Fetishes and Autogynephilia

[Alonelonelylonersbadidea]

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?

I read through the descriptions the men were giving of their fetishes. I’d be so interested to know more about any explanations as to how they come to be this way.

Some mention strange fantasies very young but then getting sexually hooked in at about 14 trying on their mother it sister’s clothes in secret. I wonder if it gets hard wired because they are so young and they get hooked?

It certainly seems clear that a proportion of transwomen must be this way.

I think the title ‘Men Trapped in the Wrong Bodies’ is wrong, on the grounds that they need to be men first in order to have these orgasm inducing fantasies about how shaving their legs, breast feeding etc.

No woman do that I know of!

I read through the descriptions the men were giving of their fetishes. I’d be so interested to know more about any explanations as to how they come to be this way.

It has been a long time since I read the book, but certainly the 1st edition of Mother Madonna Whore bythe psychoanalyst Estella V Welldon posited as follows (as far as I remember);

Not every woman is naturally maternal and some mothers are perverse.

These mothers do not understand that their children are little people and instead consider them as transitional objects.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_object

The perverse mother may obtain gratification from pregnancy and may bear many children, however her children are always a disappoinment to her as they fail to meet the mother's narcissistic and other needs in the way she hopes and imagines they will.

Perverse mothers not uncommonly fail to validate their child's gender identity. Some are seductive and even incestuous towards their male children.

Weldon provides clinical examples of mothers who describe sexually seducing their sons. She also, IMMIC, reports that some needy, unboundaried mothers share a bed with their sons into the sons teens, thus, while not actually seducing the son, creating a situation in which the son's puberty creates a highly disfunctional, sexually charged, incestuous dynamic.

This reslts in the male child experiencing conflicts in relation to his gender identity and may result in transsexualism. The transsexualism / fetishism is an attempt at mastery over feelings of hatred towards the mother and effectively avoids the feelings of trauma associated with incest / seductive mother via perversion and fetishism.

Proviso - there is probably much more to the theories in the book, this is the bare bones of what I remember.

What is fascinating about Welldon's theories is that she was based at and worked at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust for many years. That's the same NHS Trust that GIDS is based at.

The Trust has done a little piourette on the head of a needle and conpletely changed its stance re transsexualism, fetishim and perversion in the matter of a few short years. I find this absolutely fascinating.

hoodathunkit
Thank you. That is very interesting, I never knew about those ideas.

I can't remember whether it was Welldon or Stoller but I remember reading re fetishism that it is experiencedby the fetishist as a very desirable and wonderful solution to extremely distressing internal conflicts.

The patient has little to no motivation to change because they have no desire to feel terrifying anxieties and conflicted feelings that arise when they are not indulging in their fetish.

Claims about suicide are relevant here as some fetishists are tormented by unbearable feelings and impulses when they are unable to indulge in their fetishes.

Obviously, while one can feel compassion for any person tormeted by inner conflicts it is a significant leap to suggest that society accomodates these fetishes in order to prevent suicides.

I should also point out that WElldon worked at the Portman Clinic part of the Tavi and Portman NHS Trust, which was the part of the Trust working with forensic issues, she was thus working with patients who were involved with, or at risk of involvment with, the criminal justice system.

This last aspect is important as I would not wish to imply that Welldon's theories apply to all men with AGP - I am not even sure that Welldon mentioned AGP specifically, but the descriptions her male patients describe resonate strongly with the descriptions in the link early in the thread

ScrollingLeaves

You are very welcome, but please understand that it is a long time since I read the book and so some of my memories may be incomplete and also I may have missed some extremey important aspects

Welldon's nook is very difficult for anyone unfamiliar with psychoanalytic theory to understand and sound quite insane to the average lay person.

It describes primitive early anxieties, relating to anxieties about the mother's body, the contents of the mother's body etc.

It also described the perverse mother's wish to possess the phallus, which she can only possess when pregnant or when she bears a son.

The theories sound quite mad to anyone unfamiliar with the literature.

I consider all theories to be provisional but worthy of consideration and I am fascinated when psychoanalytic theory becomes used as a tool for social engineering, as is happening now.

Hoodathinkit

“experiencedby the fetishist as a very desirable and wonderful solution to extremely distressing internal conflicts.”

One of the accounts ( quoted in account of the book, ‘Men in the Wrong Bodies’) expressed how upset and remorseful the young man felt after having had an orgasm while wearing the women’s underwear. But that may be normal shame, coming on in spite of the previous euphoric feeling of wearing being relief and a solution.

I am always repelled by hearing psychoanalytical theories about how women really want phalluses, having had a close male family member who liked to suggest that even to little girls and who was basically misogynist. But on a simpler level I can understand the lack of boundaries, the enmeshment and possible incestuousness in some mother’s relationships with their children.

In the descriptions you are alluding to, the men do not seem to feel as though they were born with female gender identities. It seems as though, had their mothers treated them differently they might have not had the fetish. Is that right?

One of the accounts ( quoted in account of the book, ‘Men in the Wrong Bodies’) expressed how upset and remorseful the young man felt after having had an orgasm while wearing the women’s underwear. But that may be normal shame, coming on in spite of the previous euphoric feeling of wearing being relief and a solution.

I think the important thing may be to understand the oscillation between feelings of torment and feelings of euphoria. This is not the same as feeling content / happy. It is the avoidance of feelings of dread by escaping into feleings of intense arousal. I believe the extent to which fetishists feel guilt varies very much between individuals. Some feel none at all, some are consumed with guilt to the extent that it is part of he feelings of dread to be avoided with an escape into the euphoria of fetishism.

I am always repelled by hearing psychoanalytical theories about how women really want phalluses, having had a close male family member who liked to suggest that even to little girls and who was basically misogynist.

I can understand why you and others feel this way. It is important to understand that this desire to possess the phallus is not a simple thing of women wanting to possess a penis.

There are various theories in relation to this and I don't have time to explore them all here and also I probably do not know or understand all of them.

In Freudian theory the phallus represents not just the penis but the power of the patriarchy so it is understandable that it would be desirable.

In Kleinian theory the penis is one of a category of objects represent the contents of the mother's body, something the infant is preoccupied with.

In the primitive infant mind and the later deep unconscious, the mother's body is imagined to contain babies and faeces and multiple penises as well as milk and goodies.

It is the container of the things that go into it and come out of it. It is the provider of nourishment and thus the source of all goodness but is also the focus of rageful infantile projections and thus may appear scary and contain bad things.

Apologies but I have limited time right now and this is deep theory hard to describe succinctly. It is also, and this is extremely important, provisional and hypothetical.

More later, I have to go eat

I consider all theories to be provisional but worthy of consideration and I am fascinated when psychoanalytic theory becomes used as a tool for social engineering, as is happening now.

Be careful about misattributing this to psychoanalysis though: psychoanalysis was actually diagnostic of this issue, and it’s the eclipse of psychoanalysis by medicalised psychology/psychiatry and identity theories that’s largely fuelled the rise in gender ideology.

Psychoanalysis understood fetishes and paraphilias and how these are formed and acted out all too well. That’s of the reasons why gender ideologists are quick to dismiss it. If we had more psychoanalytic therapies and less surgery and medicalisation we wouldn’t be in quite so much of this mess.

foxgoosefinch

I would respectfully invite you to peruse the youTube channel of The Site For Contemporary Psychoanalysis here

www.youtube.com/channel/UCaqYPmWqq3MY6529mxhPRRA/videos

This video of a psychoanalytic psychotherapist's presentation on their channel may be of interest to you. Other of their videos may also be of interest

The novel development of "relational psychoanalysis" might also be of interest

So many rabbit holes, so twisty, so disturbing

I am very tired, more tomorrow (yawns)

That’s all right, I’ve read most of Freud, Lacan, Klein, Winnicott, Rivière, Bion, Laplanche/Pontalis et al - so I’ll hold off on the YouTube videos!

Hoodathinkit
I am grateful to you for your time in explaining that. I can now imagine that container of all things that a mother’s body is from a baby’s point of view, and also understand how distress could be projected back to it. Even if it is just a theory.

The idea of the power of the patriarchy being represented by the phallus in a general way also makes sense to me, even if the presumption (as expressed to me,) that penises were something I envied, because girls are by necessity somehow deficient, never was.

You seem extremely knowledgeable and I am not at all. Thanks again.

The videos are of a variety of psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists and relational psychoanalysts promoting transgenderism.

If you are suggesting that we need more talking things through, more curiosity and more care when dealing with people who are tormeted about feelings of gender dysphoria, I couldn't agree more :)

I was simply trying to alert you to some surprising new trends in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy

ScrollingLeaves

You are most welcome :)

Please do not make the mistake of considering me an expert on the subject

I have a naturally analytic mind and also worked in the sex industry for some years, I have known dominatrixes, transsexuals, people on the BDSM scene and so I have a lot of real life experience to draw my thoughts from, even before I studied psychoanalysis

I am quite rusty re theory and was just sharing some thoughts, whilst very tired

:) time for me to get some sleep

But you’re aware of course that no medical or psychiatric / psychological work in the NHS, academic psychology or private psychiatry has had anything to do with psychoanalysts for a very long time? (Except the Tavistock, which only started promoting gender ideology when it largely abandoned its remaining analytic focus.)

Gender ideology is really not being driven by analysis.

But you’re aware of course that no medical or psychiatric / psychological work in the NHS, academic psychology or private psychiatry has had anything to do with psychoanalysts for a very long time? (Except the Tavistock, which only started promoting gender ideology when it largely abandoned its remaining analytic focus.)

This is an extremely complex issue. When I worked in the NHS (many years ago) consultant psychiatrists I knew who were also analytic psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists often bemoaned the fact that organic psychiatry was prevalent in the NHS and that many psychiatrists were psychoanalytically / psychodynamically naive, which created all kinds of systemic conflicts and problems.

I cannot comment on the extent to which organic psychiatry is prevalent these days and would be genuinely interested to hear more from you in this respect.

Certainly my own research indicates that many NHS mental health trusts and services promote the most outrageous quackery.

The theories of Wilhelm Reich / energy psychotherapy / false memory therapies / yoga cults the list is endless, are promoted to staff via CPD training courses and workshops and to extremely vulnerable clients via extremely concerning “recovery colleges”.

The issue of so called “trauma-informed therapy” is something of extreme concern to me. Quackery and recovered memory therapies abound and I can prove it.

The situation is an utter disgrace.

Don’t ge me started on the kinds of extremely dangerous pseudo-therapies and cults that are provided to traumatised police officers, fire fighters and other blue light / front line staff.

Gender ideology is really not being driven by analysis.

I disagree. Again I would invite you to check out the videos via the link I posted earlier. I cannot force you to watch them but I feel curious about your resistance to engage with them.

I am not claiming that psychoanalysis is the sole driving force behind transgenderism. It seems to me that the combination of psychoanalysis with various influences from new age charlatanry, the New Thought Movement and the influences of Wilhelm Reich have been extremely influential.

It may be that some of the more traditional psychoanalytically inclined are critical of gender ideology and the gender identity movement, however there are novel branches of the psychoanalytic tree that are promoting transgenderism and dangerous cults / quackery via CPD accredited training courses for psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and other NHS mental health professionals.

I am pushed for time but can provide details later.

As this is a bit of a diversion from the main subject of the thread I think it might be better on a new thread. I would welcome your views.

I also need to say that my physical health is being impacted by my passion for research and for posting here and I need to post on dozens of old threads here. I would be better off if there were several of me so I could do it all but there is just me so readers will have to bear with me as I need to take some time to take care of myself.

@ScrollingLeaves

I read through the descriptions the men were giving of their fetishes. I’d be so interested to know more about any explanations as to how they come to be this way.

Some mention strange fantasies very young but then getting sexually hooked in at about 14 trying on their mother it sister’s clothes in secret. I wonder if it gets hard wired because they are so young and they get hooked?

It certainly seems clear that a proportion of transwomen must be this way.

I think the title ‘Men Trapped in the Wrong Bodies’ is wrong, on the grounds that they need to be men first in order to have these orgasm inducing fantasies about how shaving their legs, breast feeding etc.

No woman do that I know of!

The book is called 'Men Trapped In Men's Bodies', which I think is a perfect title.

It's by Anne A Lawrence, a self-described AGP and retired gender therapist.

www.amazon.co.uk/Trapped-Mens-Bodies-Autogynephilic-Transsexualism-ebook/dp/B00APXDL9E?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

It's very pricey, even on Kindle, but full text of some of Lawrence's shorter works can be found online.

There are only a couple of things left on Lawrence's website:

www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html

www.annelawrence.com/shame_&_narcissistic_rage.pdf

There used to be a lot more, which can still be found via wayback machine.

Thank you, Fox. Very clear.

@ LangClegsInSpace
Thank you for the links to those articles, which I have read through, though it is all complex and difficult to follow.

Anne Lawrence’s views about the narcissistic rage felt by a lot of trans women explain a lot about why the present debates are so difficult.

She also ends by showing a general sympathy as to why the rage occurs in a convincing way. Her suggestion that the term ‘autogynephilia’ might be better tolerated as ‘men wanting to be what they love’ could be true. But I wonder if perhaps that is obfuscating by being too romantic?

It is interesting to see ( first article) that theories about autogynephilia can now longer really be discussed. The only permitted idea is that of an inborn ‘gender identity’. In the end this may mean trans sexual MtFs will never receive detailed psychological counselling.

The MtF who were always more feminine, and attracted to men, seem very different to those who are masculine, and attracted to women but want to be women themselves, and may also have other fetishes.

What a complicated state of mind to have.
I wo

Apropos psychoanalytical ideas, in the 1960s and ‘70s wasn’t it popular to accept that all women had an inner male aspect and vice versa? I never hear this anymore, but this idea seemed to conjure a harmonious. perception of the human state. The idea that we all have a gender identity LangClegsInSpace that might be at war with the body lacks that implicit harmony. It seems however to have gained a lot of ground with young people.

Error, the paste repeated LangClegsInSpace in the middle of that sentence

She also ends by showing a general sympathy as to why the rage occurs in a convincing way. Her suggestion that the term ‘autogynephilia’ might be better tolerated as ‘men wanting to be what they love’ could be true. But I wonder if perhaps that is obfuscating by being too romantic?

Well yes, Lawrence is AGP so ...

Apropos psychoanalytical ideas, in the 1960s and ‘70s wasn’t it popular to accept that all women had an inner male aspect and vice versa? I never hear this anymore, but this idea seemed to conjure a harmonious. perception of the human state.

This is Jung's anima/animus. Lisa Marchiano writes about gender from a Jungian perspective. She focuses on young people and ROGD though, rather than the AGP cohort.

@ LangClegsInSpace Thank you for your answers.

I read a very interesting article by Lisa Marchiano exploring a case. It showed how important it is to help a young person find all the other elements that are really troubling them apart from gender dysphoria.

It was this. I saw it linked on a thread a few weeks back.
Gender detransition: a case study - Marchiano - 2021 - Journal of Analytical Psychology - Wiley Online Library

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-5922.12711

I've wondered if fetishes don't represent some sort of imprinting capacity in men, particularly. Human beings are fairly flexible in our capacity to accept different culturally derived types of sexual markers and customs, but people really are affected by them, and so there must be some way that a boy in one culture learns to respond to one set of cues and a boy in another culture learns something quite different.

In the past, people also had much less privacy around sex, so most young people would have been exposed to the sounds and even sights of whatever types of sexual activity were normative in the culture.

We seem over the last decades to have moved away from the idea that early sexual experiences and exposures can shape children's sexual development in significant ways, but it seems to me that's a mainly ideological change rather than an evidence based one. And while there is almost complete privacy expected for children from mundane adult sex, there is on the other hand exposure through the media to all kinds of images and fantasy type scenarios. Even before the internet but much more so now. And kids and teens have oodles of leisure time.

If there is some kind of imprinting capacity, the late age of sexual activity plus the lack of exposure to real mundane adult activities in neutral settings plus porn and film and advertising could make for some very odd outcomes.

I have often wondered about imprinting of some kind taking hold of the mind, seeing as it can with animals.

Also, the part of the mind that causes Tourette’s syndrome must work in a strange way. No word is a swear word except in a culture or context. How does the brain pick up on the taboo so soon then want to express it?