Transcripts / Autogynephilia

Introduction

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In 1989 a sex researcher named Ray Blanchard published a controversial, provocative, politically incorrect theory claiming that trans women are not, as custom has it, essentially female souls accidentally born into male bodies. Instead he claimed, they are men of two types: gay men who love straight men, and straight men who love themselves. For the latter condition Blanchard coined the term "autogynephilia", new Greek for love of oneself as a woman. It’s a theory that contradicts what almost all trans women say and believe about themselves, and affirms the common prejudice that trans people are really just sex perverts which okay, some of us are, but not for the reasons Blanchard says–

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Part 1: Just What The Hell Do I Think I’m Doing

Rest assured, in this video I am going to argue that Blanchard’s theory is false. But a lot of trans women are probably nervously wondering why I’m using my platform to potentially increase awareness of a sinister fringe theory that only adds to the stigma we all already face. After all, “autogynephilia” gives scientific legitimacy to our culture’s most twisted misrepresentations of trans women.

“Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me” - "Silence of the Lambs"

So it’s understandable that to a lot of trans women, the prospect of this concept gaining cultural traction is pretty terrifying. However, I respond that– as one of YouTube’s leading B-list transsexuals– I’ve had several conversations with academics and journalists where it becomes clear that they in fact believe in Blanchard’s theory, even if the cowards won’t admit it to my face. So, as I see it the damage is already done. What’s needed now is an accessible, convincing refutation of the theory. 

I hope this video will accomplish three things. 1: persuasively argue that the wrong theory is wrong, 2: account for how a wrong theory became so influential, and 3: move beyond some of the platitudes about trans people and open up a deeper discussion about what it really means to be transgender. Socrates, you know the drill.

Part 2: Blanchard’s Typology

The mainstream scientific view, endorsed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the DSM-5, and most practicing clinicians, is that the primary reason trans people transition is to alleviate "gender dysphoria". Gender dysphoria is a state of social, emotional, anatomical, sexual, spiritual, and sartorial angst relating to one’s assigned birth sex, which is mostly relieved by socially and medically transitioning to the gender of one’s psychological identity. 

This is what motivated me to transition, and I endorse the mainstream scientific view. However, sex researcher Blanchard has a different theory. According to Blanchard, trans women are driven to transition primarily by sexual motivations. He didn’t really bother to think about trans men or non-binary people, so you all are excused. You can just grab a beer and laugh it up. Blanchard claims that trans women can be divided into two types of men– and yeah, I know, just hold your objections for the end. The first type are the "homosexual transsexuals", these gay boys cannot get enough dick. And who can blame them?

Essentially the homosexual transsexuals are naturally effeminate gay men, who transition because 1: society is more accepting of them as women than as very effeminate men, and 2: becoming women is a good sexual strategy for them, since they do better as women in the heterosexual dating market than as male femmes in the masc4masc dominated gay scene.

The second type of trans women are the "autogynephilic transsexuals". These inscrutable perverts can apparently get off just by looking in the mirror– “I’d fuck me so hard”– Blanchard describes autogynephiles as straight, bi, or self-avowed asexual men. It doesn’t really matter because their primary sexual orientation is misdirected inward, leading to paraphilic sexual arousal at the thought of being or becoming women, which is their true motivation to transition. 

Now I’m going to argue that this theory is wrong, but first I want to acknowledge that there seems to be some observational validity to the claim that trans women tend to fall into one of two clusters of correlated traits. I’ll replace the stigmatizing terms "homosexual transsexual" and “autogynephile” with more neutral language, let’s say Cluster A and Cluster B. Cluster A trans women are mostly androphilic– that is, attracted to men– they transition relatively early in life, and are very effeminate as children. Cluster B trans women are mostly gynephilic– attracted to women– transition relatively later in life, and have outwardly boyish childhoods. 

When I first thought about this typology, it initially seemed pretty valid. I went through the mental list of trans women I know, and found I could pretty easily sort them. Cluster A, Cluster A, Cluster B, Cluster B. But as I’ve thought about it more it’s partially unraveled. Without even leaving my own circle of acquaintances I can think of a trans woman who followed all the Cluster A patterns but now dates women, and a trans woman who followed all the Cluster B patterns but now exclusively dates men. 

So while I think there may really be two genuine trends here, I interpret them merely as correlation clusters that get fuzzy around the edges. Blanchard however, takes homosexual transsexuals and autogynephiles to be two sharply distinct types, with two completely different psychosexual motivations to transition. And this is what I strongly disagree with: the notion that male homosexual strategy or autogynephilic lust are the primary motivations to transition, and I have a lot of backup here since trans women almost universally reject this characterization of their experience. 

Now you’d think that’d be a major problem for the theory, but fortunately Blanchard has an airtight response to that, namely that trans women who disagree with him are fucking liars. I mean that’s really the scientific ideal isn’t it? A theory that cannot be falsified. It’s perfect.

Part 3: The Man Who Would Be Queen

Blanchard’s theory likely would have been glanced at by a handful of sexologists before fading into the endless sea of forgotten academic publications had it not been given a major publicity boost by J. Michael Bailey, a Northwestern psychology professor who endorsed Blanchard’s theory in a 2003 pop science book titled "The Man Who Would Be Queen". Great cover, Bailey. Very controversial, very provocative, very politically incorrect. I have been triggered, well done. 

Now Bailey I read your book which, considering how much I enjoy your cream, was just amazingly bad. "The Man Who Would Be Queen" is a frightening book for trans women, because it is acutely transphobic but also kind of vivid and well-written, and it introduced a wide audience to Blanchard’s typology. The first two parts of the book describe homosexual transsexuals, including Bailey’s and his male research assistant’s observations that they’re super fuckable and natural-born sex workers:

“I start upstairs to get the panoramic view and I see Kim for the first time, on the stairs, dancing, posing. She is spectacular, exotic (I find out later that she is from Belize), and sexy. Her body is incredibly curvaceous, which is a clue that it may not be natural. And I notice a very subtle and not-unattractive angularity of the face, which is also not clearly diagnostic on this tall siren. It is difficult to avoid viewing Kim from two perspectives: as a researcher but also as a single, heterosexual man.”

Wow, Bailey. Great science writing. When he’s done drooling all over the homosexual transsexuals, Bailey moves on to autogynephilic transsexuals, focusing almost entirely on a single case study of a trans woman he calls Cher, whose backstory is a stomach-churning nightmare of auto-erotic mania and transvestic masturbation. Bailey describes how Cher made videos of herself wearing female masks and vaginal prosetheses while receiving anal sex from a sex robot of her own construction all to the accompaniment of a Donna Summers album and the moaning audio from a porno film. 

It honestly sounds like something I would do in a video as a joke. So well done, Bailey. You found an honest-to-god pervert. And look, as a performance artist I love the sex robot. I admire it. I want it in my life. But as a transsexual, I mean Bailey… this has nothing to do with being trans. You just found a– you just found a person who built a sex robot. 🤖

That’s not how Bailey sees it though. He upholds Cher as an exemplary case of an autogynephilic transsexual, claiming that Cher’s sexual fetishism is typical of the motivations of all trans women who aren't exclusively attracted to men. So Bailey’s telling is that autogynephiles are these unfeminine male masturbators, showing up to gender clinics with bogus stories about how they always knew they were women in order to get genital reassignment surgery to satisfy their paraphilia. 

Now what’s striking about this to me is that even for a defense of Blanchard’s theory, Bailey’s account is more lurid and grotesque than it needs to be. Bailey likes to think of himself as a dangerous libertine philosopher pursuing the light of truth wherever it may lead, unrestrained by conventional morality and political correctness alike. You’re so filthy. But what does the unrestrained pursuit of truth look like? What objective methodologies does Bailey employ? 

Well, for the most part, it seems like he just goes to gay bars in Chicago and chats up trans women, turning these stories into case studies for his book. Sounds like an awful lot of fun for scientific research, you need a research assistant Bailey? "The Man Who Would Be Queen" is filled with sentences like:

“There is no way to say this as sensitively as I would prefer, so I will just go ahead.”

Alright you edgy fuck, let’s hear it.

“Most homosexual transsexuals are much better looking than most autogynephilic transsexuals.”

We appreciate the feedback Bailey, we really do. But is this science? It’s effectively a straight cis man announcing his discovery that young straight chicks are hotter than middle-aged lesbians, and trying to pass it off as a valid empirical observation. And like the pop science cishet men have written over the past century regarding the nature of females and homosexuals, their observations about trans women are seriously lacking some vital perspectives.

This is what we “postmodernists” mean when we complain that science often privileges a white cishet male perspective. It’s not that I hate men or male sexuality, I just hate that the male sexual perspective is so powerful that it gets to call itself science. It’s not that there is no objective truth, it’s that this represents a very narrow window on it. Wouldn’t anyone care to hear a different perspective? Well, how about mine?

Part 4: My Perspective

From my perspective, Michael Bailey is a lecherous edgelord. He’s a man who, when I was a student at Northwestern, was mostly famous for the fucksaw incident. Google it. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the fundamental claims of his book aren’t true. Even if we could prove that Bailey gets together every weekend with Blanchard to sacrifice a trans baby to Beelzebub, it would still have no bearing on the scientific correctness of the theory, which might still be true. The problem is it isn’t true, which I’ll argue at length in a moment.

But first, it’s worth noting that the theory has gained acceptance among a non-trivial number of academics and journalists. Largely because 1: it’s often presented as the only supposedly “scientific” alternative to mushy platitudes about women born in mens’ bodies, and 2: many trans women have reacted to Bailey and Blanchard with extreme vitriol and personal attacks, resulting in the widespread perception that a bunch of triggered PC cucks are throwing a narcissistic male entitlement temper tantrum because Bailey and Blanchard accurately called them out as paraphilic fetishists.

In her 2015 book "Galileo’s Middle Finger", bioethicist Alice Dreger championed Bailey as the undeserving victim of a hysterical SJW lynch mob. But she gets so caught up in exonerating Bailey of the personal accusations against him and in telling a bigger story about academic freedom, and how scientists are being silenced by PC cucks, that she doesn’t bother to check how good Bailey’s science really is and ends up affirming the autogynephilia theory herself. 

Now I’m certainly not gonna deny that trans people on the Internet can behave like a bit of an angry mob. In fact, I may be on the receiving end of one of those myself in about oh, 20 minutes depending on how this video is received. But there’s not exactly a shortage of sleazy passive aggression from the Blanchard and Bailey camp either. Blanchard is known to seek out and comment on pornography made by his detractors, and Dreger is an advocate for the “narcissistic rage” theory of trans backlash against Bailey. Remember, according to autogynephilia theory, many trans women are erotically fixated on themselves; from which a dishonest person can make a conceptual leap to saying that they’re narcissists, and hence any trans woman who raises her voice in this conversation is accused of exhibiting narcissistic rage emanating from her wounded male ego. 

Furthermore, like so many other professors in recent academic freedom controversies, Blanchard and Bailey being ruthlessly “silenced” by PC cucks has not really interfered with their academic careers, nor their continued authority to misrepresent people with less power than them. This is of course assuming that autogynephilia really is a misrepresentation of trans women, and that’s really the crux of this whole drama isn’t it? So let’s just leave the drama behind and dive right into that question, pursuing the pure light of truth as we always do on this channel, relying only on the facts, the figures, the scientific studies. 

Just kidding. If you really want to read a scientific argument against autogynephilia, read Julia Serano’s article “The Case Against Autogynephilia” which pretty much sums it up. Because I know you didn’t click on this video because you wanted to hear about science. You came here because you wanted filth, and I’ll give you filth Bailey. I know that’s what you want, and I want to give you what you want. I want to give it all up for you. 🤪

Part 5: The False Dichotomy

Filth is coming, don’t worry. But before we get there there’s one more thing we need to discuss. Advocates of Blanchard’s theory pretty much unanimously introduce it as if it were the only possible alternative to what is called the "feminine essence theory". The feminine essence theory says that trans women are female souls in male bodies, that we are women from birth to death, and that transition is merely an effort to make our accidental exterior match our essential interior. 

People like Dreger will tell you that trans activists dogmatically adhere to this theory, and that anyone who challenges it will be pursued by a ruthless witch hunt. And of course, the only way to challenge it we’re told, is to defer to Blanchard’s typology of homosexual and autogynephilic transsexuals. Now I object to this framing of the discussion, because I don’t believe in Blanchard’s typology or the feminine essence theory. There is no feminine singularity that made me a woman from birth. I wasn’t born a woman. I was born a fucking baby, just like everyone else. There’s no such thing as a feminine essence or a masculine essence. There is only biology, habitual behavior, and the way society responds to you. All of which can be changed quite a lot, and all of which are currently changing for me. 

Now there is an emotional appeal to the feminine essence theory. I think most people have gender essentialist intuitions, and I admit I do feel on some level that I’m supposed to be a woman by nature. And in a sense that may be true. I don’t think I chose to be trans, and it seems likely that something inherent in my biology or psychology that led me to transition. But that’s not quite the same thing as essential womanhood, which intellectually I don’t think makes sense. I think it’s heartwarming gibberish. But there is also, I think, a legitimate role in the discourse for heartwarming gibberish. Sometimes you have to explain what it means to  be trans to a person who believes that dogs go to heaven. And in most circumstances saying “I’m a female soul in a male body” gets the point across. 

Not all language is philosophical, it’s a lot easier to explain what being trans is in essentialist terms; to explain it without gender essentialism requires a whole complicated philosophical discussion that most people simply aren’t up to having. But the useful platitudes become a problem when more analytically minded people start putting these things under the microscope, and then they end up concluding that trans people are just fetishists who are telling lies about themselves. 

So you’re probably wondering if I’m not a fetishist, and not essentially a woman, then why am I transitioning? Well I keep saying this, but dysphoria really was the primary reason. And shortly before I transitioned I made a whole video about that if you’re curious. You have to keep in mind that transitioning is not just for the bedroom. When you decide you’re going to live as a woman, you have to do that at the grocery store, and on airplanes, and at Thanksgiving dinner with your family, if you even still have a family. 

It’s kind of hard for me to imagine why someone would do that just to gratify a masturbatory urge. That said, is there at least some sexual aspect of being transgender? Well of course there goddamn is. How could an adult decide to switch genders without there being some connection to sexuality? The problem is autogynephilia is not a good description of that connection in most cases, and it certainly isn’t in my case. But I’m a 29-year-old transsexual with a history of dating women, and cross-dressing in erotic situations no less. According to Blanchard’s theory, I am therefore an autogynephile. It seems that I have some explaining to do. Well, here’s where filth comes in.

Part 6: ContraPoints: An Erotic Life

Come one come all to the gender circus with your host Natalie. Step right up you filthy freaks. One of the reasons it’s difficult for trans women to refute Blanchard’s theory is that even arguing against it from your own experience is incredibly humiliating and degrading and invalidating. Fortunately I have no sense of self-respect or dignity whatsoever, so I’m willing to take one for the team here. Get your clipboards out gentlemen, I want to make this as easy as possible for the psychoanalysts at home. 

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I was born in 1988. As a small child I was not especially feminine nor especially masculine. I was not interested in sports, and was just kind of physically inept. My main childhood interest was music, and I learned several instruments. In early adolescence I was misdiagnosed with OCD, the primary symptoms being spending too much time in the shower and spending too much time styling my hair. 

My sexual development was kind of late, I never masturbated till I was 15. And I didn't fantasize about having sex with women, or with men, or even about becoming a woman; my fantasies were kind of Platonic almost. I would sort of fantasize about women, but in a very abstract kind of way. An early romantic disappointment involved my realization that women would never be attracted to me in the same way that I was attracted to them. In my late teens and early twenties I was a long-haired, smooth-chested androgyne, which suited me well. It was around then that I first cross-dressed, when a woman I was seeing asked if she could dress me in her clothes and do my makeup. God yes, I said. 

Throughout my twenties I was on and off in relationships where there was this feminization dynamic. More women are into feminizing boys than you might think. When I was feminized we would just make out and not do anything penetrative but just sort of, little proto-lesbian things you know? Now some women I was with were not into that, and some would practically lock their underwear drawers when they found out I had done it in the past. There was one period where I cut my hair short and quit that altogether, but it didn’t last more than a couple years.

When I had regular heterosexual sex it was like my soul had to leave my body in order for me to to get the poison out, which is how I thought of it. The cross-dressing was never a solo or masturbatory activity, there was always a partner or sometimes several partners. Bailey, are you paying attention to this? This is for you. 

What I liked about it was the way that dressing like a woman changed the way partners interacted with my body, how they would kind of treat me like a woman. I fully acknowledge that a lot of the feminization was pretty fetishistic. There was a lot of short dresses, and thigh-highs, and occasionally also a BDSM submissive aspect. But over time I realized that the fetish aspect wasn’t really what I liked about it. It wasn’t humiliating for me to be feminized. It was affirming. And one day I kind of realized that I didn’t actually want to be feminized at all; I wanted to be feminine. 

In my mid-twenties I first really started paying attention to trans women and thinking about transitioning myself. But I thought that since I didn’t “feel like a woman”, that I never would. And I thought that I would never pass and that I would just be a hideous parody of womanhood. Then about a year ago thanks to this amazing online queer community that we have now, I started developing more positive thinking about this. I’ve always looked a little bit younger than my age, but last year I also started noticing the first signs that I was going to age into the body of an older man. And that triggered really intense gender dysphoria.

At the same time I realized that I would need to transition to have any hope of a genuinely fulfilling sex life. And at that point, the need to transition felt so urgent that I could not wait. So I got Internet hormones from the Republic of Vanuatu and I started taking those in August until I could get a prescription at an informed consent clinic, and since then my life has drastically changed. 

I live as a woman full-time now. And most of the changes aren’t sexual, but the hormones certainly do have sexual effects. I now find myself attracted to both women and men. And the mere visual image of a woman no longer turns me on the way it did. Instead I need there to be a certain kind of interpersonal connection. I don’t masturbate at all, and I haven’t come in months. Someone please fuck me.

I guess the critical thing is that I’ve been wearing women’s clothes– my clothes– for seven consecutive months, and I have been turned on by it for zero percent of the time. So the idea that I’m some kind of transvestic fetishist is ridiculous. And I'm not turned on by the mere idea of having a female body either. I mean, when there's developments I’ll check it out. But I’m not like "ah yeah I have tits now that’s so hot". I mean it’s kind of hot. But it’s more about other people being into it than it is about me being into it. 

So as always my sex drive is directed outward at other people. The sexual aspect of my transsexuality is not about the target of lust being directed inward, it’s about me wanting my sexual encounters to occur from the standpoint of a female body, or you know, at least as close as I can get. And since I started hormones it’s about my sexual desires coming from this psychologically female place of vague bisexual interest activated by interpersonal connection, rather than intense object-oriented male lust.

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So that’s my attempt to describe my sexual history without resorting to politically correct cuckoldry or trans ideology. Now I’ve read enough Blanchard to know that this description in no way lets me off the hook for autogynephilia. In fact, I’m what Blanchard would call a classic case of "pseudo-bisexual behavioral autogynephilia". "Pseudo-bisexual" because of course, all trans women’s experiences are lies. And because according to Blanchard, I only like guys because being filled up with their dicks makes me feel like a girl, which is what I’m really into.

And "behavioral" because Blanchard describes different kinds of autogynephilia, like anatomical, transvestic, behavioral, and physiological, according to what you supposedly fetishize. And I’m turned on by sexually behaving like a woman, rather than simply wearing female clothes or having female anatomy. And I mean okay, you can slap a Greek word on anything and make it sound scary, fake, and pathological. But I think this is an especially unfair way to characterize my experience, and here’s why.

Part 7: Autophilia in General

I’m guessing that most people would be pretty reluctant to admit that they take any kind of sexual interest in their own bodies. It’s sort of like admitting that you enjoy your own body odor, eww. But how unusual is it to check yourself out? To take some sexual interest in the sight or touch of your own body? I’ve noticed that cis men seem to really like their own penises, and taking pictures of their penises, and sending them to other people. Does that make them "autoandrophiles"? Are they "behavioral autophallophiles? I can make up Greek words too Blanchard. 

I know a cis woman who, having just bought some expensive lingerie, told me “it’s not for men, it’s for me”. What does that mean? It means she just liked wearing sexy lingerie under her clothes because it made her feel hot. Is that "cisvestic autogynephilia"? Likewise I used to date cis women, I know what they do. And I can tell you that women touching their own breasts during sex or while masturbating is not at all uncommon, is that anatomical autogynephilia? 

Twitter user NathanOfOz pointed out that in the October 2017 issue of Cosmo, an article on self-love tips recommends that its apparently cis female readers try stroking their own feet or running a feather over their skin as a prelude to kneeling in front of a full-length mirror and rubbing one out, possibly while squatting on a dildo. Can you imagine the level of paraphilic male fetishism that would be read into this if it were written by a trans woman? I mean it’s one step away from filming yourself fucking a sex robot. And okay, Cosmo’s sex advice is often ludicrous. But the point is it seems like it’s only with trans women where we feel the need to whip out the suffix “-philia”. It seems what’s going on here is a lot of pathologizing of normal female sexuality when it exists in trans women. But of course that raises the question, what is normal female sexuality?

Part 8: Normal Female Sexuality

Switching from male to female hormones causes your sex drive to be completely obliterated and then regrown in new form, which came as more of a relief than I expected. I don’t think I realized the extent to which my own sexuality felt like a demonic possession or alien infection until I was free of it, thank God. When I had male hormones in me I needed to have an orgasm like every day, I was turned on mainly by visual arousal cues, I was at a Kinsey 1 relative to my birth sex, and I had a couple mild typical straight-guy paraphilic kinks– no, not autogynephilia. 

On female hormones I initially had no sex drive at all, but have started developing very different patterns of arousal. For instance I never need to have an orgasm, I’m turned on mainly by interpersonal cues like intimate physical contact or close emotional moments, I’m at around a 70/30 attraction to women vs men, and the paraphilic kinks have vanished without a trace. Oh by the way for the pharmacologists at home this is 6mg estradiol and 200 mg spironolactone daily.

So my interpretation of all this is that I have what is a typical female sexuality, at least for a girl who’s into girls. I don’t feel like I have some essentially male pseudo-bisexual behavioral autogynephilia. One of the reasons why Blanchard has to come up with elaborate terminology like this is that he takes as foundational the presupposition that trans women are psychologically more like cis men than like cis women. His studies therefore a lack cis female control group, meaning he didn’t bother to apply his autogynephilia survey to cis women. But if he had, as Charles Moser did in 2009, he might have found that many of them were classified as autogynephilic. 

Blanchard’s insistence on classifying trans women’s sexuality as a variant on male sexuality makes it seem paraphilic and unusual that trans women want to have sex as women. But what do cis women want to have sex as? Walruses? I mean no judgments. This also explains his claim that "non-exclusively-androphilic" trans women are “pseudo-bisexual” because their attraction to men does not resemble gay male attraction to men. The idea is that these trans women’s attraction to men is not based on raw physical lust. So it is therefore unlike gay male attraction to men and is therefore “pseudo”, that is, it’s really an autogynephilic fantasy where the man is just a prop.

But what about straight cis women’s attraction to men? Is that based on raw physical lust for the male body? I mean sometimes it probably is, and I'm not a cis woman so I can't really say. But I kind of suspect that cis female heterosexuality is not best described as raw physical lust for the male body. That is, I suspect it’s quite different from cis male homosexuality, if I may risk painting with broad strokes. Take the case of Playgirl magazine, which at its peak published feminist articles alongside naked hunks but never had the circulation of its male counterpart and later on ended up just being read by gay men. From the perspective of female sexuality, I mean men’s bodies are nice, they have great hands, great abs, great this part, it's all great. But it’s not that great.

And if you read pornography written by women– and notice that it’s usually written and not photographed– you don't find a predominant focus on vivid descriptions of male bodies. Like in "50 Shades of Grey"– which I read for research purposes– there’s some description of Christian’s hot bod and his hot abs, but it’s not the main thing by any means. There’s a lot more sentences like:

“To the right is an imposing U-shaped sofa that could seat 10 adults comfortably. It faces a state of the art stainless steel– or maybe platinum for all I know– modern fireplace. Near the kitchen area in front of the glass wall is a dining table surrounded by sixteen chairs. And tucked in the corner is a full-sized shiny black grand piano. 'Here.' He hands me a glass of wine. Even the glasses are rich. Heavy, contemporary crystal." 

It’s like a Crate & Barrel catalog. I’m getting so wet. Christian is established as a man of good taste as evinced by his contemporary crystal, his playing Bach at the piano. And that’s hot, because it’s sexy to be wanted by someone who’s qualified. It’s not enough to be whistled at by a catcaller, they have no discernment. I mean they whistle at anything that looks vaguely female… they whistle at me. And I don’t want to be whistled at by the kind of person who would whistle at me. You want to be wanted by someone who with their exquisite and discriminating taste, selects you, the protagonist.

This is not a story about Christian’s rippling abs and his tight buns. It’s not a story about wanting a man, it’s a story about being wanted by a man. This is how the whole romance genre works. You emotionally identify with the female protagonist, then you meet the sexy bad boy who’s like a pirate or the CEO of Business Incorporated, and then the hot part is just how badly this guy wants you, the protagonist. Usually singling her out over other more qualified women, and eventually giving up everything he loves to settle down and make babies with her. 

And a lot of these stories are kind of silly, they conflate female sexuality with women’s economic dependence on men in a way that’s really problematic, but I fundamentally resonate with the wish to be wanted. I want other people to think I’m sexy and want to fuck me, you know, it makes me feel like I have value and it fills up the terrible void inside, is that so wrong?

Part 9: Female Vanity

The art critic John Berger wrote in his book "Ways of Seeing" about the European oil painting trope of depicting a nude woman with a mirror, and calling the painting "Vanity".

"The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of women. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting 'Vanity', thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you depicted for your own pleasure. The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight." 

The notion of the vanity of women is a misogynistic trope that originates in male projection. It is the assumption that women enjoy looking at themselves in the same way that men enjoy looking at them, and are therefore complicit in their own objectification. I think that the concept of the autogynephilic transsexual woman is a combination of this trope with a homophobic trope. 

Misogyny casts women as narcissistic, vain, in love with themselves, and homophobia casts queer men as hypersexual perverts. The autogynephile is the ultimate combination of the two: the hypersexual pervert vainly in love with the image of himself as a woman.

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Part 10: Autogynephilia Acceptance

So this whole video I’ve been treating autogynephilia kind of like an accusation from which I have to exonerate myself. And I think it's justifiable considering I’m objecting to misrepresentation. But some people might wonder, isn’t this whole conversation getting kind of kink shame-y? Like, is autogynephilia so wrong? Well, no. It’s not. It’s fine. There definitely are men who get turned on by wearing women’s clothes or thinking about having a female body, and as paraphilias go this is very harmless and I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of. 

But the question of whether genuinely autogynephilic trans women exist is more complicated. The reason most trans women consider the label “autogynephilia” to be such a stigma, is that as Blanchard says, women do not get turned on merely by the thought of being women. Now as I’ve discussed, the problem with Blanchard is he overextends the concept of autogynephilia to cover pretty much any sexual feeling a Cluster B trans woman can have. But I’m actually inclined to agree with him that being turned on merely by the thought of being a woman is a fundamentally non-female state of mind, and one that feels quite foreign to me. So a lot of trans women, I guess including me, have the idea that you can’t be both a woman and an autogynephile, hence the offense we take to being characterized in this way. However, things get messier when you look into this some more. 

Are there some genuinely autogynephilic transsexuals? Well, at first glance the answer is yes. I mean there’s always one, isn’t there. In this case that one is Anne Lawrence, a disciple of Blanchard and self-identified autogynephilic transsexual. From 1998 to 2011, Lawrence collected 249 anonymous accounts of autogynephilia over the Internet and published them in her 2012 book "Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies". Great title Anne, very provocative, very controversial, very politically incorrect, I have been triggered, well done. What is this cover though? Come on, Anne. Get a statue of Hermaphroditus or something on there.

So this book is filled with stories of trans women who have a past or present of pretty autogyenphilia-like fantasy and behavior. So, what do we make of that? Well a lot of this stuff, like fantasies of being women, or having sex as women, or arousal during cross-dressing, are what the trans community has destigmatizingly termed “cross-sex gender fantasy”. And among trans women, particularly prior to transition, this kind of thing is pretty common. You’ll see it all over the place on trans subreddits, there’s a blog called cross dreamers devoted to it, it’s been written about by Zinnia Jones and Julia Serano. So within the trans community this isn’t even controversial, it’s not provocative, it’s not politically incorrect. 

But how do we make sense of this? Well my thinking is that it’s pretty hard to experience genuine female sexuality when you've still got the evil magic of testosterone in your system. So you’ve got to get that out, and then this paraphilic stuff tends to go away. But how is this any different from Blanchard’s theory of autogynephilia? Well basically it comes down to this: Blanchard’s theory claims that cross-sex gender fantasy or arousal is causal and essential. In this theory if you’re an autogynephilic transsexual you are essentially male, and any facsimile of womanhood you attain can only be honestly understood as the expression of an essentially male sexual urge. 

I reject the idea that it’s causal or essential. And I think the strongest piece of evidence that it isn't essential, is that even the rare trans women who identify as autogynephilic admit that after transition the cross-sex fantasy and arousal vanishes, yet they continue to prefer living as trans women. Blanchard made this observation himself:

“Any viable theory relating to the etiologies of autogynephilia and transsexualism must explain the following well-established observation: Gender dysphoria, in young nonhomosexual males, usually appears along with, or subsequent to, autogynephilia; in later years, however, autogynephilic sexual arousal may diminish or disappear, while the transsexual wish remains or grows even stronger… The same conclusion is suggested by the fact that surgical castration and estrogen treatment– which decrease libido in gender dysphorics as in other men– usually have no effect on the desire to live as female or the resolve to remain in that role.”

If these trans women are essentially men with a paraphilic desire to become women, why would they continue preferring to live as women after the paraphilic desires go away? Well, this is where things get really weird. According to Blanchard and Lawrence, the only way to explain this is to shift the goalpost and say that actually autogynephilia isn’t a paraphilia at all, it’s actually a sexual orientation. 

So what happens when you transition is you actually pair-bond with yourself, forming a kind of stale, sexless marriage with the woman you’ve become. And if that sounds like it doesn’t make any goddamn sense at all, it’s because it doesn’t. A pair bond is a social relationship between two or more people, are you saying that trans women are a man and a woman inside the same… Why do they continue falling in love with other people?!... I can’t even start with this. 

This video’s too long, I’m getting cranky. Look, this seems like the point where Occam’s Razor shuts down Blanchard’s theory. Like okay, maybe I subconsciously created a female alter ego with which my original male ego has fallen in love. But maybe lots of things. Maybe I subconsciously want to become my mother so I can fuck my father. Maybe the elder gods ripped my primordial duality in twain, and now I’m yearning for my female half. Or maybe I’m just a woman who wants someone to fuck me every once in a while.

Part 11: True Autogynephiles

Among the narratives recorded in Lawrence’s book, there are admittedly a few accounts of trans women whose primary sexuality and motivation throughout their transition does appear to be genuinely autogynephilic. And I’m not going to say that these people are lying about their experiences, because that would be a terrible thing to do. 

Ultimately ContraPoints is not a channel about judging people. So I’m not gonna say that those people aren’t really trans. I mean I find it weird and hard to imagine, but whatever. I’m the one who’s into people licking milk off my tits. And wait till you see my sex robot. And look, if I had autogynephilic feelings I would just tell you. I’ve already admitted to things in this video that I wouldn’t tell my own diary on my deathbed. But I just don’t. This theory doesn’t describe my conscious motivations to transition. And that’s ultimately the main reason most trans women hate this theory, not because of wounded narcissism or shattered erotic delusions. We just don’t like being misrepresented. 

But you know who does love the theory? She’s been there literally the whole time. You know, I realize that by talking about this I’m subjecting myself to a lot of ruthless psychoanalysis. Whether it’s gonna come from TERF reddit, or trans people who are mad at me for even talking about this, or who knows, maybe even Blanchard and Bailey themselves. So you know what? Why don’t we just get that out of the way right now. It’s time to put this tranny on trial.

Part 12: The Autogynephilia Trial of ContraPoints

Bailiff: All rise. The Autogynephilia Department of the Sexology Court is now in session. Judge Bailey presiding. 

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Judge: Calling the case of the GenderCritical subreddit versus ContraPoints. Are both sides ready?

Abigail: District Attorney Cockbane, ready for the subreddit Your Honor.

Natalie: Ready, I guess.

Abigail: Your Honor, ladies of the subreddit: the defendant is a man. A full-grown, six-foot, wide-shouldered man in a dress.

Natalie: It’s really more of a hospital gown.

Abigail: The evidence will show that the defendant is not a woman, but a male pervert role-playing as such for his own twisted sexual amusement.

Natalie: Abigail, what are you holding?

Abigail: It’s for horseback riding. Your Honor, I would like to admit into evidence the following video clip uploaded to YouTube by the defendant on June 13, 2016:

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Natalie: Oh god. 🙈

Abigail: Fishnets, garter belts, corsets. If these are not the trappings of an autogynephile, then I don’t have two X chromosomes.

Judge: Agreed. Well, what do you have to say for yourself? 

Natalie: Well, why do you think I had all that fetish stuff in the first place?

Abigail: The court doesn’t need to hear about your perverse masturbation rituals.

Natalie: I bought that stuff for Rocky Horror.

Abigail: What?

Natalie: Rocky Horror Picture Show. I used to do Frank-N-Furter. Your Honor, I’d like to admit into evidence the following photograph. That’s me at E Street Cinema in 2014. This one’s on the house KiwiFarms. Are you a Rocky Horror fan Your Honor?

Judge: Am I?? It’s just a jump to the left!

Natalie: ♪ And then a step to the right ♪

Judge: ♪ Put your hands on your hips! ♪

Natalie: ♪ And bring your knees in tight ♪ But it’s the pelvic thrust ♪

Abigail: Eww. So you liked to dress up as another cross-dressing autogynephile. How is that helping your case at all? 

Natalie: Well, I know Rocky Horror is problematic but when you’re living as a man there aren’t a lot of socially acceptable occasions to try out cross-dressing. You know it’s basically Rocky Horror, Halloween, pretty much any time it’s socially allowed to be a freakish monster. And come to think of it, the scary monster autogynephile is a trope I’ve played with since the beginning of this channel. The whole ContraPoints aesthetic is very like, autogynephilia chic. I originally was going to have the narrator of this channel be more of a fictional character, the idea was to be like, autogynephile Harry Plinkett. And part of that is that I kind of hated myself, I thought I was just disgusting, part of it is that representing yourself as a scary monster actually does capture something of the horror of gender dysphoria, and part of it is that identifying with the scary monster version of yourself is actually kind of empowering. Like cis feminists, you have your thing about witches. 

Abigail: Okay… but monster version or not, real women do not wear fishnets and garter belts and corsets. This is just male fetishism. 

Natalie: Well it’s true that cis women generally don’t dress that way, no. I mean, unless they’re doing Rocky Horror. It’s actually pretty popular. But I never wear shit like that any more. In fact it actually causes dysphoria because it makes me feel like a male crossdresser. Sometimes trans women start out with a fairly male conception of what women wear… I guess that’s true, a lot of trans women transition after a period of sort of trying things out as a crossdresser or a drag queen. But you know, it takes time to develop an authentic sense of female fashion. Like what did you wear when you were 14?

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Natalie: That’s what I thought. But also, why not steal fashion ideas from drag queens and kinksters? Cis women do. They have some good ideas. Without drag queens and kinksters we’d have no contouring, no chokers. And what would we do then Abigail, what would we do then? 

Abigail: I don’t know what you would do, I think I could manage. Your Honor, I would like to admit into evidence the following clip:

"Is there a way to smash my ribs in? I’ll smash ‘em in, I’ll smash the shit out of ‘em. These shoes are cute, and I'll finally be able to hit my head on the tops of door frames. 'Would you fuck me?' I wouldn’t." 

Abigail: Your Honor, the defendant literally tries on high heels and corsets in front of a mirror before posing to himself the question: “Would you fuck me?” This, Your Honor, is peak trans. PEAK TRANS! ＰＥＡＫ ＴＲＡＮＳ! How do we even need to have a trial about this? 

Natalie: Well, that scene depicts a kind of anguish, not sexual pleasure. “Would you fuck me” is obviously a reference to "Silence of the Lambs", and is what is known in the trans community as a “joke”. The corsets, the high heels, these were primitive efforts at clawing my way out of manhood, and they’re efforts that I’ve left behind. Now that I’m on female hormones and I live this way full time, I feel the way I’m supposed to feel, and I don’t need to lean on that stuff for validation. I mean, I still do some things that cis women don’t do. I sleep in a bra, which I’m pretty sure no cis woman has ever done. I do it because I need to feel something– God anything– taking up space on my chest. And feeling that reassures me enough that I can fall asleep. Not so I can look at myself in the mirror, not so I can get off, so I can simply fall asleep. No one ever claimed that trans women are literally exactly the same as cis women. We have many experiences in common, but in other ways our experiences are very different.

Abigail: Yes, and you don’t have the oppression experiences that cis women have. 

Natalie: Well you know what Abigail? You’re right. For the most part, I don’t. But it’s impossible for us to have an actual conversation about this because you’re just such a fucking asshole. And if you honestly want to talk about trans women and oppression experiences, don’t have this conversation with someone who started transitioning five months ago. Go find someone who transitioned decades ago, and talk to them about their experience as a woman. 

Abigail: Your Honor, the defendant does not bleed. I find that pretty conclusive. 

Judge: As do I. Guilty as charged! 

13: Final Thoughts

I think some cis people will be congratulatory toward me for making this video. Some of them will say things like “why can’t all trans people be as calm and rational and open about their experiences as you?” Well I’m very happy if you found the video elucidating, but I’d like cis people to think a little harder about why not a lot of trans women talk about this. It’s humiliating, it’s exhausting, and it’s required me to publicize a detailed analysis of my most private sexual feelings for the scrutiny of people who despise me. I’ve had to discuss things that I’m honestly terrified to discuss because I’m afraid that people will never take me seriously as a woman, hence ruining any chance I have at happiness. For trans women this debate is intensely personal and risky, our lives and happiness are at stake.

Meanwhile Blanchard and Bailey are not just neutral, devoted pursuers of scientific truth. They have continuously and needlessly been derisive and cruel toward trans people. And they've misused their power as academic authorities to misrepresent and humiliate us. No part of my present experience corresponds to the core claim of their theory. 

I may drape myself in a hundred layers of defensive irony and depravity, but I am at core a woman who is very thoroughly not in love with myself. So I have to hope for the sake of my own happiness, that someday I will be loved by someone who thinks of me as a woman. Otherwise, I’m fucked. This has been a rough one girls, I daresay you’ve earned a song.

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♪ "Three Times A Lady" by Commodores ♪

–Oh, one more time!

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♪ "Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show ♪