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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   30342 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Some people purporting to be trans could just be using it to legitimize their cross-dressing fetish, but it’s not a significant enough number to justify the framing, and definitely not in the Sarah McBride case to justify the framing in this circumstance.

How big would the number have to be to justify the framing, in your opinion?

Good question. Just off the cuff I feel like it should be the majority to justify the framing.

Sorry to bring this up again, but I found another source, an article by @zackmdavis who used to post here and which contains some bangers:

To arbitrarily pick one exhibit, in April 2018, the /r/MtF subreddit, which then had over 28,000 subscribers, posted a link to a poll: "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation 'fetish' (or similar) before you realized you were trans?". The results: 82% of over 2000 respondents said Yes.

The scientific literature says the same thing. Blanchard 1985: 73% of not exclusively androphilic transsexuals acknowledged some history of erotic cross-dressing. (A lot of the classic studies specifically asked about cross-dressing, but the underlying desire isn't about clothes; Jack Molay coined the term crossdreaming, which seems more apt.) Lawrence 2005: of trans women who had female partners before sexual reassignment surgery, 90% reported a history of autogynephilic arousal. Smith et al. 2005: 64% of non-homosexual MtFs (excluding the "missing" and "N/A" responses) reported arousal while cross-dressing during adolescence. (A lot of the classic literature says "non-homosexual", which is with respect to natal sex; the idea is that self-identified bisexuals are still in the late-onset taxon.) Nuttbrock et al. 2011: lifetime prevalence of transvestic fetishism among non-homosexual MtFs was 69%.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, the definitive taxonomic handbook of the American Psychiatric Association, says the same thing in its section on gender dysphoria:

In both adolescent and adult natal males, there are two broad trajectories for development of gender dysphoria: early onset and late onset. Early-onset gender dysphoria starts in childhood and continues into adolescence and adulthood; or, there is an intermittent period in which the gender dysphoria desists and these individuals self-identify as gay or homosexual, followed by recurrence of gender dysphoria. Late-onset gender dysphoria occurs around puberty or much later in life. Some of these individuals report having had a desire to be of the other gender in childhood that was not expressed verbally to others. Others do not recall any signs of childhood gender dysphoria. For adolescent males with late-onset gender dysphoria, parents often report surprise because they did not see signs of gender dysphoria in childhood. Adolescent and adult natal males with early-onset gender dysphoria are almost always sexually attracted to men (androphilic). Adolescents and adults with late-onset gender dysphoria frequently engage in transvestic behavior with sexual excitement.

Super late reply, but thanks for the links. This is the first I've heard of AGP, and I can be convinced that there are two types of trans women, AGP-motivated and non-AGP. However, I still think that it is unfair boiling down trans people to be AGP-motivated trans, and then boil them down further to be cross-dressing fetishists. First, AGP seems to be more about wanting to be a woman rather than to dress like a woman, and there's social stigma for the latter unlike AGP. Second, judging by Scott's poll, it seems like biological men in general are AGP-oriented, and it would be difficult to categorize all biological men as cross-dressing fetishists.

To quote the Wikipedia article on Blanchard's typology (which is generally sceptical of the concept, if not outright hostile to it):

Studying patients who had felt like women at all times for at least a year, Blanchard classified them according to whether they were attracted to men, women, both, or neither.[3]: 444  He then compared these four groups regarding how many in each group reported a history of sexual arousal together with cross-dressing. 73% of the gynephilic, asexual, and bisexual groups said they did experience such feelings, but only 15% of the androphilic group did.[8]: 10  He concluded that asexual, bisexual, and gynephilic transsexuals were motivated by erotic arousal to the thought or image of themself as a woman, and he coined the term autogynephilia to describe this.

From an interview with Blanchard himself in 2019:

When I looked at the relative numbers of autogynephilic and androphilic gender-dysphoric males back in 1987, the autogynephilic cases were already a majority, approaching 60 percent. The proportion had reached 75 percent by 2010, and it might be even higher now.

...

Examples I have collected include: sexual fantasies of menstruation and masturbatory rituals that simulate menstruation; giving oneself an enema, while imagining the anus is a vagina and the enema is a vaginal douche; helping the maid clean the house; sitting in a girls’ class at school; knitting in the company of other women; and riding a girls’ bicycle. These examples argue that autogynephilic sexual fantasies have a fetishistic flavor that makes them qualitatively different from any superficially similar ideation in natal females.

There is also the telling phenomenon of autogynephiles who are involuntarily aroused by cross-dressing or cross-gender ideation, and who complain about difficulties changing into women’s attire without triggering erection or ejaculation. It seems likely that few natal women would give the analogous reports that they wish that they could put on their clothes without triggering vaginal lubrication or orgasm.

Self-identified autogynephiliac trans woman Anne Lawrence, who has medically transitioned, wrote a book about autogynephilia called Men Trapped in Men's Bodies, in which she solicited the perspectives of autogynephiliac males and affirmed Blanchard's typology:

"I would simply like to state for the record that, based on my clinical experience and my reading of the scientific literature, I am firmly convinced that the overwhelming majority — probably 98% or more — of cases of severe gender dysphoria in men arise in connection with either effeminate homosexuality or autogynephilia; most of the rare exceptions probably arise in connection with conditions such as schizophrenia and certain personality disorders. The idea that substantial numbers of MtF transsexuals belong to a putative “third type” that is neither homosexual nor autogynephilic is inconsistent with my clinical experience and is, in my opinion, inconsistent with the best available empirical evidence..."

Scott's survey of his users found significantly higher rates of autogynephilia among trans women than among other groups. When asked the question "Picture a very beautiful woman. How sexually arousing would you find it to imagine being her [on a scale of 1-5]?", the mean response among self-identified trans woman was 3.2.

The highest rates of autogenderphilia were found in bi cis men (autoandrophilia), gay cis men (autoandrophilia), bi trans women (autogynephilia), and lesbian trans women (autogynephilia).

(Scott goes on at length about what it would mean to be a male person who is sexually excited by the thought of oneself as an exceedingly handsome male person, or vice versa. I will freely admit I still have no idea what this entails in practice.)

Why the majority?

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