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.

Anyone is of course allowed to share their experience, but they also have to expect that it is likely to be challenged, particularly if they use derogatory terms to describe other women's experience.

You were using demeaning language.

Using words such as "regurgitated" and "trotted out" is presumably intended to imply that our accounts are unrepresentative and ill thought out, which is precisely trying to "negate" them.

In my opinion, from what I've read here., some things are said that are not helpful and it is not helpful to say all people of a type are one thing.

I'm interested in why you feel your husband is relevant to this thread @TheWayThingsGo

What is the perspective you want to bring?

I get that you're angry. Direct it somewhere other than me.

My experience is not the same as yours. I apologised. Stop banging on at me.

The thread title is "talking about men with autogynephilia".

OK these are good points. I think you're right.

I'm not "banging on". I'm taking issue with your unfeminist language.

If you come onto a feminist board primarily to defend your own isolated experience and to defend paraphiliac men, you must expect to be challenged.

I get that reading our experiences will be highly confronting for you. I sure it would have been for me while I was still at the compromising to make my marriage work phase. I hope you might reflect and find that supporting women in a similar situation is a more sisterly approach than trying to minimise their experiences, to justify your own.

Also, don't again try and minimise by saying I'm "angry", I'm not.

13th rule of misogyny: Angry women are crazy. Angry men have trouble expressing themselves.

The thread title is "talking about men with autogynephilia".

So your husband is an autogynephile?

What Tinsel said. She's not an "angry woman" just because she's expressing her lived experience of being in a relationship with an autogynephile.

Coincidentally Glosswitch has written an article to that effect this week:

thecritic.co.uk/do-hurt-people-hurt-people/

Yes that's a really good article.

Do you perceive your husband to be an autogynophillic man thewaythingsgo?

I guess if you (as an adult) are completely fine staying married to a cross dressing husband and he’s not obliging other women or children to partake in a fantasy of him as a woman (entering women’s spaces etc. or expecting others to pretend he is a woman) then there is no harm at present. Perhaps the manifestation of autogynophilia is on a spectrum and some men are able to keep it fully private.

Although that doesn’t really apply if there are children at home. I listened to quite a hard hitting podcast of a woman who had been the child of an AGP father. It hadn’t been til much later that she realised how she had been used as a kind of prop in his fantasy. It was really sad.

Ooops, apologies I thought you hadn't known - sorry!

I'm not looking for a fight, but this is a place where women come, mainly feminist women, to discuss issues of sex and gender. Hearing about your experience is interesting and I don't think anyone here is trying to negate it or deny your right to express it. It's your language in relation to other women's experience that is troubling.

I'd be very interested to hear how you see/ understand your DH's cross-dressing, how it's affected you as a couple and so on. Back in the mid-90s I had a friend whose DP of several years went from trying on her underwear 'for a laugh' to cross-dressing occasionally to living in women's clothing when at home to joining the Beaumont Society and applying to Charing Cross hospital for a full sex change* all within a period of around 18 months. I know the effect it had on her and I'd be interested to know how you feel and have felt and how you negotiate it in your relationship.

*as it was known then.

I suspect this anecdote I’m about to share is not unique. But many years ago I had a good friend who after several years of marriage finally felt able to share with me some pretty intimate details of their relationship.

Her husband had always been fairly controlling about aspects of their sex life, dictating what she should wear both in bed, and around the home, and out socialising. Pretty mild requests at first - heels, stockings under her normal clothing, feminine hairstyle, full make-up, very feminine clothing (never trousers). His requests then started to become demands and more extreme in private - he started to call her his little whore. He was unable to have sex unless she was dressed in the way he dictated, then she discovered he was buying the same women’s clothing to wear himself, and gradually it took over more and more of their life until she eventually realised there was no room left for her own desires and identity. The more feminised he became himself, the less desire he felt towards her ‘because she didn’t do it properly’.

She had loved him, and he was a kind man initially, but his addiction needs just became the only thing he was interested in their life together. When it got to the point he wanted their small child to call him ‘Momma’ at home - she gained the courage to leave him. This was over 30 years ago now, and we have lost touch over the years, I often wonder where they both are now.

Looking back, this was a classic case of coercive control, and the desire for her to dress and behave in certain ways seems much like the way society can subjugate women to match male desires.

In my younger, more naive liberal years, I worked in a charity shop. We had a couple of male customers who liked to browse and sometimes buy from the women’s clothing rails.
They were very different from each other. One would discreetly buy items quickly and rarely engaged with anyone in the shop. The other would put on a whole performance asking anyone in earshot whether they thought the style or if the colour would suit him, what sort of accessories to wear, and going into the (single) changing room to try on and then coming out in his outfit to show everyone, and rarely ever bought anything. He obviously caused a bit of consternation amongst the older volunteers, but in those days I was very much live and let live.
Looking back probably both of them were obviously AGP, but the second required an unwilling audience. It annoys me so much now, how dare he cause those poor elderly volunteers stress, and I guess I was somewhat culpable in not better managing the situation

That's odd. I wonder was it deleted because of the link to the article expressing the thoughts of a predatory man that first triggered me, all those years ago. I'll try and see, and comment separately if it is let stand this time.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/03/my-life-in-sex

It was a strange deletion @DeanElderberry ?

I suppose, to be fair,someone might have thought it transphobic of me to say that I avoid being in proximity to natal men dressed in what they think of as women's clothes because of that article. But I'd have no fear of a person who was born a woman and who now dresses in what are thought of as 'men's clothes', even after hormonal treatment that produced beard growth, so I think I'm more phobic of XY people with niche sexual preferences that might include me without my consent, than I am about trans people (most of whom are XX) in general.

I've just read the article.

My partner of 20 years has embraced this wholeheartedly. Sometimes we go shopping together. I let the sales ladies know I am shopping for myself. As I pay, I smile and wink, as if to say, “I am enjoying this even if you aren’t."

Illustrates all too well how humiliating the staff is part of the turn-on.

I let the sales ladies know I am shopping for myself. As I pay, I smile and wink, as if to say, “I am enjoying this even if you aren’t.”

Yuk.