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?

Lisa Marchiano has done some excellent work.

I was disappointed because the book was too expensive for me - but then I noticed this link at the bottom of the Twitter thread.

critorix.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/men-trapped-in-mens-bodies_book.pdf

Thank you Vexed.

Having briefly looked looked at the first chapter about the two sorts of MtF trans sexual, the first is described as feeling from a very young age that they were feminine etc. A case study describes how an individual felt as a child.

I found the account of the person remembering [his] feelings as a child believable in that the account was so detailed. Surely they were not imagining it. He wanted to dress as a girl and was sexually aroused even when very very young when he was. But, if this is true, it does not correspond with the GC view I read on here, that young children do not really feel they are born in the wrong body but they are simply being mixed up by stereotypes.

I feel rather confused.

I'm not sure there is a "GC" view of this as such. I suspect you would find people have a number of quite different views on the origins of adult sexuality and how they develop over time in children.

I don't think there is any question that children can experience a low-level, almost latent sexuality, while in some other children it remains completely underground. It's also clear that children can feel in some sense attracted to or identify with masculine and feminine images.

And there seems in many adults and sometimes younger people to be a relation between sexuality or emergent sexuality and identification with masculinity or femininity. Which is something we don't really understand scientifically though I believe traditional psychology has more to say. And is probably more useful.

But none of this really supports the "born in the wrong body" idea. Feeling attracted to femininity, or turned on by it, or turned on by being masculine or feminine, does not mean that a person is actually the other sex or even gender.

“But none of this really supports the "born in the wrong body" idea. Feeling attracted to femininity, or turned on by it, or turned on by being masculine or feminine, does not mean that a person is actually the other sex or even gender.“

No it does not suggest they are the wrong sex, as such, but I was struck by how forceful the thoughts of wanting to be opposite gender seemed to be in that persons report of themselves as a child.

In comparing that state of the child’s mind to the views I and others have had to hearing of children who were ‘transitioning’, I was thinking if a thread where a 4 year (old natal girl ), a trans boy far as his parents were concerned, was in the news. He had a twin brother.

Every one responding on MN thought the little twin girl would have simply wanted to have the same more comfortable clothes as her brother and play with his toys and that his parents really just wanted another boy. This seems possible.

But what if that little girl feels far more of a real yearning than everyone presumed?

I personally have an acquaintance who announced his 4 year old son had transitioned. This person normally seemed very rational. Maybe his son/daughter, who does not have siblings to compare themselves to, really does think of themselves as a girl.

You know, I wanted to be a boy for a number of years as a kid. Not that even, I thought I was a boy. I felt like I had boy hands, I wanted to have jeans and a leather jacket like the Fonz, I figured I'd have beautiful women following me around once I was a grown man. (For the record, as an adult I have no interest in dating women.)

I can remember thinking and feeling these things very clearly, but there was not any real basis for those feelings. They were based on an immature understanding - totally subconscious - of masculinity and femininity and maleness and femaleness.

All of this completely flipped one day when I was about ten when I realized, in a fit of jealousy, that the heroic figure I idolized, (no longer the Fonz,) I actually wanted to marry. (Go to Hell Princess Leia.)

I'm sure the Freudian's might have something to say about all that, but what it says to me, being pragmatic, is that our developing psyche and self image and sexuality are a sea of odd ideas and influences and hormones and god knows what else. A poetic image of human persons being filled with monsters and demons and gods is very apt, I think. But we have somehow completely reduced that to something like a bit of Twilight fan fiction.

@LobsterNapkin
“A poetic image of human persons being filled with monsters and demons and gods is very apt, I think. But we have somehow completely reduced that to something like a bit of Twilight fan fiction.“

That seems to me to be a very wise summing up. Thanks.

@SmokedDuck

Oops - posted too soon. When we consider that fetish, by definition, tends to mean that a person often will not be able to have a very satisfying "normal" sex life, I think it becomes questionable that it isn't harmful, at least to the person involved.

Totally agree. Bang on. The question is, does the activity fall within SSC and RACK? Can both parties fall within giving to each other Positive Informed Consent? That is key.

I had to google what the term meant.

Here is the definition

Autogynephilia is defined as a male's propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. It is the paraphilia that is theorized to underlie transvestism and some forms of male-to-female (MtF) transsexualism

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22005209/#:~:text=Autogynephilia%20is%20defined%20as%20a,%2Dfemale%20(MtF)%20transsexualism.

It is labelled as a paraphilia. Other paraphilas (NOT fets) are incest, bestiality. Paedophilia.

Used to run Kink events in London. It was always the cross-dressers who gave me the headache. Always. Not just me but other female kink organisers had to deal with these cretins. They were attempting to get into female only safe spaces running the argument that if we didn't let them in then we are being transphobic. No were were not. We had zero tolerance for abusers. Even then, we bent over backwards for these losers.

And yes, we can talk about how being 'female' impacts on our lives. The girl I was in 1995 thought that I could do anything. In 2022, all I see is our rights as female are being quietly dissembled. To the point where an semi-epsilon won a beauty contest in America looking like the back end of a route master.

Anyway. Us, females need to fight for our right not to be cancelled. We are half of homo sapiens. Half.

@ScrollingLeaves

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?

THIS. But they get hooked because they have a rampant personality disorder. Playing dress-up is cool. Normal. Where it becomes a-typical is when they attempt to lever their sense of entitlement again women.

I mean, just look at the incels. Fighting their own little war against women. State, sponsored rape.

I mean, if you had a choice, would you really want to be female? Be honest? I would not. Therefore why do these cretins want to be women? Attention. FFS.
I think that they will learn The Hard Way.

I'm not interested in what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home. It only becomes any of my business if forced on to others, especially if that includes children.