Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Fetishes and Autogynephilia

310 replies

Alonelonelylonersbadidea · 10/08/2021 21:28

I just thought it was worthwhile having a talk about this and we should try not to make 'sweeping negative generalisations', so in the spirit of positivity about fetishes generally, I don't actually have an issue with them if they don't impinge on anyone else. In fact I probably have fetishes of my own. Probably ones which don't fit with my feminist principles. Will maybe come back to that later.
What is the official feminist line on fetishes such as autogynephilia in terms of 'gender'? Is it possible to be 'each to their own' without being negative about cross dressers?

OP posts:
Havetotsell · 17/08/2021 19:24

@LastSummerHere

Why are you so angry at a reasonable point.

Datun · 17/08/2021 19:26

I mean, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

BernardBlackMissesLangCleg · 17/08/2021 19:44

- fetishizing dominant/submissive behaviour pairings

from having read things written by males who identify as women, I think this is a large part of it for many of them. They want to be submissive during sex and just can't deal with doing that as a man.

it's sexist as fuck

LastSummerHere · 17/08/2021 20:05

[quote Havetotsell]@LastSummerHere

Why are you so angry at a reasonable point.[/quote]

Say what?

Datun · 17/08/2021 20:44

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg

- fetishizing dominant/submissive behaviour pairings

from having read things written by males who identify as women, I think this is a large part of it for many of them. They want to be submissive during sex and just can't deal with doing that as a man.

it's sexist as fuck

They appear to want to force their partner to treat them as submissive. It's just a common or garden coercive mindfuck.
Aparallaxia · 17/08/2021 21:26

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

suggestionsplease1 · 17/08/2021 21:41

@Aparallaxia

Suggestionsplease Here is part of the answer to your questions about AGP as a private fetish: like all fetishes, it involves attaching sexual meaning to objects, properties, processes, or body-parts that do not, in themselves, have a sexual function. There are, for example, e.g. Qing-era Chinese woodcut images that are uncoloured, except that the women’s feet have been picked out in red.

So far, you may think: well, we have to accommodate such people. They are apparently gender-non-conforming, mixing it up, breaking down the boxes, which is what feminists have wanted and have been doing themselves for some time. "Old-fashioned" transexuals were terribly gender-conforming—only it was the opposite gender they wanted to perform, and in every aspect of their lives. An AGP man isn’t like this. He’s a pervert with rose-tinted spectacles about women and a rose-coloured basque.

He looks on female underwear as a sexual prop for himself. He likes to carry it to work with him, to bars, to the game, to PTA meetings maybe; its being secret is part of the thrill, I guess. But if he’s married, maybe (probably) his wife knows about it. Maybe she’s been persuaded or coerced or bullied into “sharing” this secret life. The husband wants to wear this underwear in bed with his wife. Then he wants to play “the female rôle” (which means: being penetrated) while his wife plays “the male rôle”—she has to pretend to be a dominatrix so she can penetrate her husband. He starts wearing female clothing in his leisure hours. He ventures out sometimes in it. Gradually he begins to wear it all the time. He “comes out” as TG.

Now not every male female-underwear wearer goes down this well-trodden path. Some stay at the first stage for decades. What’s the harm in that, you ask?

First, because men who dress like that, also feel a certain way about women. They covet for themselves a very restricted vision of things that they think women have or do and they don’t, not yet: wearing soft fabrics, silk and lace; being able to adorn their persons and be complemented for it; being looked at and admired; being the object of desire. In their minds, they are a woman… but only because of the sexual gratification they receive from being treated “as a woman”, and from women treating them and accepting them as women. Whether we’re talking about secret underwear or surgery, the whole AGP thing is born of a man’s sexual desire to be seen as and be treated, not as a woman, but as he imagines women are and are treated.

Somehow he doesn’t associate being a woman with being paid less than men, being exploited or sex-trafficked, being intimidated, controlled, abused, beaten, raped, or murdered by a partner or ex-partner. He does not demand to be paid less in solidarity with "other women”. He does not start demanding to be given the lion’s share of housework and child-care. He doesn’t start worrying about heavy periods or the effects of the Pill, or about developing polycystic syndrome or breast cancer, or about how menopause will hit them. He doesn’t instinctively avoid dark alleys, dark corners, or anywhere alone with a strange man. (BTW, the murder rate for TG people is lower than it is for the rest of the population.) His is a narrow, sexualized imagining of what being a women involves. For him the “female rôle” is an exciting part in a sexual drama he wants to play again and again and again.

Second, if a man is wearing women's clothing, but otherwise does not perform the female rôle—that is, does not behave as women are conditioned socially to behave—then he will stand out like a sore thumb. There is no getting round this, as yet. There will unavoidably be a cognitive disconnect for those who engage with him, men and women alike. A very tall person in high heels and a short skirt and bright red lippie, who likes talking over people in meetings, is always competitive, can be a bully, is known to drive a powerful car fast and hard, tweets about violent assaults on women’s bodies, conspires with other men to drown women’s criticism of them and their language—all of this behaviour will remain “masculine”. (This is not to say that women cannot be domineering and loud, only that they are conventionally associated with the masculine gender, whereas heels and so on are not.)

So why does this person change their dress, their hair, etc., but not their personality? Why is it just this one aspect of themselves that they have opted to change? What has happened to the rest of "femininity"? Lots of gay men are feminine in various ways—they often like cooking, interior design, clothes, and talking about people and relationships, and often make excellent friends for girls and women. But they wear men's clothes, have (and like) men's bodies, and are definitely men. These men are… what?

This sort of lop-sided "femininity"—high heels and a domineering, look-at-me, violence-loving personality—will be familiar, at any rate to Mumsnetters, from the very masculine abuse and threats of violence, including rape, hurled at “TERFs” and especially at lesbians, who are, of course, very sensitive to these threats, since PWPs have been threatening to "set them straight" with a good dose of cock since time immemorial.

Feminism taught us that “the personal is political”. In this case, that men’s personal choices come from a perverse, incomplete, distorted understanding of women and what it is like to be a woman. He has cut out all of the unwelcome political consequences of that condition and left only a conventional sexual rôle. And the sexual fantasy they construct for themselves is always also for the women around them. They are part of the drama. They can provide validation, if the person transitions to wearing female dress. At the very least, they are also wearing female underwear. How exciting is that! How wonderful and erotic! How could women ever complain about bullying in the workplace or equal pay and conditions or paid maternity leave when they get to go that mAg!cål WºnDerfuŁ place that is Victoria’s Secret and try on padded bras and silk thongs with other women in cubicles around them and no one bats an eyelid! It is so unfair!!

And this is not to talk about which bathroom he will use and how womem will feel about having to accommodate his fantasy. They may not have transitioned physically at all. That person in a short skirt and heels may have a penis and testicles under there. And as we women don't know either way, then our penis-radar will be pinging away like mad. Unless we know better, that person will be perceived by women as a potential threat. We will avoid being alone with this person, apart from others, either inside or outside, unless we know him well and/or someone they know well can vouch for him. We will not readily give him our phone number or address. We will not engage in intimate conversation with him. And so on.

Yet this man's feminine dress is a message to others that he wants to join female conversation and to enter female spaces. So which loo do they use? Do women always have to go to the restroom in couples? This person's behaviour has, in effect, forced these women to accommodate his desire to wear women's clothing while not changing in any other way.

Well there are a huge, huge amount amount of associations in your post - can I ask how many of these individuals you know personally to be able to draw up such a comprehensive, detailed and scathing psychological and behavioural analysis of them all?

Of course there have been similar caricatures developed for gay men and women, and for people of different ethnicities and cultures, in order to demonise them. Luckily most people are aware that people in social groupings aren't demonic caricatures of each other, but are hugely diverse.

When a man sees a woman wearing stereotypically masculine clothing should he be thinking: "Look at this woman, enjoying wearing the clothes than men wear. I bet she doesn't think at all about the education gap between the sexes, and how boys are failed time and time again by the system. I bet she never thinks of all the men that will die by suicide - 3 to 4 times as many of us as women! What is she doing to address that as she enjoys wearing those men's' clothes? Look at that woman, happily walking along in those trousers and that shirt. She doesn't seem to care in the slightest that I will die 4 years earlier than her. 4 years of my life! A whole 5% of a lifetime less than her, 1460 days less of my life to live, love and enjoy. What is she doing to challenge that? What has she ever done to address this inequality? She has no idea what it is like to be a man, she's not thinking about that at all as she enjoys wearing our clothes"

Datun · 17/08/2021 21:45

When a man sees a woman wearing stereotypically masculine clothing should he be thinking: "Look at this woman, enjoying wearing the clothes than men wear. I bet she doesn't think at all about the education gap between the sexes, and how boys are failed time and time again by the system. I bet she never thinks of all the men that will die by suicide - 3 to 4 times as many of us as women! What is she doing to address that as she enjoys wearing those men's' clothes? Look at that woman, happily walking along in those trousers and that shirt. She doesn't seem to care in the slightest that I will die 4 years earlier than her. 4 years of my life! A whole 5% of a lifetime less than her, 1460 days less of my life to live, love and enjoy. What is she doing to challenge that? What has she ever done to address this inequality? She has no idea what it is like to be a man, she's not thinking about that at all as she enjoys wearing our clothes"

Correct. Women don't tend to fetishise any perceived male disadvantage. Men as a class are not subordinated. There is no equivalent to AGP.

LastSummerHere · 17/08/2021 21:51

Suggestions, why on earth would men care less if the see women wearing trousers?🥴 They are unisex nowadays, by the way. It's 2021, not 1921.

Datun · 17/08/2021 22:18

Well there are a huge, huge amount amount of associations in your post - can I ask how many of these individuals you know personally to be able to draw up such a comprehensive, detailed and scathing psychological and behavioural analysis of them all?

Men with AGP aren't exactly known for keeping it a secret. It's splashed across the internet from one end to the other.

There are thousands of posts on this very site from the women experiencing it from their partners. It's not a complicated paraphilia. And is, I believe, one of the most common. Iirc, amongst male prison inmates it's number one.

irresistibleoverwhelm · 18/08/2021 00:25

Trousers and shirts have not be culturally coded as essentially masculine for around 100 years now, @suggestionsplease1. Maybe your frankly specious post might have made a tiny bit of sense in 1927 in an underground lesbian Berlin cabaret night.

However, take a look at Kim Kardashian when she’s next wearing trousers, and then tell me how many men think she is fetishising their male apparel.

irresistibleoverwhelm · 18/08/2021 00:25

*been

Nellodee · 18/08/2021 07:02

People who know one or two people who have cross dressing fetishes are not saying every transwoman is like this. They are just saying that quite a few penis people have this, that it's a common paraphilia.

Lots of people are saying that people with these kinds of fetishes simply don't exist, or are vanishingly rare. This just isn't true.

When women are asking for the fact that this can be a sexual fetish to be taken into account when considering safeguarding etc, it's very convenient to portray this as bigotry, rather than realism.

BernardBlackMissesLangCleg · 18/08/2021 09:12

Yes indeed

It’s a lot harder to justify removing women’s dignity, privacy and safety when a proportion of the people you’re doing it for are indulging a fetish by using women’s spaces and provisions

Ereshkigalangcleg · 18/08/2021 12:30

Quite, Bernard.

HelenHywater · 18/08/2021 13:21

The answer I'm going to get from my colleagues if I say this, is that it is only a small proportion of transwomen/cross dressers who have this fetish.

What is the evidence that it is as high as the proportions mentioned in this thread?

BernardBlackMissesLangCleg · 18/08/2021 13:24

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

suggestionsplease1 · 18/08/2021 13:27

@irresistibleoverwhelm

Trousers and shirts have not be culturally coded as essentially masculine for around 100 years now, *@suggestionsplease1*. Maybe your frankly specious post might have made a tiny bit of sense in 1927 in an underground lesbian Berlin cabaret night.

However, take a look at Kim Kardashian when she’s next wearing trousers, and then tell me how many men think she is fetishising their male apparel.

Well of course, women have been granted a lot more freedom than men in this country at least to dress in gender atypical ways without social rejection and disapproval. I have no doubt that the pathway to this was also paved with speculation about improper motivations and and deviant sexualities, just as we are seeing in this thread now.

Men still have a long way to go to escape the policing and censure of their choices to dress in gender atypical ways it seems.

BernardBlackMissesLangCleg · 18/08/2021 13:28

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

BernardBlackMissesLangCleg · 18/08/2021 13:30

Well of course, women have been granted a lot more freedom than men in this country at least to dress in gender atypical ways without social rejection and disapproval

Women weren’t granted it, they fought for it. And they didn’t do it by saying they were men

Nellodee · 18/08/2021 13:38

It’s strange - if you Google cross dressing on the internet, you get loads of supportive forum posts saying “it’s more common than you think”, “it doesn’t mean your gay“, etc.
But if you say “I’m uncomfortable with men with a cross dressing fetish coming in women’s toilets” all of a sudden, it’s incredibly rare and happens so infrequently as to be insignificant.

By strange, I mean thoroughly predictable.

BernardBlackMissesLangCleg · 18/08/2021 13:55

I see that my post pointing out that clothes and make up don’t change a person’s sex has been deleted

Is it because MNHQ believe clothes and makeup do change a person’s sex do we think?

Or because I said only someone very sexist would think that?

irresistibleoverwhelm · 18/08/2021 14:05

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg

I see that my post pointing out that clothes and make up don’t change a person’s sex has been deleted

Is it because MNHQ believe clothes and makeup do change a person’s sex do we think?

Or because I said only someone very sexist would think that?

I’m finding - especially on this thread - that it’s not the posts you expect would that get deleted.

It’s the posts where you point out the obvious logical consequences and that gets a little too near the knuckle, hits a nerve, etc. It’s quite the “tell” when this happens, because it shows what they know might actually be true, and they really don’t want you to think about.

TrainedByCats · 18/08/2021 14:10

@HelenHywater

The answer I'm going to get from my colleagues if I say this, is that it is only a small proportion of transwomen/cross dressers who have this fetish.

What is the evidence that it is as high as the proportions mentioned in this thread?

We have very little formal research because TRA’s block every attempt by researchers to study trans issues.

Anecdotally rom a personal perspective every TW bar one that I’ve met in person displayed behaviours towards females consistent with them having AGP. The one TW that didn’t that I met in reason is Kristina Harrison, our interaction was very brief so insufficient time to properly assess but there were no immediate indicators and there usually are.

On twitter where more evidence is displayed and I see interactions from huge numbers of TW including from my profession the only TW I’ve seen who doesn’t appear so is Fionne Orlander.

Based on what I see I am of the opinion it is extremely prevalent.

Datun · 18/08/2021 14:15

Well of course, women have been granted a lot more freedom than men in this country at least to dress in gender atypical ways without social rejection and disapproval. I have no doubt that the pathway to this was also paved with speculation about improper motivations and and deviant sexualities, just as we are seeing in this thread now.

Men still have a long way to go to escape the policing and censure of their choices to dress in gender atypical ways it seems.

Oh for heaven's sake. That's because women dressing in men's clothes is seen as punching up, whereas men dressing in women's clothes is as seen as punching down. Hence girlie, sissy, etc.

Some men who crossed dress get involved in things like forced feminisation and sissification. What would the equivalent be for women? Forced leadership? Strengthification?

And it's not really relevant to women spaces. It doesn't matter what you wear, you can't change sex.