In his research on gender identity disorders, Prof. Ray Blanchard posed that the cause behind male transsexualism was related to atypical sexual orientation: either homosexuality or “autogynephilia”,1 a word he coined to describe the unusual phenomenon of the male “attraction to oneself as a woman”.
Both the DSM-4 and the DSM-5 call the first homosexual type “early onset” gender dysphoria, which is when a particularly feminine boy persistently identifies as a girl in childhood. This identification usually desists at the onset of puberty, at which point they are also likely to be homosexual.2
For a minority of these feminine boys, the feeling will persist after puberty, where some might want to be perceived as heterosexual woman, and take medical steps to change their bodies to model the female phenotype. Sexologists call members of this first type “homosexual transsexuals” (“HSTS”).
If “gender” is understood as the average of male and female behaviour, and is made up of two intersecting bell curves, then members of the HSTS group can be found at the tail end of the bell curve of their sex: as remarkably feminine males, and remarkably masculine females.
The second type, which the DSM recognises as “late onset” is harder to understand. This is when at the onset of puberty, a boy finds that he is not only attracted to women, but attracted to the concept of himself as a woman: autogynephilia.
For the majority, this will remain a fantasy, but for the minority, it will result in an identity disorder, which is also labelled under “gender identity disorder” in the DSM. In this case it is not a case of being remarkably feminine, as males with autogynephilia are typically masculine.
Characteristics of autogynephilia
Autogynephilia “is basically a sexual orientation”,3 however unlike typical male heterosexuality, it is not directed outwards, but inwards, which is something that can vary in degree, from coexisting with outward heterosexuality, to nullifying it.4 Autogynephilia is not in itself a disorder, nor something that necessarily requires clinical intervention.5 “Some paraphilic behaviors are illegal or potentially harmful to other people; other paraphilic behaviors are both legal and harmless. Autogynephilia is one of the latter type of paraphilias”.6 Autogynephilic males might be labelled bisexual, but this is arguably qualitatively different from “that experienced by homosexual gender dysphorics… this type of of “bisexual” orientation need not reflect an equal attraction to male and female physiques and would perhaps be better characterised as pseudobisexuality”.7 Autogynephilia and gender dysphoria are two sides of the same coin,8 but one does not always imply the other:
It is important to distinguish between autogynephilia and autogynephilic gender dysphoria. Autogynephilia is basically a sexual orientation, and once present does not go away, although its intensity may wax and wane. Autogynephilic gender dysphoria sometimes follows autogynephilia, and is the strong wish to transition from male to female. A male must have autogynephilia to have autogynephilic gender dysphoria, but just because he is autogynephilic doesn’t mean he will be gender dysphoric. Many autogynephilic males live their lives contented to remain male. Furthermore, sometimes autogynephilic gender dysphoria remits so that a male who wanted to change sex no longer does so.9
History of autogynephilia
Although the word autogynephilia is new, it is not a new phenomenon and can be seen in much earlier research, such as that by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld from the early 1900s.10 It is also possible to judge historial figures as also likely autogynephilic, such as the Chevalier d’Éon, the cross-dressing spy. The researcher Henry Havlock Ellis, a contemporary of Magnus Hirschfeld, also recognised the phenomenon, but instead named it “Eonism”, after the Chevalier:
On the psychic side, as I view it, the Eonist is embodying, in an extreme degree, the aesthetic attitude of imitation of, and identification with, the admired object. It is normal for a man to identify himself with the woman he loves. The Eonist carries that identification too far…11
On the question of whether autogynephilia is innate, Blanchard answered in an interview:
I don’t think that people are born with fully formed paraphilias, fully formed specific paraphilic interests and I don’t think that anybody is born with a fully-formed cross-gender identity. What I think is that people are born with predispositions or vulnerabilities to a kind of erotic miss-learning, which then predisposes them to things like autogynephilia, perhaps it predisposes them to develop a cross-gender identity […] I don’t think think people are born with that specific crystallised paraphilia, but I think they are born with some sort of defect, where erotic learning is not self-correcting… some paraphilias definitely cluster: autogynephilia and masochism, for example, and autogynephilia, masochism and what we might call “stuff fetishism”: fetishism for particular materials, like leather, silk, rubber… it’s not completely at random…12
Regarding “erotic miss-learning” Blanchard suggests the theory that autogynephilia is a “erotic target location error”, where the category of attraction is targeted onto oneself, rather than directed out at another. The phenomenon is not limited to males who are attracted to women. It appears that for each thing a man can be attracted to, there is the phenomenon where the attraction can be targeted at oneself.13
Whilst talking about autogynephilia on social media, a gay man recognises the concept of “autogynephilia”, but instead as “autoandrophilia”, that is, attraction to oneself as a man. There are also more unusual sexual attractions, such as an attraction to amputees (“acrotomophilia”), and the attraction to being an amputee (“apotemnophilia”) which the journalist and author Matt Walsh pertinently talks about in his documentary What is a Woman?
The theory is, that the “erotic target location error” appears to happen more in males, and not females, as male sexuality is “category specific”. Prof. J. Michael Bailey writes in The Man who would be Queen, a popular introduction to the “two types” of transsexuality:
Show men two erotic video clips: one showing only men and the other showing only women. If they are straight, they become much more sexually aroused by the clip showing women than by the one showing men. This is true whether you measure sexual arousal by asking them (subjective arousal) or by using a penile plethysmograph, which measures the degree of penile erection (genital arousal). Gay men show exactly the opposite pattern: they are much more strongly aroused by video clips of men than by those showing women. Men are quite specific about the kind of erotic categories (i.e. male versus female) they respond to…. In contrast, women of all sexual orientations tend to be aroused by video clips showing men and by those showing women. Women have a bisexual pattern of sexual arousal, both subjectively and genitally.14
If you experience sexuality as directed at a particular target, then the theory is that this target can incorrectly be located towards the self.
While the concept of “autogynephilia” is generally accepted by sexologists, it was not well accepted by “trans activists”. The book The Man who would be Queen proved to be particularly controversial amongst activists, with its case studies of “Cher” and “Juanita” an autogynephilic and homosexual transsexual respectively.
The intersex campaigner Alice Dreger writes about the problem “trans activists” have with presenting transsexuality to the public as a case of atypical sexuality:
Therein lay a real problem, one that explains why the transgender activists who went after Bailey were able to garner fairly widespread help from other transgender people, at least at first. Before Bailey, many trans advocates had spent a long time working to desexualize and depathologize their public representations in an effort to reduce stigma, improve access to care, and establish basic human rights for trans people. The move to talking about transgender instead of transsex was motivated in part by a desire to shift public attention away from an issue of sexual orientation (sexuality always being contentious) to an issue of gender. This is similar to how gay rights advocates have desexualized homosexuality in the quest for marriage rights, portraying themselves in living rooms and kitchens instead of bedrooms, in order to calm fearful heterosexuals… The shame and derision accorded trans women like Juanita and Cher doesn’t disappear just because a few scientists may be personally fine with the idea that men might become women primarily because of reasons of sexuality, not “trapped” gender identity… the trans women who attacked Bailey for his book understood that the world would probably not agree… They wanted the whole business of Blanchard’s taxonomic division shot down. Transsexuality should appear only as the public could stomach it, as one simple story of gender, a tale of “true” females tragically born into male bodies, rescued by medical and surgical reassignment. And there should be absolutely no mention of autogynephilia or any other sexual desires that might make trans women look to the sexually sheltered like the perverts they were historically assumed to be.15
Dreger was arguably right that sexologists were perhaps naïve to assume that the public would be respond to transsexualism well, if it was presented as a matter of atypical sexuality, rather than a trapped “gender identity”: it is easy to see that the average reader would likely find the presentation of autogynephilia in The Man who would be Queen freakish, in comparison to how autogynephilia is presented to the public under the guise of “gender identity”, as in the film The Danish Girl, the story of the likely autogynephilic transsexual Lili Elbe, or “Cherry Valentine: Gypsy Queen and Proud”,16 which is a mixture of accounts from homosexual and autogynephilic transsexual males
Similarly the Netflix series Pose, a drama set in the New York ballroom scene, arguably also gives the public a more rounded insight into HSTS, than the archetypes in The Man who would be Queen, although this is something that is perhaps forgivable, given the book’s primary focus is on sexology and the aetiology of transsexualism.
The two-type theory of autogynephilia and HSTS was arguably also controversial to male transsexual “gender identity” ideologues, as it would necessarily confine their activism to advocating for the rights of transsexuals, rather than for the rights of supposedly “another type of woman”, with male sex characteristics but a female “gender identity” or “feminine essence”.
There is justification for transsexual people not to be discriminated against when it comes to provision of services such as housing. But there is no justification for transsexual people to compete in sports under their assumed sex, as they are not literally that sex, in a way that “gender identity” ideologues would like the public to believe.
There is also the consideration that two-type theory was unpopular amongst some “trans activists”, as it can be psychologically unpleasant for males whose gender identity disorder has progressed to a delusion, as the two-type theory conflicts with their delusion that they are in some way, actually the other sex, rather than just males with an atypical sexuality.
As the autogynephilic transsexual Anne Lawrence writes in the book Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies:
The theory of autogynephilic transsexualism forces us to confront the fact that both our essential natures and our motives seem to directly contradict our desired ends. We autogynephilic transsexuals want to be women; but the theory tells us that we are not women and that we don’t even resemble women—not in the least. We would like to believe that our desire to be women springs from our need to express some internal feminine essence; but the theory tells us that we have no internal feminine essence and that our desire to be women actually springs from our paraphilic male sexuality.17
Many are therefore compelled to deny that autogynephilia exists:
At present, many heterosexual MTFs [male to females]—in their own view, lesbian trans women—police online forums ceaselessly for any mention of autogynephilia. If a newcomer posts that he thinks that autogynephilia describes his own experience, they will quickly let him know that this is wrongthink and that autogynephilia does not exist. It is therefore hard to get any sense of how many autogynephilic gender dysphorics privately think that autogynephilia describes their own experience, because stating that online will produce scorn and other negative reactions.18
Trans activists have been entirely successful at suppressing the research that shows that the unease or dissatisfaction with one’s sex is caused by atypical sexual orientation: either homosexuality or autogynephilia and have ensured that in any material on the topic of “gender dysphoria” denies it has anything to do with sexual orientation. The activists' far reach can even be seen on the UK’s National Health Service’s (NHS) website that says while “The exact cause of gender dysphoria is unclear”, it’s certainly “not related to sexual orientation”.19
Perhaps there was no need to have talked about autogynephilia and homosexual transsexualism, if not for the fact that the belief in an innate “gender identity” or “essence” has proved, and is proving to be a dangerous fantasy.
Many now believe that there are “trans” children, who are capable of knowing their “gender identity” to the point where they are capable of consenting to hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgery. Blanchard talks about how the treatment of gender identity disorder has changed:
Blanchard: Oh, for sure. I mean, the people who approve, who are in favour of transition in children, who are in favour of earlier medical interventions, whether it’s puberty preventing medications, whether it’s testosterone for young girls, whether it’s surgical procedures carried out on kids as young as 16, I think they all believe that they know — they know what’s going to happen to this person in 10 years or 20 years. These people believe they know: that they can see into somebody’s soul, and they know how things are going to be. I’m not that good.20
The next part in this series looks at the belief in “gender identity” and the “devouring mother”.
“Early History of the Concept of Autogynephilia”, Blanchard, R. Ph. D, Archives of Sexual Behavior 34(4): 439-46. September 2005.
See the story of Danny in The Man who would be Queen, Bailey, J. M. B., Ph. D. (Joseph Henry Press, 2003).
“Gender dysphoria is not one thing” Bailey, J. M., Ph.D and Blanchard, R., Ph.D., 4th Wave Now: A community of people who question the medicalization of gender-atypical youth
“The Classification and labelling of nonhomosexual gender dysphorias”. Blanchard, R., Ph. D. Archives of Sexual Behavior 18(4) 315-334 p. 324.
“A paraphilia [“any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners”] is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for having a paraphilic disorder, and a paraphilia by itself does not necessarily justify or require clinical intervention” American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.) pp. 685-6.
Blanchard, R. Ph. D. “Partial versus complete autogynephilia and gender dysphoria”. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 19, 301–307 1993.
Blanchard, R., & Steiner, B. W. (Eds.). (1990). Clinical management of gender identity disorders in children and adults. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
Clinical management of gender identity disorders in children and adults.
“Gender dysphoria is not one thing”.
Die Transvestiten, Hirschfeld, M. M.D.. (1910).
Ellis, Albert (2008) [1933]. Psychology of Sex.
“Pioneer Series: Autogynephilia: Myth and Meaning with Ray Blanchard” Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast. O’Malley, S., Ayad, S. 4 February 2022.
Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies p. 25
The Man who Would be Queen.
Galileo’s Middle Finger, Dreger, A., (Penguin, 2015) pp. 65-66.
“Cherry Valentine: Gypsy Queen and Proud” BBC 25 January 2022
Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies p. 203.
“What is Autogynephilia? An interview with Ray Blanchard” Perry, L. Quillette 6 November 2019.
“Gender dysphoria” National Health Service 3 September 2022
“The Life & Research of Dr. Ray Blanchard”, Boyce, B. A.