Article on AGP by Lorelei

The issue with 'destigmatising' AGP is where is the line drawn? If we are told we must coddle and support males with this paraphilia, what's next?

I see the problem a little differently. If we don't discuss AGP at all in the public debates about all this, then we are essentially allowing paraphilias to be one of the bases on which someone can claim the right to enter female single sex spaces and so on, but their paraphilias are simply hidden under the 'being born that way' label.

To discuss AGP openly, it is important to treat it as a mental disorder and not something the sufferers are opting to have. So to that extent having the condition needs to be destigmatised, not the harmful consequences from it on others who are forced to participate in the game.

But when you've accepted the egg situation I described it suddenly becomes much more difficult to justify a complaint. I don't mean officially, but in one's own mind.

And then when you are thinking this way, many people feel that it begins to conflict with claims that things like gendered clothing don't matter, people should wear whatever they want. The difference of course is that people say that assuming that somehow they won't be attaching any kinds of outward expressions (like clothing) to sex difference. Whereas suspicion of men wearing women's clothes seems to assume that we know that some or many are in fact doing that.

It seems to bring us to a place where conceptually, people who go out of their way to subvert gender norms are in fact a source of suspicion and I think that makes people who have been taught that these norms are not really important uncomfortable.

But I am not convinced the gc idea that we can simply abolish them is plausible.

I must admit anime avatars give me the creeps and I'm instantly suspicious of anyone using them

Mangyinseam
I don't quite understand what the issue with describing a paraphilia as a target location error is. It seems quite neutral to me, a theory of what exactly goes wrong that a man develop this kind of thinking.

The benefit of understanding that, to me, is to see how it could potentially be prevented or treated when it's found. Which is better for everyone involved.

It was originally defined as a target location error, because the heterosexual man with the condition is erotically drawn not to heterosexual women but to himself as a woman. One man with AGP has written that for him it was more like romantically falling in love with the female version of himself, and not just a sexual attraction.

I don't see anything wrong with it being defined as a target location error, either. But thinking about the possibility that this error is not just sexual but perhaps romantic clarified some things for me:

There are trans women who are intensely angry at natal women, as we all know. Perhaps that anger is not just misogyny or rage at TERFs etc., but also a form of rivalry or jealousy?

If the women they identify as are the ones they love, then they wish those particular women to be the best of all women, the most attractive, and the most alluring.

Other women are then seen as competition and certainly not as a group that particular trans woman would want to work for in, say, feminism. Identifying as a woman, but not with women then makes sense, as does my observation that quite a few trans women don't support women's general rights at all (though that may also come with identifying with men which many of them do).

I also want to know how almost every Twitter account belonging to trans identified young people has a Japanese cartoon little girl's face in the profile. She always has those impossible large eyes with a tear or two in them, and she is certainly not a depiction of an adult

I take it for a given that any social media account with a female name and a cutsie female anime avatar is, in fact, a middle age man.

The issue with 'destigmatising' AGP is where is the line drawn? If we are told we must coddle and support males with this paraphilia, what's next?
Adult babies out in public? They've already done the puppy play in public where stupid parents allowed their children to interact with grown men who are sexually aroused by dressing up as dogs. Why should women's spaces be handled over as a prop for male thrills?

Growing up, cross dressers and transvestites all seemed to be over a certain age but now the teenage boys watching forced feminsation and sissy porn and then 'coming out' as girls is increasing massively but parents don't realise, or want to admit, what their sons are doing online.

These men think women are just empty shells with holes for a penis to be inserted into. They get off on women's pain and suffering. They want to be humiliated and degraded because, as men, that is what being a woman means.

They hate us because we know.

do you think we're allowed to say how fucking creepy autogynaephilia is?

Other things that have aroused me are [......] sitting with a bunch of women as the only male and listening to 'girl talk'

urgh. women as props. again

it's part of the reason I try not to engage with the people who post here and announce themselves as transwomen. I strongly suspect some of them get off on getting their arse handed to them by women

I think we also have to be aware that there are a lot of chancers out there who are not trans, do not have AGP, but are using weak self-ID rules to get into women-only spaces or women-only events (like sports).

Yeah, I think what he says is that in some the element of constant identification with this pseudo-female version of themselves actually leads to alienation from their own male body. Like looking in the mirror and what you see is not what you expect based on the mental image you are using for yourself.

Thank you, that's a much better explanation.

@Roseglen84 Absolutely not having to give up single-sex spaces. My point is really that men with AGP shouldn't transition (because it won't resolve the issues) and it leads to problems all around.

If people could talk about it, you will see a reduction in people transitioning. That's why I believe TRAs try to suppress any discussion around it, they're simply obsessed with bolstering their numbers.

There's a lot of misguided teens out there who have AGP, but the activists are telling that it is gender dysphoria and the only solution is to transition. There sexual arousal is actual "gender euphoria".

It just seems to me that we have a lot of confused children (girls not wanting to grow up in a misogynistic environment, and boys not fitting into the macho stereotype) with an industry ready to take advantage of that and sending them on a one way route to transition.

I remember a girl from school whose parents divorced after her father started crossdressing (MNHQ this is what it was called then, getting on for 30 years ago). As children about 9 or 10 we thought it was funny that her Dad wanted to wear her Mum’s clothes. I remember him coming to a school event after they split up wearing earrings and carrying a hand bag but nothing more feminine than that and thinking he didn’t really look like a woman but a definite feeling of oddness around him that I couldn’t explain.

I also remember how my friend became more withdrawn before they eventually moved away. I often think of her and her mum now.

Yes, the shading of boundaries so that it becomes very difficult to say at what point it is no longer acceptable and another person is able to say no without being argued with is another very familiar problem.

If it is someone who wishes to undress in a room where you are undressing despite your discomfort. Someone who wishes to pee where you are peeing. Remembering the Guardian columnist who wrote the article about enjoying the embarrassment of female shop staff in buying women's underwear and finishing the article 'I give them a smile to say 'I know you're not enjoying this but I am'.'

It's like whether the man watching you and smirking with a hand in his pocket is the same as the one who trips against you and manages to get a hand on your boob, or the one who openly pinches your bum, or the one who grabs you at the bar and demands a kiss, or the one who flashes you in the street...? At what point does it shade into really not ok now?

(And I'm very aware in all of these there would be an immediate biologically based burden on the one being the resource in the situation as to whether what they wore, where they were, what they were doing etc contributed in any way to them being a resource no one could be expected to treat with respect and not appropriate.)

Is the person is unaware what's going on, for example.

Not to be too graphic, but I can remember reading those books they have for adolescents at school libraries saying that any kind of sexual fantasy, about the person next door for example, or a film star, etc, was ok, because they wouldn't know about it and it can't affect them.

Not the old sexual conservative view of that would have be to say, first of all, that it was still probably disrespectful to the individual being used for the fantasy (especially someone you know and interact with), and secondly, it can affect the way the person doing it thinks about and relates to others by making them up as private sexual objects.

If this is all ok, then it becomes a lot harder to pinpoint where it all goes astray. Is some guy shopping for eggs who is privately indulging a fantasy of himself as a housewife a problem given no one else in the supermarket can really know that? Or what?

When you start to think about how this could be managed at the level of social norms, it all starts to look a bit different because of course we don't know who is doing what for what reason.

I'm not sure the two things are mutually exclusive. It is wholly possible to understand and sympathise with the root of it, but that in itself doesn't require non consenting people to participate. Particularly on a very much dimorphic sex-based basis.

It's like many other aspects of this debate that are framed as all or nothing when actually it need not be at all. For example TW reporting feeling unsafe in male spaces is something I have much sympathy for and understanding of - however it would be very possible to provide third spaces. This does not require the removal of female only spaces and the exclusion of many females. The one does not equal the other, it's a false equation. And it seeks to hide some of the reality of what is truly wanted, in fear that the truth would be less likely to be sympathised with.

The problem we have right now is there has been a huge PR campaign to rebrand AGP as innate gender dysphoria, and therefore something to be pitied and supported instead of something to be angry about.

It's the question that keeps being dodged, mostly by trying hard to avoid bringing this into public view by deleting it like a game of whack-a-mole. Is it ever acceptable for one person to use and exploit another as a non consenting prop or resource in a personal sexual experience?

I don't quite understand what the issue with describing a paraphilia as a target location error is. It seems quite neutral to me, a theory of what exactly goes wrong that a man develop this kind of thinking.

The benefit of understanding that, to me, is to see how it could potentially be prevented or treated when it's found. Which is better for everyone involved.

As our culture stands right now, I think we're almost maximizing the development of problems like AGP because of the way kids and teens are exposed to so much sexual material, because we don't tell kids that it's a good idea to have boundaries around sex, and when an abnormal type of thinking like AGP begins to appear we not only fail to recognize it, we almost encourage the individual to indulge it before they even recognize what's really going on.

I knew a woman through a group I belonged to who was struggling with this with her teen son. They were a very average family, did usual things, went to a usual school, not religious or anything. She described him as seeming desperate, and she was very uncomfortable with it but didn't know what to tell him or how to help him. The idea that you might say to someone - this fantasy life is unhealthy - was completely alien to her experience where they had always been told that such things were good and fine and would not affect anyone in a material way.

My feelings on the matter probably differ to most on this site, but I think it AGP needs to be publicised (not suppressed) as it will probably led a lot of men to realise that they have AGP and not gender dysphoria, and lead to a lot less damage and regret.

I think many of us here would like to see more open acknowledgement of AGP. It's mostly TRA's who try to shut down discussion about it because they don't want people to become aware that there is a sexual gratification element to feminine gender expression.

Blanchard has written about how men with AGP can experience gender dysphoria so from his point of view it's not one or the other. If I remember correctly the paraphilia precedes the gender dysphoria but not all cases of AGP lead to GD. Blanchard estimates the split is 75%/25% AGP vs HSTS.

Many young women don't see everyday sexism in society until they are older, some only do when they have children themselves.

Plus older women are demonised in society generally - witch, hag, spinster, etc. They are no longer considered 'fuckable' by men, so therefore are not useful to worthy to them. Young women see this derision and don't want to be subject to it so align themselves with the aggressors - men.

I would also like to see AGP come out into the open, but many of the men who have it would not because it breaks the fantasy.

And as for transition, most middle aged men with AGP don't transition, why would they bother when they just claim female identity and get full access everywhere?

Sissy hypno porn is a massive problem.

My sister, who has completely swallowed the "we just need to pee" line, definitely needs to read this!

Agree with the poster who said this account should be made available to every MP and member of the House of Lords and every organisation that thinks it is OK to have trans women in single sex spaces or involved in female only sports/activities.

I am pretty convinced that the majority would have no idea the depth of depravity behind this movement where adult men are concerned.

I knew the paraphilia was bad e.g. the used sanitary towel thing, but even then I did not realise how deep into the mire of utter yukness it went.