#cw autogynephilia mention

[isuggestforcefem]

Hey, I'm a generally unhappy cis guy(afaik), and I've thought to myself that I wish I had been born a girl, but I'm not exactly sure why. I fear I'm just projecting an internalized manosphere/incel-esque "women have it easier" perspective onto my present loneliness. For my entire adult life, my actions(and general inaction) have/has been controlled by the desire to not be the type of man that all men are stereotyped to be in certain spaces, the view of which I know not be true now, but that I worry I heard and believed at too early and formative an age. How do I know I'm actually trans and not just a man who hates the box that is manhood? The thing is, I really don't care about what other men think of me. They could call me a faggot/whatever, but patriarchy as enforced by women just hits all the harder in my experience. Terfs have done far more to dissuade me from pursuing this line of thought than normie transphobic men ever have. As in, the idea that I will only ever be the predator/monster I was destined to become.

I don't even know what I'm saying here at this point. Do you relate to any of what I've said? Any suggestions? :3

That seems pretty trans to me. How do you know you are? That’s simple. Give being a girl a honest, genuine try. Maybe just with your friends, or with a reduced comitee. And not a one day try that stops when you realize you feel slightly uncomfortable when called she. Because, where does that discomfort come from. From not wanting to be called that, or from wanting to, so desperately, but knowing you’re not supposed to?

Finally, you are not a predator for wanting to be a girl. What wanting to be a girl means is just that you might be one. Autogynephilia isn’t real

[muskmelon-enjoyer-199x]

20, 42, 52 :)

20. what is your favorite song at the moment?

oooo, tough. probably

or

or

or

or

I've really been feeling Pat's later stuff recently. I never really got it when it first came out. I was a dumb teen and still vibing hard with the Johnny Hobo and Wingnut stuff. Now I'm behind my peers in my late 20s and trying to get my shit together for once in my life, so it's like, "huh."

42. favorite books

Where do I start?

"Nevada" by Imogen Binnie. The protagonist Maria is literally me in every single possible way, in the worst way possible lmao. She goes on a road trip after her life falls apart and meets a depressed young man in northwestern Nevada who is blatantly a repressed transsexual. CW for drug abuse, autogynephilia discussion, and one mention of BDSM.

"Little Fish" by Casey Plett. Amazing book. It's about a Mennonite-raised trans woman in Winnipeg who has to get back into prostitution to make ends meet. CW for sexual violence, alcoholism, suicide, etc.

"Sovietistan" by Erika Fatland. The author travelled through every country in Central Asia around 2010 and wrote about her experiences in each of them. Some of the anecdotes are insane, and she treats her subject matter in a very human way (which is unfortunately not common in writing about the region). Definitely worth reading.

"Orlando" by Virginia Woolf. I must've read this 10 times my freshman year of college. A teenage Elizabethan nobleman gets transformed into a woman (happily enough) by spirits and lives that way for 400 years.

"The Man Who Spoke Snakish" by Andrus Kirivähk. This is a fantasy story about a dying pagan community during the Christianization of Estonia. They talk to snakes and live in the woods, but the youth keep running off to live in Germanicized Christian farming communities. This book has all kinds of stuff. There's magic, snake-human cultural exchange, culturally-pagan irreligious people who hate the high priest, vicious polemics against bread and porridge, and remnants from another human species who live in the trees and tame lice. There's some weird stuff about women marrying bears instead of men (i swear it came out before the tiktok thing lmao) and some really brutal war scenes, but it's definitely my favorite fantasy book of all time. Better than The Hobbit, and I love the Hobbit. It's so good. It's so so so so so good.

52. something i'm talented at

Im a decent cook! here are some photos:

(clockwise: general tso's tofu, surinamese moki alesi, a japanese version of mapo tofu, and my favorite swedish pizzasallad)

[autolenaphilia]

CW for description of massive transmisogyny and lesbophobia and almost every prejudice under the sun, including biphobia and aphobia.

Recently I wrote about trans women are dismissed as fetishists and how that worries me in connection to the kink at pride discourse. And I mentioned that there is this dichotomy in transmisogynistic thought. It is between on one side “the good transsexual” who is straight, cis-passing and gender conforming, passed rigorous medical gatekeeping and doesn’t insist too much on her rights. And on the other side of this dichotomy is the figure of the “bad trans woman”, who is fetishistic, either lesbian or bi, non-passing and the dreaded Trans Rights Activist.

This dichotomy has existed in trans medical gatekeeping since at least the 60s, and has and still often plays a role in who gets to medically transition or not. Signs of non conventionally feminine interests or sapphic inclinations can be a reason for denial of healthcare, and trans women often justifiably lie about such things to get past gatekeeping.

And one of the foremost exponents of this transmisogynistic dichotomy is of course Ray Blanchard and his “theory” of “homosexual transsexuals” (HSTS) and “autogynephiles” (AGP), which has caused its own transphobic strain of sexological research, which I will call Blanchardism for short. The dismissal of trans women as fetishists has deeper roots, but his ideology is the source of a lot of today’s transmisogyny.

One might be tempted to rephrase “HSTS” as “straight trans women” and “AGP” as “lesbian/bi trans women”. And those are the people the terms are intended to describe, but they are deeply transmisogynistic words and essentially create a kind of dream-image of the people who they purport to scientifically describe.

Basically the HSTS are “so gay they became trans”. In Blanchardism they are basically described by ultrafeminine gay men who transition because of their attraction to men and it’s often implied by transmisogynistic researchers that they do so to attract straight masculine men. They transition younger than lesbian or bi trans women, and according to Blanchard also pass better and more conventionally attractive compared to their non-straight trans sisters. Not that this keeps Blanchard from misgendering them by saying that they are “homosexual males” and the figure is essentially an extension of “the deceitful trans woman, who tricks straight men into having sex with a male”.

Blanchard however reserves the full force of real thinly-disguised transmisogyny for the autogynephiles, trans women who are attracted to women. They are described as straight men driven to transition by the fetish of autogynephilia. It’s a sexual attraction to the image of themselves as women, said to be closely related to “transvestic fetishism” (which means being turned on by wearing the opposite gender’s clothes). It’s caused by an “erotic target location error”, which causes them to misdirect their attraction to women to their own bodies, and cause their fetish. They are said to transition later, and be non-feminine and non-passing and overall described as disgusting perverted failures.

What about bisexuals, you might ask? Well, Blanchard doesn’t really believe that bisexuality exists, at least not among trans women. He argues that autogynephiles sometimes have “pseudo-bisexuality” where they are attracted to the idea of having sex with a man as a woman, but aren’t actually attracted to male physique in itself. The sex with men is just a tool to further their “being a woman fetish”. In response to that you can argue that the defining part of sexual attraction to a gender is wanting to have sex with them, not any vaguely defined attraction to their bodies in the abstract. And that what gender you are treated as in a sexual-romantic relationship is crucial to whether the person wants that relationship or not. But let’s talk more about the blanchardian ideology before we get into further.

Blanchard is also a aphobe, who doesn’t believe asexuality exists among trans women either. He came across trans women who essentially said they were asexual, but claimed they were just autogynephilic fetishists who were either lying or whose masturbation to their fetish was enough to satisfy their sexual urges (which he bizarrely claimed was a kind of “pair-bonding” to their feminine selves).

It’s all nonsense, of course. Me just writing out what Blanchard believes is so obviously nonsensical that it almost refutes itself. It’s terrible science, and you can find plenty of evidence against it. Even Blanchard’s own studies had findings that contradicted his conclusions. There are many people who don’t fit into his dichotomy, and in studies of cis women who have very similar sexual feelings to Blanchard’s concept of autogynephilia.

Smarter people than me have done these debunkings, and you can for example read Julia Serano on the subject or watch this Contrapoints’s video.

Of course, this won’t convince the believers in Blanchard’s typology, because I think it’s fundamentally unfalsifiable, just like Freud’s theories. In a manner similar to Freud, Blanchard builds up this elaborate theory of human behaviour, in which all dissent can be dismissed as repression and deceit. He is a fantasist rather than any kind of scientific researcher.

His answer to trans women saying things about themselves that contradicted his findings has always been “those bitches are lying”. They were denying their attraction to women, their masturbation and fetishism. Of course in many cases that is true, as I mentioned before, trans women have and do lie about having sapphic tendencies or even sexual feelings overall in order to get past medical gatekeeping. But for Blanchard and his followers it becomes a mantra that invalidates any evidence against their ideas. Basically anything that doesn’t fit into their transmisogynistic binary like bisexuality or asexuality is said to be essentially fake. It’s essentially like arguing with a conspiracy theorist, they can just deny any contrary evidence with the claim “it’s lies”.

It’s more interesting to look into how Blanchard’s transmisogynistic theories are not just reflections of already existing transmisogynistic ideas, but also just plain misogynistic, lesbo- and biphobic and heteronormative ones, which I haven’t seen discussed that much.

The ideal trans woman in blanchardism is straight, conventionally feminine and literally has her womanhood entirely defined by her attempts to please men sexually. The ideal is also that she is submissive to these men. In one of Blanchard’s questionaries (which deserves a separate post of its own because it’s bugfuck insane) to determine how straight or lesbian trans women are, you actually get less “straight points” if you prefer to “lead” in sexual encounters with men. Not that this doesn’t keep Blanchard and co. from treating her with condescension at best, misgendering her as a “homosexual male”. It’s not surprising that papers by Blanchard acolytes Ken Zucker and Yolanda Smith came to the conclusion that “HSTS” have lower IQs than lesbian trans women (which of course in reality doesn’t say anything about real intelligence). The view of straight trans women by these “scientists”, is of course extremely transmisogynistic, but it also shows transmisogyny is just misogyny applied to trans women. If these straight trans women are accorded any kind of respect from these transmisogynists, it’s because the fantasy that these studies create of them come close to fulfilling society’s misogynistic ideal of a woman. She is straight and is submissive to men, and preferably a bit dumb.

Her evil mirror image is the autogynephile, and it’s interesting how she is a specifically transmisogynistic reiteration of already existing misogynistic, lesbophobic and biphobic tropes. The idea of wanting to become a woman as a fetish builds on the sexualization of women in patriachy, so wanting to be a woman must be sexual.

Her sapphic sexuality being demonized as perverted and fetishistic is how cis lesbian sexuality is demonized too. I’m not the first to point out how the sapphic trans woman being portrayed as a predatory danger in bathrooms and changing rooms is an evolution of old homophobic/lesbophobic fearmongering. Blanchardians gleefully point out how “autogynephiles” often fail at passing as cis, and are non-feminine, and that is of course another specifically transmisogynistic reiteration of an old trope with the aim of otherize lesbians and bi women. It’s the old narrative of how they are “mannish” and fail at femininity and ultimately womanhood and are therefore disgusting to the cisheteronormative mindset.

Blanchardism as a narrative thus furthers misogyny, heteronormative and lesbophobia and biphobia. Transmisogyny is thus again revealed as misogyny applied to trans women, in concert with transphobia. And the hatred towards bi- and lesbian trans women in the concept of the “autogynephilia” is just old lesbophobic and biphobic narratives in a new form mixed with transphobia.

It’s telling how TERFs, despite their stated aims of fighting misogyny and lesbophobia have embraced Blanchard and his theories, to the point “AGP” is a fixture of the TERF vocabulary. To the extent Terfs don’t openly espouse total trans elimationism and want transness “morally mandated out of existence”, they can sometimes pretend to accept the “old-school true transsexuals”. It’s a variation of Blanchard’s HSTS stereotype who in the Terf narrative of the good submissive trans woman that went through rigorous medical gatekeeping and didn’t insist on “invading women’s spaces”. The subtext is that gatekeeping kept their numbers down to a quantity cis society could easy ignore, the cis passing requirements that existed also contributed to that, and trans people were cowed enough to not insist on their rights.

It is ultimately this that reveals the hypocrisy in the TERF accusation that trans women further misogyny, lesbophobia and in general stereotypes about womanhood. It was the cis male medical gatekeepers and “researchers” like Blanchard that actually furthered the stereotypes and literally forced them on trans women by denying them healthcare if they didn’t comply. People that are now lionized by TERFs. And in wider society, performing femininity continues to be a way of survival for trans women. All women are expected to perform femininity, but trans women due to transmisogyny especially so. We are just trying to survive. We are not transitioning to trick men into sleeping with us, we don’t transition to prey on lesbians. We just are.

[sylvanas-girlkisser]

Have you read Dreadnought by April Daniels? It's a superhero novel about a trans-lesbian super hero called Danny "Dreadnought" Tozer. Also the author is trans.

I have, i quite enjoyed the first book, though i feel it kinda lost its’ way through the second one (which I never finished). The first one imo is just decent transwlw wish fulfillment, but the second one kinda tries to make a statement by: (spoiler alert) having the main antagonist be a TERF, and like I get enough of those IRL i don’t also need them in my escapist literature.

To follow up that point about the main antagonist, I get that Danny is supposed to be an insecure teenager with anger management issue, but the author also makes a point of saying that Danny has had publicity training in the year between book one and two, so it annoys me how she consistently waltzes into every trap set to paint her as the villain by the bad guy.

I also wish that even though Danny might not be able to protect herself from transphobic abuse, the book itself was structured to at least somewhat refute it. Like in book one, when Danny is transformed and the ol’ autogynephilia defense is thrown at her, Danny is scared, confused and overwhelmed, so i get why she can’t say anything against that, but then the book should really be doing more than just going “I mean, i guess it kinda looks like that”. Doesn’t need to like quote studies or point out flaws in the original methodology, just mention that despite having the body of an airbrushed porn star, Danny still feels the most comfortable in a gamer t-shirt and doesn’t know how to braid her hair.

I have some vague memory about the only two plot relevant PoC being streetsmart vigilantes disliked by the other superheroes, possibly as some sort of mishandled metaphor - its also possible I’m getting parts of the story mixed up with “Worm” (by John C. McCrae), so take that with a grain of salt.

Lastly: MAJOR CW for the fact that Danny cannot go two weeks without nearly being forcibly detransitioned, like your girl could go to the bottom of the ocean, and next thing she knew she was captured by sharks trying to steal her tiddies.