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I think Mulvaney is causing a lot of what the TERFs call "peak trans" - that moment when a previously tolerant person, even a true believer, realizes they aren't actually buying this.
The thing about Mulvaney is that whereas a lot of trans people I think are sincere in how they identify, even if their self-identification is an offensive caricature of womanhood because they are acting out their inner fantasy of being a pretty, pretty girl, I find it hard to believe that Mulvaney himself is a true believer. He seems to not only be living up to the stereotype of a creepy autogynophile acting out his fetishes, he's doing it in a flaming, performative fashion with a mocking wink at the audience: "Yes, we all know I'm a gay dude getting off on this, now clap and play along or else." Not since Jessica Yaniv have we seen a trans woman doing such a gross parody of a feminine girly girl who's really into tampons and jiggling excitedly and forcing women to suppress their disgust reactions. And whereas I think Yaniv is both a bad actor and straight up mentally ill, Mulvaney seems to be nothing more than a cynical grifter who's enjoying himself.
The difference between him and Andy Kaufman is that Andy Kaufman was funny.
Aren't "autogynephile" and "gay dude" supposed to be mutually exclusive, autogynephiles being heterosexual men who like to imagine themselves as women because they like women?
My understanding is that autogynophiles are aroused by the idea of being seen and treated(fucked) like a woman. Where they fall on the spectrum of gay->straight I don't know.
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