Article on AGP by Lorelei

[TinselAngel]

This is a really excellent article, in which AGP males, in their own words, describe much of the behaviour outlined in the trans widows threads over the last 5 years.

Many people don't believe trans widows, maybe they'll believe the men themselves? (nb Mods this article is based on source material old enough that the men in it did not identify as women as far as I'm aware)

loreleihatpin.substack.com/p/autogynephilia?s=r

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).

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

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.

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.

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

@Artichokeleaves

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.)

I would guess that most people who understand what's going on in these situations would be uncomfortable with the ones you describe.

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.

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.

@Whatsnewpussyhat

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.

Many are young trans men, too.

@nepeta

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).

That's an interesting thought. It's a very Narcissistic image, in the classical sense.

MangyInseam

I suppose then you have to ask how far you take that.

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 would think the line should be drawn when those fantasies are taken into a public space, particularly one that is designated for a particular group they are not part of. That's why we have to have a solid 'no men in women's spaces, end of!' It's the only way.

Men who breach women only spaces in service of their fantasy are not victims in need to cosseting, they are co-opting others into their deviancy.

We all have fantasies, some nice, some weird, whatever. When you project those onto other in a very public way, and expect to be pandered to, there's a huge problem. They have now been given permission to take this out in the open, into the mainstream and more importantly, laws are being changed to facilitate this.

@nepeta

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.

We are not the ones stopping the discussion of AGP - the TRA lobby groups and supporters are. I'm actually surprised this thread hasn't gone tbh, there was a time when if you mentioned AGP on MN it would get deleted.

If we accept that it's a mental disorder, and not a sexual fetish are we giving too much credence to it? Are we saying that 'sufferers' need to be accommodated because they didn't choose to have this 'disorder'? Also, many who have AGP don't want to accept it's any sort of disorder, and are claiming innate gender dysphoria.

"Many women are afraid of male violence because of the serious risks to us it poses and because of our own experiences of it. We wish for of a world that has no more male violence in it, and for the vast freedoms that world would offer us. We could walk late at night, or through forests, and alleyways and deserted places with no more risk of sexual violence. Or of never coming home.
We could travel to any land, alone, if we had the money to do so and not have to give any thought to the idea we might be murdered or kidnapped or raped there. The inherent risk that comes with being female and moving through society would be gone.
Someone masturbating over that very oppression of us cannot hope to understand it. They do not, after all, even wish to prevent it as doing so would remove their ability to have such a fantasy."
This is tragic for women and chilling.

@Whatsnewpussyhat

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.

It's not "destigmatising" it, it's about acknowledging it, and understanding that it is what lies behind a lot of men transitioning.

I would argue that many of the men who transition have never heard of it. Instead they've heard about gender dysphoria, think that applies to them, and the solution is transition.

It could well lead to a lot less people identifying as transgender. Currently they identify as transgender and so they have to be treated as women, otherwise it's discrimination. But once the cat of out of the bag and it's understood that it's not transgender, then the legal requirement over how they are treated changes.

And really I think we need to move away from the obsession that single-sex spaces is key for them. If they go out dressed as women, they want everyone to indulge their fantasy, whether that be men or women, and to be indulged at all times, not just in those single-sex spaces. Of course women-only spaces should be off limits for them, but don't believe for one second that their fantasies aren't indulged on the unsuspecting public elsewhere. It does sound like a particular comedy sketch show really.

Roseglen84
We are not the ones stopping the discussion of AGP - the TRA lobby groups and supporters are. I'm actually surprised this thread hasn't gone tbh, there was a time when if you mentioned AGP on MN it would get deleted.

If we accept that it's a mental disorder, and not a sexual fetish are we giving too much credence to it? Are we saying that 'sufferers' need to be accommodated because they didn't choose to have this 'disorder'? Also, many who have AGP don't want to accept it's any sort of disorder, and are claiming innate gender dysphoria.

My comment about the destigmatisation was in response to another poster's earlier comment, not aimed at gender critical women in general. Sorry if that was unclear.

I beiieve that AGP would be classified as a paraphilia. A paraphilia becomes a paraphilic disorder if it causes suffering and anguish to the person who has it or risk of harm to others. Not all paraphilias are disorders, but those are which harm the person who has it and/or may harm others. I believe that the kind of AGP which is played out in the public arena qualifies as a paraphilic disorder.

@Roseglen84

MangyInseam

I suppose then you have to ask how far you take that.

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 would think the line should be drawn when those fantasies are taken into a public space, particularly one that is designated for a particular group they are not part of. That's why we have to have a solid 'no men in women's spaces, end of!' It's the only way.

Men who breach women only spaces in service of their fantasy are not victims in need to cosseting, they are co-opting others into their deviancy.

We all have fantasies, some nice, some weird, whatever. When you project those onto other in a very public way, and expect to be pandered to, there's a huge problem. They have now been given permission to take this out in the open, into the mainstream and more importantly, laws are being changed to facilitate this.

I'm not sure this is entirely practical though, not with the framing around sex and gender that was present even before there was so much attention on trangenderism.

You can tell that to people I suppose, that they should keep sexual things at home, but the fact is that often we don't know what is going on in the mind of someone in a public space. What is the difference between some guy wearing a dress because he wants to subvert gender norms, and one who is playing a role for a thrill?

I think as long as your underlying messaging about sex, sexual arousal, fantasy, etc is that it is all ok if it's in our heads, and maybe even unhealthy to suppress it, you will have people who don't recognize when they are starting down a path that will eventually drive them to bring their fantasy into public settings, even if only passively. And what's more they will have very few told to avoid that path because we don't really teach people how to avoid that path even when they are uncomfortable with it early on.

I believe that the kind of AGP which is played out in the public arena qualifies as a paraphilic disorder.

What about when it's played out in the private arena of one's own bedroom with a non consenting spouse?

If we accept that it's a mental disorder, and not a sexual fetish are we giving too much credence to it? Are we saying that 'sufferers' need to be accommodated because they didn't choose to have this 'disorder'? Also, many who have AGP don't want to accept it's any sort of disorder, and are claiming innate gender dysphoria.

While I wouldn't necessarily think a fetish is classed as a mental disorder, they aren't just a hobby for people who have them. They are very powerful and often come up at a young age and prevent the development of a normal sex life and relationships.

@drinkingwineoutofamug

Just wondering if we can have a vote How many women fantasies about being tie up, dismembered, knifed in the stomach and gang raped 🤬 If these men think that what being a woman is , I'm lost for words. Read bits out to my partner he's disgusted, he asked are these the same people who want access to female spaces , my reply was yes.

And the thing is that every month one or two of these men are in the newspaper for sexual offences. It's not like it's not happening. It IS happening. It's happening enough for it to be in the newspapers not just hidden on some forum on the internet.

@TinselAngel

I believe that the kind of AGP which is played out in the public arena qualifies as a paraphilic disorder.

What about when it's played out in the private arena of one's own bedroom with a non consenting spouse?

Then, too. And it would also qualify as a disorder if it gives the man who has it pain even if it hurts no-one else.

But it's the kind that is played out in public which is most likely to be relevant in the fight over who gets to access female single-sex spaces.

But it's the kind that is played out in public which is most likely to be relevant in the fight over who gets to access female single-sex spaces.
The struggle of trans widows is as worthy a cause as the fight for single sex spaces

twitter.com/Women_Stand_Up/status/1514856289964277760

Fuck. 😱 what was he doing with the surveillance equipment?

I guess the answer is obvious, I just don’t like thinking about it. Love that a paraphilia that’s frequently comorbid with voyeurism has been rebranded as a reason for men to access spaces where women are naked.

Quite. The abuse of a woman is no less abusive for taking place privately behind closed doors.