Originally posted 2021-01-07 14:43:41.
Autogynephilia (AGP) is ‘A man’s propensity to be aroused at the thought or image of himself as a woman’ (Blanchard) and it is the main cause of non-homosexual gender dysphoria in males. But what actually causes it? The key to this lies in first understanding that there is nothing at all unusual about a male with Autogynephilia, other than the Autogynephilia itself.
Autogynephilia appears to hijack the normal male Erotic Target identification system and reverse it so that it reflects onto the self. This means that a man with it will wish to play the role of his own lover in some way. The easiest to understand is sometimes called ‘fetishistic transvestism’ where the man puts on women’s clothes in order to masturbate. There are, however, other forms that it can take.
Autogynephilia has five recognised forms, transvestic, anatomical, physiological, behavioural and interpersonal, and these may occur individually or in combination. All of these facilitate some sense of ‘experiencing being a woman.’ They are all sexualised although as Professor Ray Blanchard, who described the condition, said, ‘Autogynephilia is a propensity.’ So males with it may not constantly engage in sexualised behaviour (though some do) but they always have the propensity to do so.
In addition, those with it have three sexual orientations: they may be gynephilic (heterosexual, attracted to women), annalloerotic (having no sexual relations at all with others) or pseudo-bisexual, (pursuing sex with men but only when in role as a woman). In the last case, where the individual lives full-time as a woman, he may only have relations with men, but these are still considered pseudo-bisexual in Blanchard.
In Blanchard’s testing, the proportions were about 60:20:20, but this may have changed and also appears to be culturally dependent. All forms, however, are principally gynephilic. As Blanchard said, ‘You have to be gynephilic to be Autogynephilic.’
To explain this through a comparison, the other main provocation for males to wish to appear to be feminine is homosexuality. This is because gender is primarily the means by which we select Erotic Targets or more simply, mates. Simply, if one wishes to seduce masculine men, one makes oneself as feminine as possible, since opposites attract. Now this link has been denied by modern Western ‘gays’ whom I call the New Gay Men, who posit a like with like model based on Platonic thinking and supported by some misguided thinkers like Alfred Kinsey. However this model only applies in parts of Western culture and nowhere else on Earth or in human history.
So. leaving that anomaly aside, the desire to seduce masculine males will lead one to desire to perform femininity, whether one is male or female oneself. In other words Transsexual Homosexuals, that is Homosexuals who live as women, are just doing what other women do, in the same circumstances. It is simple and clear. Autogynephilia is anything but.
This leads to a conundrum. It is not really logical to consider someone who only pursues men for sex in which she will be the recipient, who is completely unattracted to females and indeed may experience revulsion towards them, all of which are typical of the Transsexual Homosexual, and is like this all the time, as ‘bisexual.’ I think we have to rethink that.
Consider Chikay, above, from the Philippines. She was a perfectly normal little boy until she came home from school one day, age 13 and found a pair of her sister’s panties on the bed. She told me she put them on and ‘It was like an explosion. I’d never felt anything like it. I became a girl there and then.’ She went on to explain that every day after that, even at school where she had to wear a boy’s uniform, she would wear girls’ panties and as son as she finished school she completed her transformation.
That, in Blanchard would lead to a diagnosis of Autogynephilia, but Chikay, now 27, shows none of the typical signs. She is beautiful, feminine and passing, if a little tall. She is elegant and graceful; her manner is not forced but natural; her skin is completely smooth and clear despite the fact that she no longer takes hormones. She expresses revulsion to the idea of having sex with a female. All of these are typical of the Transsexual Homosexual type. Because of girls like Chikay, of whom there are many, it does appear that the Blanchard Taxonomy must be only part of the picture.
What else could cause the difference between the typical Western Autogynephile, who is not in the least feminine and completely unconvincing as a woman, and this other type, found across the world but particularly in Asia, who are feminine and often so completely convincing as girls that they are mistaken for girls by Asian women?
Socialisation
Having studied this for well over a decade, the only plausible reason I have found is socialisation. To explain, there is significant homophobia in the West, and almost none in much of Southeast Asia. Little boys are conditioned by parents and peers that being a Homosexual is wrong and they may suffer for it. (I am aware that this has somewhat changed in the last decade but the people we’re talking about are all older.) In southeast Asia, although fathers might be violent in their rejection, in the main they are sanguine, especially if the son in question is not the eldest.
As a result, boys who have nascent Homosexuality or Autogynephilia in the West, are likely to suppress or repress it, keeping it a secret. They are conditioned by the culture they grow up in to ‘act like boys’ and later, men. They do not learn ‘how to be girls.’ Instead they are coerced into performing masculinity at all times.
On the other hand in Southeast Asia, they will be identified when they are still very young and propelled by parents, peers and others, towards the other ‘baby gays’ who will probably hang around the volleyball court, wearing hair as long as they dare and shorts several years too small. In Luzon in the Philippines, this group is called Kabaklaan, ‘the way of the bakla.’ This is like a parallel school where they will learn how to perform femininity.
This understanding of the importance of socialisation in shaping the adult behaviour of people like Chikay on the one hand and the typical Western Autogynephile on the other, helps greatly in teasing out the differences.
Although Autogynephilic and Homosexual ladyboys in Southeast Asia do grow up with each other and typically see no difference in each other, these differences do exist.
Variations
The above, especially the West, leads to a surprising degree of variation in presentation. This is more pronounced in the West, again because of the adolescent socialisation of Autogynephiles. They do not in general, seek to conceal practices like masturbation, using dildos; they almost certainly will ‘behave like girls’ or in other words preform femininity and they will use cosmetics, hormones and silicone injections to shape their bodies because they are socialised with the Homosexuals, who are doing all of these things naturally. AGPs are just going with the flow.
The Western Autogynephile has no such advantages. He is likely to be isolated as an adolescent, unless he completely suppresses his impulse to be feminine. Because of the Western hostility towards male femininity, he may attempt to perform a ‘maxxed out’ version of masculinity. If he marries, his wife will be beautiful. He is not a dissolute so if he has children he will try to support them and may conceal his Autogynephilia for decades. Quite understandably he will be, at the end of this, like an overwound spring.
Most people would assume that all Autogynephilic males are transvestic, or that they desire to transition, but this is far from the truth. A significant number either have no such desire or succeed in suppressing it. They obtain gratification in other ways. For example, a man may present as a man but desire to be penetrated. In this way he experiences what he thinks is ‘sex as a woman,’ being the recipient in sex. This leads to confusion.
There are other practices that play much the same role, like wearing women’s underwear, sanitary pads, feminine products and so on, or even just indulging in what the man regards as feminine activities. Men have been recorded as getting sexual relief from knitting, for example. Others simply surround themselves with women and avoid the company of other men.
This really is an extremely varied condition, therefore. But none of the above, which describe the symptoms of Autogynephilia actually address the cause and this has resulted in much speculation. Causation, as has been said, is key. But before understanding causation, we need to learn how Autogynephilia actually works.
Men are sexual-target oriented and extremely visual (this is why the transvestic form of Autogynephilia is prevalent.) All men develop, in their minds, a mental model of their ideal female partner. This is their Erotic Target. It is part of the larger mental model that we all inhabit.
In most men, this Erotic Target remains outside the self; it is the image of someone we are looking for. But in some men, this image, instead of becoming associated with another person, in this case a flesh and blood woman, becomes associated with the self that created it. Dr Blanchard called this the Erotic Target Location Error or ETLE. Notice that the Erotic Target does not necessarily have to be a woman; many other targets are available. Homosexual males with Autoandrophilia, a related condition, will normally develop targets who are men, but others target plush animals — giving us ‘furries’ — anime characters, children and so on.
So what this tells us is that the mechanism that powers Autogynephilia is actually present in all men, more or less, since the erotic targeting system appears to be universal. The question becomes, therefore, what causes the Location Error? Why is it reflected back onto the self?
There is much debate, often angry, about the development of the condition. Many who would quickly be diagnosed as having it, deny its very existence and even attempt to suppress investigation. A classic example would be the orchestrated and malicious attempt to smear Dr J Michael Bailey after he published a book in 2003, The Man Who Would Be Queen, discussing Blanchard’s theories. The leaders of this attack, which was unwarranted, were three transitioned Autogynephilic males, Lynn Conway, Andrea James and Deirdre McCloskey. The latter two are clearly recognisable as AGPs of the Western type. Others, such as Jamie Veale and Julia Serano — both also readily identifiable as AGPs under Blanchard — have penned article after spurious article trying to discredit the theory.
Thankfully, once the mechanism by which Autogynephilia works is understood, the condition itself ceases to be mysterious. It is provoked by the misdirection of a normal male erotic targeting system, such that the target is the self, but envisioned as a woman. (There are examples of lesbian women who appear to exhibit something very similar, but I’ll discuss that in another article; heterosexual women do not.)
Gender Dysphoria
Gender Dysphoria is a sense of unease or discomfort at presenting in the gender which we do. Consider, if you are a heterosexual man, without Autogynephilia, how you might feel if you were obliged to walk down the High Street in a pink mini-dress and heels, with long hair and makeup. Most men would feel highly uncomfortable; well, people with Gender Dysphoria claim to experience feelings like that all the time, but as a result of appearing in the gender normally associated with their sex..
The Gender Dysphoria that non-homosexual males with Autogynephilia feel is specifically related to appearance, measured against the idealised Erotic Target, which is the self. While again it’s important to remember that by no means all men with Autogynephilia dress as or desire to appear to be women in public, this example is readily understandable. So imagine that your Erotic Target is yourself, as a woman. Remember that you are an adult heterosexual male. Suppose that you look at yourself in a mirror: do you see the beautiful woman who is your erotic target or do you see a man — which repulses you, because, as a heterosexual man, masculinity does that?
Of course, you see a man; the illusion is shattered and a sensation similar to that experienced in coitus interruptus sets on. This can lead to severe depression and even suicidality, but it can also lead the man to try to bring himself into line with his Erotic Target, a beautiful woman. He will soon be buying outsize women’s clothing from discreet online sources and he is, without realising it usually, on the way to a major change of life.
Note however, that if the Autogynephilia commences in the early teens, then it might be quite easy for the boy to ‘see himself as a girl’ using a mirror, some lipstick and a wig. But he will be isolated from others like himself, knowing that he doesn’t dare step out of his room like that. In contrast to the Southeast Asian, he is at a loss how to proceed; he has no mentors, no Kabaklaan. Our Southeast Asian, at this very point, would be taking his first steps on the pageant stage.
The Erotic Target is not seen by the self as a part of itself, even though it is. It is seen as a separate character, with its own personality. It is the ghost in the machine, the ‘woman inside’. We might call this the ‘Autogynephilic artefact’, because it is entirely constructed by the man’s own Autogynephilia, which has hijacked his normal targeting system. Indeed, we might even call it ‘the hijacker.’
As the man indulges it, the artefact will grow in strength. Usually, at some point, he will name it. at first this will be a secret name that only he knows, until the day the invented character can be ‘set free’. But in his dreams and private life, it — now she — will become increasingly dominant. Unfortunately, because in the West this man will have been socialised as a man and probably quite tough one; he has not learned the feminine ways of the Homosexual and is likely to offend people.
She will be a powerful character; she has to be, because she is in competition with the male host and to overwhelm him she must be stronger than he is. Unfortunately, this, which he sees as her strength, is actually her ability to browbeat and intimidate her male host. This proclivity, if the individual transitions, is all too often translated to dealings with other people.
In other forms of Autogynephilia, the man will desire to experience himself as a woman (or as he thinks a woman is) through other means. These will usually become increasingly intense or spill over to other forms. He may become addicted to being penetrated anally; men who like this may move on to desiring it while dressed as a woman and soon, wish to transition. He may seek to reshape his body, through the use of prosthetics, to resemble his Erotic Target’s; seek to insert himself into women’s social and sporting activities or political causes and so on.
There is also evidence that Autogynephilia is associated with high testosterone levels, which are typical of male puberty from the onset until around twenty-one. Indeed, it is moot whether the relief reported by men with Autogynephilia, who have undergone Cosmetic Genital Surgery (CGS) to invert the penis and form a pseudo-vagina, is actually caused by removing the source of testosterone in the body. This is especially likely where the man is neither pseudo-bisexual nor has Anatomical Autogynephilia since these men will not use their neo-vagina to accommodate their lovers and have minimal dysmorphia regarding their penises. This begs the question, of course, whether it might be enough to prescribe anti-androgens to provide relief from Gender Dysphoria, and Professor Bailey has reported case histories that appear to support this.
The end is always the same: the creation of a semi-autonomous alter ego that takes control over the host. Generally, when the severe Gender Dysphoria caused by this sets on, some degree of transvestism will occur, even if it is not the root stimulus.
So what is the specific trigger? What causes a perfectly normal erotic targeting system to fail in this manner? Some have proposed a theory of ‘masochistic emasculation fetish,’ but while many Autogynephilic males certainly do exhibit this — indeed there is a case for making it a Type alongside the existing five — this does not answer the question, it just shifts it. Why is it happening in the first place?
The truth is that there are as many potential triggers as there are cases of Autogynephilia. However, from the information we have, the many case histories collected by Dr Ann Lawrence and the interviews I’ve conducted myself, together with the accepted wisdom of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) we can be sure that this is something that first sets on at puberty and so either the condition must be innate and manifests at that time, or that events surrounding puberty trigger it.
That suggests that we must be aware of the potentially triggering factors that boys might be exposed to at around that age. One obvious example would be pornography, which is now ubiquitous; any boy with an internet connection can access huge amounts of it. But more importantly today, I believe, is the ongoing condemnation of men, being male and masculinity, which is directed at boys from the moment they enter school. This is something we have to wake up to and take seriously.