Blanchard debunked: Surveys show that all kinds of people experience "autogynephilia"

 

Online surveys show that gender embodiment fantasies (called "autogynephilia" and "autoandrophilia" by transphobic researchers) are common among all groups of people: transgender and non-transgender, men, women and those nonbinary.

Anyone who follows the intense anti-trans propaganda of the day, will have made note of the way the "autogynephilia" theory is used to invalidate transgender women and other gender variant people. "Gender critical" TERFs love the theory, as it allows them to present trans women as perverted predators. 

The theory has been falsified and dismissed over and over again, both by scientists and those that truly know something about being trans: transgender people. The tactic of the theory's supporters is often to confuse and obfuscate, or they double down on the analytical basis for the theory, ignoring the fact that it is this world view that has been falsified. Moreover, there is always a small detail somewhere you can use to confuse readers that do not know the topic well, or you can simply lie. 

In this post I am going to present data from several online surveys, some of them quite extensive, that have not been part of the academic discussions about the "autogynephilia" concept, but which nevertheless provide a rich amount of data about gender, gender variance and sexualities.  

They document that erotic crossdreaming (as in imagining yourself being the "other" gender relative to the one assigned at birth) are quite common in all relevant groups of people, straight and gay, women and men, transgender and those that are not trans. The fact that such fantasies are so common, destroys the credibility of the "autogynephilia" theory, which states that only male assigned people who are attracted to women can have such fantasies.

And what is truly interesting is that these surveys look at erotic crossdreaming as part of a much broader phenomenon: Embodiment fantasies in general, where people get turned on by the idea of having a body of any gender, including the one they identify as. This proves that the erotic cross-gender fantasies found in some trans women and other MTF (male to female) gender variant people represent a subcategory of a common human trait.

Autoandrophilia Defined

"Autoandrophilia" has been defined as "the paraphilic tendency of a biological female to be sexually aroused by the thought of becoming a male."

A lot of women have fantasies about being a man, but
 "autoandrophilia" is not a scientific term, and it does not
capture what this gender-crossing crossdreaming about.

This  is in the mirror term of Ray Blanchard's concept of "autogynephilia", where male to female crossdreamers and transgender women who are attracted to women are believed to be suffering from some kind of "erotic target location error". They are,  according to this theory, attracted to their "inner woman" as opposed to real women "out there".

So "auto-andro-philia" would translate into "self-man-love".

Autoandrophilia is not a thing

If you are a woman having fantasies of being a man, and who has found this article by searching for "autoandrophilia", there are a few things you should know:

1. Your feelings are real. You are not alone. There are many people assigned female who have such fantasies. Some of them identify as trans. Others identify as qenderqueer or nonbinary. Many identify as cis (non-transgender). Regardless: You are a natural part of the wonderful spectrum of sexuality and gender. This is not a sexual perversion.

2. "Autoandrophilia" is not a thing. It is a made up and misleading pseudo-scientific term, referring to an explanation for crossdreaming for which there is no proof, and which has not been accepted by the broad medical community.

On women who have sexual fantasies about being men

It turns out there are a lot of people assigned female at birth who have sexual fantasies about being a man.

Illustration by francescoch.

Last year I wrote a post about what the sexual fantasies of non-transgender people can tell us about crossdreamers and those who are some shade of transgender.

I documented that a lot of the fantasies that are used to invalidate the identity of trans women (and that are also found among many male to female crossdreamers) are actually quite common among non-transgender women.

And if these fantasies are found among cis women, they cannot be explained as a misdirected form of male sexuality when reported by  MTF crossdreamers and trans persons.

Do female to male crossdreamers exist?

Another myth of this kind is the one saying that there are no female to male crossdreamers. Women do not get turned on by the idea of being a man or having a man's body, the argument goes.

Post from a female to male crossdreamer from the reddit crossdreaming forum.
Republished with permission.

A relatively new collection of female sexual fantasies tells another story. The book, Garden of Desires, is a follow up to Nancy Friday's influential collections of such fantasies. Emily Dubberley, the editor, is the creator of Cliterati, a British fantasy website for women.

The suicide rate among FTM transgender youth is much higher than among MTF teenagers. Why?

Here is an article that has made me rethink certain preconceptions about female to male transgender people: "Half Of Transgender Teen Boys Have Attempted Suicide, According To A New Study"

The study, made at the University of Arizona,  says that about 50% of transgender teen boys have attempted suicide at some point in their lifetime. The similar number for transgender teen girls is 29.9 percent and for non-binary youth 41.8 percent.

In comparison, 17.6% of cisgender females and 9.8% of cisgender males had attempted suicide.

Chaz Bono is one of the few truly visible transgender men in the media. Photo: Gage Skidmore.

I must admit that I would have guessed that the attempted suicide rate would have been just as high among male to female transgender youth, as the misogynistic stigma attached to femininity would make the social pressure they face worse.

"I am something that does not exist!" (On queer schwulwomen, girlfags and guydykes)

In this guest blog post Ili tells about her life as schwul (girlfag). How do you explain something when the language you speak lacks the words for it, she asks, and when the culture you live in doesn't see it as possible? 

American comedian Margaret Cho modelling
the girlfag T-shirt over at Beyond the Binary

Guest post by Ili 

Note: I will use the German word schwul for “gay male” in this article because English has no single word for the concept, and because schwul has a subtly different meaning from "gay male".

A great many English-speakers are offended by the English term "girlfag," given that both"girl" and "fag" are at least potentially pejorative - a linguistic battle to which nobody has yet figured out a workable solution. Perhaps the German schwule mädchen will eventually be adopted into English.

I am something that many people will tell you does not exist. Schwulwomen (“girlfags”) and lesbian men (“guydykes”) cannot, by current gender-bound linguistic standards, be real.

While the advent of trans identities in the last few decades has brought significant changes in the meanings of “man” and “woman," the words “
schwul and “lesbian” still have rigid definitions, even within the LGBTQ communities: only men can be schwul, only women can be lesbians. Anything else isn’t possible, per definition.

And yet I, as well as an uncountable but significant number of men and women like me, feel strongly that we are these impossible identities, the schwul female, the male lesbian. To say that these identities are problematic is to understate the case dramatically.

Thinking the impossible

To begin with, it often takes years, perhaps even decades, for a nascent girlfag or guydyke to realize her or his tendencies. A woman may identify with schwul culture since puberty – but until she accepts the "impossible," she may think she’s crazy, or the only one of her kind. She may try for years to reconcile herself to normative heterosexuality - after all, she likes guys, she must be straight, right?

The Gay Male Friends of Girlfags

In spite of what the girlfag-bashers on tumblr say, gay men are not the enemies of girlfags and female to male crossdreamers.

Katharine Hepburn, the girlfag

Tumblr is one of the favorite social tools of the new generation, including male to female crossdreamers and girlfags.

Some of you will have noticed that I have put up a tumblr blog in order to get in touch with them. My wife, Sally, is also blogging on transgender issues over there.

(By girlfags I mean female bodied persons who are attracted to gay and bisexual men. A majority of them can be understood as female to male crossdreamers, as they express some kind of masculine sexuality and/or identity.)

The young and restless

One strength of tumblr is that the audience is young. 66% of all visitors are under the age of 35, while 39% are under 25 years old. If you want to know about their interests and problems, this is the place to go.

On the other hand, the young age of the majority of users is also a problem, as some of them have still not developed the social antennas needed to sense the suffering of others. Some are also too angry and frustrated to treat people with love and respect. Tumblr is like a school yard where the bullies roam unsupervised.

Bullies and trolls

I have rarely seen so much aggression and hate. The girlfags are targeted by some bloggers. Some of them are separatist "truscum" FTM transsexuals, who clearly see the female bodied crossdreamers as a threat to their own social acceptance.

Another one with Hepburn

The standard argument is that girlfags are "sexual fetishists", who are objectifying and preying on gay men. And yes, the autogynephilia theory has been used, as well.

Because I defend these fellow crossdreamers, many of them believe I am a young girlfag. This has made me the target of much aggressive misogyny. The levels of irony in this scenario are mind-boggling.

Gay men accept girlfags

But here's the thing: I find no such hostility towards girlfags among gay men in general.

My girlfag friends report the same. Their gay male friends are just that: friends. They accept them in the same way they accept the "fag hags". The whole "fetish" argument makes little sense to them, probably because gay male culture has a lot of "fetishistic" expressions of the gay identity.

I am going to share a quote with you which illustrates this. It was written by a gay man in a girlfag Facebook group. I have his permission to republish it.

All you need to know about "autogynephilia"

Here is all you need to know about Ray Blanchard's "autogynephilia" theory about transgender women and male assigned people who dream about being "the other gender".

With irregular intervals there pops up a new article discussing Ray Blanchard's "autogynephilia" theory, often written by someone who knows enough about crossdreaming to be interested, but not enough to see through the jargon of Blanchard.

Autogynephilia times two.

Photo: Dmitrii Kotin

This is a comment I wrote as a reply to Joseph Burgo's recent article on autogynephilia.

"Autogynephilia", huh?

Blanchard argues that there two separate types of transgender, both defined by the sexual orientation of the transgender person. The theory covers both male to female crossdressers and trans women, but the vocabulary refers mostly to trans women.

The first type is the "homosexual transsexual" (by which he means trans women attracted to men). These are effeminate gay men who transition in order to attract straight men, according to Blanchard.

The other is the "autogynephilic transsexual" (those who are not attracted to men). These he considers heterosexual paraphiliacs (perverts) who are sexually attracted to the image of themselves as female. Neither Blanchard nor his supporter J. Michael Bailey, recognize any of these as women.

Blinded by Science

Needless to say, the Blanchard model invalidates the identities of trans women. And from where I am standing it is also clear that the theory does not reflect the real lives of non-transsexual crossdreamers and crossdressers.

We live in a culture, however, where scientists are expected to be disinterested and objective, while the trans activists are -- for obviously reasons -- both emotionally and existentially involved in what's being said about them. This has led some to believe Blanchard (who is not transgender) knows more about transgender issues than transsexual women, crossdreamers and crossdressers.

Let me therefore make this perfectly clear: The theory has been thoroughly falsified and dismissed, also by scientists.

Here are some of the main arguments raised against it:

1. Crossdreaming is not limited to men who love women

The "autogynephiliacs" are defined by what I have called crossdreaming. Crossdreamers may get aroused by the fantasy of being their target sex. The androphilic trans women ("homosexual transsexuals" in Blanchard's misleading and offending terminology, i.e. those who are attracted to men) never experience such fantasies, according to Blanchard.

A Creative Transgender Vocabulary - from Butch to Woodworking

Photo by Jayfish, Thinkstock

Here is the final post in my Crossdreamer Vocabulary. In this post I include the remaining letters of the alphabet (W and beyond) as well as entries that have been suggested by others (and me) since the first post.

Remember that these entries are not so much dictionary definitions as mini blog posts on topics of relevance to crossdreamers and transgender people.

Butch

A butch is a lesbian woman who expresses a strong masculine identity.Her masculinity is real, and her butch appearance is her way of expressing that identity.

In spite of what many people believe, she is not necessarily  imitating men, although she will often make use of clothing of symbols associated with male masculinity. She may also express some of the personality traits associated with men. Many butches will, for instance, stress the role of being their lover's protector.

Butches may often hook up with more feminine "femme" lesbians, but butch/butch relationships are not unheard of. If you are searching for simple models of sex and gender, this is not the place to look.

Photo by Scott Griessel, Thinkstock

The reason crossdreamers should study the loves of butches is found in the similarity between some female to male crossdreamers and lesbian butches. Some (but in no way all) FTM crossdreamers express a masculinity similar to the one of butches, the main difference being their sexual attraction to men as opposed to the lesbian desire for women. This tells me that sexual orientation is not the only way of approaching the mysteries of sex and gender.

Note also the similarities between the butch/FTM trans man debate and the discussion of the relationship between crossdressers/crossdreamers and transsexuals on the other. There is no clear border between being butch and being a female to male trans man. Many trans men starts out as butches. In the same way many  trans women start out as crossdreamers. In spite of this, transsexuals and non-transsexual gender variant people spend a lot of time distancing themselves from the other group, most likely because they fear that the other group implicitly threaten their sex identity.

Many butches crossdream, in the sense of getting aroused by taking on the traditional male role in seduction and love making. The art of "packing" strap-on dildos as part of the ritual tells me that this crossdreaming also includes the bodily aspect.

Cultural dissonance

My friend Natalie from Thailand suggested that I include the term "cultural dissonance" in the transgender vocabulary. She writes:

 "This one I feel refers to how many enlightened and educated transgender and other gender-variant folks and even homosexuals/bisexuals suddenly feel a sense of total alienation/isolation in the respective cultures they are brought up in after they learn about their condition either from internet or from other sources. 

"Not because of the fact that they are different from the norm (which they anyways have felt forever) but because of the simple realization that their society is not aligned along the way they feel it should be to accommodate such a huge gender and sexual diversity, and also the awareness that such a massive change may not even take place for long unless a huge cultural war takes place soon.

On Getting Your Identity Affirmed (The Rayka & Jack Crossdreaming Dialogue 3)

Last year I had a very interesting email conversation with Rayka, a young Iranian girlfag and female to male crossdreamer. This is part three of our edit of that conversation. Part 1 can be found here.

How do you get accepted for who you
are, if there are no words to describe
who you are?
(Photo: Stockbyte)

In this part we discuss the difference between gender roles, gender traits and gender identity. We also look at what the lack of visibility, recognition and affirmation means for you mental health.

(About words: A crossdreamer is someone who gets excited by the idea of being or becoming the other sex. A girlfag is female bodied person with a strong affinity to gay male culture and who may imagine herself being a gay man with a gay man).

A difference between MTF and FTM crossdreamers

JACK
At first I believed that the main difference between MTF [male to female] and FTM [female to male] crossdreamers was the FTM focus on gay men and gay relationships. In MTF erotica the relationships are just as often male vs. female. It as if there has to be a male involved for many MTF crossdreamers to feel affirmed as woman in their fantasies. If you ask them, however, whether they are truly attracted to men, they will say no.

I have made myself "a sexual orientation test", asking selected MTF dreamers the following: "Go down the main street of your town. At the end list up the people you remember. If the majority is female, you are predominantly gynephilic [sexually attracted to women]."

This applies to me, as well. I am attracted to women and not to men. I do believe I have a preliminary solution to the puzzle, though, and I got it when I read a wonderful lesbian love story written by a MTF crossdreamer I know. The story is widely read by lesbians. I doubt very much if a man would be able to write such a story if he didn't have some kind of inner female identity. The point is that if you remove the erotic part, the crossdream that remains is the dream of a lesbian romantic relationship.

Maybe you can come up with an explanation for why FTM crossdreamers do not need to be a man with a woman in their fantasies to have their masculinity affirmed.

Words for what we are

I realize that it must be hard for you to even try explain what you are to your friends, given that the only terms are lesbian and trans. I have tried to use the term "straight gays" to explain this to non-trans friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it causes even more confusion.

How it feels to be a girl

You wonder how it feels to be a girl with a girl´s emotions. I can completely relate to this. "How can you possible now how it feels to be a girl?"some people ask. My reply is much like yours: "Í have absolutely no idea how it feels to be a man!" But I do know what if feels to be human, and have found that most of what it means to be a man or a woman is something we have in common.

How post-structuralist feminism has become a weapon used to invalidate transgender

I have spent some time over at tumblr, lately, mostly discussing the lives of female to male crossdreamers and girlfags. Sometimes it feels like being back in the school yard, with bullies honing in on you from all directions. This is probably because so many of the participants are very young and have still not developed the necessary empathy and patience needed to treat others with respect.

Using the fetish theory of modern feminists, lesbians
are invalidating the lives of FTM girlfags and crossdreamers,
arguing that these persons have no male identity.

There are some patterns here, the most important being the use of modern "post-structuralist" feminist theory to invalidate girlfags in particular and trans people in general.

Lesbians attack girlfags for "fetishizing" gay men. Since most of my readers do not spend much time on tumblr, I will republish a couple of my entries here.

The following is a response to impostoradult, who gives a very good presentation of post-modern accounts of sex and gender in her response to my blog post om sex, gender, mind and body. You do not have to read the original posts to make sense of this one.

Dear impostoradult,

I have actually no problem in accepting most of what you write here, both as regards post-modernism and your understanding of understanding in itself.

I guess I am more of a 'philosophical hermeneutics' kind of person myself, but the basics remain the same: Our life word, the sum of our experiences, put limits to what it is possible to think.

And yes, categories like gay, girlfag and crossdreamer only exist in our mind. You will not find them 'out there', in the 'real world'. However, our sense of self and our bodies are anchored in the real world, so we do have some access to "the world in itself", if no through language.

My admittedly popularized and simplified presentation in this blog post was aimed at those that systematically use parts of post-modern theory to invalidate the experience and identity of girlfags, crossdreamers and other gender variant people. And in this respect reminding people of their animal nature makes very much sense.

The current atracks on girlfags and crossdreamers, reducing them to unreal 'fetishes' and body-less 'semiotics' have their roots in the thinking of the post-structuralist philosopher Judith Butler and her fans. Having read all the books written by the lady, I can confidently say that this is a woman who have left the physical world behind and is now living in a mirage of literary references.

Man or woman or both? (The Rayka & Jack Dialogue 2)

Last year I had a very interesting email conversation with Rayka, a young Iranian girlfag and female to male crossdreamer. This is part two of our edit of that conversation. Part 1 can be found here.

If anyone have doubted the existence of female to male crossdreamers, this conversations should end that misconception.

Adam Lambert, girlfag icon.

In this part we discuss to what extent childhood experiences and hormones may shape our crossdreaming, and how to find word that can be used to describe who we are.

(Apropos words: A crossdreamer is someone who gets excited by the idea of being or becoming the other sex. A girlfag is female bodied person with a strong affinity to gay male culture and who may imagine herself being a gay man with a gay man).

What causes crossdreaming: Childhood, hormones?

RAYKA
I just wanted to know more about the theories about social and psychological causes of crossdreaming. I heard that getting raped at childhood might cause this condition. Well I experienced this! They say for a female, being raped may cause her hate her femininity so she wants to be a boy cause it feels more secure and less vulnerable! 

And there's also my hormonal problem. My body produce more testosterone than normal and causes some problems. Once my mom told the doctor that I'm so boyish and she said many girls with this problem are like that. As I read, it's also so common among FTM [female to male] transsexuals! 

I wonder whether this problem makes me boyish or me being boyish causes this problem! Something else: I have a butch lesbian sister! So many variations in a family, aren't there? But I have read somewhere that it actually makes sense, like, it's something in the family's genes!

Childhood crossdreaming

Illustration  of Iranian woman, based on photo
by Harris Shiffman. This is not Rayka, but
she could have been.

Childhood crossdreaming huh? Reading the trans people stories, I always see that they knew it in their childhood, but,well,I wasn't aware of this until about about [a couple of] years ago.

But I remember that I always (and right now) imagined the life of a boy (which I then realized was me!). I have  liked feminine boys since an early age, but don't remember if it was before that abuse incident or not.

Sex identity versus gender identity

You write: "I guess I am 'gender queer', but 'sex woman', if you see what I mean."

Exactly the same here (a male sex but an androgynous one); that's why I said I'm not transsexual. But, you know, I actually would like to transition to some extent. I always dream about it: top surgery and a low dose of hormones that gives me a deeper voice!

What irritates me the most is the idea that maybe my identification is not true; I just can’t be sure about anything…

Hey, seriously, why are FTMs  so much less visible than MTFs [male to female crossdreamers]?!

A Creative Crossdreamer Vocabulary, from "Top/Bottom" to "Twilighter"

Here is the fifth part of my Crossdreamer Dictionary. You can read the first entries here!

I found this photo by nensuria over
at Photos.com. It was tagged "Concept
of Domination and Authority." The fact that the
tie is immediately associated with
 dominance, says a lot about how
many read the roles of
men and women.

You may consider each of these entries a mini blog-post in its own right, all covering topics that should be of interest to crossdreamers and other transgender people.

Are there any crossdreamer phenomena, feelings or ideas you think is missing? Please add them as a comment!

Top and Bottom

More than 70 million copies have been sold of the "mommy porn" novel Fifty Shades of Grey,  not only proving that a significant proportion of women  find the idea of bondage and BDSM tantalizing, but also that most people find this phenomenon completely undramatic.

Fifty Shades of Grey echoes the preconceptions that there are two kind of people in the world: "tops" and "bottoms, "dominants" and "submissives".

Men are supposed to be on top, while women are supposed to give themselves passively to the man. You will find such  hierarchies among gay men and lesbian, as well, and even there being the penetrator may sometimes seem to be "better" than being the "penetree". The reason for this is most likely that sexual dominance is mixed up with social dominance.

To make this clear: There is no correlation between your social power and bedside preferences. Really! Nor is the "bottom" always passive and reactive in bed. And yes, there are female tops and male bottoms, and many seem to thrive in both roles.

Although there is a lot of variation, there is reason to believe that many male to female crossdreamers are -- in fact -- "bottoms". They want to be at the receiving end in bed, and the closer they are to the gender dysphoric end of the spectrum, the less pleasure they take in being "the man" in bed.

Historical picture of Japanese
femme and butch. From flickr.

This causes obviously a lot of frustration for the MTF (male to female) crossdreamers who are attracted to women, as most women expect them to be the proactive one.  There are practical solutions to this, pegging being one of them, but not all heterosexual women are comfortable with this kind of role play.

As for the female to male crossdreamers, it seems a majority of those at the gender dysphoric end of the spectrum dream about being the dominant seme in the gay male relationship, and not the more submissive uke. However, I do not have sufficient data to confirm this.

The Rayka & Jack Dialogue on Crossdreaming 1

Illustration  of Iranian woman, based on photo
by Harris Shiffman. This is not Rayka, but
she could have been.

Last year I had a very interesting email conversation with Rayka, a young Iranian girlfag and female to male crossdreamer.

She is inquisitive, she is intelligent, she asks hard questions and makes very helpful observations.

Because of my discussions with her I have expanded my own understanding of crossdreaming, crossdressing and  transgender issues. Most of all she has helped me map the similarities and differences between female bodied and male bodied crossdreamers.

The following is an edit of that conversation. I publish it here with Rayka's permission.

(About words: A crossdreamer is someone who gets aroused by the idea of being or becoming the other sex. Personally I believe crossdreaming is a symptom of  some sort of broader gender variance. A girlfag is female bodied person with a strong affinity to gay male culture. Girlfags may imagine themselves being a gay man with a gay man, and many -- but not all -- of them are crossdreamers).

Am I transgender?

RAYKA
I can say I'm a FTM  [female to male] crossdreamer but don't know what it all means; does it mean that I'm a transgender? I just mark both options when they ask about gender in a formal paper, I just feel like it but It's so confusing.

It's like you try to keep a hidden identity for yourself but you attempt to give up in the routine of everyday life.

JACK
I consider us transgender, as in "gender variant". We are outliers on the gender spectrum.
Some crossdreamers are truly transsexual, (i.e. with the inborn sex identity of the opposite sex), while others are not, and I am afraid you are the only one who decide for yourself. That might take time.

I guess that one way of finding out who you really are is to see if you suffer from gender dysphoria (i.e. deep unhappiness with one's biological sex and gender role).

If you do not feel distress because of your fantasies and you feel at home in your female body, I would say you are not transsexual. If you feel a deep longing for the life of a man, and this longing causes distress and unhappiness, you might be.

It seems to me you are troubled by it all.

As for myself, I do experience gender dysphoria, but for various reasons transitioning is not on the table.

On gender dysphoria

RAYKA
I'm reading the references you provided. about the dysphoria. Well, I would do anything if I could just cut off these irrelevant mounds of flesh on my chest. I really cant connect to them, they're stupid! I bind them all the time but they are still there! 

You know the image I have of myself  is of a a man with a flat chest, guy's wear and  short hair (just like me!). That person looks like a sweet boy but I'm not sure what's his gender!

New web site on girlfags and guydykes (+ the story about the blind men and the elephant)

Activists trying to describe the transgender continuum.

Ili has put up a new web site for and about girlfags and guydykes.

The site is bilingual: In German and English. It is currently under construction, so watch out for scaffolding and fresh paint!

The goal is to gather new and previously published material that may throw light upon the lives and feelings of girlfags and guydykes (gfgd).

gfgd and crossdreamers

The girlfag/guydyke concept overlaps with the crossdreamer term, in the sense that some (but not all ) girlfags and guydykes are crossdreamers. That is: They fantasize about being the other sex (relative to their birth sex) in a sexual or romantic relationship.

Female bodied girlfags may write and read stories about gay male relationship, identifying with one of the male partners while doing so. Male bodied guydykes will often dream about being a woman in a lesbian relationship.

Note, however, that at the core of the gfgd concept you find a strong affinity with gay or lesbian culture. This is not always the case for crossdreamers.

"Autoandrophilia" did not make it into the DSM-5

The absurdities of  the DSM continues (stockbyte).

I have had a hard time getting a hold of the relevant texts from the new edition of the American psychiatric manual, the DSM.

So much for democratic transparency.

From what I hear, though, it seems "autoandrophilia" did not make it into the DSM.

Someone within the DSM machinery might have concluded that enough is enough. There is no research underpinning this "disorder", so let's leave it out. That would be the optimistic version of what has happened.

I fear, however, that they all believe that female to male crossdreamers do not exist. Because if they knew the female to male variant existed, it would be close to impossible for them to leave "autogynephilia" and male bodied crossdressers and crossdreamers in the manual.

According to my source the "autogynephilia" term remains under the Transvestic Disorder category.

This means that male bodied crossdreamers who feel distress from their gender variance are considered mentally ill, while female to male crossdreamers and crossdressers are not.

Ray Blanchard and the Missing Girlfag (The DSM-5)

Blanchard refuses to let transgender people
out of the DSM (Drawing by Jayna Pavlin)

Ray Blanchard denies the existence of female to male crossdreamers, in spite of including "autoandrophilia" in the DSM-5, and in spite of having described a girlfag in a 1987 paper on transsexual men and women.

Tomorrow the American Psychiatric Association is to publish the fifth edition of the American manual for mental illnesses (DSM-5).

(Update 1: The manual was presented at the APA annual meeting today, but the text has not been published online)

Unless there has been a miracle "autoandrophilia"will be included as a new mental disorder.

"Auotandrophilia" is, as some of my readers will know, Ray Blanchard's term for female bodied persons who get aroused by the idea of being men -- people I call female to male crossdreamers.

Many of them call themselves girlfags. Some, but not all of them, are transsexual. Others, but not all, are crossdressers.

Blanchard refuses to believe in girlfags

In a recent interview Blanchard, who is the leader of the "paraphilia" (perversion) subworkinggroup of the DSM, admits that he had been the one to suggest the inclusion of "autoandrophilia, not because he believes "autoandrophiles" exist, mind you, but because he would like to avoid attacks from feminists.

You read me right. The DSM is going to include a diagnosis for a new mental disorder the leader of the responsible working party, Mr. Blanchard, does not even believe exist.

This is also why he has not presented any scientific research that documents that this "non-condition" is a sexual paraphilia (perversion).

This is a scandal that undermines the legitimacy of the whole DSM-5 enterprise.

Girlfag disbelief

Blanchard's bizarre tactics made one girlfag make the following comment to me in an email:

"First this idiot tells me I am mentally ill. Next he tells me I do not exists. Is this man crazy?"

It would be tempting to include a new disorder for people like Blanchard in the DSM. His obsessive attempts to classify sexual perversions is more than a little disturbing.

However, this is not so much about madness, as it is about a scientific and mental lock-in.

The female to male crossdreamers threaten to undermine his whole autogynephilia vs. homosexual transsexual theory, so he has to deny their existence.

Ray Blanchard lied when including autoandrophilia in the DSM-5 proposal

Cracks appear in Blanchard's facade. 

It turns out it was Ray Blanchard who suggested that "autoandrophilia" should be included in the new edition of the American psychiatric manual, labeling a large number of transsexual men as mentally ill in the process. He now admits that he did so in order to avoid being attacked by feminists. He does not really believe in their existence. 

As some of my readers will remember, the  new proposed version of the DSM-5 include a category called "autoandrophilia" refering to  female bodied persons experiencing sexual arousal when imagining themselves as male.

It now appears it was Dr. Blanchard, the chair of the paraphilia sub-workgroup,  who proposed the inclusion. But he does not believe in it.

Let me quote a recent  interview with Blanchard:

"[Motherboard:] Do you think autoandrophelia, where a woman is aroused by the thought of herself as a man, is a real paraphelia [sic]?

[Blanchard:] No, I proposed it simply in order not to be accused of sexism, because there are all these women who want to say, 'women can rape too, women can be pedophiles too, women can be exhibitionists too.' It’s a perverse expression of feminism, and so, I thought, let me jump the gun on this. I don’t think the phenomenon even exists."

The Transmasculine Women of Ancient Baghdad

Shereen El Feki's fascinating glimpse into the sex life of the Arab World, Sex and the Citadel, includes the  amazing story about female to male crossdreamers in ninth century Baghdad.

Some of the Jasmines of ancient Baghdad
preferred the life of Aladdin (Image: Disney)

As the story has it, the wife of Sultan Harun al-Rashid, Zubayda, was starting to get worried about their son, al-Amin.

My sources are divided as regards his sexuality. Feki argues he was attracted to men, while the Wikipedia article refers to his fascination for castrated  eunuchs. Regardless: There would clearly be no heir from the heir to this throne.

Al-Amin and his transmasculine girls

But Zubayda was a resourceful woman. She dressed up some of the slave girls up as boys and cut their hair, in the hope that they would attract the attention of their son.

This  seemed to have worked. Al-Amin's favorite boyish slave girl was 'Arib, famous for her beauty and her intelligence -- a singer, poet, chess player and excellent horsewoman.

The story may perfectly well be true. If al-Amin was attracted to eunuchs, he would be what we today call gender queer rather than homosexual, probably with some kind of trans-fascination. If that was indeed the case, an interest in girls taking over the role as boys would not be out of the question.

Be that as it may, to me story sound a little bit like an after-rationalization -- an attempt by non-transgender people to explain the unexplainable: the ghulamiyyat of ancient Baghdad.

There is no doubt in my mind that many of these girls were indeed what I call female to male crossdreamers, and some shade of trans in the wide umbrella sense of that word.

The gulamiyyat

This is what El  Feki says about them:

"In ninth-century Baghdad, the hottest girls on the streets looked like boys. These were the ghulamiyyat -- a feminine derivative of the Arabic word for a young man.

"These women were a curious combination of male and female. The ghulamiyat dressed like men, yet wore makeup. While they plucked their eyebrows and painted their lips, they also drew on mustaches in musk. 

The Yaoi Culture and the Female to Male Crossdreamers

Typical yuoi manga cover.
From Houyou Hikken.
Note the German title: Your Heart! Yaoi is a
global culture.

What makes women, world wide, write and read comics about men having sex? Crossdreaming, of course!

There are scientists who deny the existence of female to male crossdreamers, that is female bodied persons who get turned on by the idea of being a man. As far as these scientists are concerned only men can be what they consider "paraphiliacs" or "perverts".

Ray Blanchard, who came up with the "autogynephilia" theory, belongs to these researchers.

I have through several blog posts documented that not only are there female to male crossdreamers among us now; we find them in a wide variety of cultures and they have most likely always been here.

In other words: This is not a purely cultural or psychological phenomenon.

The reason the researchers do not see the FTM crossdreamers, is that they do not look for them.

Today I am going to present to you the fascinating world of female to male crossdreaming, and prove to you that there are large numbers of girls who dream about being boys out there.

They have their own thriving crossdreamer and crossdresser culture, in which we find a lot of parallels to their male to female counterparts.

Welcome to the world of Boy's Love and yaoi!

Thanks to Uli Meyer

I am very grateful to the German researcher Uli Meyer. In her article "Hidden in straight sight: Trans'gressing gender and sexuality via BL" in the anthology Boys' Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre  she has managed to make the female bodied crossdreamer visible for themselves and for the rest of us.

She has put them within a framework that makes sense, not only for the people involved, but also for people like me. I am using that article actively in this post. Do read the original! Her work is going to change our understanding of what it means to be transgender.

Some words about words

When you try to write about female and male bodied crossdreamers at the same time, it is easy to get lost in the terminology, as the inter-gender dynamics are a bit unusual.

Rutta to Kodama, yaoi comic presenting
a male same sex relationship. Note that
both look quite feminine, but the
uke to the left more so than the
dominant seme to the right. In manga
large eyes might signify both
child like innocence and femininity.

In this post MTF refers to male to female, i.e. male bodied persons who dream about being women or -- in the case of transsexuals -- transsexual women who have realigned their female mind with their hormonally and/or surgically altered female body.

FTM means female to male, meaning people with two X chromosomes who fantasize about being men, male being their target sex. FTM crossdreamers might call themselves "girlfags" online, a word most of them  do not find offensive.

Some crossdreamers may identify with their target sex, living at the transsexual end of the transgender scale. Unless they have transitioned, these often experience gender dysphoria, a deep unease from not having a body that fits their "inner woman" or "inner man".

Other crossdreamers identify with their biological birth sex, arguing that their fantasies do not entail another sex or gender identity. Most of these do not report  dysphoria. Note, however, that there is a lot of denial and repression going around. The crossdreamer's journey may be a trip from  one end of the scale to another.

I consider all of these people transgender, in the umbrella term sense of the word.

The terms "inner  man" and "inner woman" are metaphors referring to whatever it is that seeks expression through crossdressing and/or crossdreaming. I truly believe there is a biological core to crossdreaming as well as the transsexual condition, but the terms are helpful even if there isn't one.

To avoid confusion as to what the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" refer to (birth sex or target sex), I refer to people who are predominantly attracted to women as "gynephilic" and people oriented towards men as "androphilic". Believe me, it is easier this way!

I refer to FTM crossdreamers as women if it is clear that they publicly identify as such, and as men if they tell us that they are men. Transmen are men in my book. End of story!

What is BL and yaoi?

An uke is the submissive receptive partner in a yaoi gay
male relationship.
From the blog Manga Freak.

Male bodied male to female crossdreamers have different ways of expressing their "inner woman".

Some crossdress. Some explore their female avatar in online gaming. Others write stories or TG captions (illustrations accompanied by ultra short TG transgender stories).

They are all trying to express a side of their own self that the society around them does not accept. These are men who not only dream about being women, but who even would like to have sex as women.

The FTM crossdreamer culture has had a different cultural trajectory and history. At this moment in history their main way of expressing their "inner man" is through Boy's Love and yaoi, which at its core is a genre of Japanese style comics.

Boy's Love,  BL  or yaoi comics contain stories about gay male relationships. They are written by women, though, and the readership is mainly female. Boy's Love female readers identify with one or both of the male characters in these stories.

The Kama Sutra on Transgender People

Crossdreamer women who enforces their will on their male lovers with a strap-on? The Kama Sutra has it all!

I have been working on this blog for several years now, and I have learned one important lesson:

As human beings we have an amazing ability to reinterpret reality according to our own prejudices or cultural stereotypes.

Our fear of chaos, uncertainty and social exclusion tempts us to go firm and fixed world views, reality be damned.

History as a teacher

One way of getting around this kind of intellectual lock-in is to look at the views of other cultures and other epochs.

What is "self evident" to us is not to them, and by watching an alternative system of beliefs we can learn something about ourselves.

Recently I presented a case study from the early 20th century work of Magnus Hirschfeld, showing that the crossdressers, crossdreamers and transsexuals of his time struggled with many of the same challenges as contemporary transgender people.

Still, Hirshfeld has been instrumental in developing the language we now use to understand transgender conditions. Although I think it very unlikely, it could be that Hirschfeld's liberal view of cross-gender behavior has created the crossdreamers.

Would it be possible to go further back and further away and see if we can recognize crossdreamer behavior elsewhere and "elsewhen"?

The Gupta Dynasty and the Kama Sutra

Recently I watched a documentary about the influential Gupta dynasty of India (320 to 550 AD). This was a thriving and influential culture, and its most famous literary work is the Kama Sutra.

The Kama Sutra is now known as a manual for sexual positions, and that part is republished again and again with both ancient and modern illustrations.

The work  is much more than a sex manual, however. It is a review of the understanding of sex and sexuality of the time -- or times, rather, as it is a kind of compendium based on works written over several hundred years. 

Maybe, I thought, I could find descriptions of crossdreaming in the Kama Sutra? Unfortunately, the editions I found online did not give me much, apart from some small glimpses into the world of proactive women. 

However, I soon realized that the versions found online were shortened and censored, so I bought myself a complete version, The Complete Käma Sütra of translated by Alain Daniélou .