Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the creators of the Matrix and Sense8, are – as most of you will know transgender women, and as such victims of Ray Blanchard’s transphobic autogynephilia-theory.
The similarity between Blanchard and the mad scientist of Sense8 is not a coincidence! Mr. Whispers is played by Terrence Mann in the series.
Brynn Tannehill’s tweet can be found here!
For those of you who see trans women invalidated by Ray Blanchard’s autogynephilia-theory, this article may give you the arguments you need.
Zinnia Jones does a good job at showing why the theory is pseudo-science and why Blanchard-supporters like Alice Dreger contribute to the continuing persecution of trans people.
For a shorter deconstruction of the autogynephilia-theory, there is also my take on the issue.
There is this myth that on the female to male side of transgender, there are no crossdressers and crossdreamers, and there are no gay trans men, in the same way some trans women are attracted to women.
This is pure nonsense. The founder of the American FTM movement, Lou Sullivan, called himself a “transvestite” at first, and yes, he was a gay man.
He was also a crossdreamer. He once wrote:
“I dream of being a man since I can remember. I always felt aroused by the thought of me having a male body. I always wanted to have a penis. I always considered men are lucky for having that powerful and strong body, that ability to penetrate (with the amazing pleasure it implies) and be dominant.”
He did not shy away from expressing the sexual part of his transgender nature. Nor should he!
Trans historian Zagria reports that Sullivan wrote to Ray Blanchard, the creator of the sexist autogynephilia theory (which is used to invalidate trans women), telling him about the existence of people like him.
For Blanchard trans women who love women are driven by a perverted male sexuality; finding similar desires on the FTM side would prove once and for all that this is not true.
Blanchard ignored Sullivan. He still claims there are no gay trans men or “autoandrophiliacs”. Blanchard perfectly well know that acknowledging Sullivan will make his whole toxic theory implode.
This short video gives you a quick glance into Sullivan’s life and his struggles.
According to Rhys Ernst the video was commissioned by Visual AIDS as part of “Alternate Endings,” a video program launching December 1, 2014, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Day With(out) Art—a national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis.
See also my blogpost On Lou Sullivan and what female to male crossdreamers mean for our understanding of transgender
HT Uli
(This is an edited version of a post published over at the New Crossdream Life forum).
When I was first coming out as trans, I had a lot of internalized transmisogyny. I knew how negative society’s images of trans women were and I was convinced that I was somehow different. I was terrified of being seen as a man in a dress, so I just never wore dresses. In that respect it was rather convenient that I’m butch. I was not going to be - as another trans woman put it to me - “a masturbating freak in panties.” I internalized a list of norms and behaviors that I had to avoid in order to be taken seriously and seen as a real woman. This list of “don’t"s is more or less the autogynophilia diagnostic citeria.
Years later, after I had begun writing on transmisogyny I still had a lot of these messages internalized. I had a wake up moment when I was traveling and visiting a girlfriend. Her roommate came home after a difficult day and mentioned that she had gone clothes shopping to cheer herself up, and quickly showed off her new underwear and dresses, in particular one slinky sequined number. There was much oohing and aahing and her mood significantly improved.
About an hour later she came back out of her room and said that she was having a hard time doing her work for the evening because she was still depressed. My girlfriend sat her down and gave her some sage advice. "Just put you nice new dress on, as well as your fancy new underwear. It will make you feel sexy and you’ll feel better.” "Then what, just work while wearing it?“ “Yeah.”
Warnings had been popping into head the whole time but now alarm bells were going off. I so desperately wanted to warn them “Don’t do that! You’re directly admitting a connection between feminine clothing and sexual arousal and using that almost as if you’re self medicating! No one will take you seriously as a real woman, you’ll just be seen as some fetishist!” But I didn’t say that of course. Not only because it would have been very rude, but because they were cis women. No one is going to take away their womanhood for feeling sexy about lingerie and slinky dresses. This seems to be something cis women, particularly femmes, do all the time.
The bottom line is that the behavior classified as autogynophilia is normal female behavior. Charles Moser did a small study where he tried applying the criteria for it to cis women and found that 93% of cis women qualify as autogynophiles. So why are trans women subjected to this standard and often stigmatized, punished, or denied access to healthcare if they fit this criteria? And why is there no similar criteria for trans men?
It seems to me this is primarily about exerting the control doctors have over trans people to maintain male control over the sexuality of women. It encourages us to be sexually available to men and discourages us from having a sense of sexuality focused in ourselves or in other women. It sets up a pass/fail system so we are beholden to gatekeepers and must prove that we are the good kind of trans woman and not the bad kind. And it pits us against each other as enforcers of this system and keeps us divide so we cannot challenge the psychologists who create the rules of who can and cannot access transition. It’s no accident that one of the main proponents of using autogynophelia as a diagnosis was caught having sex with his patients, not informing them he was using their experiences in his research, and manipulating their testimony by granting/denying medical care based on whether or not they said they fit his model.
I do not fully understand the subject matter that is autogynophilia even after reading on it. I wish the OP had given an explanation of it as it would really help since it affects them so much.
The short version is that someone sat down and thought, “Hmmm, why is that some people are trans women?” and he pondered and pondered until he came up an idea that all trans women are just really really gay men who decide to live as women in order to have an easier time finding men to date (?!) or in order to get straight privilege (!?) or something like that.
Then someone said, “wait, but what about the trans women who are lesbian? What about the trans women who are bi? What about the trans women who are asexual.” So he sat and he pondered and he pondered. Finally he came to a conclusion:
“Aha!” he said. ”The first kind of trans women, I will call ‘homosexual transexuals.’” (which was really confusing because he wasn’t talking about lesbian trans women, but was misgendering trans women as being men, so he’s actually talking about people who he saw as gay men and using language that most people would consider bigoted or at least ignorant these days). “And any trans woman who is not exclusively attracted to men must have something really weird going on. If she’s attracted to women (or is asexual) then she must have a misguided attraction to women that is so strong that she fetishizes women to the point of wanting to be one. This attraction to self as woman shall be called auto-gyno-phile and it will describe the bizarre self-fertilization of a kink gone wrong. Such autogynophiles will be desperate to prove that they aren’t autogynophiles, so any trans woman who isn’t exclusively attracted to men but claims not to be an autogynophile must clearly be lying or in denial.”
In all seriousness, though. The idea was first invented by a guy named Blanchard but popularized by J Michael Bailey. And Bailey said such disgusting things such as that “homosexual transexuals” are “particularly well suited to prostitution,” and that “autogynophile transexuals” are freaks that need psychological help, not access to medical transition (okay in fairness, he tells a story about a student of his who said that, then he agrees with the student, but avoids ever claiming those words himself.)
And considering how ridiculous all this is, it might seem easy to dismiss. But in the recent DSM revision when there was a lot of pressure to remove or revise gender identity disorder, they made Blanchard the chair of the committee in charge of the process. And while they did revise gender identity disorder to address the stress and angst of gender dysphoria without making it a disorder to be trans, he managed to sneak “autogynophilia” into the new version of the DSM as a actual official diagnosis when it hadn’t been there before.
Consider that the vaginoplasty procedure is constructed primarily around the obviously heteronormative metric of “sufficient penetrative depth,” yet if you want to modify your sex organs for any kind of sexual reason you’re immediately cast with suspicion. Like, of course I want vaginoplasty for sex: that’s what I use my fucking ladyparts for and I don’t want to experience dysphoria while I use them. Goddess fucking help me here.
To clarify the cis fuckery at work: autogynephilia was included in the 2013 revision of the DSM, and the only three references given there are to Blanchard’s own damn work. It’s one of those things that’s so fucked up you can only laugh at the absurdity. Then again, these are the same fuckers who said that being gay was a disorder until 1987.
Like, how many queer cis women have said “I don’t know if I wanna be her or get naked with her,” which is really the fundamental concept of autogynephilia. Srsly tho.
When you read what researchers like Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey say outside the world of academic papers, it becomes abundantly clear that their theory is nothing but old sexist bigotry camouflaged as science.
I have documented this in this blog post: “What Dr. Zhana Vrangalova Taught Me About Transphobia in Science”.
(via rambleonamazon)
During the last ten years or so we have seen enormous progress in the way science treats gender variance. New generations of researchers and health personell no longer consider gender dysphoria a mental illness.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association now call for respect for gender diversity, as do other relevant organizations world wide.
There is, however, one small cabal of transphobic researchers who continue the old tradition of sexualizing and invalidating trans women. These are the supporters of Ray Blanchard and his “autogynephilia” theory. If you see the names J. Michael Bailey, Anne Lawrence, James Cantor and Alice Dreger anywhere, you are in the presence of the tribe we are talking about.
Blanchard’s extremely offensive model basically divides all male to female transgender into two distinct groups: “autogynephiliacs”, who are considered sexually perverted “heterosexual” men, and “homosexual transsexuals” (effeminate gay men, according to Blanchard.) No, he has no facts to back this up, and yes, he is actually calling trans women men.
The gender dysphoria chapter of the American psychiatric manual, the DSM-5, is no longer presenting trans women as mentally ill. The DSM accepts that crossdressers and crossdreamers may suffer from gender dysphoria, But the “transvestic disorder” chapter still refers to autogynephilia. This has given transphobic activists – including conservative religious fundamentalists and trans-exclusionary radical feminists – weapons they can use to harass trans women.
If you meet such arguments, please remember the following:
Please note that no one is denying that transgender people can experience cross-gender arousal. It is hard to imagine them have sexual fantasies without them being their target sex. It is the explanation for this arousal that is toxic.
More information and documentation here:
The autogynephilia theory of Ray Blanchard is bad science, transphobic science, stigmatizing science, but that does not stop it from causing much suffering among trans women. It is used by religious fundamentalists and trans-exclusionary radical feminist to invalidate trans identities.
The autogynephilia theory classifies male to female transgender persons into two distinct categories based on their sexual orientation.
There are men who fantasize about having a woman’s body and get sexually aroused by this. There are also women who get excited by the idea of being a man, and by having sex as a man.
I call this crossdreaming. Dr.Jaimie Veale , who has done extensive research on transgender people, calls it cross-gender arousal. Trans-philosopher Julia Serano has suggested the term female/feminine or male/masculine embodiement fantasies.
Not all crossdreamers are transsexual, but some of them suffer from gender dysphoria (distress caused by a mismatch between gender identity on the one hand and biological sex and/or social role on the other).
Trans women and trans men may have been crossdreamers in the past. This should not come a surprise. If you present as male, and your inner sense of self is female, one of the few ways you can explore your female sexuality is by imagine yourself having a female body, and fantasize about having sex as a woman.
Because of this even the idea of being transformed into a woman can become arousing. The transformation makes the full life of a woman possible.
Misogyny and transphobic medicine
Unfortunately we live in a world that has been quite unforgiving as regards gender violations of this kind. In the previous century doctors and other “experts” found it hard to believe that this kind of arousal could be caused by a female sexuality. Women were not supposed to have strong sexual desires.
Besides, this was the age of misogyny. A man who wanted to be a woman had to be mentally ill.
The only trans women who were accepted as “real” women (if they were accepted at all) were therefore those that could say that they had never had such erotic fantasies. Those who had were dismissed as “transvestic fetishists” (sexual deviants).
The autogynephilia theory of Dr. Ray Blanchard of Toronto, Canada, is part of this tradition.
In this post I will, for practical reasons, quote Blanchard-supporter Anne Lawrence when presenting the theory. Blanchard has given her interpretation of the theory strong support.
Summary of autogynephilia
Anne Lawrence gives the following summary of autogyenphilia:
“Ray Blanchard proposed that these transsexuals have a paraphilia [i.e. sexual disorder] he called autogynephilia, which is the propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of oneself as female.
"Autogynephilia defines a transsexual typology and provides a theory of transsexual motivation, in that Blanchard proposed that MtF transsexuals are either sexually attracted exclusively to men (homosexual) or are sexually attracted primarily to the thought or image of themselves as female (autogynephilic), and that autogynephilic transsexuals seek sex reassignment to actualize their autogynephilic desires.”
[Read the rest of the blog post over at Crossdreamers.com].
The following blog posts give more detailed arguments for why the autogynephilia theory is not only bad science, but transphobic and stigmatizing:
Illustration by castanedasevilla.
I have published a new blog post on the effects “the transgender tipping point” may have on transgender and queer people.
I this post I argue that as soon as you find yourself on the other side of the tipping point – e.g. as soon as a majority of people accept the true gender of trans people – then the theories that have been used to stigmatize and discipline gender variant people will lose their power.
For instance: Trans women have been described as sexually perverted men, using pseudo-scientific theories like “transvestic fetishism” and “autogynephilia” to force them back into the closet. The fact that some male to female trans people may get aroused by imagining themselves as a sexually attractive person of their target sex, has been taken as proof of them being mentally ill.
But the only reason such arguments may seem logical is that they are based on the idea that the person is a man. As soon as you see “him” as her, the arousal becomes the natural reaction of a woman who is denied the possibility of exploring her full sexual potential in real life.
This is why the Caitlyn Jenner story becomes so important. We may like or dislike the fact that she presents her female identity in such a traditional – and even sexualized – way. But as soon as your respect her gender identity, you also have to respect her right to decide for herself. And now that more an more people do see her as a woman, the way they interpret her way of expressing herself shifts accordingly: If her step daughter Kim Kardashian can proudly express her sexual attractiveness on the public stage, so can Caitlyn Jenner.
I believe that this shift in perspective eventually will push the stigmatizing theories into the history books, where they belong. The autogynephilia theory has become the Conferderate Flag of modern psychiatry, and we have reached the point where the Powers to Be will have to take it down, not because the discussions have ended, but because the theory is finally seen for what it has been all along: a weapon used to discipline and punish gender transgressions.
Read the blog post: “What Caitlyn Jenner’s Story Means for MTF Crossdressers, Crossdreamers and Transgender”
See also: “How psychiatry and psychology have been used to suppress gender variance”
Last week Ontario banned anti-transgender reparative therapy, practiced for decades from Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health(CAMH).
The ban was one of many enacted in response to transgender teen Leelah Alcorn’s suicide after being subjected to anti-transgender reparative therapy.
Such conversion therapies aim at “curing” transgender people from their gender identity, or from gender expressions that go against the stereotypes these psychiatrists and psychologists hold on to.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has stated that “treatments aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity” are “no longer considered ethical."
The Canadian Association of Social Workers has stated that "Any professional attempt to alter the gender identity or expression of a young person to align with social norms [is] an abuse of power and authority.” (See this article for more).
Trans activist Andrea James asks anyone who have been subjected to anti-transgender reparative therapy, in Toronto or elsewhere, to get in touch with her (aj@andreajames.com).
It is time to put an end to this evil!
Read Andrea’s article here: “Sexology’s war on transgender children”