So what's really going on with autogynephilia?

When I read Twitter or even mainstream news I see a bunch of… discussion… of transgenderism. The most recent instance I saw was Steve Sailer bugging Tracing Woodgrains about exposing autogynephilia:

Here's what you could do from now on: expose how autogynephilics have been lying to kids about what our current transgender mania is really about. 

Are you willing to do that?

If you are not, I can understand; the AGP ex-men are the Seal Team Six of Cancel Culture.

(Tracing Woodgrains responds by citing Zack Davis and Phil Illy as experts; I haven’t read Phil Illy’s stuff but I have read Zack Davis’s).

I could comment on the politics of this, how Sailer simultaneously complains about “cancel culture” and makes demands for specific narratives as part of coalition building in a “cancel culture” fashion. (Oops, too late, I already did)

But I’d rather focus attention on the object level issue. There may have been a time when avoiding the topic was politically strategic, but when autogynephilia is one of the top unifying narratives of transphobia contemporary counter-establishment discourse on transgenderism, the discourse is going to become increasingly insufferable until people with actual knowledge on this topic address it.

On the “science”

Now to get something out of the way: I’m going to use anecdotal evidence on this. This is not a breach of scientific standards, because anecdotal experience is part and parcel of “science” of autogynephilia; Zack Davis has recommended to me Anne Lawrence’s Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism, a selective collection of anecdotes, as evidence of the autogynephilia theory.

But what about the Science? Blanchard’s original article, “Typology of male-to-female transsexualism”, collects data from male-to-female transitioners based on a 2-dimensional measure of sexual attraction to women and sexual attraction to men, clusters this data into 4 clusters (androphilic/gynephilic/bisexual/asexual), and finds more transvestic fetishism (that is, being turned on by dressing up as a woman) in the non-exclusively-androphilic clusters. This is used as the main evidence for proposing a two-type taxonomy.

There are a few unfortunate things about this research. One is the graph.

I mean, come on, you’re clustering this data into 4 clusters and you used 2 colors? Couldn’t you have introduced more styles of point (even in black-and-white) with crossed-out circles or squares or something?

Moreover, the clustering is fairly weak. The typology separates the exclusively androphilic cluster (bottom right) from the rest. Looking at the graph without the suggestive point colors, is that really a natural way of clustering the data? With my high-IQ pattern matching ability, I see roughly two clusters (>-5 androphilia, <-5 androphilia), but the fit is unimpressive nonetheless.

Some of Blanchard’s work has also been victim to the replication crisis (e.g. see “A Further Assessment of Blanchard’s Typology of Homosexual Versus Non-Homosexual or Autogynephilic Gender Dysphoria”). Nonetheless, I basically agree that gynephilia positively correlates with transvestic fetishism in gynephilic male-to-female transitioners. The problems I have with this work aren’t about observations like this, they’re about overstated conclusions.

This… research... is used to support the idea of a strict two-type taxonomy. Male-to-female transitioners are either exclusively gynephilic or exclusively androphilic; the gynephilic ones transition because they find the idea of being a woman sexually arousing; and the androphilic ones transition because men tend to find pretty women sexy. Let’s look at Michael Bailey’s The Man who Would be Queen:

The two types of transsexuals who begin life as males are called homosexual and autogynephilic.... Succinctly put, homosexual male-to-female transsexuals are extremely feminine gay men, and autogynephilic transsexuals are men erotically obsessed with the image of themselves as women. When most people hear “transsexual” they think of the homosexual transsexual, who fits the classic pattern.... They unambiguously desire and love men, especially heterosexual men, whom they can attract only as women… Honest and open autogynephilic transsexuals reveal a much different pattern. They were not especially feminine boys… Autogynephilic transsexuals might declare attraction to women or men, to both, or to neither. But their primary attraction is to the women that they would become.

Now look back at Blanchard’s graph, and tell me, does it support the conclusion that all male-to-female transitioners are either exclusively androphilic or exclusively gynephilic?  Your answer will be used to calculate your IQ score.

The Blanchardians may reply, “But what if the subjects are lying about their sexual orientation? This is pseudo-bisexuality!”. (Pseudo-bisexuality is the idea that autogynephilic trans women who have sex with men are not actually attracted to these men, but to the image of themselves as women who have sex with men. No homo.) Then why are self-reports of sexual orientation used to support the two-type taxonomy? If the data is garbage, how does it support any specific conclusions?

I can’t really be charitable to the taxonomy by assuming it is derived from scientific data. Rather, I think it is worth looking at Bailey’s other work regarding sexuality, such as that discussed the provocatively named New York Times article “Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited”. Bailey makes the case that, as the title suggests, all men (not including trans men) are either exclusively gynephilic or androphilic. Now, if this conclusion is extended to male-to-female transitioners, one can reason as follows:

1. Males are either exclusively androphilic or gynephilic.

2. This is the primary axis along which male sexuality varies.

3. Male-to-female transitioners are male in the relevant sense.

4. Therefore, the primary axis along which transfeminine sexuality varies is exclusive androphilia/gynephilia.

5. Sexuality is the main motivation for male-to-female transition.

6. Therefore, the main motive for male-to-female transition has androphilia/gynephilia as its primary axis, which is binary.

7. AGP and HSTS are valid descriptors of these two motives.

This is, as best as I can re-construct, a relatively plausible argument for the two-type taxonomy. The main problem with this isn’t anything after point 1, it’s point 1: further research has suggested that some men are bisexual (what a surprise!).

An Illustrious Example of Autogynephilia Narrative

The Establishment may be satisfied if I end the post here: I’ve “debunked” autogynephilia research, showing it to be pseudoscientific (yay, we don’t have to be mean to trans women!). But if you’re still reading, maybe you suspect something is off with the Establishment Narrative. Maybe you suspect that, even if the science behind autogynephilia research isn’t great, there is some important truth to it.

I do too. Which is why I am going to use personal anecdote to show the truth of autogynephilia. Now, this is emotionally difficult, because sharing one’s sexual fantasies and experiences with strangers is usually considered a faux pas, but one must tolerate social embarrassment if it is necessary for The Truth, and the people demand it!

When I was about 12, I read a book about puberty. I learned how the genitals develop in the womb, and how the male baby originally has a vagina-like opening which is sealed by the scrotum. I found this distressing, and wished it hadn’t happened to me. I also had some sexual thoughts about how it would be fun to have a vagina.

At around the same time, I sometimes looked at myself in the mirror and tried to pose in a sexy feminine manner. I had seen women make sexy poses (in magazines and so on) and be celebrated for it, why couldn’t I? Darn, maybe I don’t have the looks for this…

I encountered social justice discourse in high school, through ShitRedditSays. These people seemed pretty mean, but maybe they were right about some things. They said it was important to listen to trans people, and I did.

At around age 17, I casually mentioned to a friend that I was an “autogynephile”. I’m not sure where I learned the term, but I did look at the Crossdreamers blog at some point. I didn’t think this made me “trans”. I had some sexual fantasies involving being a woman and read some erotic manga involving sex transformation. (“Sissy” or “masochistic emasculation fetish” material was, on the other hand, repulsive to me.)

I also had some non-sexual fantasies involving waking up as a woman one day, with this somehow being not a huge deal in terms of people’s reactions, and how much better life would be like this.

In college (at Stanford), there was more social justice discourse of the ShitRedditSays type. This was distressing for some reasons of the type elucidated by Jennifer Coates and Scott Aaronson (who, despite identifying as a heterosexual man, commented that “My recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man, or best of all, (completely asexual, so that I could simply devote my life to math, like my hero Paul Erdös did)”).

I was only attracted to women (in a sense that includes trans women), and had trouble dating; it was a confusing domain and it was very hard to find credible advice anywhere. I didn’t understand what made men attractive, due to my orientation.

There were some women who I liked (sexually or not) and I felt drawn to become more like them, I liked their way of being and wanted to learn from them.

At age 20 I had an intense gender questioning phase. I read Whipping Girl and The Null HypotheCis. I read Anne Vitale’s “The Gender Variant Phenomenon--A Developmental Review” (which described two types of male-to-female transitioners, although less absolutely than the Blanchardian typology). I noticed that Zinnia Jones had studied Kolmogorov complexity (one of my primary interests) and later transitioned. I read a bunch of reddit.com/r/asktransgender, found gender questioning people similar to myself, and got practical information on acquiring hormones.

I started thinking of myself as a real transsexual. You see, as the “truscum” on Tumblr can tell you, there are a lot of people getting into this for the wrong reasons, because they care about gender roles or want to be special or something. Whereas I actually primarily cared about having female sex characteristics. I would be more satisfied having female sex characteristics and living socially as a man than the reverse.

Even if society had silly ideas about this, and thought “gender identity” was the main cause of transition (I wasn’t sure if I had one), and had all these stereotypes about trans people that I didn’t fit, what was important was that I wanted something, for myself, not for another, and was able to pursue it, after having done my research.

And so I stored sperm and started taking hormones at age 21. I felt a lot better. There were non-sexual gender euphoria feelings mixed with sexual feelings about developing a female body. I didn’t really do “transvestic fetishism”, I was concerned more with my body than my clothes, and wore androgynous clothing for some period, feeling that wearing feminine clothing would be vulnerable somehow. I got into feminine styles more over time (how much of the desire to “pass” is really the desire to be pretty?).

Social transition was basically fine even if it was scary. Mostly, people who weren’t on the Internet were nice. Somehow it was easier to date women as a trans women than as a cis man, go figure.

I figured that I’d gotten into this partially because I wanted to have a vagina, and got bottom surgery around age 22. I started experiencing sexual attraction to men soon afterward. I just cannot believe that no trans women are bisexual given this. Sorry, I have to apply Bayes’ rule here.

Later I got into more psychological notions of gender, and thought of myself as mostly psychologically female, but have also questioned this, as described in my Am I Trans? article. Mostly, I don’t think it matters whether I am really trans or really a woman (psychologically). What are they going to do, take away my hormones? Sometimes people develop narratives that don’t make sense because they’re under coercion, but I’m not under much relevant coercion at this point.

At this point the “autogynephilia” theory barely matches my experience. I’m a woman in my sex fantasies… which is hardly anything to explain? I’m not sexually attracted to myself, I like other people. Blanchardians might explain this as “autogynephilic romance”, but this is at best a poetic metaphor, no more rigorous than Jungian psychology. Overall, the autogynephilia theory applies much better to people early in transition than people late in transition.

Conclusion

I realize a lot of people will read the previous section and conclude “aha, classic autogynephile, you have been found out!” If you only pay attention to the parts matching that narrative, sure. It’s important to have more detailed accounts and not just over-generalizing simplified theories of these phenomena.

Even if I did fit the autogynephile cluster to a T, I wouldn’t conclude that the two-type taxonomy is valid in general. There’s the sexual orientation bit, of course, but also, the data does not even naturally cluster into the exclusively-androphilic and not, let alone support a strict two-type taxonomy.

I don’t see how the fact that some people like me used to read sex transformation erotic manga would support the sort of conclusions Steve Sailer and so on are pushing for. It seems like an overly broad conclusion that neglects the way autogynephiles are under pressure from the rest of society to have certain narratives about their transition.

Approximately everyone has sexual motives and hides them most of the time, this is basic Freudianism, and male-to-female transitoners are not an exception.

Anyway, I will conclude with a public service announcement. If you are considering male-to-female transition, please go to a sperm bank and jack off into a cup, you might want kids later.