Talking about men with autogynephilia - AGPs

[Leafstamp]

Have just been checking the mumsnet guidelines and this is what they say on the subject:

Will you consider deleting posts that associate transgender people with autogynephila (AGP)?

This is something we'd look at on a case by case basis, though we'll definitely delete posts which generalise.

So, we should bear that in mind here.

I wondered how anyone can say for certain that a man who identifies as a woman is NOT an AGP.

I suppose if he is seeing a psychologist or similar HCP then that HCP may be able to give an opinion. But the fact of the matter is, none of the rest of the people that such a man came into contact with would know for sure if he is getting kicks out of dressing as a woman.

The Equality Act, through having Gender Reassignment as a protected characteristic has given protection to men with autogynephilia, hasn't it?

I know this is not a particularly new trail of thought for this board but I felt perhaps it needed a bit of an airing.

That DM article is shocking. How is it ethical to use a newborn baby as tool to ease gender dysphoria. Which I doubt this "patient" had anyway. More likely they had what other Transwomen describe as gender euphoria. In other words getting off on the whole experience. The whole thing is about the positive effect for the patient FFS

Probably worth summarising to help inform this discussion:

Blanchard theorised from his vast clinical experience that there were two main sub-types of "transexual male" as such people were then known.

The "homosexual transexual" a young highly effeminate gay man who often had grown up in a very homophobic family/culture and faced violence and abuse for expressing himself effeminately, so adopts a "transexual" persona to ease his way through society. Many young sex workers are of this type. In the public domain Blaire White would be of this type.

The "autogynephile" usually a white middle class middle aged man usually married and with a family. Has never shown signs of homosexual or "effeminate" behaviour. Suddenly announces a desire to transition often claiming he has long sturggled with his gender but Blanchard finds from his clinical practice that in actual fact such a person gains sexual or emotional comfort or pleasure from presenting as female and this 'coming out' is often preceded in his earlier years with secret cross dressing or porn viewing. Often his 'coming out' is unexpected and a great shock to his fmaily. Often he will wish to stay married in a 'lesbian' relationship. Debbie Hayton is of this type.

I find it interesting to observe that in the TRA movement the loudest voices and those acceding to public positions of power (eg Rachel Levine) are of the second type. They tend to be quite pivileged as men before transitioning. The first type is often vulnerable, from poor and non-white non-western societies with a high degree of homophobia and do face violence, poverty and discrimination.

No conclusions from this just an interesting observation. As I do not believe the two sub types necessarily have a great deal in common.

Jon Uhler says it breaks down to these 2 types as well; the gay ones ( not really harmful) and the pre-offending middle-aged ones, who he warns should have their hard drives inspected. It's chilling.
He described the descent from watching mild pornography to hard core porn to furries to children with public examples.

The desperation to hang on to stereotyped trans identities and AGP rights by men with those labels keeps reminding me of behaviour around well-entrenched addictions. I've witnessed plenty of people become hugely defensive about retaining their access to alcohol, shopping, gambling, gaming, or whatever. I know I was like that about cigarettes before I gave up smoking decades ago.

There's been lots of talk about as a trans ideology acting like a cult but does anyone know of research into AGP issues as addiction? It would make sense in terms of denial, refusal to debate, protection of perceived 'rights', rejection of rational or scientific thinking and so on.

That makes a LOT of sense @SoupDragonsFriend. It is clearly a very strong compulsion for some- and has a lot in common with addiction (I’ve had a lot of addictions throughout my life so I know a bit about how they operate 😬)

There's been lots of talk about as a trans ideology acting like a cult but does anyone know of research into AGP issues as addiction? It would make sense in terms of denial, refusal to debate, protection of perceived 'rights', rejection of rational or scientific thinking and so on.

A very interesting question.
I'm thinking about how AGP is positioned differently by those who admit having it. For example, Phil Illy (he of the infamous blue dress) talks about it being an innate orientation. This has (thankfully) been refuted by Genspect, when they clarified this during BlueDressGate.
If I imagine that he is describing an addiction, without realising/wanting to acknowledge it as such, it makes a lot more sense to me. Obviously I'm not specifically saying that Phil Illy has an addiction, so I hope that this comment is within the talk guidelines.

I wondered how anyone can say for certain that a man who identifies as a woman is NOT an AGP.

I suppose if he is seeing a psychologist or similar HCP then that HCP may be able to give an opinion. But the fact of the matter is, none of the rest of the people that such a man came into contact with would know for sure if he is getting kicks out of dressing as a woman.

Whether he's "getting kicks out of it" is (a) not something anyone else can judge or fully understand (any more than they can know or understand exactly what kind of kicks any stranger they see on the street might be getting out of anything) and (b) not something that makes any practical difference to anything.

You can't create rules or limits to human interaction based on peoples' internal psychological states. You can only limit what they actively do to each other.

Like other posters I find it so strange that everyone now pretends they are completely unaware of a phenomenon that literally everybody knew about 15 years ago. We've all seen The Silence of the Lambs, this was a well known paraphilia for decades.

If you'd said to your average British adult in, say 2005, "Did you know some men get off on wearing women's clothes?" they'd have wondered primarily why you were asking them something that was blindingly obvious.

I'm not wanting to say that any of them actually have addictions either. I was just trying to think about new ways of framing things, a new angle on it all.

As an extension of the addiction idea though, it also might make sense of the transactivism and support shown by allies if that were viewed as some sort of co-dependent behaviour which is entwined with propping up the addict's addiction.

I wish I hadn't got rid of my books about addiction and co-dependency now!

Great to see this thread is still standing, OP. My partner used to post on here a couple of years ago and was banned after getting a third strike for mentioning AGP. She pointed out that other people had mentioned it and not been censured, but... Maybe she'd be allowed back now?

I think having read transwidows voices of having witnessed their former partners’ “purge and binge” cycles; the way it never stops at just owning a few pair of knickers or similar but always escalates to more, plus having a general understanding of how indulging in repeated porn exposure essentially rewires the brain to need more extreme stimulation to achieve the same satisfaction, means I need no further persuading that AGP fetishism is, indeed, an addiction.

The similarity with an ideology comes in how supporters have been brainwashed to be all-compliant to the mantras and completely closed-minded to any contrary opinion, not in the original motivation driving proponents to cross-dress.

I have absolutely no doubt that the AGP component of current transgenderism is laughing its collective bollocks off not only at the women trying, often in vain, to hold the safeguarding line but also at the gullibility of the very “be kind” vocal trans supporters that help empower these men.

There's one assigned every minute!

I've often thought this, especially with regard to the family dynamic they create with their spouse and kids. It's exactly the way a lot of addicts behave in their marriages.

WHich to me brings up the interesting point that apart from booze, these days the dominant voice in addictions treatment seems to be all about harm reduction and enabling people to make the choices they want (or supposedly want) rather than actual recovery.

More and more, considering Shrier's new book on therapy for kids, which I think is right on the money, and also tis, I am seeing the way the medical people look at gender ideology as not such an outlier. It's part of a much bigger problematic set of beliefs about how people are and how to treat them.

Don't forget who built and controls the Internet as well. What are now, white, middle class middle age male coders. Who appear to lean towards more extreme desires and interests, I assume because when you've been exposed to porn from a young age online you need to increasingly escalate to get your kicks. That generation of nerds had access a decade before the iphone was invented and everyone started worrying about kids looking at porn. I feel this is the key to all of it honestly, how womens voices were so easily shut down from the start.

Within a liberal society like ours I believe it is not unreasonable to feel that AGP should be treated like any other sexual fetish, ie acceptable between consenting adults ‘behind closed doors’ as long as it doesn’t harm or abuse others.

But this is a very simplistic response because the nature for some fetishes (& maybe in particular AGP) part of the turn-on is to cause others to unwittingly be an audience to the behaviour. No doubt for some the major driver is to cause shock or distress in others. Activities like dogging or flashing are not acceptable or legal, why therefore should certain behaviours linked with AGP be tolerated.

Unfortunately conflating people with gender dysphoria with those with AGP, has created a conflicted situation where the ‘be kind’ advocates fail to understand the risks of permitting activities that allows predatory behaviour to not be acknowledged or controlled.

We need to define what activities and behaviours are acceptable and minimise the risk of creating situations where unwanted behaviour can occur. Segregation by sex rather than gender identity always seems to me the best safeguarding approach.

I’m not sure I’ve articulated my views well in the above post. What I’m really trying to say we really do need to be able to openly talk about AGP to resolve the key safeguarding issues around gender identity politics. And it’s not transphobic to do so.

"Whether he's "getting kicks out of it" is (a) not something anyone else can judge or fully understand (any more than they can know or understand exactly what kind of kicks any stranger they see on the street might be getting out of anything) and (b) not something that makes any practical difference to anything.

You can't create rules or limits to human interaction based on peoples' internal psychological states. You can only limit what they actively do to each other."

I get what you're saying to an extent, but unless I've sorely misunderstood I feel like there are some circumstances in which a person "getting kicks out of something" 100% can make a practical difference to others.

I also feel like there are circumstances in which rules and limits to human interaction can and must be based on people's internal psychological states.

The most obvious example for both being child focussed areas such as soft play settings - Perhaps I'm very out of the loop but I imagine there's rules in place to prevent a middle aged man with no child of his own from paying to come in "just to watch" for example?
Or at least I'd bloody hope so!!
(Pre-emptive note on the off chance MNHQ misinterpret my intentions here as I don't want this whole thread removed; I am not meaning to generalise either AGP's or TW with the above example. I am not talking about or referencing either here, just pointing out that there are circumstances in which people aren't permitted entry to things based on things that could hypothetically be going on in their own heads)

I do not understand why someone gets their kicks from dressing as a woman is wrong. If anything that seems to me like they're less likely rather than more likely to assault women.

In private, they're welcome to do what they like.

The vast majority of AGP men probably do only act this out in private, but for some it becomes obsessional and escalates (likely linked to addiction/porn). Or some men appear to almost 'fall in love' with this other woman and live full time as that woman. I would have said the latter camp seem to be the majority of transwomen I've come across (those who people say are 'quietly living their lives').

However, the more addicted/pornsick men, ones who have likely got into it through things like sissy porn, seem to be correlated with those really fighting the 'bathroom wars', trying to erode boundaries etc. There are unfortunately many examples of these men - plenty telling women to suck their girl dick, videoing themselves doing weird stuff in women's bathrooms etc. etc.

Many women find the overtly sexualised characterisations of women degrading. I personally think you should be able to do as you wish, up to the point that it impacts others. Try reading the Transwidows threads on here to read about stories of wives whose marriage and lives have been destroyed by their husbands fetish.

My main issue though it's that it challenges the assertion that these are just benign men who have an 'inner essence' that is female - which is what trans activists are trying to claim. In fact these are men acting out their fetish in public and expecting us to play along. Would you be ok with other fetish types being accepted and praised also?

Dressing in stereotypical female clothing doesn't make them women, and they shouldn't be legally counted as such.

As to your second point - TW actually they have the exact same offending patterns as men, because they are men. In fact, if you want statistics, trans prisoners are far more likely to be in prison for sexual offences than the general male prison population (although my take on that is men who are convicted of sexual offences identify as women to try and blag their way into a women's prison).

(To note, the 'quietly living their lives' trans women aren't all totally innocent; many peddle the idea that they would have been better off never going through puberty, which is how the whole puberty blocker/transing kids thing got started, and many have left devastated families in their wake due to transitioning in middle age and later life)

I don't want an argument. I hope as a woman I can speak.

Don't worry I was just replying to give you my perspective, not arguing 😊

It's not, until it affects other people.
A man having a foot fetish isn't "wrong" until that same man starts hanging around beaches and pools in the summer just to ogle at teenage girls bare feet or in sandals/flipflops.
Does that mean all foot fetishists do this? No. But it doesn't change the fact that some do.

I use this example, as this exact thing happened to a group of friends and I one summer as teens in town - This is explicitly 100% what was happening, we were not imagining it/paranoid.
We could tell because he was slowly moving closer, and "adjusting" his crotch whilst intensely staring at our feet.

In that same vein, a hypothetical man with AGP is not "wrong" until that same man starts demanding (aggressively might I add) we let him use female only spaces as if he is a "real woman" and that bio women "play along" to satisfy his sexual desires.

EDIT; Edit to add, I'm also not arguing! :) - Just explaining where the lines become muddied with an anecdotal story!

I got a week's ban for mentioning AGP so I avoid this board now.
Edited to add that I didn't actually want to avoid the board but decided it would be a good idea.