alone, in their teenaged daughter’s bedrooms over night, if they thought I might be interested or capable of having sex with them?
As to choice of careers. I love teaching and have been an instructor/tutor in several schools in several subjects, from teaching little kids swimming to teaching teens and adults flying. I started my career in Silicon Valley as a secretary / administrative assistant. I worked as an electronic assembler (a female coded job) and proceeded up the ranks of supervisor and management, all while earning a degree by examination after self-study. That’s not the career arc of a typical AGP.
So, remembering the definitions and indicia of sexual history & orientation, childhood gender atypicality (as reported by my mother), age of gender dysphoria onset, age of transition, etc. What type am I?
I have no doubt the AGPs in denial, haters, disappointed chasers, and TERF/GC folk will all still tell lies. But I know who and what I am.
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
Essay on Invalidity of “Female Embodiment Fantasy” Meme
Reference:
Lawrence AA, Latty EM, Chivers ML, Bailey JM. Measurement of sexual arousal in postoperative male-to-female transsexuals using vaginal photoplethysmography. Arch Sex Behav. 2005 Apr;34(2):135-45. doi: 10.1007/s10508-005-1792-z.
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When the Numbers Add Up…
Or, Scientific Numerology
Sometimes, when one spots numbers that seem to be awfully familiar, they cause us to wonder. Well, I think I spotted either an amazing random coincidence, or a basic connection between the incidence of autogynephilia and autoandrophilia in the general population and the incidence of potential gender dysphoria found in teenagers. Check out these numbers.
From the Sumia study 0.5% girls compared to 2.2% of the boys had indicated such potentially clinically significant dysphoria. Note that this is indeed potential, not clinically significant distress. While in the Langstrom study 2.8% of men and 0.4% of women reported at least one episode of transvestic fetishism.
Again 0.5% vs. 0.4% for natal females and 2.2% vs. 2.8% for natal males.
So, random coincidence? Or underlying correlation? We need further study. But I’m willing to put a high confidence estimate that this reflects that the GIDYQ-A is picking up on the connection between autogynephilia / autoandrophilia and mild and transitory gender dysphoria.
Further Reading:
Essay on Autogynephilia causing gender dysphoria in late onset transwomen
References:
Sumia et al., “Current and recalled childhood gender identity in community youth in comparison to referred adolescents seeking sex reassignment”, Journal of Adolescence
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197117300155
Langstrom, et al., “Transvestic Fetishism in the General Population” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, (2011) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00926230590477934
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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
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SAGE Lies
Book Review: The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies
When I was a young teen in the early ’70s, I scoured our home library (larger than most middle-class households) for anything that could help me with my horrible feelings that we now label “gender dysphoria”. We had a number of college psychology, biology, human anatomy texts, and one medical encyclopedia. I found exactly one reference of interest, but it declaimed, “There is no such thing as a ‘sex change’.” That’s it, one line reference in the negative. Of course, it was both a true statement and a lie of omission. It failed to explain that there was medical help, if only superficial. But superficial or not, hormones and SRS were good enough to make my life worth living. But before I found much better, and truthful, references at our local public library, that one reference left me despairing and despondent for my future.
As I’ve researched our collective LGBT history and science (especially when I was teaching my class on Transhistory through the Harvey Milk Institute), and of course, through my decades of LGB – and especially – T activism, I’ve read and collected many books and references. So one could imagine my delight in finding the SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies. But that was very short lived.
The first thing I do when I look at such purportedly comprehensive works is to see how they treat transsexual and transgender subjects. In this case. OMG! What a &^%$#@! mess! It is more than simply disappointing. It is deja vu. Consider the section on “Controversies”, the only section that deals with the central nature of transgender etiology,
“Autogynephilia – The term autogynephilia was first used in 1989 by Ray Blanchard, a sexologist, to describe a purported class of transgender women. Classifications of transgender women prior to this time tended to divide this group into those who were sexually and romantically interested in men as “homosexual transsexuals” and those who were sexually and romantically interested in women were classified as “heterosexual fetishistic transvestites.” Critiques of these classifications noted that the “homosexual” and “heterosexual labels were applied incorrectly, failing to recognize the gender identities of transwomen themselves. – These classifications also reflected mainstream stigma around transgender identity as they resigned many transgender women to little more than sexual fetishists. The autogynephilia label only intensified this view of some transgender women as sexual fetishists. The theory of autogynephilia asserted that many of the trans women classified into the “heterosexual fetishistic transvestites” category were primarily attracted not to women but to the idea of themselves as women. In this way, autogynephilia was proposed as a type of primary sexual-identity category for transgender women. Subsequent research has found little empirical basis for such a classification, and many researchers have criticized the classification as transphobic. – One particular critique of this classification system concerns its failure to recognize the way in which all sexual attraction depends on one’s own gender identity. For example, a critical component of both homosexual and heterosexual attraction among many cisgender men involves an erotic charge around one’s own manliness or manhood. To assume that such attachments to (and sexual desire motivated through) one’s own gender identity and expression, in relatation to another’s, exists only among transgender women, is misguided. Despite a relative lack of empirical support for the diagnoses of autogynephilia among transgender women, some segments of the radical feminist community endorse this diagnostic category in their own writing as well. … The most outspoken critiques of the theory of autogynephilia ahve emerged from self-identified transfeminist academics (e.g. Julia Serano and Talia Mae Bettcher), who have highlighted not only the lack of empirical support for these theories but also the underlying biases and assumption revealed in the very foundations of the theory itself.”
I highlighted three phrases as they demonstrate a rhetorical trick, repeat a lie three times and people will tend to believe it. Yes, I bolded the text because these are bald faced lies. The material claims that there is no empirical evidence for autogynephilia in transwomen. But we have numerous studies that put the lie to these statements, some of which were conducted by transwomen ourselves. To make this assertion is academic misconduct of the worst sort.
Because I know that most readers will only read this one page, I feel I need to point out that we have such empirical evidence in abundance, both prior and subsequent to Blanchard coining the term “autogynephilia” to replace the earlier terms “fetishistic femmiphilia” and “fetishistic transvestism”. Science depends upon repeatability, and these results regarding sexual orientation and autogynephilia have been replicated by Buhrich (1978), Freund (1982), Blanchard (1985, 1987, 1988, 1989), Doorn (1994), Smith (2005), Lawrence (2005), Veale (2008), and Nuttbrock (2009), in separate studies spanning four decades, collectively involving over a thousand transsexuals to date. In fact, this is one of the most repeated and reconfirmed scientific finding regarding transsexuality. The largest study, Nuttbrock et al. found that fully 82% of gynephilic transwomen acknowledge being autogynephilic, specifically, being sexually aroused by wearing women’s clothing. I have essays on this blog that extensively survey and discuss these papers and their abundant empirical evidence supporting the “assertion” that many transwomen are autogynephilic. Let me say this again in another way, we have empirical study after study after study that shows that the vast majority of gynephilic (attracted to women) transwomen fully admit to being autogynephilic. How much more plain empirical evidence do we need, proof using phallometry to measure the amount of sexual arousal? We have that too!
The section also includes misleading statements regarding the nature of autogynephilia, trying to confuse the issue with non-autogynephilic sexuality. With deceptive cleverness this writer has substituted the usual “women are autogynephilic too” meme by referencing men instead. But here too, we see that they use the classic rhetorical trick of confusing the map for the territory. Here, they suggest that non-transmen, both homosexual and heterosexual, experience autoandrophilia. But in fact, this deliberately conflates, or rather confuses, pride or even vanity in one’s masculinity with sexual arousal to one’s own maleness. This can only be done because the casual reader doesn’t know the exact nature of autogynephilia and autoandrophilia. These men are not getting turned on by simply being men. They are not being turned on by simply wearing men’s clothing, although autogynephiles do exactly that. (As I pointed out, the vast majority fully admit to sexual arousal to wearing women’s clothing.)
So, we’ve caught them out in a outright lie, in misleading statements meant to confuse the issue, but what about lies of omission? Oh yes, this they have done as well, in that they totally fail to include any mention of transsexual and transgender scientists and writers who support the two type taxonomy and the role that autogynephilia plays in the etiology of one of the types. Where in all of this encyclopedia is Dr. Anne Lawrence?
Actually, they do reference her. But in safety, only mentioning her letter regarding the need for better transgender medical care. But where are her papers, book chapters, and even a book discussing the nature and role of autogynephilia in transwomen’s lives? How can they simply make such an important transwoman’s work on the subject disappear and call this work “encyclopedic”?
(This is especially ironic in that Lawrence has written material, currently in press, entitled, “Gender dysphoria: Overview; Gender dysphoria: Diagnosis; Gender dysphoria: Treatment; Sex reassignment surgery. In A. Wenzel (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of abnormal and clinical psychology)
There is one other lie of omission… where in this “encyclopedia” is the voice of the exclusively androphilic and known to be non-autogynephilic transwomen? By printing this disinformation the editors of this work have given voice to only one of the two types of transsexual, and only the minority that are in denial of their autogynephilic nature at that, completely silencing the other. For an academic work that purports to give voice to the LGBTQ communities, this is a very serious cultural and political offense.
Finally, not content with outright lies, misleading comments, and lies of omission, they top it off with calumny, “underlying biases and assumption revealed in the very foundations of the theory itself.” That is to say, that this supposed academic work tops it off with character assassination of those of us, scientists and transsexual activists, who recognize the abundant (and socially obvious) empirical evidence for the theory, by implying that we are “transphobic” and “biased”.
I cannot condemn this work in any greater terms, knowing how deeply distorting it is of an area in which I have some knowledge. It leads me to distrust any areas where I may not have the in-depth knowledge to recognize any other lies it may contain.
I have to wonder, in deep disgust, how many transfolk are going to read this material in despair. As M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake, an autogynephilic and gender dysphoric (but not yet transitioned) individual wrote in reference to his own experience,
“A brief note on why all this matters. Independently of whether the two-type taxonomy is in fact taxonic, there are obvious political incentives to dismiss the explanatory value of autogynephilia, because it could be construed as invalidating trans women. I get that.
But here’s the thing: you can’t mislead the general public without thereby also misleading the next generation of trans-spectrum people. So when a mildly gender-dysphoric boy spends ten years assuming that his gender problems can’t possibly be in the same taxon as actual trans women, because the autogynephilia tag seems to fit him perfectly and everyone seems to think that the “Blanchard-Bailey theory of autogynephilia” is “clearly untrue”, he might feel a little bit betrayed when it turns out that it’s not clearly untrue and that the transgender community at large has been systematically lying to him, or, worse, is so systematically delusional that they might as well have been lying.”
For more information:
READ MY WHOLE BLOG !!!
List of publications by Anne A. Lawrence, M.D.
References:
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-lgbtq-studies/book244331%20
Two clinically discrete syndromes of transsexualism. Buhrich N, McConaghy N. British Journal of Psychiatry. 1978 Jul;133:73-6. Abstract online
Two types of cross-gender identity. Freund K, Steiner BW, Chan S. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 1982 Feb;11(1):49-63. Abstract online
Typology of male-to-female transsexualism. Blanchard, Ray. Archives of Sexual Behavior. Vol 14(3) Jun 1985, 247-261. Abstract online
Heterosexual and homosexual gender dysphoria. Blanchard, Ray; Clemmensen, Leonard H; Steiner, Betty W. Archives of Sexual Behavior. Vol 16(2) Apr 1987, 139-152. Abstract online
Nonhomosexual gender dysphoria. Blanchard, Ray. Journal of Sex Research. Vol 24 1988, 188-193. Abstract online
The concept of autogynephilia and the typology of male gender dysphoria. Blanchard, Ray. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. Vol 177(10) Oct 1989, 616-623. Abstract online
Nonmonotonic relation of autogynephilia and heterosexual attraction. Blanchard R. J Abnorm Psychol. 1992 May;101(2):271-6. Abstract online
Varieties of autogynephilia and their relationship to gender dysphoria. Blanchard R. Arch Sex Behav. 1993 Jun;22(3):241-51. Abstract online
C. D. Doorn, J. Poortinga and A. M. Verschoor, “Cross-gender identity in transvestites and male transsexuals” http://www.springerlink.com/content/u63p723776v57m11/
Transsexual subtypes : Clinical and theoretical significance Smith Yolanda L. S.; Van Goozen Stephanie H. M.; Kuiper A. J.; Cohen-Kettenis Peggy T.; Psychiatry research (Psychiatry res.) 2005, vol. 137, no3, pp. 151-160 Abstract online
Anne A. Lawrence, “Sexuality Before and After Male-to-Female Sex Reassignment Surgery” 2005 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-005-1793-y
Jaimie F. Veale, Dave E. Clarke and Terri C. Lomax, “Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals” http://www.springerlink.com/content/bp2235t8261q23u3/
A Further Assessment of Blanchard’s Typology of Homosexual versus Non-Homosexual or Autogynephilic Gender Dysphoria, Nuttbrock, et al. Archives of Sexual Behavior
http://www.springerlink.com/content/b48tkl425217331j/
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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 Autogynephilia in the general population
Essay on Census of Post-transition transgender population
Essay Showing Autogynephilic Causation of Late Transitioning MTF Transsexuality
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Dangerous Thoughts
It has long been noted by sexologists, and folk in the “kink” scene, that if one has one paraphilic sexual interest, the likelihood that individual will have other paraphilic interests is dramatically increased. Some of these paraphilic sexual interests tend to cluster. It is these clusters that help sexologist delve into potential underlying common sexual functions that are distorted (hence the the common term “kink”). One of these clusters is that of Voyeurism, Exhibitionism, Frotteurism, and Paraphilic Rape, that are grouped together as Courtship Disorders. Another cluster is Autogynephilia & Autoandrophilia (most often found as “transvestic fetishism” = “erotic cross-dressing”), Autopedophilia, and Apotemnophilia group together as Erotic Target Location Errors. But there have also been many observations of of clustering of other paraphilias that don’t have obvious connections of an underlying common function (other than sexuality in general).
Given the current political climate and some rather pointed and ugly recriminations and insinuations regarding transgender people and the safety of women & children in sex segregated facilities, it behoves us to seek real data rather than polemical rhetoric. In a very timely study involving nearly 6,000 subjects chosen because they are members of a twin birth, the incident rates and co-occurances of various paraphilic sexual interests was explored, including “transvestic fetishism” and “sexually coersive behavior”.
As has been known for decades, most people with an Erotic Target Location Error are male. Males are about nine times more likely to have autogynephilia as females are to have autoandrophilia, with 4.6% of males aroused by cross-dressing and only 0.5% of females. Please note, the number of females was not zero… only small. Compare this number to the estimated 3% to 6% of females being exclusive gynephilic. This ratio also fits the data we have on the relative numbers of gynephilic FTM transmen vs. androphilic/bisexual FTM transmen, adding statitical support to the hypothesis that androphilic/bisexual FTM transmen are autoandrophilic.
First, the good news for transfolk. There was no independent correlation between transvestic fetishism (both autogynephilia and autoandrophilia) and sexually coersive behavior. That is to say, that neither autogynephilia nor autoandrophilia alone has any effect on the likelihood, one way or the other, on whether an individual would be sexually coersive.
On the other hand… that’s not the whole story. As I mentioned above, the likelihood that one will have a co-occuring paraphilic interest is increased with autogynephilia or autoandrophilia, as the data from this paper showed. And with THAT OTHER paraphilic sexual interest, there WAS a correlation with an interest in sexual coersion.
But, before going deeper into the data, it is important to explain a bit about the study and what constituted interest in sexually coersive behavior in this study. The question asked whether the thought of persuing a range of behaviors from deliberate deception (not simple dating exageration) to acheive sexual contact, forcing contact, taking advantage of an incapacitated individual, to forcable rape was sexually arousing. The raw numbers in the population at large were to be honest, more than a little disturbing; They were in fact horrifying. The number of men who had an interest (not neccessarily actualized / committed such an act) in being sexually coersive was 18.5%. That’s nearly one in five men indicated that the idea of performing a sexually coersive act was sexually arousing. The percentage of women who found the thought of performing (not being the victim of) such an act was significantly lower at 3.6%.
Again, while autogynephilia and autoandrophilia alone were not independently correlated with an interest in sexually coersive behavior, when controlling for other paraphilias, this only meant that they were no more likely to have an interest in such coersive acts as the general population. That is to say, that 18.5% of autogynephilic males without a co-occuring paraphilia is interested in sexual coersive acts.
So the good news isn’t that autogynephilic only males are less likely than other males… only as interested as other males in sexually coersive acts.
The bad news is the fact that paraphilias cluster and that there is an increase in the likelihood of co-occuring paraphilias and that as shown in this paper, sexual interest is some paraphilic behaviors correlates with increased interest in sexually coersive behavior, which in turn would suggest that autogynephilia and autoandrophilic people in general would be more likely to be interested in such acts. And, sadly for transfolk, this is the case. The number of autogynephilic and autoandrophilic people (the study lumped male and female “transvestic fetishism” subjects, but given that males are nine time more likely than females to experience transvestic arousal, most of the subjects are male) that are sexually interested in sexually coersive behavior is a disturbingly high 28.3%. That is to say, that one in four finds the thought of performing a sexually coersive act to be sexually arousing. Remember, this does not indicate that transfolk are more likely to actually act on such desires, only that they find the thought of it arousing.
Paraphilic Interest Males Females AGP/AAP
Transvestism 4.6% 0.5% 100%
Voyeurism 18.2% 6.3% 39.8%
Exhibitionism 4.3% 0.6% 12.4%
Sadism 2.7% 2.3% 11.5%
Masochism 4.9% 8.6% 24.8%
Sexual Coersion 18.5% 3.6% 28.3% (AGP/AAP alone: 20%)
What is surprising in this data is that the % of autogynephiles/autoandrophiles that were also interested in voyeurism is so high. I personally hadn’t seen this suggested in the literature. We see lots of references to the high co-occurance of sexual masochism. It may be because of the relative ratios; AGP folks are about twice as likely to be interested in voyeurism as men in general, while they are five times more likely to be interested in masochism as men in general. Perhaps I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am considering the oft noted intense interest in pornography among AGP transgendered people? Perhaps pornography could be considered a watered down version of voyeurism?
Going back to risks of paraphilic sexual interests causing actual sexually coercive acts, the authors estimated from this and other data that perhaps one in three sexual assaults may be averted if all paraphilic individuals were identified and provided treatment interventions aimed at keeping them from acting on their sexually coercive interests. This would, conversely, suggest that two thirds of such assaults are mediated by other factors including Rape Culture in a misogynistic male privileging environment.
Addendum 6/17/2017:
From an earlier study by NIKLAS LÅNGSTRöM, et. al., an interesting concurrence on the percentage of men and women who experience autogynephilia and autoandrophilia and co-occuring paraphilias as described in their abstract,
“We used a random sample of 2,450 18–60 year-olds in the general population of Sweden to study the prevalence as well as the social, sexual, and health correlates of transvestic fetishism (sexual arousal from cross-dressing). Almost three percent (2.8%) of men and 0.4% of women reported at least one episode of transvestic fetishism. Separation from parents, same-sex sexual experiences, being easily sexually aroused, pornography use, and higher masturbation frequency were significantly associated with transvestic fetishism. A positive attitude to this sexual practice and paraphilia indicators—sexual arousal from using pain, exposing genitals to a stranger, and spying on others having sex—were particularly strong correlates to the dependent variable.”
Note that the “particularly strong correlates” with fetishistic transvestism (transvestic autogynephilia and autoandrophilia) were masochism, exhibitionism, and voyeurism, the same group as in the Baur study.
Further Reading:
Essay on Erotic Target Location Errors
Essay on Autoandrophilia in Androphilic/Bisexual Transmen
References:
Baur, E., et Al, “Paraphilic Sexual Interests & Sexually Coersive Behavior: A Population-Based Twin Study” Archives of Sexual Behavior: DOI:10.1007/s10508-015-0674-2
Langstrom, et al., “Transvestic Fetishism in the General Population” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, (2011) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00926230590477934
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Four Out of Five…
… Gynephilic Transwomen Openly Acknowledge Autogynephilia
Or, Which Came First? Chicken Or Egg?
Not too long ago, I got an email from a transwoman, an ‘older transitioner’ who acknowledged without reservation that there was a “correlation” between later transition / gynephilia (non-exclusive androphilic) transwomen and autogynephilia, while tacitly acknowledging that exclusively androphilic early transitioners do not. This was great, but not too surprising, since four out of five such transwomen acknowledge experiencing autogynephilia either currently, or in the past. But she asked, does it mean causation? That is to say, is autogynephilia the prime mover in causing gynephilic (and bisexual / asexual) transwomen to become gender dysphoric and develop a ‘female identity’?
I would have thought it was obvious that it does, and that we don’t need to explicate why. But, no, Sillyolme, nothing in science is self-evident. One really does need to explore the question fairly, making the assumption, the null hypothesis, that it does not, then look to see if the evidence supports that null hypothesis. Only if the data fails to support the null hypothesis should we state that it does.
Let’s start at the beginning shall we? First, does autogynephilia exist? Yes, we need to ask this first, as it can’t be a cause of gender dysphoria if it doesn’t exist. And, indeed, many ‘older transitioners’ insist that autogynephilia does not exist. Well, that one is easily answered, because we have at least 100 years of sexologist observations of a minority of males who definitely become sexually aroused when wearing women’s clothing and/or when thinking of themselves being or becoming female. Consider this typical description of a teenaged male experiencing an autogynephilic episode from Richard Ekins book Male Femaling – A grounded theory approach to cross-dressing and sex-changing,
“… I was 13 when I stepped, quivering with excitement into a pair of French knickers belonging to my sister. I ejaculated almost immediately… The feeling was glorious and yet quite alarming and I felt as though I was leaking urine. … Some three days after this first ‘event’ I got home from school to find my mother out. I went upstairs to do my homework and through the half-opened door of my mother’s bedroom I saw, hanging over a chair, a pair of her pink directoire knickers, obviously discarded in a hurry as she changed before going out. That soft gleaming bundle turned my whole body and senses into a jelly-like state of desire and longing. I had to wear them, to try and see if I was all right. Would it happen again? My answer was there almost immediately in my swift gathering erection as I struggled out of my clothes. …”
We can find hundreds of such examples, very often showing that this behavior is most noted in early adolescence, but continues into adulthood. In fact, we have an entire genre of erotic fiction and images (still and motion picture porn) dedicated to the tastes of autogynephilic adult male individuals. These examples and the males that experience it are common enough that they also form organizations to join together to support each other emotionally and even politically. So, no, we can’t say that autogynephilia does not exist. The null hypothesis is easily proven wrong. Autogynephilia in some males exists.
OK, now that we know that autogynephilia exists in some males, we can take a known group of autogynphilic males, conduct in-depth interviews into just what sorts of things they erotically respond to that the majority non-autogynephilic males don’t. From that we can construct trial psychometric inventories, test items (questions), for an autogynephilia scale, so that we can measure the degree of and autogynephilic factors (types) present in, autogynephilic males. Then carefully test and validate it against known autogynephilic males and a set of control males.
However, some transwomen insist that autogynephilia can’t be the cause of their trans identity, because autogynephilia is common, perhaps near universal, in females. Thus, that would demonstrate that autogynephilia is just part of normal female sexuality.
Does autogynephilia exist in females? Now, remember, we START with the null hypothesis. So, assuming it does NOT exist, can we find (credible) evidence that would disprove the null hypothesis? First, how many sexologists have observed, documented, and remarked on autogynephilic sexual arousal in females?
Wow… I’m hearing an empty, hollow echo in that department. Not one observation, study, or anything… oh wait, I hear some tiny voices outside the hall? Could it be? Why there ARE some folks saying that females do experience autogynephilia… but… what? Oh, yeah… that… ALL of them are autogynephilic males who are claiming that their autogynephilia is the same as what women feel when they wear women’s clothing… after all, wearing “sexy” panties gets them all going, so it must get women going too? Right? Ummmm no.
Seriously, where in the many thousands of diaries, autobiographies, and now online social media blogs published, is there ANY (credible, not catphishing by an AGP male) female individual accounts of anything remotely like the autogynephilia so easily found in a minority of males? Seriously? Where are the copious accounts of how, when they were pre and early teens, that they became intensely sexually aroused upon trying on their big sister’s bra, panties, and pantyhose? Or looking in the mirror at their blossoming breasts and become intensely sexually aroused? Or examining their genitals and finding them so arousing that they masturbate while examining them… cause being female is just so sexy? No? Again that hollow echo.
Oh, but wait, I hear a rising chorus (of autogynephilic males) saying that a Dr. Charles Moser created an autogynphilic inventory for females and tested a group of women. So we ask, as we must assume the null hypothesis, where did he find the known autogynephilic females to interview to create a valid test? How did he validate it? What are the psychometric properties of the instrument? What? No? He did none of that? Well, then what did he do? He carefully rewrote questions from an instrument intended for and validated only for males in a gender clinic setting? Well, looking carefully at the rewrite, they don’t seem to have even a passing bearing on what autogynephilia would theoretically look like in women, or even in androphilic transsexuals. The questions were very carefully written to get positive answers from heterosexual females, as that was the intended (political) goal, to “prove” that straight women were also autogynphilic… but they have no meaning. They don’t measure autogynephilia, they measure mostly anticipatory arousal before dates with men. Well that was disappointing. One and only one demonstrably invalid study. We still have no evidence to disprove the null hypothesis. So, for now, we must accept that females do NOT experience autogynephilia.
OK, so now we know that autogynephilia exists in males, but there’s no (credible) evidence that it exists in females. But are there really two types of MTF transsexual? Does autogynephilia exist equally as much in exclusively androphilic transwomen? Let’s assume the null hypothesis, that there is only one type, not two. We can use the previously developed and validated, instruments to measure any putative autogynephilia in both exclusively androphilic and non-exclusively-androphilic transwomen and see if there is a difference. Here, we have a number of studies done over the years, Buhrich (1977), Freund (1982), Blanchard (1985), Doorn (1994), Smith (2005), Lawrence (2005), and Nuttbrock (2009).
These studies all clearly indicate a strong correlation with non-exclusively androphilic reporting a high, nearly universal, percentage of individuals acknowleging autogynephilic arousal, either currently, or in early adolescence, and a strong anti-correlation with exclusive androphilia. Diving deeper, consider that in the largest and most recent of these studies by Nuttbrock (N=571), the grouping that had the highest percentage reporting sexual arousal to crossdressing was the gynephilic at 82%, while the group with the least non-exclusively androphilic was those who had begun Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) as teenagers, who had the lowest percentage reporting sexual arousal to cross-dressing at 14%.
To support the null hypothesis, there should have been no correlation with sexual orientation. The null hypothesis is NOT supported, there is NOT one group, but two. Further, the null hypothesis regarding autogynephilia not being correlated with gynephilic/bisexual/asexual transwomen, and only these transwomen, is not supported. Androphilic transwomen and natal female women do not experience autogynephilia.
But this only brings us back to where we started, with my correspondent fully conceding to the above. But she still has a valid question, does this mean causation? After all, we all know that correlation does not imply causation. But here we need to bring up a point, actually, it doesn’t imply it… but causation does require correlation. So, we have our first step toward answering the question. With correlation, we may have causation. But we need to explore further.
One of the most accepted methods of deducing whether there is a cause and effect relationship in medicine, including psychiatric epidemiology, is found in Bradford Hill’s Criteria.
The list of the criteria is as follows:
- Strength (effect size): A small association does not mean that there is not a causal effect, though the larger the association, the more likely that it is causal.
- Consistency (reproducibility): Consistent findings observed by different persons in different places with different samples strengthens the likelihood of an effect.
- Specificity: Causation is likely if there is a very specific population at a specific site and disease with no other likely explanation. The more specific an association between a factor and an effect is, the bigger the probability of a causal relationship.
- Temporality: The effect has to occur after the cause (and if there is an expected delay between the cause and expected effect, then the effect must occur after that delay).
- Biological gradient: Greater exposure (dosage or intensity of cause) should generally lead to greater incidence of the effect. However, in some cases, the mere presence of the factor can trigger the effect. In other cases, an inverse proportion is observed: greater exposure leads to lower incidence (as found in vitamin deficiencies).
- Plausibility: A plausible mechanism between cause and effect is helpful (but Hill noted that knowledge of the mechanism is limited by current knowledge).
- Coherence: Coherence between epidemiological and laboratory findings increases the likelihood of an effect. However, Hill noted that “… lack of such [laboratory] evidence cannot nullify the epidemiological effect on associations”.
- Experiment: “Occasionally it is possible to appeal to experimental evidence”.
- Analogy: The effect of similar factors may be considered.
Taking each in turn:
- Strength of the correlation is very high. Four out of five gynephilic transwomen acknowledge experiencing, currently or in the past, autogynephilia. Considering that autogynephilia is very rare in the general male population and non-existent in the female population, this correlation is very, very high. But it gets even higher when considering the experimental results of phallometry of those cross-dressers experiencing gender dysphoria who claim that they did not experience sexual arousal to cross-dressing, did in fact demonstrate mild sexual arousal to cross-dressing narration (autogynephilic erotic fiction) compared to control males.
- Consistency of the correlation is easily shown by looking at the literature referenced above, in which study after study, over four decades, involving around a thousand transwomen, consistently shows the same data, even using different measures of sexual orientation and autogynephilia.
- Specificity is shown in that it is only non-exclusively-androphilic males who experience autogynephilia and that a subset of those males develop gender dysphoria.
- Temporality is demonstrated in that the majority of non-exclusively-androphilic males who become gender dysphoric and come to identify as women report autogynephilia in adolescence which seems to mellow even as their need to cross-dress and their gender dysphoria increases, reaching a threshold, a crisis point, most commonly in their mid-30’s. As Prince (herself an autogynephile) and Doctor documented, “Among our subjects, 79% did not appear in public cross dressed prior to age 20; at that time, most of the subjects had already had several years of experience with cross dressing. The average number of years of practice with cross dressing prior to owning a full feminine outfit was 15. The average number of years of practice with cross dressing prior to adoption of a feminine name was 21. Again, we have factual evidence indicative of the considerable time required for the development of the cross-gender identity.”
- A gradient effect is easily found in autogynephilia in that men who have only very mild autogynephilia typically are content to cross-dress in private, never developing severe gender dysphoria or a female gender identity. There are individuals with partial autogynephilia who only wish to have breasts, who are content with mildly feminizing HRT, cross-dressing in public only occasionally. There are those who come to identify as “Bi-Gendered” or “Gender Fluid” who go back and forth. And finally, there are those whose autogynephilic ideation was intensely focused on being completely female and develop intense and all-consuming gender dysphoria who go on to live full-time as women, obtain HRT, and SRS. A number of studies have found that intensity and the specific nature of their autogynephilia correlates with these differential outcomes. Further, these effects seem to indicate both a continuum and a progression (criterion #4). There is another dosage effect that though subtle, is of high importance to the question of causation and the nature of autogynephilia itself found by Blanchard in “Nonmonotonic relation of autogynephilia and heterosexual attraction”, from the abstract, “the highest levels of autogynephilia were observed at intermediate rather than high levels of heterosexual interest; that is, the function relating these variables took the form of an inverted U. This finding supports the hypothesis that autogynephilia is a misdirected type of heterosexual impulse, which arises in association with normal heterosexuality but also competes with it”. This non-monotonic relationship was questioned in the Nuttbrock study, as they hypothesized that autogynephilia was a classic conditioned sexual fetish that had arisen as a consequence of cross-dressing and gender dysphoria, and not the cause. But Lawrence easily demonstrated that Nuttbrock missed the relationship due to improper mathematical treatment of the data… and thus the dosage relationship evidence remains valid.
- Plausability. This is almost self-evident. If one’s sexual ideation is exclusively autogynephilic, if each time such an individual sees herself as obligatorially female during sex, that would be strong drive towards gender dysphoria and an incentive to adopt a female gender identity, over time.
- Coherence with laboratory tests are found by looking at brain sex research which shows that non-exclusively-androphilic transwomen are different from exclusively androphilic transwomen AND females, as expected by the theory that autogynephilia is the cause, not the result, of gender dysphoria and a female gender identity.
- Experiments with animals are not possible as we have no animal models of autogynephilia.
- Analogy is found in the amazing similarity of autogynephilia and its effects are found in males with apotemnophilia, the sexual desire for limb amputation, and autopedophilia, the sexual desire to be a child. In fact, a very high percentage of heterosexual apotemnophiliacs are also autogynephilic, experiencing an Erotic Target Location Error in which they wish to become female amputees.
So, we can see that we meet nearly all, saving only experimental evidence, to support the conclusion that autogynephilia is the cause, and not the result or merely a co-occuring factor, of gender dysporia and female gender identity in non-exclusively-androphilic transwomen.
Additional Reading:
Essay on the development of an Autogynphilia Instrument in Males
Essay on the Non-Validity of Moser’s “Autogynephilia in Women”
Essays on evidence to support the two type taxonomy of MTF transsexuality
Essay on the Origins of Cross-Gender Identity in Transsexuals
Essays on Brain Sex in Transsexuals
Essay on analogy between autogynephilia and apotemnophilia
References:
Textbook of Psychiatric Epidemiology, 3rd Edition, Wiley Press
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Flipping the Bird
Book Review: Galileo’s Middle Finger – Heretics, Activists, And The Search For Justice In Science, by Alice Dreger
Dr. Dreger’s latest book could be described as a coming of age story as it chronicles her journey from naive graduate student to a world class activist historian, seeker of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. She truly is a super-hero, if any real, live human being can be. Hers is a journey into social justice activism, only to find that many of the self-styled activists were searching for anything but social justice.
Dreger’s introduction to activism was the result of meeting modern examples of the very injustice that she had previously documented had occurred to people in the 19th Century when their bodies didn’t conform to the expected norms for males and females, the so called “Hermaphrodites”, which today we called “intersexed” or “people with Disorders of Sexual Development” (DSD). Writing about her academic work on 19th Century treatment of intersexed people,
“…It ended up pushing me into two unfamiliar and intense worlds: contemporary sex politics and contemporary medical activism. That’s because, thanks to the Internet, by the time I came to this topic, in the mid-1990s, something was going on that the Victorian doctors would never have imagined: People who had been born with various sex anomoalies had started to find each other, and they had started to organize as an identity movement. Labeling themselves intersex, many gather under the leadership of Bo Laurent, the founder of the Intersex Society of North America, and after reading my Victorian Studies article, some of these intersex activists, including Bo, contacted me. A couple wrote me simply to complain that they found some of my language offensive, apparently not realizing I was relaying Victorian rhetoric in my article. By contrast, Bo got my work. And she asked for my help in changing the way children born intersex were treated in modern medicine. … I hastened to tell Bo, “I’m a historian; I study dead people.” However, once I understood what was really going on at pediatric hospitals all over the nation – once I understood that Bo’s clitoris had been amputated in the name of sex “normalcy” and that this practice was still going on – I felt I had to assist in her efforts.”
Dreger rose to that challenge, taking on a leadership role in the fight to end medically unnecessary surgeries on children with ambigous genitalia. This entailed taking on the medical establishment, confronting them, insisting that they re-examine their protocols in the light of real damage to real people. It took a while, years, but the work of these activists with whom Dreger worked, began to seriously effect the desired change. While the work is not truly complete, it is well on the way. In her book, she details the long hours, the difficulties encountered, but most importantly, the need for such evidence based activism, that the work of these activists was based on demonstrating the real outcomes of these surgeries, which diverged greatly from the view previously held, that these surgeries helped. If the book went no further, it would be worth buying it.
But Dreger’s work, and her life, as she took a new position at Northwestern University would take another turn,
“It was shortly after this time that I took on a new scholarly project, one that without warning forced me to question my politics and my political loyalties … This was a project that suddenly changed me from an activist going after establishment scientists into an aide-de-camp to scientists who found themselves the target of activists like me. Indeed, this project soon put me in a position I would never have imagined for myself; vilified by gender activists at the National Women’s Studies Association meeting and then celebrated at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society by the enemies of my childhood hero, Stephen Jay Gould.”
In 2003, J. Michael Bailey had published his book on femininity in males, The Man Who Would Be Queen. This had set off a firestorm among a group of autogynephilic transwomen who took exception to Bailey’s effort to popularize Ray Blanchard’s research which had shown that there were two etiologies leading to gender dysphoria, that there were two (and only two) types of transwomen, as different as night and day, one that was gynephilic, autogynephilic, and gender typical until they announced their intention to transition – and the other that was exclusively androphilic and gender atypical since birth. This led to a number of serious accusations of wrongdoing by Bailey, to which Dreger was asked by her friend Paul Vasey to investigate. As Dreger expresses her initial reluctance,
“Still, I thought I knew from my background in science studies and a decade of intersex work how to navigate an identity politics minefield, so I wasn’t that worried when in 2006 I set out to investigate the history of what had really happened with Bailey and his critics. My investigation ballooned into a year of intensive research and a fifty-thousand word peer-reviewed scholarly account of the controversy. And the results shocked me. Letting the data lead me, I uncovered a story that upended the simple narrative of power and oppression to which we leftist science studies scholars had become accustomed. – I found that, in the Bailey case, a small group had tried to bury a politically challenging scientific theory by killing the messenger. In the process of doing so, these critics, rather than restrict themselves to argument over the ideas, had charged Bailey with a whole host of serious crimes, including abusing the rights of subjects, having sex with a transsexual research subject, and making up data. The individuals making these charges – a trio of powerful transgender women, two of them situated in the safe house of liberal academia – had nearly ruined Bailey’s reputation and his life. To do so, they had used some of the tactics we had used in the intersex rights movement. … but there was one crucial difference: What they claimed about Bailey simply wasn’t true.”
Here, I have to break from the usual traditional book review to share my own experiences in this story. I personally know most of the players. I was an active participant in Bo Laurent’s work, meeting with her on several occasions, donating money, and helping her in a minor way to raise funds from the transsexual community. One of those transwomen who donated was at the time, also a friendly acquaintance of mine, Lynn Conway, one of the “trio of powerful transsexual women”. The other two were Andrea James, who I had never heard of before, and Deirdre McCloskey, who my good friend (and college roommate) Dr. Joy Shaffer, had spoken of highly. It was reading Dreger’s lengthy paper on the Bailey affair that upended MY life, led me to become friends with Kiira Trea and eventually to write this blog at her encouragement. This blog is the direct result of Dreger’s history of the Bailey affair. I can think of no greater testament to the power of a scholar’s work, than that it should inspire others to action.
But Dreger’s story is only just beginning,
“You can probably guess what happens when you expose the unseemly deeds of the people who fight dirty … Certainly I should have known what was coming – after all, I had literally written what amounted to a book on what this small group of activists had done to Bailey. But it was still pretty uncomfortable when I became the new target of their precise and unrelenting attacks. The online story soon morphed into “Alice Dreger versus the rights of sexual minorities,” and no matter how hard I tried to point people back to documentation of the truth, facts just didn’t seem to matter.”
I must share, that I too was vilified by these same transwomen, when I openly supported Dreger, Bailey, Blanchard, and Lawrence.
Because of her experiences, Dreger set out on a new scholarly journey,
“Troubled and confused by this ordeal, in 2008 I purposefully set out on a journey – or rather a series of journeys – that ended up lasting six years. During this time, I moved back and forth between camps of activists and camps of scientists, to try to understand what happens – and to figure out what should happen – when activists and scholars find themselves in conflict over critical matters of human identity.”
The result of those journeys is her new book. It explores intersex, transgender, indigenous peoples of the South American rainforest, back to intersexed people again. Its quite a journey, of which I can only barely touch upon in this review. While I read the entire book with great pleasure, here I chose to focus on the section dealing with transgender and Bailey’s book and its aftermath.
In delving further into the book, one finds gems like this,
“When people ask me how transgender is different from intersex, I usually start by saying that intersex and transgender people have historically suffered from opposite problems for the same reason. Whereas intersex people have historically been subjected to sex “normalizing” hormones and surgeries they have not wanted, transgender people have had a hard time getting the sex-changing hormones and surgeries they have wanted. Both problems arise from a single cause: a heterosexist medical establishment determined to retain control over who gets to be what sex.”
She even has a very insightful explanation of why the “trio”, and many others in the autogynephilic transwomen’s community, went to war against Bailey,
“To understand the vehemence of the backlash against Bailey’s book, you have to understand one more thing. There’s a critical difference between autogynephilia and most other sexual orientations; Most other orientations aren’t erotically disrupted simply by being labeled. When you call a typical gay man homosexual, you’re not disturbing his sexual hopes and desires. By contrast, autogynephilia is perhaps best understood as a love that would really rather we didn’t speak its name. The ultimate eroticism of autogynephilia lies in the idea of really becoming or being a woman, not in being a natal male who desires to be a woman. … The erotic fantasy is to really be a woman. Indeed, according to a vision of transsexualism common among those transitioning from lives as privileged straight men to trans women, sex reassignment procedures are restorative rather than transformative… For Bailey or anyone else to call someone with armour de soi en femme an autogynephile or even a transgender woman – rather than simply a woman – is at some level to interfere with her core sexual desire. Such naming also risks questioning her core self-identity … When they felt that Bailey was fundamentally threatening their selves and their social identities as women – well, it’s because he was. That’s what talking openly about autogynephilia necessarily does.”
There’s a wonderful bon mot moment in the movie, Desert Hearts, when a lesbian scholar vows that she will have her revenge on a homophobe when she writes her memoirs. In this book, one could say that Dreger takes her revenge on McCloskey, Conway, and especially James by revealing evidence that they are not only autogynephilic, but knowingly so, as Dreger reprints text from an email from Andrea James to Anne Lawrence in 1998,
“A definition is inherently inclusive or exclusive, and there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t feel they belong in or out of a definition. I got body slammed by the usual suspects in 1996 for recommending a Blanchard book. Sure, he’s pretty much the Antichrist to the surgery-on-demand folks, and I’ve heard some horror stories about the institute he runs that justify the nickname “Jurassic Clarke.” However, I found many of his observations to be quite valid, even brilliant, especially in distinguishing early and late-transitioning TS patterns of thought and behavior. I’ve noticed in most TSs, and in “surgery addicts” especially, a certain sort of self-loathing, a drive to efface every shred of masculinity. While I readily admit to my own autogynephilia, I would contend that my drives towards feminization seem to have a component pushing me from the opposite direction as well.”
Dreger goes on,
“OK, THIS WAS FASCINATING. A prior admission to autogynephilia from James and what seemed to amount to the same from McCloskey – plus something very much like an ongoing tacit admission from Conway? – lying behind the attempts to bury Bailey. All that spoke to motivation on the part of Conway et al.”
Personally, I find this damning, as James has made a special point of defaming a number of individuals in the transcommunity for supporting Anne Lawrence, Bailey, or Blanchard. She writes scurrilous material on her website against Dreger, Bailey, Blanchard, Lawrence, and many other notable transwomen, including myself; all for writing about a phenomena of which she admits she experiences.
Dreger recounts her year of research on the Bailey affair, detailing the ways in which Conway and James attack Bailey and how she was able to discover the truth of the matter, setting the record straight. She also recounts how these two transwomen then turned on her, attempting to blacken her name with the same tar filled brush. In the end, it becomes clear, that though the experience was unpleasant, it lead her to connect with a number of other scholars who have wrongfully been attacked and vilified by other groups, in other fields.
At the end of the book, Dreger lays out recommendations for society and especially for social justice advocates, to follow an evidence based approach. I would like to think that I would qualify as an exemplar of her recommendations, in my conduct of this affair and of my previous, and definitely of my future, activism.
Further External Reading:
I highly recommend purchasing and carefully reading this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Middle-Finger-Heretics-Activists/dp/1594206082
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Triumph for Whom?
In a recent popular magazine article, intellectual essayist, Charlotte Allen wrote an extensive and deep exposition on the events of the past 15 years of the increase in visibility of the Transgender community. Encouragingly, it was unflinching in its exploration of not only the pop-psychology, but also the REAL psychology and politics. Of necessity, this also means that she explained about the two type taxonomy, Blanchard’s role in researching it, Bailey’s role in popularizing it… and of the disgraceful behavior of the autogynephilic transwomen who attempted to shout down those who, in their research, came to support the scientific recognition that “late transitioning” transwomen are on the same continuum as transvestites / cross-dressers. Ms. Allen writes,
“Blanchard’s theory is that transgenders fall into two distinct categories whose sexual orientations, interests, choice of careers, and even, to a large extent, social class are violently different from each other. One of those categories he calls “homosexual” transgenders, whose sexual attraction, from childhood to death, is strictly toward members of their own genetic sex. Among males, they’re the extremely effeminate boys who identify as girls in early childhood, play with dolls and other girls’ toys, and shun the rough-and-tumble play typical of boys their age. Studies at Vanderbilt and the University of London have shown that 70 to 80 percent of those trans-children grow out of their trans-identity at puberty and become, simply, gay adolescents and, later, gay adult men. The 20 to 30 percent who do take formal steps toward transitioning, Blanchard believes, are a self-selected group who, thanks to their more delicate looks, can function fairly successfully as women. “They’re people who might be unsuccessful as men,” Blanchard said. — Homosexual transgender men transition early in adulthood, typically during their twenties, Blanchard observed. They account for the vast majority of transgenders in the non-Western world: from the “two-spirits” of indigenous North American tribes, to the fa’afafine of Samoa, to the kathoeys of Thailand who can easily fool Western sex tourists into misidentifying them as women. In those societies there is typically a recognized and thoroughly integrated social niche for men who identify and dress as women. The fa’afafine typically work as secretaries, nannies, and housekeepers—stereotypically female occupations. In that respect, they’re not unlike the flamboyant gay men of Western culture who carved out a recognized social niche for themselves in such occupations as hairdresser, dancer, makeup artist, interior decorator, couturier, and fashion consultant (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). Boys and men in drag played women’s roles on stage from classical times to the 17th century, and they continue to be popular entertainers for both gays and heterosexuals to this day, as the demographics of the Kit Kat Lounge attest. — By contrast, Blanchard discovered that the predominant form that trangenderism takes in the West today involves men who, as men, have never identified as homosexual in their erotic attractions, but rather as heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual. Those men, his research revealed, tended to make their transitions in their mid-to-late thirties, or even later—at least a full decade on average after the homosexual transgenders did. Furthermore, many of those men were married and fathers before they came out. The paradigm might be travel writer Jan Morris, now 88, who spent the first 46 years of her life as James Morris, the journalist who covered Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mt. Everest and who fathered five children before undergoing transition surgery in 1972. And many in this heterosexual population—in contrast to the homosexual transgenders on the drag scene—worked in stereotypically hypermasculine professions: They’d been parachutists, Navy SEALs, engineers, policemen, firemen, and high school football coaches. The billionaire philanthropist James Pritzker, who became Jennifer Natalya Pritzker in 2013, in his early sixties, is a retired much-decorated U.S. Army lieutenant colonel with three children by his former wife. “They’ll say that they chose those professions in order to suppress their feelings as females,” Blanchard said. “But no one put a gun to their heads to choose those jobs.” Many late-transitioning transgenders (Jennifer Finney Boylan, for example) insist, contra Blanchard, that they were aware from early childhood that they were born into the wrong body—but Blanchard thinks they aren’t being honest with themselves.”
Ms. Allen then goes on to explain how certain members of the autogynephilic tranwomen’s community took umbridge with Bailey’s attempt at popularizing Blanchard’s work,
“The Man Who Would Be Queen inflamed transgender activists. It did have certain inflammatory aspects. There was the jacket photo of the man in high heels. Blanchard’s coinage “autogynephilia” (extensively used by Bailey in the book), with its connotations of fetishism, deviance, and mental disorder, has never sat well with transgenders. Bailey was even more adamant than Blanchard that autogynephilic transgenders often lied about their erotic fascination with cross-dressing. Furthermore, Bailey observed, drawing on his previous studies, that homosexual transgenders tended to come from lower socioeconomic classes than autogynephiles, and that they tended to have short time-horizons that often led them into streetwalking, shoplifting, and other petty crimes. “Prostitution is the single most common occupation,” Bailey wrote. His book also, perhaps inadvertently, included details about “Cher” that made her real identity quickly discoverable to those in the know: Anjelica Kieltyka, a Chicago transgender woman who, although disagreeing with Bailey about his characterization of her as autogynephilic, had made frequent guest appearances in his classes and had introduced him to other figures in the city’s transgender scene. — Bailey’s book caught the immediate—and hostile—attention of Lynn Conway, now 77, a pioneer of computer-chip design during the 1970s, a longtime engineering professor at the University of Michigan, and a leading transgender activist who figured as one of Time’s “21 Transgender People Who Influenced American Culture” in its May 2014 cover story. Conway was close to Andrea James (both had been patients of Dr. Ousterhout and touted his facial-feminization techniques on their websites). James, best-known for counseling Felicity Huffman, the star of the film Transamerica (2005), on transgender voice and mannerisms, underwent transition surgery in 1996. She and Conway teamed up with Kieltyka, and with Deirdre McCloskey, to make sure that The Man Who Would Be Queen would not receive a respectable academic hearing. McCloskey’s participation in this enterprise seems odd. For one thing, her memoir, Crossing, describes her pre-transition self as having been “sexually aroused” as a young man by accounts of cross-dressing—a classic Blanchard-esque theme.”
She also notes that the science does not support the contention that “late transitioners” have female brains,
“The medical evidence for a mismatch between brains and bodies is ambiguous. The two studies cited most frequently by transgender activists, published in 1995 and 2000, examined the brains of a total of seven male-to-female transgenders and found that a region of the hypothalamus, an almond-shaped area of the brain that controls the release of hormones by the pituitary gland, was female-typical in those brains. But those studies have been criticized for not controlling for the estrogen—which affects the size of the hypothalamus—that most male-to-female transgenders take daily in order to maintain their feminine appearance.”
If I had any serious criticism of her essay, it would be in the way that she hews to the stereotype that transkids, “homosexual transsexuals”, are stereotyped as being prone to becoming petty criminals, prostitutes, and drag performers. I also found her take on the recent improvements in medicine and law regarding the treatment of transchildren and teens to be unsympathetic. She gives one the impression that too many gender variant pre-teens are being pushed into iatrogenic trauma via puberty blockers, etc. While it may be true that autogynephiles may overvalue transition, most transkids and our caregivers are careful not to push children who are more likely to become gay and lesbian adults into wrong paths.
Note: The magazine, The Weekly Standard, from which the above material was drawn is now defunct and the website no longer available.
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