Do transmen suffer from a form of autogynephilia or do they have 'genuine' gender dysphoria?

[GaIadriel]

Not looking to stir things up although I do appreciate this may be a controversial question.

I've read so much about how transwomen are often motivated by sexual perversions etc, and my kneejerk reaction is that it's certainly feasible. However, when I think about transmen it becomes a little bit more ambiguous.

I'm not sure I buy the argument that it's to 'escape from the pressures of being a female' as is often claimed because male hierarchy seems much more brutal and unforgiving to my eyes and seems to punish the 'weak' to a much greater extent.

When a female presents as male and uses male facilities (as many successfully do due to passing much more easily than most TW) what is their motivation for doing this?

Women do not often experience autogynophelia.
Historically, men dressed in women's clothing for sexual kicks, whereas women who cross dressed did it to try to escape the constraints of womanhood.
From my reading of r/transgenderuk, some trans identifying women use male toilets for what I assume is validation, however the majority use gender neutral toilets

Do you mean do they get aroused at the thought of themselves as men? That would be a different word to AGP as the gyn part means woman.

Anyway, I have seen detransitioner Sinead Watson comment that porn use is a factor in some trans identifying female’s behaviours.

So whilst I think it’s much, much, rarer than AGP I think the female equivalent may exist for women who claim to be men.

Blarchard studied this explicitly in his paper Heterosexual and Homosexual Gender Dysphoria (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1987). What he found is is virtually all trans identifying females were homosexual and none were erotically attracted to the idea of being men (what he would later in an 89 paper call AGP/AAP, auto gyno/andro philia.).

It's impossible to run such studies today because the concept of AGP/AAP is fraught. So, we can't know if the situation has changed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some do have AAP, but that it's still extremely rare compared to AGP

Many of the women with trans identities I have met are mostly desperate not to have to be women in the way that they perceive women as meaning, with the limitations, lack of power, vulnerabilities. It seems to come from a very different drive and place.

It's also worth pointing out that a main thrust of Blarchard's work was that AGP transexuals had genuine gender dysphoria and were in some sense more true trans than those without it, i.e. their identity was more stable and they reported greater satisfaction with transition.

Agree with above. The ones I know are trying to other themselves away from being a woman

Agree with the substantial differences between TiM and TiW. Most ‘women’ who wish to transition are actually children - disproportionately autistic and traumatised girls. In the Finnish study they were also most likely to detransition/desist. The group missing is adult women transitioning, which doesn’t seem to happen. The children are escaping (often sexualised) ideas of womanhood. According to the Tavistock figures they were very likely to have experienced sexual assault and 10x more likely than the general population to have a convicted sex offender in the immediate family.

Most of the TM I know, young - late teens/early 20s are desperately trying to escape the abuse they suffered.

The only examples I can think of are a couple from a few years back where women pretended to be men in order to trick other women into dating them. One of them went to prison I think. Granted I'm not the most knowledgeable on the history of male identifying women.

some of them are lesbians struggling to deal with their sexuality. Some of them are sexual abuse survivors trying to run away from being a woman so it doesn’t happen again.

I also think it's possible that some transwomen are just gay men. I defo get this vibe with my neighbour who is a tough old school builder approaching retirement age. About a decade ago he apparently 'realised' he'd actually been a woman all along. I wonder if that's just a more palatable explanation for him being attracted to other men.

It's certainly an odd situation when we chat because I'm a female working in construction talking to a man who thinks he's a female working in construction. 🤔

I think old fashioned transexual women were dysphoric lesbians but increasingly there is a fetishistic side to it among young trans identified girls, though it's a different feel of fetishisation than with AGP. If you're in fan spaces like tumblr, they are awash with young girls with trans identities who are very much heterosexual but who identify as gay men. They (over)identify with male characters in shows/books, ship exclusively gay ships with these characters and sort of self insert themselves right in there.

Like I said the fetish does feel different. They're not turned on by themselves as men but they are very much turned on by two men together and think they can be in on that. It's a mixture of escaping being seen as a female in a misogynistic world (there's a lot of posting a picture of a perfectly ordinary man and screaming about their "gender envy" of him) and co-opting the gay male experience for their own sexual fulfilment (Heated Rivalry is v popular in transmac circles).

And like AGP males have got no idea what it is to be female and don't understand this, these girls have got no idea of what the actual gay male experience is like. They consume fanart and fanfiction of these "slash" ships which are entirely written by other girls (even if they believe they are boys). The boys in these stories are softer and emotional and call each other "love" and sit in each others laps and then have what girls imagine gay sex must be like and are entirely unlike real boys and men. And the girls identify with this fantasy and think they can create it and are actively trying to bring it into being by transitioning and getting into "gay" (completely straight) relationships.

The girls caught up in this also talk a lot about their autism/ anxiety/ depression - it can be buzzword salad so I'm never sure how many are genuinely vulnerable young people with comorbidities that left them wide open to finding the answers in a trans identity, and how many are just label collecting for oppression points. I suspect there is a mixture of those who were anxious and depressed who sought their answer in trans, and those who took on a trans identity and became anxious and depressed as a result of now being the "most marginalised" and believing everyone wants them dead.

It is very sad, all the ones on Testerone post about their crumbling bones and they don't understand whhhyyyy they've got osteoporosis and isn't weird that me and my trans friend both can barely walk now? But they're also quite self righteous and unlikeable (the osteoporosis at 20 rants are immediately followed by rants about how evil JK Rowling is and how much damage she has done to them and how important it is to speak out against her). There is always a lot going on with them and 'fetish' certainly isn't the only thing.

But 100% the idea of being in a boy/boy relationship and the enjoyment they get out of fictional boy/boy relationships and their desire to self insert into that is a big part of it now.

There's a first hand account of the fandom to trans pipeline here

💯 agree with this. I've noticed too that trans identified females often form relationships with other trans females. They are more like lesbians playing dress up and these mainly young girls have been used as pawns in the tra ideology. Is it also a shield to ward off unwanted male attention. It's utterly heinous they've been encouraged and steered down the surgical route. I don't know if it's just me but there doesn't seem to be as many photo shoots of these women showing their mutilated bodies and scars. Really hope that these surgeries reducing in numbers.

The female equivalent of autogynephilia would be autoandrophilia; the sexual/romantic arousal at the thought or image of oneself as male. And yes, it exists in some trans-identifed females (mostly young women and girls). Increasingly so. You’ll find a fair share in female-dominated fandom spaces around Boys’ Love, yaoi, slash fiction, and whatever other adjacent online subcultures.

I could go further into it if you’d like (I just got home so I’m a bit short on time to go more in-depth about it). If you’re interested you can also listen to this detransitioner speak of her experience in this .

I went through a phase of wanting to be a boy when I was a young teenager.

Puberty was hard for me. One moment I was a sporty girl who was good enough to play football with the boys (and my equally sporty female best friend), the next things started to grow on my chest and all the other girls were constantly talking about boys and how to get a boyfriend. And then periods started which was just horrific! Seriously? I was expected to put up with that every single month for the next 30 years!

Oh and somewhere along the line I also discovered that the average woman earns significantly less than the average man, that sexual violence exists and woman are the majority of the victims of it and that it was seen as quite acceptable for a man to shout remarks about me from his van as I walked to school in my uniform.

And then……..

I grew into my body and accepted it. Met a boy I liked. Fell in…… ok lust but it seemed like love at the time. A few years later met Dh, fell in love, got married, had a couple of kids, happily breastfed with the breasts that caused me such horror, discovered various forms of hormonal contraception meaning that the only time I have had proper periods as an adult was when ttcing.

I’m just glad I grew up in the 90s. If someone had given me an “out” at 13 that explained why my body felt so wrong to me I would have taken it. I actually find it surprising that anyone wouldn’t.

Almost every trans man I’ve known was ridiculously young when they started transitioning, there were a few at my secondary school that started at 12/13.

I remember being bambozled their parents were on board with it. I still am bambozled that any normal parent is ok with that

Most trans women I’ve met have been much older when they started transitioning. The few young trans women I’ve met also had learning disabilities.

That's interesting. I've always wondered why lesbians often tend towards the butch and gay men towards the effeminate/camp. Obv I'm generalising but I highly doubt you'll find a great many straight men acting like Alan Carr, nor many overly butch heterosexual women.

It seems a bit of a taboo topic and whenever I've mentioned it before people always strongly assert that gay men/lesbians aren't trying to in any way mirror the opposite sex. I just don't believe it though. If a butch lesbian isn't attempting to adopt 'masculine' mannerisms then it's one hell of a coincidence that she'd present that way.

The teen girIs I know who identify as male or nonbinary are suffering from mental health issues including eating disorders and trauma from sexual abuse or unwanted sexual behaviour from men, or they are trying to escape the pressure put on girls to act, dress and present a certain way. And/or they are uncomfortable with their inconvenient changing bodies and the unwanted male gaze they get. They don't fit in with the popular girls and are looking for a new group to fit in with. Hence why it's socially contagious. Completely different motivation from middle aged men who get turned on by wearing tights.

@GwenogJones
Interestingly in the study I mentioned, the sole example of a heterosexual trans identifying women (out of 71 TIFs) is what can only be seen as a precursor of this, and Blanchard didn't quite know how to categorise it.

The one heterosexual female was a single, university-educated woman in her early 30s who complained that the subjectively felt herself to be male and requested surgical sex reassignment. She was erotically attracted to homosexual males, particularly "gentler, nonmacho gay men," in relation to whom she felt herself more masculine. She expressed romantic fantasies of being a man in a homosexual relationship with another male whom she could protect and care for, and there were less obviously erotic fantasies of protecting a homosexual male friend from being assaulted or ridiculed in public. Unlike the many heterosexual male gender dysphorics who relate fantasies of being, or becoming, a lesbian, she denied ever having been aroused erotically by cross-dressing. It is possible that this patient was one of a type described by Hirschfeld (1925): heterosexual women with strong masculine traits, who say that they feel as if they were homosexual men, and who feel strongly attracted to effeminate men. We d o not mention this very unusual case further, and she is not included in any of the statistics that follow.

Personally, I'd hate to be a bloke. Violence or at least the threat of it seems pretty much inescapable without conceding some amount of dignity for want of a better phrase. Yes, you can 'walk away' and many that do get the last laugh later in life or end up with a different type of power (financial etc).

But there's a reason almost every teen film has a fantasy about the nerd kicking the bully's arse. I'm not so sure it's social conditioning so much as evolution. I think even most non violent men would prefer to be able to handle themselves if it came to it.

I get this impression too. Although I do also think we need to be careful not to go down the path of "you've got mental issues if you're not heterosexual".

@GallantKumquat - It's a shame Blanchard never saw tumblr, it's a rich seam just waiting to be studied.

I could have written that. Add in crying my eyes out when my mother made me wear a bra (and taking it off at every opportunity)

As an adult woman so would I. As a 13 year old girl who was sat in French worrying that she was bleeding onto her school skirt - the downsides of being male hadn’t even occurred to me.

And none of you are familiar with us slashers? We know we'll never be blokes but enjoy our queer kicks and on the whole look down with amusement and titillation on males.