Crossdreamers

The Kama Sutra and the Transgender

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Crossdreamer women who enforces their will on their male lovers with a strap-on? The Kama Sutra has it all!

I have been working on this blog for several years now, and I have learned one important lesson:

As human beings we have an amazing ability to reinterpret reality according to our own prejudices or cultural stereotypes.

Our fear of chaos, uncertainty and social exclusion tempts us to go firm and fixed world views, reality be damned.

History as a teacher

One way of getting around this kind of intellectual lock-in is to look at the views of other cultures and other epochs.

What is "self evident" to us is not to them, and by watching an alternative system of beliefs we can learn something about ourselves.

Recently I presented a case study from the early 20th century work of Magnus Hirshfield, showing that the crossdressers, crossdreamers and transsexuals of his time struggled with many of the same challenges as contemporary transgender people.

Still, Hirshfeld has been instrumental in developing the language we now use to understand transgender conditions. Although I think it very unlikely, it could be that Hirschfeld's liberal view of cross-gender behavior has created the crossdreamers.

Would it be possible to go futher back and further away and see if we can recognize crossdreamer behavior elsewhere and "elsewhen"?

The Gupta Dynasty and the Kama Sutra

Recently I watched a documentary about the influential Gupta dynasty of India (320 to 550 AD). This was a thriving and influential culture, and its most famous literary work is the Kama Sutra.

The Kama Sutra is now known as a manual for sexual positions, and that part is republished again and again with both ancient and modern illustrations.

The work is much more than a sex manual, however. It is a review of the understanding of sex and sexuality of the time -- or times, rather, as it is a kind of compendium based on works written over several hundred years.

Maybe, I thought, I could find descriptions of crossdreaming in the Kama Sutra? Unfortunately, the editions I found online did not give me much, apart from some small glimpses into the world of proactive women.

However, I soon realized that the versions found online were shortened and censored, so I bought myself a complete version, The Complete Käma Sütra of translated by Alain Denieéou .

This version contains a translation of the complete Kama Sutra, as it was compiled and written down in Sanskrit by Vätsyäyana somewhere between 200 and 500 AD.

This version also has the advantage that it includes a medieval commentary on the Kama Sutra, written by a scholar called Yashodhara.

In this way we have two windows into Indian views of sexuality, one from around the fourth century, and one from the twelfth century.

I am now going to give you a glimse into the real world of the Kama Sutra.

Remember that the original work was based on different works written over several hundred years (from 4th century BC to 4th century AD). The editor, Vätsyäyana, tried hard to reconcile the contradicitons between the different input, to the point of arguing that customs will vary from place to place and from social strata to social strata.

Elitist and misogynistic

At the first glance the work is elitist, sexist and misogynistic. It is compiled for male members of the upper caste (Bramins mostly), and the view the authors have of women rhyme well with the kind of prejudices found in Europe and Northern America since the 19th century.

Quotation:

"Vigor and audacity are manly qualities. Weakness, sensuality, and dependence are female characteristics." (Chapter 7,para 22)

The medieval commentary reemphasizes this views:

"A man must have a strong body, be decided and audacious. These are both qualities of the ardent man [tejas], of him who likes beating. Lack of strength, the incapacity to hurt, even though the softest hands make her suffer, dependence, lack of character, the fact of desiring to be beaten by men, the wish to receive blows, all are part of women's nature. If, without having been beaten, she begins sighing during intercourse, what she wants to receive are blows in response to her sighs."

The text is extreme, but nevertheless rhymes well with the traditional Western dichotomy of women being weak and submissive and men strong and aggressive.

When the woman inverts the situation

The Kama Sutra, however, is a catalog of human sexual behavior, and the editor and the authors were keen at presenting all possible variations of such behavior. And they had clearly met women of a different kind:

"Sometimes, out of passion, custom, or temperament, the woman inverts the situation. This is only temporary, however, and nature ends by taking back its due." (Ch 7, para 23)

This is one of the most fascinating paragraphs about crossdreaming I have ever read. The author acknowledges that there are women who act like men in bed, both out of passion and temperament -- which must be based in her nature.

Still, this natural behavior is clearly unnatural, the author claims, and the roles are therefore always reverted back to the normal form of "normal".

This reminds me of Western doctors who in the 19th and 20th centuries proclaimed that all women were weak and asexual by nature, with the exception of those who were not.

The sexual women were presumed unnatural nymphomaniacs, prostitutes or their behavior was explained as "hysteria", which -- presumably -- had nothing to do with sex.

The medieval commentator, Yashodara, adds that the boy, in turn, changes his own behavior, and starts whining and moaning:

"This does not last very long, however, and after a few moments, the situation reverts. He says, 'What is all this?' and rediscovers his true nature to fuck her. Since intercourse against nature is not possible for lack of the instrument, they go back to the old formula, being without any means of changing it."

But women are sexual beings in the Kama Sutra

Ah, the lack of a penis puts everything back in its proper place. Or does it? The schizophrenic nature of the Kama Sutra is revealed in another chapter of the same book:

"Vätsyäyana's opinion is that a woman, like the man, experiences the same sexual enjoyment from start to finish.

"How is it possible for two beings belonging to the same species and practicing the same act not to feel the same pleasure?

"Differences exist only in advances and in secondary actions [caresses, kisses, etc.].

"Vätsyäyana does not believe that there is any difference in the pleasure itself. Difference of sex is a fact of birth. It is generally admitted that the man is active and the woman is passive. The man's action is therefore different to the woman's. The man thinks that he is enjoying the woman while the woman thinks that the man is enjoying her. There is thus a difference in attitude and experience, but not in enjoyment." (ch 1 para 23 -26)

So, women are not asexual, but the active/passive dichotomy remains in nature.

Virile women

Or does it?

It is in chapter 8 of the book we find the examples that puts this theory to its test. This is the chapter on "virile behavior in women".

This is the chapter on female to male crossdreamers, and -- if we read between the lines -- we can also witness the male to female ones.

You see, the reason a man may submit to a woman, Vätsyäyana argues, is that he is tired after having made love to her the natural way:

"When the boy, wearied after is uninterrupted sexual exercises, seeks rest and is no longer dominated by passion, with his agreement, the girl descends to his anus [adhah] and, with the aid of an accessory [sähäyya], imposes her virile behavior on him."

Turns out the lack of a penis was not so problematic after all.

"Whatever his intentions may be, she is decided on practicing this fictitious intercourse."(Chapter 1, para 1-2)

The presumably passive woman turns out to be assertive and aggressive!

Raped by a woman

The medieval commentator even admits that the man can be overwhelmed by the woman:

"If he does not agree, a struggle ensues, but she is determined on that kind of inverted intercourse known as virile behavior"

I am at loss here, but it seems to me he is describing the rape of a man by a virile woman.

However, he admits that the man may volunteer as well. The original version elaborates:

"She is determined to unite him with the instrument that she is inserting into his anus, so that he gets the taste [rasa] for one pleasure [rata] after another. This is one of the ways of proceeding." (ch 1, para 4)

The medieval commentator goes into more detail:

"There are two ways of proceeding with the inversion of roles. In the first case, she holds firmly the instrument [yantra] to unite the boy with this fake sex [shalya] in a doubled up position. Being excited, the girl grips in in her arms and, mounting him and bestirring herself, possesses him. Seeing that he is developing a taste for a sensation of pleasure that is different from the other, she lets the instrument slide once more into its target [sandhana]. He feels a pleasure unknown before, since up to then he had not had any inclination for that kind of experience."

Note how the medieval commentator tries to blame this on the woman. Indeed, the man will try to stop this behavior:

"However, he suddenly interrupts this pleasing sensation, since it is of a kind that is not acceptable for a young male [kämina]. In such a case, despite her efforts, the girl's desire is not fulfilled."

I find it hard to believe that this behavior would be so common as to favor a separate chapter in the Kama Sutra, hadn't it been for the fact that many of the men involved volunteered.

Moreover, I would argue that most men would -- due to differences in weight and muscular strength -- be able to defend themselves. The fact that they did submit on a regular basis leads me to believe they liked it.

In other words: The text does not only describe female to male crossdreamers (or "girlfags"), but male to female crossdreamers as well.

The fact that the text does not describe crossdressing, is not important here. Not all crossdreamers are crossdressers, and for all I know the taboo against crossdressing among the upper classes in India could have been stronger than the taboo about role reversal during intercourse.

Tearing the flowers from her hair

I have, of course no way of knowing the true nature of their transgender condition.

The text says nothing about sex dysphoria or transsexual tendencies, but it is clear that in ancient India there were quite a few proactive female genderbenders, who didn't give a damn about "natural" gender roles:

"Tearing the flowers form her hair [which I suppose is a symbol of renouncing traditional femininity],laughing until she is breathless, in order to bring their faces together, she presses hard with her breasts against the boy's chest, forcing him to lower his head several times. She copies in every detail his previous behavior with her, dominating him in turn. Laughing, she mocks him, saying insulting words to him. Then again, if he shows modesty [which, i guess, refers to female behavior], wishing to rest from his labors, she mounts him [upasripta] and sodomizes him." (para 9)

The "masculine" aggressiveness is even clearer in the medieval commentary:

"She makes him lower his head with shame and presses her breast hard against the boy's chest, not to embrace him or bite him, but with the ferocious desire to force him into behaving like a woman [strairena] in all ways. Speaking like a man, she tells him violently, 'I will repay you for all the torments you have made me suffer.' "

Note that her "masculine" behavior goes far beyond "sodomizing" him with a strap-on. She also plays out the role of an aggressive dominant male in words and mannerisms.

Seduced by a girlfag

The mash-up nature of the Kama Sutra is reflected in the next paragraph, which describes the way a virile woman will seduce -- as opposed to force -- a man into submission:

"Having made the boy lie down, the woman distracts his attention with her words, while she unties his undergarment [nïvï]. If he protests, she embraces him to calm his apprehension."

If he protests, the medieval commentator explains, she kisses him on the cheek until he agrees and the undergarment can be easily removed:

"Being excited, he allows the girl's hand to caress his sides, thighs, breast, putting him into an erotic mood. Then the boy is suddenly possessed by an object of copulation [sangatäya], which she slides without difficulty between his thighs."

Note that the Kama Sutra often appears to be formulaic, in the sense that it describes role playing games that can be played out by both parties. This helps them know how to behave in a "proper" way.

And I get the sense that the description of virile women also may be like this. In other words: If they both have read the Kama Sutra they may -- if they are both crossdreamers -- play the roles described in the text, symbolic resistance included.

Gay or not?

It is interesting to note that the Kama Sutra does not really talk much about homosexuality in the modern term of the word. It is the sexual behavior that is the focus in the description of virile women, not the sex of the partner.

Without taking a pause, chapter 8 goes on to describe how virile women, in the same manner, may overpower a girl:

"According to Suvarnanäbha once the girl is possessed [upasripta] by union with the instrument, the moment when her eyes start vacillating is the moment to make her suffer. This is the secret of young girls." (para 16)

A virile woman is identified by her virility, not her preferences for boys or girls.

The hijra

The book also describes the hijra, nowadays identified as male to female transwomen. In the Kama Sutra, however, they are used to illustrate the art of fellatio.

"People of the third sex |tritïya prakriti] are of two kinds, according to whether their appearance is masculine or feminine." (ch 9, 1)

No, this is not an early version of Blanchard's division between "homosexual" and autogynephilic transwomen.

The medieval commentator explains that those with feminine appearance have breasts, while those with a masculine aspect have mustaches, body hair, etc.

This could be a way of distinguishing between interexed persons and what we now call male to female transwomen, but I doubt it. There are still hijras around and most of them are not intersexed.

Instead it seems to me this could be a way of distinguishing between male bodied persons who identify as women, and those we now call male homosexuals:

"Those with a feminine appearance show it by their dress, speech, laughter, gentleness, lack of courage, silliness [mugdha], patience and modesty." (p 2)

"Buccal coition [fellation] as practiced by both kinds is part of their nature." (p 1)

"They perform the act that takes place between the thighs in the mouth, which is why it is called superior coition."

Moreover, they live as prostitutes performing fellatio on male customers:

"Those who dress as women are taken for prostitutes" (p. 5)

"Those who like men but dissimulate the fact maintain a manly appearance an earn their living as hairdressers or masseurs."

"Buccal coition can also be practiced with corrupt women [kulatä], lesbians [svairiniï], servants [paricharïkä], women who carry burdens [sanvahiki]." (p 25)

According to the Ächärya, the Kama Sutra tells us, this practice is not recommended. It is contrary to sound morals and is not a civilized practice [asabhya]. "One is defiled by the contact of the sex with the face."

So the trouble with transwomen and homsexual men is not so much that they are what they are, but the fact that they perform the unclean act of fellatio!

This is also, by the way, why contacts must be avoided with people from the eastern area, Prächya, Arichchatra, Saketa, or the Saurasenas-- as they practice oral sex.

But, as the medieval commentator notes:

"Anxiety over matters such as purity or impurity have no meaning in countries like Läta or Sindhy, where buccal coition between men or with women who make a business of it is allowed as freely as kissing on the mouth."

By the way, the Kama Sutra also describes marriages between men and between women. (p 36) Again, it is the oral sex that is found offensive, not the fact that two men live together! Note also that while the female to male virile women love anal sex, that practice is not mentioned when it comes to the practices of the feminine and non-feminine "third sex".

I suspect this may be caused by the different chapters being based on different text that are not directly comparable. Or maybe anal sex was not common among "third gender" male bodied persons in India at this time.

I doubt very much that the dichotomy dominant/submissive or "top" and "bottom" was irrelevant to these androphilic men and transwomen, though. In other words: The longing to be receptive as opposed to the penetrator would be as strong among them as among the male to female crossdreamers.

Crossdreaming is not a cultural phenomenon

It is abundantly clear that same sex intercourse was common in India at the time. But then again, we find such behavior in all cultures and most mammals. This should come as no surprise.

To me, however, the book also proves that other types of "gender bending" were common enough to require their own chapter in the Kama Sutra.

The existence of "virile women" (or female to male crossdreamers and "girlfags") proves beyond doubt that this kind of crossdreaming is not a product of modern Western society or the common era.

The fact that these women also had male companions who succumbed to being "sodomized" tells us that being submissive was not against their nature. And again: The fact that a pretty sexist society had room for this kind of behavior leads me to believe that some of these men were the male bodied counterpart to the "virile women".

The authors and the editors cannot admit that such submissive men exist, as their view of nature does not allow for it. They therefore try to explain this by saying that the man was tired after having normal sex or something equally implausible.

But this argument only serves to illuminate the prejudices of the day. Their implausible denial only confirms the existence of the male to female crossdreamers.

Censorship

The most popular translation of the Kama Sutra is accredited to Sir Richard Francis Burton, who -- in spite of the censorship of the day -- managed to publish the book in 1883.

The fact that he did so much to battle censorship and publish erotic literature makes it hard to believe that he censored the text on virile women, but the fact remains: His edition contains none of the quotes I have presented here.

(You can see for yourself in this PDF version of the translation - chapter VIII).

Maybe he and his co-translators found the idea of virile women uninteresting or offensive. I do not know.

This was unfortunate, as the Kama Sutra did have a readership in educated circles and a text describing the very existence of "virile women" might have forced some doctors to take another look at contemporary women.

Or maybe not. Maybe the cultural counter forces of the times were so strong that the existence of crossdreamers in ancient India would have meant nothing to them.

After all, even scientists see what they want to see. Even now there are "experts" in the field of sex and gender who refuses to acknowledge the existence of female to male crossdreamers.

These days it is the dogma of sex selection that underpins their reluctance. Even in the 21st century women are to let the "sperm bringer" come to them. She is definitely not supposed to "sodomize" the man with a strap-on.

Ah well, Mother Nature does not care about what sexist men think. I can hear her laughing!

Reference: Vätsyäyana: The Complete Kama Sutra, translated by Alain Daniélou, Vermont, 1994.

See also Kindle Edition: The Complete Kama Sutra: The First Unabridged Modern Translation of the Classic Indian Text

New genetic study of male and female behavior

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:51:00 +0000

American scientists develop an interesting model of how genes and hormones influence sex behavior, a model that might also throw light on transgender conditions.

Regular readers of this blog know my skepticism towards reducing human gender behavior to biology alone.

The interaction between cultural factors, personal experiences, the body itself and the genetic variables is just too complex to be reduced to a simple "one gene determine all gender behavior" kind of theory.

Indeed, we now know that not only is the brain "plastic" in that learning changes it; we also know that genes may be switched on and off because of stress and various environmental influences.

On the other hand, the discussion of the transgender conditions taking place on this blog and in other online forums, as well as my own personal experience, has led me to believe there is some kind of biological core to at least some of these experiences, including my own crossdreaming.

The social pressure to conform to traditional gender stereotypes is extremely strong, so strong in fact, that these transgender traits should have disappeared if they were anchored in personal experiences only.

I can see a clear parallell in homosexuality. I have many homosexual friends who get seriously angry when someone suggest their experience is based on "mother complexes" or teenage seductions. As one gay friend told me: "If that was the case, ten years of therapy would have cured me!"

Then, of course, there is the large number of heterosexual men with similar childhood experiences.

In other words: homosexuality as well as transsexuality are most likely to have a strong biological basis.

That does not mean, of course, that there are no same-sex relationships or no types of cross-gender behavior that are not anchored in these kinds of hormonal or genetic starting points. Humans behavior is amazingly diverse, and I suspect that both sexual orientation and gender behavior are quite flexible.

Simplistic biological models

There has been a tendency among biologist to fall into the trap of social projections. That is: They take the social stereotypes of their own culture and projects it onto animal behavior.

Their interpretation of animal behavior is then taken as proof of the social stereotypes being based in biology. Nature trumps nurture, and sexism trumps humanism. (See my series on Joan Roughgarden for examples).

These studies are often based on a simplistic reductionism where all "masculine" behavior is understood as the effect of one single factor (for instance a gene or prenatal hormones).

Ray Blanchard's transgender theory is, for instance, reductionistic in the sense that sex identity, gender specific behavior and sexual orientation are chained together. A transwoman can only be feminine if she (or "he" if we use Blanchard's vocabulary) is attracted to men. If she is attracted to women, she is per definition masculine, ungainly and ugly.

The Nirao Shah study

A new study done by Nirao Shah and his group at the University of California, San Franscisco, is interesting in that it brings a new level of complexity to the sexual behavior arena.

According to them sexual behavior in mice (which are much less complex organisms than human beings) cannot be reduced to one single gene. Instead each gene regulates a few components of a behavior without affecting other aspects of male and female behavior.

The idea is that genes may trigger a wide variety of hormone mixes from life in the womb to old age, and that different "mixes" leads to different combinations of "male" and "female" behavior.

In these experiments the researchers are looking at pretty simple behavioral dimensions. Still, even these dimensions add up to an amazing complexity:

Their website reports:

"Scientists have long suspected that sex hormones ultimately influence gene expression in the brain. About six years ago, Shah and his colleagues set out to find such genes by using DNA microarrays, a routine laboratory assay, to analyze sex differences in gene expression in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain known to be involved with hormone sensing.

"They found 16 genes that were expressed differently between males and females in the hypothalamus and showed that such differences were regulated by sex hormones. But in identifying these 16 genes, Shah and his colleagues also discovered they could tease apart classic, male and female hormone-driven behaviors into individual elements—each governed by its own genes." (...)

Breaker switches

Shah & Co compares the sexual behavior of mice to a main electrical box with many breaker switches. Male and female behaviors in mice are actually made up of many behaviors, like sex drive or an inclination to fight.

Shah and his colleagues were able to turn off genes with drugs and by other means. They found that they could selectively knock out some male behaviors so that males continued to fight and mark territory normally, but altered their mating routine with females. Likewise they could modulate female mouse behaviors to make them maintain active interest in sex but spend less time caring for their young.

In the case of humans you would have to add cultural and social factors to this mix, which would -- of course -- make the number of variables mindbogglingly large. Still, if you do so, you end up with a model that is very close to the slider model presented by Natalie and myself.

In other words: In humans male and female behavior cannot be reduced to one and only one combination of traits and behaviors, and because of this it is also impossible to develop one "ideal" stereotypical model of how a woman or a man (trans or not) ought to be.

Sexual orientation is, for instance, separate from mating behavior (the copulatory instinct) and -- in the case of humans -- from a sex identity.

(I have no idea of knowing whether a mouse has a sex identity.)

It should be possible, though, to identify a core of genetic and/or hormonal triggers that might lead to the development of a transgender condition.

And as several such triggers exist, the idea that a transwoman is "a woman trapped in a man's body" may make sense. But we would also have to accept that there are people out there with a mix that makes it close to impossible for them to identify with one gender only.

For more on Shah, see my post On hormones, gender, mice and men.

The article, "Modular genetic control of sexually dimorphic behaviors" by Xiaohong Xu, Jennifer K. Coats, Cindy F. Yang, Amy Wang, Osama M. Ahmed, Maricruz Alvarado, Tetsuro Izumi, and Nirao M. Shah appears in the February 3, 2012 issue of the journal Cell.

Abstract:

"Sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone are essential for sexually dimorphic behaviors in vertebrates. However, the hormone-activated molecular mechanisms that control the development and function of the underlying neural circuits remain poorly defined.

"We have identified numerous sexually dimorphic gene expression patterns in the adult mouse hypothalamus and amygdala. We find that adult sex hormones regulate these expression patterns in a sex-specific, regionally restricted manner, suggesting that these genes regulate sex typical behaviors.

"Indeed, we find that mice with targeted disruptions of each of four of these genes (Brs3, Cckar, Irs4, Sytl4) exhibit extremely specific deficits in sex specific behaviors, with single genes controlling the pattern or extent of male sexual behavior, male aggression, maternal behavior, or female sexual behavior. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that various components of sexually dimorphic behaviors are governed by separable genetic programs."

The Amazing Transgender Story of John O. (Anno 1905)

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:18:00 +0000

Male to female and female to male crossdresser,
early 20th century. (From Femulate)

I am going to share with you another remarkable crossdreamer life story. I found it in Magnus Hirschfeld's amazing book from 1910: Die Transvestiten (Transvestites, the Erotic Drive to Cross Dress, translated by Michael A. Lombardi-Nash.)

As Vern L. Bullough writes in the introduction to the English language edition of the book:

"In Hirschfeld's view, transvestism was a sexual variation in itself. He sharply criticized psychoanalysts who thought that it was simply an aspect of homosexuality... He recognized that both men and women could be transvestites and that they could be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual and asexual (automonosexual in his terms)."

In fact, Hirschfeld's understanding of crossdressers, crossdreamers and transsexuals (which to him is one group) is very similar to my own. Thanks go to U. for making me aware of this! I will come back with a broader presentation of his theories later on.

Case No. 13

In the book Hirschfeld presents 17 case studies in addition to referring to a large number of life stories found in the literature available at the time. Of the 17 core case studies 16 are on male bodied persons and one on a female bodied "transvestite". The other cases referred to, however, contains discussions of a large number of what I would call female to male crossdreamers.

His case No. 13 is of particular interest to me, partly because John O. is a crossdreamer who actively tries to explain what he is to others, and partly because he is one of many examples found in the book who refuses to live up to contemporary prejudices regarding the differences between crossdressers and transwomen or between gynephilic (woman-loving) and androphilic (man-loving) transsexuals.

A letter to a woman's magazine

Hirschfeld writes that in 1905 the woman publisher of the magazine Antenatal Care (Mutterschutz) received a text from a certain John O. from San Francisco with the request that she publish it:

"When the expected publication did not take place and, after waiting for a long time, O. turned to me, he was very disappointed that he had received no word. With his letter, which I clearly understood, he included a copy of the odd piece of writing, and now I understand why the woman publisher thought it would be too much for her readers, because they hardly would have been able to understand it."

Hirschfeld then goes on to present parts of the text. I will take the liberty of quoting the text quite liberally, as I think it is extremely useful as a counterpoint to contemporary crossdressing and crossdreaming in the Western world.

Firstly, this case -- as well as many of the others -- proves beyond doubt that crossdressing and crossdreaming is an old phenomena. They also tell us that much of what is written about crossdreaming these days is myopic, misleading and bigoted.

Please not that Hirschfeld and John O. used the male pronoun for male to female transgender people. This was definitely not out of disrespect. I have decided to do the same in my coverage of Hirschfeld in order to avoid confusion when mixing quotes and original text. Normally I would use the pronouns used by the persons themselves.

Crossdresser anno 1901 (From Femulate)

Physically a man, mentally a woman

John O. writes:

"Your publication, Antenatal Care, interests me so much that I have to keep it: I am physically a man, mentally a woman; for that reason I have a lot of sympathy for everything that is womanly. Because you are fighting for sexual liberty, I would like to say a few words about the persecution of effeminate men. For many mothers do not understand their sons when they are girlish.

"I am convinced that when a boy becomes 8 or 10 years old and shows preference for girls' clothing, girls' work and girls' games, then the mother, for the benefit of the child, should let him have free choice.

"The boy is, then, namely, only sexually a male, but mentally a female, and when such children are raised according to their feelings, then they are so much happier than when people punish them, or even abuse them to produce boyishness.

"But if he is raised as a girl, then he will lose all doubt and be more stable in his girlishness, so that he then never will ever want to become a man; if he is forced to behave as a boy, then he will feel destroyed and will yearn for the time when he can make a living as a maid or something like that."

Acceptance and not suppression

John O. then goes on to refer to contemporary science and attacks attempts at conditioning feminine boys in order to remove their feminine side:

"I do not agree with Dr. Moll and his contrary sexual feeling, p. 448, where he says: one should attempt to do away with the effemination by punishment. Indeed, on page 157 he says, himself, 'in fact, it is striking how powerfully womanish behavior appears in many homosexuals. When one considers that the raising of such boys is mostly the same as any other, then it is amazing that the feminine nature finally breaks out in their case with such force in spite of everything.'

But note that John O. himself is not "homosexual", as will be revealed below. In fact, in Hirschfeld's book most of the male to female cases are attracted to women.

John O. continues:

"I will agree that up to the fifth year, perhaps, many children can still be raised in their sex, but then mostly not, and if the girlish characteristics appear much stronger than the boyish ones, then it is much better for the child to be raised according to its mental sex.

"For that reason, dear mothers, raise such sons as daughters, because they will seldom become good husbands, they will even have an aversion ot intercourse, except when they later, perhaps, find a woman who is manly. I would also allow for the police to leave such feminine men in peace and that they be treated like women."

Childhood crossdreaming

In most of the cases found in Hirschfeld's book the crossdressers and crossdreamers become aware of their cross-sexual tendencies as kids. This is, according to researchers like Blanchard, not possible, as male to female crossdreamers ("autogynephiliacs") are driven by some kind of perverted male sexuality and not a true inner femininity.

Hirschfeld's "transvestites" had not read Blanchard (who had not been born yet) and therefore failed to live up to his dogma.

John O. again:

"I myself, as a child, took every opportunity to wear my sister's clothing, was often beaten for it, mocked and teased, played with girls, and yearned for the time when I could finish school and work as a nanny.

"I finally stole the clothes of a young woman and her certificate of domicile and, dressed as a woman, fled to Switzerland, so that for years no one knew where I was. For the first three months I sometimes wanted to work as a young man, because the work was hard and the woman evil, but the second woman employer was kinder to me, and so I soon forgot my own place or origin and my sex."

He had his my first sex experience at the age of 19 with a young girl, and -- as he says -- during the act he, too, wanted to be a young woman:

" I sometimes cried because I was not a woman and could not become a mother."

Eldorado Nightclub Berlin between the wars.
Four of these ladies are crossdressers.
Click on image to enlarge! (From Femulate)

Longing for children

According to the autogynephilia theory a longing to be a woman is just another way of internalizing the external love object: real women. In the case of John O. and others found in the book, it becomes clear that the enthusiasm for bringing up children is natural and heart felt.

"I am now 43 years of age and single, have not embraced anyone in six years. I often dream that I am a woman, about childbed and putting children to sleep, and feel happy when I wake up, until I realize that it is not true, and that, to my dismay, it was only a dream. So, dear ladies, can you imagine how unhappy your children feel when you try to suppress their natural tendencies.

"Such a boy would not be ashamed to appear as a girl; on the contrary, he is mentally a girl and wants to be one. I have spoken to many women-men mostly of whom have a weak sex drive and no idea about friendship with men, as long as they can move in company with women and children. Even if they were not in women's clothing, they still preferred women's concerns and preferred living with a family where there were children."

In a letter to Hirshfeld he explains that he later moved to New York and found work as an embroiderer there, later as a maid on a farm. He finally ended up as a maid in San Francisco where he was the nanny of a young child.

"Bringing up and caring for children is my greatest joy, " he writes, "to raise them in the sense of Froebel, Pestalozzi, and other great pedagogues of children."

Crossdreamer longings

His longing for the full life of a woman is painful:

"When I reached my twenties, young people would run after me, and sometimes their mothers would say what a good homemaker I would make. But I did suffer a lot because I was the other sex. Oh, how it hurt when I would see a couple in love flirting with each other, how envious I was of every young woman and still am today."

John O. is attracted to strong, manly women, -- i.e. female to male crossdreamers. Not all of Hischfeld's male bodied cases do so, nor do all contemporary M2F crossdreamers. Still, John O.'s makes an interesting case for an alternative way of solving the crossdreamer's love dilemma.

"Strong, manly women were always my ideal lovers. They always make me feel like a woman." (...)

"If ever there is total freedom of dress, then the effeminate people will connect with female society, just as the man-women will befriend the so-called stronger sex. When there is no longer a dress code, the woman-man will grow into the feminine and be attracted by the man-woman, because by nature both feel right for each other, he as a woman and she as a man, and they will love happily together as any normal married couple today.

"The usual woman does not excite the woman-man, and the manly man does not attract the manly woman. Many women have been amazed by me when they by chance discover my sex, that they hae not been able to see any manly characteristics in my case. Then how often have they said, 'Johanna, you would have been better as a girl."

"Everything that I say here goes in reverse for girls with boyish tendencies. Many more of the would be successful technicians, inventors, or something similar of they would be freely tolerated as men, which is what they want. Both would forget their sex and would be happy.

"Humanity would not die out of account of that; nature has already sufficiently taken care of that, and it would protect many a person from unhappy marriages, because a woman-man makes a bad bedfellow for a normal woman and vice versa. But if the two get married, one of whom is a woman-man and one a man-woman, then he is the feminine and she the masculine part, and they will be happy; for, no matter what the sex is, emotionally they still are, indeed, opposite sexes, just as nature made them.

"For that reason, dear mothers, why not bring this theme into public discussion? Does it not concern the well-being of your children? If ever society becomes more tolerant and rational, many effeminate men and masculine women will realize why they were born. Just look into human life and you will find that what is inborn will not be suppressed. Has it not also been proven by history that many woman-men were great educators of children and have made many good contributions in female areas? (....)"

Magnus Hirschfeld

Feminine crossdreamers

Hirschfeld felt that John O. was "a typical case of the group we are concerned with" (i.e. "the transvestites" as he called them, who -- in the core sense of his term -- overlaps with my "crossdreamers").

Note that Hischfeldt did not distinguis between what was later to be known as primary and secondary transsexuals, or "homosexual transexuals" versus "autogynephiles", where one group is considered androphilic and feminine and the other gynephilic and masculine.

The reason for this is clear when you read his cases. Most of his cases are male to female crossdreamers attracted to women. They still show a strong interest in stereotypical feminine activities and behavior, and many of them look feminine and behave in a womanly manner.

Hirschfeld believed that stereotypical male and female traits would be mixed in all men and women, giving the world very diverse expressions of sex and gender.

There are more than enough cases in Hirschfeldt's book to prove Ray Blanchard wrong. Gynephilic male fo female crossdreamers (or "Transvestiten") were not -- on average -- less "feminine" than the androphilic ones.

Context

Then why do so many researchers later on argue that there is such a difference? The answer is probably the following:

The observations made by later researchers are of male bodied person seeking sex reassignment surgery. This causes a selection bias. Since gynephilic transwomen are attracted to women, they are more likely to try to stay in the role of men, in the belief that women like manly men.

Unlike John O. most of them do not even know that the female to male crossdreamers ("man-women") exist, and have no way of finding them. To attract regular non-transgender women they therefore play the role of the man for a long time, until they -- finally -- realizes that their condition will not improve, and seek out professionals to get help.

The androphilic transwoman, on the other hand, loves men. By transitioning at an earlier age, she increases her chances of finding a straight man to love and marry.

The earlier you transition, the less ravages the testosterone can do to your body. Younger transwomen therefore look more feminine than the older ones. Heck, this even applies to non-transgender XX women. Many women look more "masculine" when they get older.

Hirschfeld with friends in Berlin 1920s
(From Counterlight's)

Since the androphilic transwomen have lived longer as women, they have also been able to assimilate feminine mannerisms and behaviors. Their gynephilic sisters have done the exact opposite: They have done their best to suppress such behavior in order to appear as manly men.

One hundred years ago, you could not transition in the physical sense, which is why Hirschfeld does not distinguish between transvestites and transsexuals. To him they are the same, simply because they are the same by nature.

John O. is truly feminine. He wants go be a mother. He wants to be a nanny. He learns embroidery. And he desperately wants the body of a girl:

"Sometimes, when i saw a young woman bathing, I wished I had the shape of her body, and gladly would have given her mne. Since I was still religious, I prayed, 'Dear God, please make me into a girl."

But he is not "homosexual", which is a requirement if you are to be considered "feminine" according to the autogynephilia theory. He does write about "woman-men" being asexual, but it is clear from the context that this is based on his understanding of stereotypical male sexuality. He wants to have sex with a "man-woman" as a woman. He therefore also violates the absolutely stupid idea that you have to lack any kind of sex drive to be considered a proper transsexual woman.

An age of sexual liberation

There is one more thing that strikes me when I read Hirschfeld's book. He is in many ways much more modern and liberal than many contemporary psychologists and psychiatrist.

And indeed, historically the period between the late 1880's and the Nazi take-over in Germany was a period of radical liberation in Germany.

Even if Hirschfeld's pupil, Harry Benjamin, managed to bring some of this openness over to the US, most American psychiatrists succumbed to a kind of sexist brutalism that is still reflected in the DSM-5. History is definitely not a steady process of progress.

Nazis raid Hirschfeld's institute 1933. (From Homocaust)

By the way, Hirschfeld's institute for sexology in Berlin was attacked in 1933 and the Nazi thugs burned all its books and archives.

I wonder if not the backlash against the increasing tolerance up to the mid 1930's may partly explain why Die Transvestiten (crossdressers, crossdreamers and transsexuals) became less visible later on, both in Europe and North America, and why the crossdressers increasingly found refuge in secret crossdressing and private societies where the androphiles and the transsexuals were not allowed to enter. It became harder to admit, as John O. did, that they were truly women.

In Hirschfeld's time many male to female transgender people actually lived and worked as the opposite sex, in spite of the lack of hormones and surgery!

Guydykes and girlfags anno 1905

When I published the post on the relationship between male to female and female to male crossdreamers , I actually believed that this was a rather radical discussion of the possibility of "girlfags"/"man-women" hooking up with "guydykes"/"women-men". It wasn't. If we are to believe O. and Hirschfeld such relationships were possible in the late 19th and early 20th century!

In a letter to Hirshcfield he writes:

"At 16 1/2 a man tried to rape me. I protected myself, but he gave me a bad name as being a hermaphrodite, so I had to move away and went to France, where I started as an embroiderer in Luneville. I had a friendship with a girl, who, like me, was in opposition to her sex, namely, manly, and when she went to St. Quentin to the embroidery factory there, I followed her. Not long after, and embroiderer coaxed me to come to Paris where I could earn more. There I had the opportunity for the first time to come together with women who with other women lived like married people, which i France is a rather widespread custom."

John O. then lives as a lesbian embroiderer among lesbians, until one day one of his coworkers feels him up at night and finds out he "was not made right".

John O. writes that "This young woman was the first with whom I entered into a sexual relationship, in which I was the succubus."

Being the succubus means being the bottom, or taking the woman's receptive place during intercourse.

So there you have it.

John O. is a transvestite, in the sense that dressing up as a woman gives him mental peace. He is a crossdreamer, in the sense that he wants to be the receptive partner during intercourse. And he is clearly what we today will call a transsexual, that is a male bodied person who longs to be a woman on all levels: Sexual, psychological, cultural and esthetic.

See also: Transvestites: The Erotic Drive To Cross Dress (Kindle Edition)

On evolution, autogynephilia and Anne Lawrence 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:37:00 +0000

I my previous post I presented Anne Lawrence's argument for why male to female "autogynephiliacs" -- or crossdreamers, as I call us -- must be classified as mentally ill.

Or, to be more precise, she asked if the desire for sex reassignment in some men is to be understood as a mental disorder in terms of a particular classiﬁcation system of psychiatric conditions.

Her answer is yes; mine is no.

Lawrence's comment, "Do Some Men Who Desire Sex Reassignment Have a Mental Disorder?", was originally a response to a paper by Dr. Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg of Columbia University.

Dr. Meyer-Bahlburg was kind enough to give me a copy of his own response to Anne Lawrence's text, and I am going to give you a summary of his main arguments here.

A summary of Lawrence

Meyer-Bahlburg gives the following summary of Lawrence's paper (the text in brackets [...] are my comments):

"1. In line with the original sex assignment on the basis of genital appearance at birth, the young child forms a core gender identity (as ‘‘biologically male’’)."

[Actually: Basically both Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence say that a man is a man if he has a penis. Period.]

"2. Later development includes the activation of erotic heterosexual interest, which involves a mental mechanism responsible for locating erotic targets (females) in the environment external to the self (Freund & Blanchard, 1993). This mechanism is 'natural,' i.e., was developed by way of evolutionary selection. However, in the particular men under discussion, this mechanism fails its natural function; these men become autogynephilic instead of gynephilic, or both, and, thereby, experience a powerful erotic interest in turning their own bodies into facsimiles of their preferred erotic targets (females), thus generating the desire for sex reassignment. This desire to transform the body is an epiphenomenon to the primary mental dysfunction, namely the malfunctioning erotic-target location mechanism."

[In other words: Autogynephilia is the result of a masculine sexuality, not a feminine sex identity.]

"3. Experiencing the discrepancy between their actual (maletypical) body and their desired (female-typical) body causes signiﬁcant distress for these men."

"4. The combination of a primary mental dysfunction with signiﬁcant distress ﬁts the deﬁnition of mental disorder provided by Wakeﬁeld and First (2003)."

[In the sense that autogynephilia is evolutionary disadvantageous; it reduces the possibility of getting offspring and transferring one's genes to the next generation.]

"5. The cross-gender identity that gradually emerges in the course of this development is merely one’s current sense of oneself as being psychologically male, female, or of indeterminate sex, and does not really replace the core gender identity ('biologically male')."

No male identity

First Meyer-Bahlburg turns Lawrence's argument on its head. While Lawrence doubts that the autogynephilic child has a female gender identity, Meyer-Bahlburg questions the idea that it has a biological based male identity.

"In young children, the initial development of gender identity does not depend on their perception of their primary sex characteristics, but on the gender labeling by their social environment, along with the imposed gender symbols, such as gendered clothing and hair styles, and the children’s psychological gender ﬁt (in terms of activities and interests) with their local social environment, particularly the peer group if available. There are a number of studies that show the lack of salience of the genitals among the criteria by which gender-typical children categorize their peers by gender (McConaghy, 1979; Volbert, 2000)"

I am not sure that Blanchard and Lawrence would argue that it is the male bodied child's understanding of its penis that makes it male. It could be that Meyer-Bahlburg is misreading Lawrence's text here. Lawrence writes that:

"Nonhomosexual [i.e. gynephilic] MtF transsexuals do not have a female or cross-gender core gender identity: In childhood, during pre-transition adulthood, and after sex reassignment, they know that they are, always have been, and always will be biologically male."

I suspect that Meyer-Bahlburg interprets this sentence to mean that the bodily awareness of the gynephilic M2F transwoman means that she has a male gender identity. The fact is that the sentence is virtually meaningless, as the only thing it says is that the "autogynephiles" know that they have a male body. In time all male to female transsexuals understand that they have a male body. This also applies to the androphilic ones.

The fact is that the only meaningful parallell to gender identity found in the "autogynephilia" theory is sexual orientation. Homosexual men are feminine, and androphilic transwomen are therefore also feminine. The reason androphilic transwomen are not mentally ill, according to this theory, is that they have the "proper" sexual orientation towards masculine men (proper for gay men, that is). Heterosexual men are not feminine, and because of this the "autogynephile's" sense of a female self must be false.

(Yeah, I know. It is absolutely amazing that scientists can get away with this!)

Meyer-Bahlburg' argument is still valid though. He believes gender identity is primarily a social construct. Indeed, he argues that the reason children start to focus on genitalia is in response to the protests of the parents. The argument "You cannot be a girl, because you have a penis!" leads to the wish of seeing the penis gone. In other word: The experience of being a girl instead of a boy (or vice versa) comes first. The interest in the genitals is an effect of the parents' protests.

Meyer-Bahlburg also refers to interesexed persons with XY chromosomes (46,XY children with certain disorders of sex development) who have been raised as girls and who have been given feminized genitalia through surgery, nevertheless insist that they are boys. For these reasons, Meyer-Bahlburg argues, it does not make much sense to speak of a core gender identity as ‘‘biologically male’’ that begins in early childhood.

In other words: The early gender identity is not based on the shape of the body, but on a psychological sense of self.

Bye, bye binary

He also argues against the idea that children will identify either as male or female. Few gender researchers believe so, he argues:

"Yes, most people identify either as male or as female, but within such an overarching categorical identity people can perceive themselves as being more or less masculine or feminine. The latter is not an alternative form of an identity, just a qualiﬁcation of one’s overall self-categorization in terms of the given binary gender system."

He then presents a model that is similar to the "slider" model presented in this blog, conceptualizing "gender identity as a multidimensional construct" encompassing "a variety of evaluative components that interact in a complex developmental process."

In other words: He is rejecting Lawrence's reductionistic/simplistic approach to gender development.

Putative theory

Like me he finds the erotic target location error theory unfounded ("putative"). He especially makes a point out of the fact that such a target location error cannot be found in non-human mammals.

I am not sure that is a very strong argument, as I do not think anyone has looked for erotic target location errors among animals.

Given that autogynephilia represent a mental preference, I am not sure it would be possible to prove or disprove its existence among -- let's say -- bonobos. Lack of interest in copulation could be caused by other factors than autogynephilia, and since the male to female bonobo cannot tell us about his wish to become a female bonobo, we have no way of knowing.

Although it is possible to explain how human autogynephiliacs can get offspring (social pressure), it is hard to explain how bonobo autogynephilia could survive as an inherited trait.

That is not the point Mayer-Bahlburg makes, however. He questions the very premise of calling such a trait dysfunctional among humans. We are no longer living in the wild:

"Are arguments based on traditional evolutionary theory, i.e., on procreation success, really appropriate for such aspects of the human condition, given the complex, urbanized, industrial and postindustrial societies of the twentieth and twenty-ﬁrst centuries, from which the classical evolutionary selection pressures have largely been removed, while the opportunities for individual psychological specializations have enormously expanded?"

He also argues that we would have to apply the evolution-based argument, if it was still valid, to paraphilias, celibacy, contraception habits, homosexuality, and more, and label all of those ‘‘dysfunctions’’. That would not be plausible.

Brain research

Meyer-Bahlburg refers to recent brain research, arguing that such ﬁndings suggest at least a vulnerability, perhaps even an underlying endophenotype (genetic marker), for the development of a gender identity in conﬂict with the assigned gender:

"Either would indeed be based on biology, namely variations in the factors that ordinarily bring about the sexual differentiation of the brain, but this concept appears to be at odds with Lawrence’s concept of a (biological, body-appearance based) core gender identity."

As I noted before, it is more at odds with Lawrence's idea that sexual orientation equals femininity/masculinity, which can be thought of as a proxy for gender identity. But the end result is the same.

On distress

Meyer-Bahlburg's most important argument, however, is the one on distress. He does not accept that distress is an obligatory part of being a gynephilic M2F transsexual.

"I see distress as an ascertainable emotional condition, and that condition varies tremendously across individuals with GIV."

This is line with the research I referred to in my post on the Study on differences in mental health between homosexual and heterosexual transsexuals, which showed that not only are gynephilic transwomen in general mentally healthy; they are in fact as healthy as the androphilc ones.

This means that the only way Blanchard and Lawrence can put the "mentally ill" label on the male to female crossdreamers is to make use of her evolutionary argument, instead of an argument based on the emotional well being and social abilities of an individual.

Reference

Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg: "Do Some Men Who Desire Sex Reassignment Have A Mental Disorder? Response to Lawrence (2011)", Arch Sex Behav (2011) 40:655–65

On evolution, autogynephilia and Anne Lawrence 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:18:00 +0000

Dr. Anne Lawrence tells us that "autogynephiliacs" must be considered mentally for evolutionary reasons. I argue that this make no sense.

Some how you have wondered why I keep writing on "gay" and "transgender" animals, arguing that these pheonomena are of little relevance to a discussion of crossdreaming or "autogynephilia" (sexual arousal from the idea of having the body of the opposite physical sex).

I have argued that the presentation of "autogynephilia" (AGP) as a mental illness in the autogynephilia theory of Ray Blanchard, J. Michaels Bailey and Anne Lawrence is at least partially based on evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology.

This means that the categorization of crossdreaming as a paraphilia (perversion) is ultimately based on the idea that it represents a trait that hinders procreation.

The sanctity of sexual selection

According to this type of thinking sexual selection provides organisms with adaptations related to mating. For male mammals, this theory holds, sexual selection leads to adaptations that help them compete for females. A behavioral adaptation that does not lead to them breeding with females is therefore harmful, and an illness.

They argue that "heterosexual transsexual men" (which is an impolite reference to people I would call lesbian or gynephilic -- woman loving -- transsexual women), are mentally ill. The underlying argument is that "autogynephilia" represent a maladaptation. The natural heterosexual longing for a woman out there has been internalized as a "erotic target location error".

I believe this explanation for crossdreaming is the end result of reductionistic evolutionary thinking. Their basic model cannot encompass the idea of gynephilic male bodied person wanting to be women, for the simple reason that in this theory sexual orientation equals sex identity. It cannot be otherwise in a theory that argues that sexual selection, and sexual selection only, explains the survival of the genes of the individual and -- ultimately -- of a species.

Nature disagrees

I have presented alternative research on the sexuality and gendered behavior of animals to show you that this basic understanding is wrong. A lot of the sexual behavior found among animals (and humans) does not have procreation as a goal. It is, for instance, used as a tool for socialization or for comfort.

None of these alternative theories dismisses the concept of evolution -- far from it -- but they argue that the survival of a genetic line relies on much more than mere sexual selection.

This research also shows that the social and sexual dynamics of animals does not necessarily adhere to the simplistic strong, aggressive, male conquers coy and passive female paradigm. And if the basis for the paradigm is wrong, the conclusions based on this basis are also most likely to be wrong.

Anne Lawrence presents the evolutionary argument

The reason some of you have questioned my interpretation of the basis of the "autogynephilia" theory is that Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence rarely make such evolutionary arguments. The most important exception has been Blanchard's sibling theory on homosexuality, and that one is not about "autogynephilia" at all, but adaptive advantages to homosexuality.

Well, Anne Lawrence has let the cat out of the bag. She has written a paper, "Do Some Men Who Desire Sex Reassignment Have a Mental Disorder? Comment on Meyer-Bahlburg (2010)," where the argument is solely based on an evolutionary argument. "Autogynephiliacs" are mentally ill, because their condition does not lead to procreation:

"In autogynephilic MtF transsexuals, it is reasonable to infer that the mental mechanism responsible for accurately 'locating erotic targets in the environment' (Freund & Blanchard, 1993, p. 558) has failed to perform its natural function: Specifically, there has been a partial or complete failure of the evolutionarily selected mechanism that keeps heterosexual erotic interest (i.e., gynephilia) directed toward erotic targets external to the self. Autogynephilic MtF transsexuals experience a powerful erotic interest in turning their own bodies into facsimiles of their preferred erotic targets (females), an interest that competes with and sometimes completely overshadows erotic interest directed toward external female partners (Blanchard, 1992). It is easy to understand why evolutionary selection might favor the development of a mental mechanism that would keep gynephilic men's erotic interest focused on external female partners. When a gynephilic man's erotic interest is instead directed primarily toward his own feminized body, one can reasonably infer that this putative mental mechanism has wholly or partly failed. If the foregoing analysis is correct, then the desire for sex reassignment in autogynephilic MtF transsexuals -- that is, in many or most nonhomosexual MtF transsexuals -- represents a genuine mental dysfunction."

A way to define crossdreamers as perverts -- regardless

Anne Lawrence truly believes she has found the golden egg with this one, as she no longer has to define ambiguous terms like "gender identity". By basing the classification of crossdreamers as perverts on firm evolutionary ground, there is no need for other arguments. Case closed:

"Do some men who desire hormonal and surgical sex reassignment have a mental disorder? By framing the issue this way, one can avoid having to formulate a comprehensive definition of gender identity or address competing theories of normal gender identity development."

The trangender person's experience of having the body of the wrong sex is therefore of no interest, as it is the person's ability to procreate that is important, not his or her sense of self.

No core identity

In fact, Lawrence has the audacity of dismissing this sense of self altogether:

"Nonhomosexual [i.e. gynephilic] MtF transsexuals do not have a female or cross-gender core gender identity: In childhood, during pre-transition adulthood, and after sex reassignment, they know that they are, always have been, and always will be biologically male."

If she, with this, means that gynephilic male to femalecrossdreamers know that they have a male body during childhood, the sentence becomes either self evident or meaningless. It is not as if androphilic male to female transsexuals do not know that they have grown up in a male body!

If she by this means that they have a male sex identity, she will have to make the same argument as regards the androphilic transsexuals. They are also most likely to see the penis they have between their legs.

Lawrence tries, admittedly, to make a point out of the allegedly late onset of gender dysphoria among gynephilic male to female transsexuals:

"The development of a cross-gender identity in these men, however, typically occurs decades after the onset of erotic cross-dressing and is usually preceded by experiences of complete cross-dressing, public self-presentation while cross-dressed, and adopting a feminine name."

This is often used as an argument for gynephilic transwomen being different from the androphilic ones.

However, Lawrence herself has documented that many male to female transsexuals often experience gender dysphoria at a very early age, and who knows what the rest of them has managed to repress. There is in fact no difference between androphilic and gynephilic transsexuals as regards onset, which means that the androphilic and gynephilic transwomen must be equally "paraphilic".

Elsewhere she writes:

"It is useful to focus on the desire for sex reassignment, as opposed to variant or disordered gender identity; by doing so, one can address the actual presenting concerns of patients, rather than abstract concepts....Although the desire for sex reassignment historically has been conceptualized as reflecting a disorder of gender identity, disordered gender identity in nonhomosexual [i.e. gynephiloic] MtF transsexuals is an epiphenomenon, not the underlying mental disorder itself. It would be helpful for the text discussion in the DSM-5 to emphasize this point."

Note how she dismisses the experience of a misalignment between body and mind as an abstract concept, even if many "autogynephiliacs" experience this as a very concrete trauma indeed.

No proof

Although crossdreaming is an observable fact, the theory of "autogynephilia" has in no way been proven, even Ray Blanchard admits as much.

In spite of this both Blanchard and Lawrence behave as if it has, to the point of insisting of having "autogynephilia" included in the American psychiatric manual (DSM-5).

In other words: They feel no qualms about stigmatizing a whole group of people as mentally ill without any proof whatsoever.

In fact, all the observations made by Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence may be explained as an effect of some kind of inborn alternative sex identity or as an effect of a complex variation of personality traits and sexual inclinations.

It is not that Lawrence denies that autogynephilia may be inborn, though:

"The sexed body dysphoria of autogynephilic MtF transsexuals is clearly 'in the individual'; although it may coexist with distress caused by prejudice, discrimination, or unwanted gender role expectations, it is not reducible to any of these and is not merely a result of social deviance, disapproval by others, or conflict with society."

That may perfectly well be the case. In fact, I am inclined to believe so, but there is absolutely no legitimate reason to prefer an explanation along the lines of the "erotic target location error" theory to an explanation based on an inborn sex identity or an explanation that says that it is the end effect of a complex interplay between a wide variety of biological, psychological and cultural factors.

I have tried really hard to read her text with an open mind, and see if there is a good argument for preferring the target error theory to the others, and the turns out there is no such argument. The text presupposes that the target error theory is the only correct one, as do all the offered proofs for this being so.

Wakefield and First

Lawrence takes the evolutionary definition of mental illness from Wakefield and First (2003):

"According to Wakefield and First, a mental disorder is "a 'harmful mental dysfunction,' with harm being determined by social values and the word dysfunction referring to the failure of a mental mechanism to perform its natural (i.e., evolutionarily selected) function" (p. 28). Wakefield and First recognized that an evolutionary analysis created potential epistemological challenges but argued that often 'one can judge with some plausibility the functions and dysfunctions of a [mental] mechanism (or at least that a function or dysfunction likely exists), with no need for detailed direct knowledge of the evolution of the mechanism.' (p. 39). They added that, in many cases, 'one can make such inferences without knowing anything about the actual mechanisms. . . . "

Please note that Lawrence is covering her back here. Even if the target location error turns out to be wrong, this still amounts to an evolutionary maladaptation and therefore a mental illness.

As Lawrence points out, Wakefield and First also emphasize that the dysfunction must be "in the individual" and "cannot be due only to social deviance, disapproval by others, or conflict with society or others".

This means that if it is possible for a crossdreamer to establish a good love relationship with another human being, the basic theory of a target location error must be wrong. The introversion and psychological suffering will be caused by the social stigma attached to being a "pervert", a condition that can be easily cured by acceptance. Since Lawrrence has already made up her mind about this, that option is not seriously considered, which leaves us with "autogynephilia" as an evolutionary maladaptation and a mental illness.

The mistakes

So what is wrong with Lawrence's evolutionary approach?

1. Using evolutionary arguments for the definition of mental illnesses is extremely controversial, as is evolutionary psychology in itself.

There is no consensus among experts on making sexual fitness the basis for defining a condition as a mental illness in the DSM-5. Actually, the proposed definition of a mental disorder in the DSM-5 contains no reference to evolution.

2. Mental illness and "paraphilias" are not only objective diagnoses made by disinterested scientists.

As history has shown again and again, they are also social constructs based on the cultural prejudices of the day. This is why, for instance, hysteria, nymphomania and homosexuality are no longer are considered mental diseases.

The gender and sex stereoypes presented by Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence tell me, that we are facing yet another attempt at forcing natural diversity into another straight jacket of an allegedly biologically based normalcy.

Blanchard has defined a paraphilia as "any powerful and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in copulatory or precopulatory behavior with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners" (Cantor, Blanchard, & Barbaree, 2009). That is a cultural definition, and a very restrictive one at that.

I do not think it wise to give people like these the power to define what's normal in a public manual of mental health, no more than it was a good idea to let psychiatrist label homosexuals as perverts.

3. Lawrence shows little interest in the main objective of any psychiatric manual, which should be to increase the life quality of people.

People who are mentally balanced and well adapted are normally not considered mentally ill, even if they should engage in sexual behavior beyond the missionary position.

The reason some crossdreamers are depressed or confused could simply be caused by shame and embarrassment, and if that is the case, Doctor Lawrence becomes part of the problem and not the solution.

Lawrence denies this, of course:

The sexed body dysphoria of autogynephilic MtF transsexuals is clearly "in the individual"; although it may coexist with distress caused by prejudice, discrimination, or unwanted gender role expectations, it is not reducible to any of these and is not merely a result of social deviance, disapproval by others, or conflict with society.

But in her academic work Lawrence is not really interested in the development of an harmonic mind or healing. She is -- like her mentor Ray Blanchard -- mostly interested in putting human behavior into neat little boxes with Latin names. If a person does not fit into the blue box called "normalcy", off he goes into one of the small yellow ones labelled "paraphilia". And when he is put in one of those boxes, any mental anguish he might feel is caused by him being such a pervert, not the fact that Lawrence has put him there.

4. Even if it turns out that crossdreaming leads to less offspring, human psychological health is not based on the tooth and claw laws of evolution.

Psychological well being is, in fact, very much based on the fact that we do not let nature run its course.

Rape may, for instance, lead to the dissemination of the rapist's genes. That does not make him mentally sound. Cheating is definitely a good way of spreading one's seed, but that does not necessarily make cheating healthy.

In short: there is much more to life and human culture than the unions of sperm and egg cells. The fact that new research shows that this is the case among many animals, as well, tells us that sexual selection cannot be used as a basis for definitions of health.

Among our closest relative, the bonobo, all types of sex are permitted: male on male, female on female, adults on juveniles, and only a small fraction of all this hoopla leads to kids. They use sex to build social bonds and to defuse aggression, which -- of course -- help their survival in the long run. That doesn't mean that they are "paraphiliacs".

5. Using reproductive fitness as a basis for defining mental illnesses leads to a lot of absurdities.

Grown men and women who decide not to have children must be defined as mentally ill.

The fact that the DSM-5 forces perfectly healthy asexual people into the mental illness category shows us how bad such a philosophy is.

Within more tolerant societies homosexual men and women are less likely to have offspring than heterosexual ones. They must therefore also be included as paraphiliacs in the DSM-5, if we are to follow the logic of Lawrence.

Please note that homosexual men and women were removed from the manual in 1973. The reason for Lawrence not drawing the logical conclusion from her own argument, and demanding their re-inclusion, may therefore be a political one.

Still, I suspect that she actually believes that homosexual men are naturally feminine and lesbians masculine, and that this makes their behavior more "natural". This type of argument is another example of unfounded stereotypes (as the lesbian femme and the masculine gay man amply demonstrates), but it makes no difference when it comes to evolution. If offspring is the sign of mental health, the homosexuals must be mentally ill. The fact that they are not, is alone enough proof to sink the whole idea of using evolutionary fitness as a basis for defining mental health.

The fact that both Blanchard and Bailey try so hard to find an evolutionary advantage to homosexuality, seems at least partly to be an attempt to get homosexuality out of the paraphilia category. That is: They see the problem. It is amazing that Lawrence does not.

6. Evolutionary theory is not based on adherence to a particular ideal heterosexual relationship. It is based on the principle of having your genes transferred to the next generation.

There is nothing in the research that shows that male to female or female to male crossdreamers are less likely to have kids than other people. They do definitely get more children than homosexual men.

Crossdreamers try hard to live up to the stereotypes of their birth sex, and since they most often fall in love with the opposite biological sex they often get married and have kids. Besides: a more tolerant society would open up the possibility of male to female crossdreamers joining their female to male counterparts, leaving ample room for pleasurable sex as well as babies.

See also Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

APPENDIX: Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg on Gender Identity Disorder as a mental illness

Below I have included some extracts from the paper that triggered Lawrence's response. It is interesting to compare Lawrence's bombastic and reductionist approach to Myer-Bahlburg's more nuanced arguments.

"In the developments leading up to the removal of homosexuality from the DSM, the demonstration that there were homosexuals who led productive and satisfied lives without demonstrable psychopathology constituted an important argument against the notion of homosexuality as a pervasive mental disorder. Although significant associated psychopathology has been seen in both DSD [disorders of sex development] (...) and non-DSD gender-dysphoric persons (...), this is by no means universal. It is often not seen in young children with GID (...), and not in all adolescents and adults with GID before they undergo hormonal and surgical measures associated with gender reassignment (...), and the rates of psychiatric problems after assignment to the desired gender diminish (...).

Moreover, much of psychiatric distress and suicidality seen in transgender persons can be statistically accounted for by the effects of stigmatization itself (...) and is therefore not necessarily inherent in persons with GID. On the other hand, other psychiatric diagnoses, such as PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder], are validly made as attributes of individuals, although their origin has been an external event or chronic stressful situation. One has to realize, of course, that even if GID is associated with increased risk of other psychopathology, its definition as a mental disorder should stand on its own feet and not rely on ‘'co-morbidity’ (...)."

"GVs [gender variants] fall onto a spectrum or continuum ranging from mild presentations such as gender-atypical behavior (e.g., '‘tomboyish' behavior of girls) without effect on core gender identity through presentations of clinical relevance such as, in males, the repudiation of certain anatomic and physiological features of manhood without the desire for changing into a female (...), to the desire for full gender transition including the acquisition of the somatic characteristics of the other gender. Characteristic of the entire spectrum is behavioral or psychological gender atypicality relative to the statistical norm, which can be readily quantified as a behavioral dimension. The more extreme cases are GIVs, [gender identity variants] that is, they show incongruence between their assigned gender with its associated societal role expectations on the one hand and their subjective experience of gender identity and the associated desire for gender expression on the other.

In the absence of an empirically grounded detailed theory of the mechanisms and processes of gender identity development, the available empirical evidence does not permit a categorical, universally valid statement that GIVs are or are not mental disorders.

With GIV-accepting parents, both young children of preschool age and early adolescents do not necessarily show significant distress or impairment, especially if they are shielded from stigmatization by others in their social environment. The same is true of many post-SRS trans men and trans women. Even expressions of distress in adult pre-SRS [sex reassignment surgery] individuals with GIV who are approaching or are in the process of somatic and legal gender change are highly variable and do not necessarily reach a clinically relevant degree of emotional distress. Therefore, a universal term involving a reference to emotional stress such as ‘'Gender Dysphoria’' also does not seem appropriate. Instead, a term such as ‘'Gender Incongruence’' as defined above appears to be more widely applicable to the various presentations of GIVs.

In addition, DSM-V needs to address, and possibly categorically distinguish between, GIV persons '‘in remission’' (in the sense of vanished cross-gender desire [...]), '‘post-transition’' with good adjustment, and '‘post-transition’' with regret (...).

Moreover, as clinical evidence indicates that there are individuals with great uncertainties about their gender, individuals who waver back and forth between their desired and their natal gender, individuals for whom the pursuit of gender change appears to be a way out of other (non-gender based) problems, and individuals where GIV is just secondary to a psychotic process, specific subthreshold or ‘NOS’ terms should be defined.

It is clear that the decision on the DSM- or ICD-categorization of GIVs cannot be achieved on a purely scientific basis. Instead, scientific issues need to be considered in combination with the service needs of persons with GIVs and the psychosocial implications of DSM formulations for such persons, when one works towards a consensus among stakeholders regarding a pragmatic compromise."

Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, "From Mental Disorder to Iatrogenic Hypogonadism: Dilemmas in Conceptualizing Gender Identity Variants as Psychiatric Conditions" Arch Sex Behav (2010) 39:461–476

Crossdreamer Diva: Annie Lennox

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:35:00 +0000

All right, I do not know if Annie Lennox is truly a crossdreamer. I cannot look into her mind and read her fantasies.

What I do know is that she has spent a lot of time exploring the role of gender, and as a female to male hetero/bi crossdresser she certainly fits the profile.

The Eurythmics was big in the 1980's, which saw the birth of a large number of crossgender artists, including Boy George, Dead or Alive and -- let's admit it -- Freddie Mercury.

But must of these were gay. Lennox is more like a female counterpart to David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, which brings her closer to most crossdreamers.

eurythmics - sweet dreams from alexei glowakz on Vimeo.
Slow? Click here for alternative.

An online friend got a message from another online Indian friend, who asked whether her song "No More I Love You's" says something about the transgender condition.

It definitely demonstrates Lennox' sympathy for male to female crossdressers and drag artists.

The Sweet Dreams video is a clear example of art that breaks down the traditional divide between masculine and feminine symbols and expressions. There can be no doubt that the Lennox of this video is a beautiful and sexy woman. The fact that she dresses up as a man and uses manly mannerisms does not change this.

If you compare the video above with the one below, it is easy to see how unbalanced our cultures are when it comes to gender. The male to female crossdressers in this later video also combine male beauty with cross-sexual attire and mannerism. It is a fair guess that most people will find them absurd and far from sexy.

This reflects a culture that deep down looks upon the masculine as something positive and the feminine as something weak and unasked for.

The ballet scene is placed in a secret dungeon or club in the late 19th century, a period of amazing sexual and cultural exploration, and with increasing understanding for the diversity of human sexuality and gender expressions. It was not to last. The German Nazis and the American psychiatric establishment soon found ways of pushing the "deviants" back into their closets.

Bastards!

The Moon

The video is also interesting for another reason. It seems to me to depict two different types of crossdressing.

The ballet dancers gives a drag performance, and as drag queens often do they parody the female stereotypes. In other words: They are not really trying to appear as real women, but as someone who is more feminine than any woman who has ever lived.

Drag queens are most often androphilic, and will just as often identify as feminine gay men as women.

The male audience, being dressed up by seducing women, are more like gynephilic crossdreamers. Some part of them is dreaming of being a woman, which is why they are unable to resist the enforced crossdressing. On the other hand, these guys have no training in appearing feminine, which is why they look as men in drag, even when they are not.

This video does not tell us who are the true women, the drag artists or the crossdressers, or Annie Lennox for that matter.

In fact, the strange, uncanny, laughter seems to tell us that this play of gender expressions is nothing but an artificial game, and that the whole dichotomy of feminine and masculine is misleading.

Indeed, Annie Lennox herself plays Luna, the Moon, who throughout her feminine 28 day cycle reflects both the stereotypical masculine (rational enlightenment and the full moon) and the stereotypical feminine (the darkness of emotions and the unconscious feminine), as well as every position in between.

Note also how Lennox is replaced by a man at the very end.

Annie Lennox - No More I Love You's from Andrea Beat on Vimeo.

The second version of the song, a performance from the Letterman Show, reveals how even a liberal like Letterman is unable to take this gender challenge seriously. Lennox shows her displeasure.

Lennox is certainly a pro-gay, anti-fundamentalist and liberal, and she tries to make room for a more generous view of what it means to be a man or a woman. As she says: The words cannot capture what this is about:

I used to have demons in my room at night
Desire, despair, desire
So many monsters

No more i love you's
The language is leaving me
No more i love you's
The language is leaving me in silence
No more i love you's
Changes are shifting outside the words

Literature on sex and gender differences

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:29:00 +0000

My blog post on the statistical differences between men and women has caused a lively debate.

One reader even implies that this is yet another male rapist plot to suppress women.

Below you will find some of the studies I have made use of when preparing the blog post. They are all reflections on the cultural bias of modern biological sex and gender research.

Note that all the books are written by women. It says a lot about the toxicity of the current sex and gender debate that an argument based on feminist thinking can be interpreted as a male attack against women.

Studies of science

Anne Fausto-Sterling: Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality

Anne Fausto-Sterling: Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men

Cordelia Fine: Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

Lise Eliot: Pink Brain, Blue Brain - How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps

Transgender lives

I would also draw your attention to a recent study of the lives of transgender people, that documents a significant shift from gender stereotypes to a deeper respect for gender diversity among transgender men and women:

Brett Genny Beemyn and Susan R. Rankin: The Lives of Transgender People

Post-structuralist feminism

I have also been reading Judith Butler's books on the social construction of gender. They are very interesting, although I think her way of completely ignoring the biological basis for human life is too extreme. Moreover, she is very hard to read.

Still, if you have a university course in post-modern philosophy, you might want to take a look at these two books:

Judith Butler: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Judith Butler: Undoing Gender

A more popular presentation of post-structuralist feminist thinking can be found here:

Susan A. Speer: Gender Talk: Feminism, Discourse and Conversation Analysis

Nature studies

I also recommend Joan Roughgarden's book on gender and sexuality among animals and humans. This is the best study yet on the tendency of male biologists to project their own prejudices as regards sex and gender onto nature.

Joan Roughgarden: Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People

Relevant blog posts

On the statistical difference between men and women

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:10:00 +0000

I have made som bold claims about the difference between men and women on this blog, in essence claiming that there are no significant differences as regards personality traits.

Men can be as introvert, timid, submissive, emotional and hysterical as women, and women can -- if they are allowed to do so -- be aggressive, analytic, assertive, ambitious and plain out cold blooded.

And I have said that the few observable differences we can see, might as well be caused by cultural upbringing as by genetic differences.

I have had quite a few readers arguing that this cannot be possible, as they, personally, have observed that women are more likely to be -- let's say -- compassionate than me, and that men do not ask for directions when lost.

I would guess that in some sub-cultures the punishment for not adhering to cultural stereotypes will be so severe that these observations will be true. In an Amish village women are more likely to live up to the clichés.

Elsewhere, however, I fear our cultural prejudices makes us see differences that are not there. In other words: If we meet women who are demure and caring, we take it as a proof of there being a biological difference. And if we meet women who are not, we consider the exceptions to the general rule.

Pink brain and blue brain

There has, of course, been done a lot of research in this area. There are several problems attached to these studies, though. Most of them do not correct for the cultural upbringing and the human need to belong, and the scientists themselves are often very biased. They are actively looking for a biological basis for gender differences, and they only publish or refer to studies that confirm that there are such differences.

I highly recommend the book Lise Eliot's book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It . This is a more popular critique of modern biological sex research.

What she manages to document is how science papers that seem to prove gender differences, most often find very small differences. These differences might be "significant" from a statistical view point, but certainly not from a social one.

She says:

"When it come to differences between boys and girls, and even most psychological gaps between men and women, the fact is that the gaps are much smaller than commonly blieved and far from understood at the level of the brain or neurochemistry."

When researchers measure the difference between men and women they are looking for a difference value -- d.

She explains:

"You calculate it by substracting the mean score of females on a given test from the mean score of males and then dividing the result by the standard deviation of both groups (which is basically a measure of the overall spread of abilities, or the width of the curve)."

The d values are positive for traits or skills where males outscore femalses and the other way around. By convention, differences are considered small when the d value is around plus or minus 0.2. Medium is 0.5. 0.8 and higher is considered a large value.

Insignificant differences as regards personality traits

It turns out the differences are quite small compared to the range of performance within each sex. Eliot makes a comparison with a truly significant difference: the difference between men and women as regards height (2.6). In the accompanying figure, Eliot adds a couple of curves showing a difference of 0.35:

From Pink Brain Blue Brain. Click on image to enlarge!

"The d value of 0.35 in this graph is close to what's seen measurements of sex differences on standardized science-test scores or (if the male-female curves where swapped) in evaluations of verbal fluency (that is, the speed and accuracy of speech). The curves obviously overlap through most (76 percent) of their range, and the difference between average males and average femailse is small compared to the ability range within each sex."

As Eliot points out, this means that a large number of women are better at men at science, math and asserting their opinions, while loads of men outperform the average woman at speaking, reading and interpreting the feelings of others. This means you can never use this reaserch to make predictions about individuals.

Eliot refers to Jane Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, who points out that out of 124 extensively analyzed gender specific psychological traits, 96 were in the small difference range (d less than 0.35).

"Or as others have succinctly put it," she says, "'Men are from North Dakota, women are from South Dakota'."

And please note that many of these studies are based on questionnaires. As Anne Fausto-Sterling has documented (Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men ) , men and women have a tendency of giving responses in accordance with the stereotypes, mostly out of a need to belong and to appear normal. Even if you arrange seemingly neutral ability tests, the gender context will influence the results. Tell women that you are testing women's excellent mathematical abilities and they will perform well. Tell them that men are expected to perform better in tests of spatial abilities and the women will perform worse than men.

The extremes of extremes

Elliot also points out that sex differences between the man male and female are nowhere near as great as those between the extremes, but it's only the extremes that make headlines.

And it is the focusing on extremes that leads to gender stereotyping. As Eliot points out, beliefs about male-female differences have actually become more exaggerated over the past several decades.

Gender and transgender

Why is this relevant for the transgender debate?

There are several reasons:

1. The stereotypes are used to persecute transgender men and women, both by cisgender and other transgender people.

I grow cold when I hear transwomen disparage other male to female transgender people by arguing that they are violent male chauvinist pigs who cannot understand women, or who dismisses the sex identity of another transwoman because she argues too strongly or "manly".

I find this especially offensive when the women who make these accusation show a kind of aggression that according to the stereotypes is a male trait. It isn't, of course, but the irony is tragic.

2. The stereotypes mess up our attempts at understanding our own sex identity.

I have seen male to female transgender who hold on to their shyness, intoversion, passivity as proofs of their femininity. They may perfectly well be women, but an introvert personality profile is as likely to be male as female.

I have also heard male to female transgender, who -- in spite of severe gender dysphoria -- argue that they cannot possible be women, as they are too interested in -- I don't know -- science fiction, engineering or (God forbid!) sex. I guess they believe all women are asexual barbie dolls, which is -- of course -- sheer nonsense.

if XX women do not have to adhere to the stereotypes to be considered women, transwomen do not either. Sex identity cannot be determined on the basis of a pscyhological personality profile.

3. We miss the fact that a male to female transgender interest in feminine attire, behavior or stereoypical sexuality can be a symptom instead of a cause.

That is: The reason some crossdressers want to dress up in a pink dress, is not that dressing up is pink is genetically programmed into women, but that the crossdresser has an inner woman than is looking for a way to express herself, and she makes use of the cultural symbols at hand.

By dressing up in culturally extreme symbols, the inner femininity is affirmed.

The women of Northern Norway

Let me make this argument a little bit more personal.

I revisited one of the Norwegian communities on the coast of Northern Norway last year, and got a reminder of the women of my own childhood.

Note that I do not come from an academic family or a big metropolitan centre. I grew up with women like these.

The women living in the coast of Norway were used to absent men. The women stayed at home looking after the kids, while the men went out fishing or found a job in the big Norwegian trading fleet.

As regards the formal division of labor they all adhered to the stereotype of the child rearing mother and the providing father. The problem was, however, that since the women were the ones back home, the became independent, strong and proud.

Eating breakfast at the hotel I fond myself mesmerized by all the female characters in the room, most of them from neighboring counties. Many were attractive in their own way, but they were all "manly" in one way or the other -- regardless of age.

Countryside women of their kind, lose their stereotypical "femininity" as soon as they become parents -- if they ever had it. There is absolutely nothing pink about them, down to their clothing and their short and practical hair cuts.

The conversations at all the tables were dominated by women, the men only adding comments if forced to by the womenfolk. And to the extent I was able to hear what they were talking about, the women were also making all the decisions, which is exactly how I remember it from my own childhood.

I am not saying that such women were not oppressed. For a long time they were forbidden to get an education or vote, but as regards their personalities there was and is nothing submissive about them. They do not fit the personality profiles developed by scientists and philosophers bred in a more urban, upper class, environment.

They also lack the kind of feminine mannerisms that is often taken as proof of a true feminine gender identity among some transwomen. You know, the lifted little finger, the limp wrist and so on and so forth. This is a definite proof of such mannerisms being cultural and not biological.

Still, if you asked these Martian women about gender roles and their meek Venusian men, they would probably all insist that all women are from Venus and all men are from Mars.

How is that possible?

Gender mapping

One possible explanation of this is found in the research of Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach).

Susan A. Speer makes the following summary in her interesting book Gender Talk: Feminism, Discourse and Conversation Analysis :

"What Kessler and McKenna found was that once gender had been assigned, almost anything that person did would be seen as consistent with that gender attribution. Irregular details (e.g. a male sounding voice) would be understood with reference to the original attribution and used to substantiate it (e.g. 'It is a husky-voiced female'...) When faced with contradictory evidence, the members would do anything to make sense of it, except, that is, to acknowledge that the person might be ambiguously gendered."

I experience this all the time, as I clearly have a voice that sounds like a woman's. This is no problem as long as the one I am talking to can see my male appearance, but on the phone they have no visual clues to balance the input from my voice.

I once had a Japanese colleague who was on the verge of committing hara kiri when he realized he was talking to me, and not the woman he believed to be my secretary. He had taken me for a woman, which in his mind must be the most offensive insult ever!

Ah, well...

Transsexual friends tell me of a tipping point. After having taken hormones for a while there suddenly comes a day when people stops treating them as men, and starts responding to them as women. It is as if all the subliminal cues have reached some kind of critical mass. As soon as that has happened, a geeky interest in Star Wars and ComicCon is considered a quaint and charming feminine trait, and not a proof of her being a nerdy boy.

All of this means that to the extent there are typical male and female personality traits and behaviors, they are in our minds and not in the real world. It is time for us to free ourselves from these restraints.

Autogynephiliacs Love Estrogen

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:11:00 +0000

I am going to share another story from a another male to female crosssdreamer with you. She (or he?) wants to remain anonymous, so I am going to call her Moon.

The moon has become a transgender symbol for me. It is masculine in the Germanic languages and feminine in the Latin once. Furthermore, its shifting phases/faces seems to indicate a more flexible approach to gender.

Moon has been experimenting with hormones, which have had a significant effect on how other people see her. The question is: Should she go all the way?

In this text "autogynephilia" [AGP] is used as a synonym for male to female crossdreaming (i.e. a man's arousal from imagining himself having a female body), and not necessarily for the autogynephilia theory per se.

Autogynephiliacs Love Estrogen

By Moon

So what happens when a guy who has spent pretty much his whole life fantasising about being a female takes female hormones? And what if that male person feels that they have always been more transsexual inclined, but feels that there is a driving force behind the feelings of wanting to be female which calls itself autogynephilia. How does he know what he is?

Is he a transsexual who would benefit from transition or a transsexual wanabee with some bizarre condition that mimics the symptoms that makes him feel he is a transsexual? Or is he someone who is making a big deal out of his own little perversion?

That person is me in a nutshell. I want to be as frank as I can be about my own experience with hormones and their effect on me. I have decided to publish this anonymously which is why I have asked Jack to publish this on his own blog.

Before anyone asks I have been through the counselling process and have come away not really any the wiser as to what I am. My conclusion is that you have to help yourself find out who and what you are, no one is going to tell you. The last period of counselling allowed me to take hormones 'legally' for the first time. Before this I had tried using hormones on my own for short periods.

So why do I feel the need for hormones? Well, the desire for feminisation is very strong indeed and occupies my thoughts and causes me frustration when I face the reality of life. Crossdressing helps with creating a image of a female but it is rather limiting. There is a great need to make it more 'real'.

The sexual aspect has always evolved around being identified as a woman in my fantasies. The sexual component seems to be a way of making the fantasy real for a short time. After all there is perhaps no better emotional outlet to use if you can only takes things up to a point. The masturbation allows you to suspend the disbelief for a short while. I have always had the sexual component tied in with my gender thoughts ever since I was a small child. I have been masturbating from first memories too. So I'm not like others who say their sexuality reared its head in their teen years.

After a few days of starting hormones I felt a great sense of relief, a positive sense of well being and the feeling that I was at last dealing with my problem. I was put on a low dose (Estraderm TTS 50 patches) which I was happy with, as the dose given was making me feel much better in myself. I felt more like me. My therapist told me I was feeling better as my thought patterns were now able to flow freely and be processed better with the introduction of estrogen into my system. It was a sign that my brain wiring was actually feminine. How true this is, is another matter.

The first year continued like this. I felt all round very happy. I felt in control. My fantasies still continued but without the bad feelings of guilt and shame I had always associated with them. I was able to masturbate when I wanted to and it was much more enjoyable too. Orgasm was a little harder to achieve but everything was better.

I was not actually transitioning in the gender role I was still me. I came to the conclusion that the need for a transition was not a priority and that I had found a way of being happy. Why did I need to turn my life upside down and start dressing full time as a female? The idea was there and I would have liked to, but I felt I had to be realistic with what could be achieved.

From about a year in with hormones I started experiencing odd glances, side ways looks from people when I walked down the street. I began to feel self conscious, very much like what I felt in my teenage years. Why did I receive such looks from strangers? Was I simply imagining it? Was it paranoia? What this reaction made me realise was that I had perhaps started to loose the protective 'testosterone shield' which makes you deal and respond to stress better than females. I was still my everyday male self in my day to day life, although I had grown my hair a lot longer as I felt that the longer hair was more in tune with the person I felt inside.

Up to this point I always believed that to pass as a female I would have to spend an hour or so with make-up and fussing with presentation. I had spent years going to tranny clubs so there was always the association that to be taken as female you have to dress as one and wear makeup. I was still presenting as a male or perhaps as a more relaxed male with longish hair. So I was very surprised that in casual exchanges in shops or markets I was being called madame, or she.

The first time this happened I could not get over how a person could take me as being a woman and I was presenting as a male. I made no attempt with adjusting my voice or anything like that as I was just being me. This type of situation started to occur more frequently and I made the note that it was non English people who were mistaking me for female.

As time wore on I say about a half of communications with strangers resulted with them thinking I was female. Sometimes the word 'she, miss, madame' were not used but it would be something else that would give it away. Men would smile at me if I passed them on the street, or the verbal exchange may result in some sort of phrase such as 'Guys can multi-task too, you know', was one reply I had back from a chap who would only say something like this if he thought I was female.

I was just being myself. There was no change in my attitude or mannerisms, yet every now and then it would be made known to me that I was being taken as a female. These were always short exchanges, such as purchasing something in a shop or walking past someone wanting to do a street survey, or charity box holder. Close friends who had not seen me in a while but knew of what I was doing told me how girly I was starting to look. Yet I did not see this woman emerging from myself, she seemed invisible to myself but easily seen by others. I was still me, or was I?

As I was growing my hair the lady hairdresser I had been going to for some time seemed to automatically give me a female hair style each time I visited. I enjoyed this and worked up to having the full works of hair coloring and highlights on each visit. She would ask me how my 'partner' was, so I guess she thought I had a boyfriend. My sexual attraction had always been for females.

I started to feel as if the train I was on was starting to run a little bit too fast for my liking.Yet I held on and continued as I felt very happy, if a little paranoid.

Orgasm became harder to achieve, but I was able to maintain my pleasure at the cliff edge before falling off, for as long as I wanted to. Sexual experience became much more of a whole body experience, rather than a penis thing. My nipples became a source of masturbation and could have easily replaced what pleasures I had known with my penis, but that still worked and gave me pleasure.

I was experiencing I guess what I had always wanted to experience. I would also hide my penis away and simply masturbate using by nipples and caressing my body. I would pretend in my mind that I had a vagina and was really a woman, it was wonderful. I also experienced genuine feelings of wanting to be rid of my penis. I had not experienced this before and realised this was my brain's reaction to its sense of what my body was and should be now with the wash of estrogen's within me. Men also became a source of attraction and started to replace the AGP sexuality that I had always known. To really feel like a female - yet this forbidden pleasure that I had so wanted was somewhat scary.

The thing I wanted and had fantasied about the most was actually happening to me. People were taking me as a female with no effort on my part (I was still dressing as a guy) and I was enjoying a sexuality that was 100 times better than pre hormones. But obtaining this prize did frighten me. I can't explain why or put into words why this was so.

So what did I do? I pulled the plug an stopped taking the hormones at around the two year mark.

A year later many physical and mental traits have remained. I don't get taken as a female day to day anymore. I do not see the difference between myself then and to the way I am now. But people's reaction and response have changed back. I do still get the odd look or second glance but it is not so often now. Part of me is sad at what I have lost, but I treasure the mental bits that have been left within me such as the exposure to a new form of sexuality beyond AGP which in part still remains.

So what about now? - Well I still want to be female and would like to start up again with the hormones, but the fear of the unknown frightens me. Would I be happy or would I be a regretter. So confusing and I still don't have any answers or know what to do.

On how to save a relationship

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:42:00 +0000

I have another email on love and relationships for you. agppartner ask for advice on how to save her relationship with a male to female crossdreamer.

Please do share your own thoughts on this matter!

This is what she writes:

"Hi Jack,

I write with sincere distress, as I really don't know what to do.

My parter and I started coping with his AGP [autogynephilia or male to female crossdreaming] almost a year ago now. It has repeatedly almost destroyed our relationship and is a very tense subject to say the least. He has repeatedly lied, not only to me, but to himself, about the subject. And our sex life, even at its peak, is far from ideal.

About 6 months ago, we came to the realization that he was addicted to AGP. We both agree that AGP is not an addiction, but, that, as is possible with any strong stimulus, he had become addicted to it.

We worked SO hard for months. We really focused on developing his masculine side and on finding ways to celebrate his masculinity. He lost 20 lbs and started to feel so much better about his body and to really own his sexual attractiveness as a man. Our sex life got better. Our relationship got stronger.

But, now, he has started lying again. Granted, its over rather small things, but it is the pattern that scares me. He set the rules and he agreed to talk with me about any gender-themed thoughts, fantasies or experiences that were a part of his life. Meanwhile, I find out that for the last "few months" shemales have been popping into his head in a sexual manner every other week and he as masturbated twice without telling me, which he had promised to do. He has also been looking at gendered porn, on occasion. Worst of all, the only way I found this out was by "policing" him (which I HATE, HATE, HATE to do, but my intuition was too strong to ignore).

We've come to a new agreement that he doesn't have to tell me anything and that he is free to masturbate (although he claims that he doesn't want to). This makes me feel so vulnerable, like I don't even know what is happening with my own relationship. I feel wildly out of control.

And worst of all, I don't think that we can have a mutually satisfying sexual life if AGP is a major component of his sexuality.

We tried and it failed miserably. We have repeatedly tried dressing, switching roles, watching porn and "dirty talk" about gender. We talked about pegging, although did not actually do it.

There is absolutely no way that I get any sexual gratification out of any of these experiences, as I find it sexually repulsive (I have a strong desire to be dominated and he does not make a passable, let alone hot girl). I have never orgasmed or really even become aroused in any of these experiences.

Not to mention, I know that, even if I could find them gratifying, his sexual pleasure has NOTHING TO DO WITH ME. NOTHING. Its all in his head. Its all about him. I am, at best, a prop. But, in reality, even as a lowly prop, he is probably imagining me as something else (a male) anyways.

Possibly the hardest part for me is the utter rejection I feel. Nothing I can do or say or wear or anything could ever compete with himself and his fantasy world.

I am not a sexual being or object or anything. I am not a sexual component of our relationship.

Even though I love him dearly and he loves me in return, for purely sexual reasons, I feel like I should just give up now. For both of our sakes.

I'd love to know what you and your community think. You have full permission to print this on your blog.

Thank you."

My response:

"Thank you for your open and frank email!

It is heart breaking, and I wish I had a simple solution to you other than the usual "We all have to make compromises" kind of stuff.

Some couples make it work. They find different ways of role playing that satisfies both, not necessarily at the same time, but the joy of pleasing one another can be pleasurable enough.

You have sincerely and courageously tried to go down that road, and found that you get no pleasure out of this, which simply means that in your case it does not seem to work. This is not in any way your fault! You are not to blame here.

In some relationships one partner (and it can be either one of them) plays along focusing on the other aspects of the relationship instead (love, friendship, family, common interests). This is partly my way of coping. I love my female partner very much, and am willing to go a long way to make her feel that love. She, on her side, seems to appreciate my softer side, although I readily admit that there are times when our sex life suffer. It would never work, if the sex had only been a way of satisfying her or mine sexual desires, and not a way of bonding through sharing intimacy.

In your relationship that you would have to be the one to make all the sacrifices, it seems, and -- frankly -- giving up your own pleasure completely will most likely not work. You will be frustrated, hurt, angry and depressed, which is never a good foundation for a loving relationship.

But this is also the case for your partner. I he suppresses his desires and longing, trying to become something he is not, he will also suffer.

I know from my own experience that the "addiction like" behavior displayed by some crossdreamers, is based on a combination of sexual frustration, lack of affirmation and shame. Men are brutally conditioned by parents, friends and society to deny any feminine inclination, as it is considered a weakness and a loss of self. If we M2F crossdreamers have a female side to our psyche (and I am convinced that we do, even if only a minority are truly transsexual), we are basically taught to believe that our true selves are to be despised instead of loved. This leads to the secrecy, the suppression, the shame and the obsessive behavior.

You write that you have focused on developing his masculine side and on finding ways to celebrate his masculinity. I am not 100 percent sure of anything when it comes to gender and sexuality, but it seems to me that this strategy can only work as a means of helping him play the role of the masculine man. It will not work if it is used as a way of suppressing his "inner woman". She will not be denied, and his only way of coping with "her" demands within such a setting is to lie to you. In other words: Make believe can only work as make believe, and not as a strategy for changing a crossdreamer's personality, in the same way you cannot train yourself to become the dominant one in bed.

I have a gay friend who tells me that a relationship between two "tops" or two "bottoms" will never work. I am not so sure about that. I think most men and women have enough of the opposite inclination to be able to play along. But it will never work if their fundamental "wiring" is not respected and never satisfied.

Some relationships will not work. The differences in interests, personality traits, and opinions are just too many. I have no way of knowing if this is the case when it comes to the two of you. It might be, but I would not give up just yet, if I were you.

Let us see if we can get some feedback from the readers."

Related posts:

Crossdreamer Love

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:04:00 +0000

Sahar has sent me a very interesting email about the relationship between a male to female and a female to male crossdreamer that I think is highly significant.

He has joined up with a girlfag.

Note that "a girlfag" is often defined as "a biologically female individual who feels a strong romantic or erotic attraction towards gay or bisexual men, or their social environment."

I suspect that many girlfags are in fact female to male crossdreamers who feel attracted to gay and bisexual feminine men because these men seem to leave room for women with a pro-active, "masculine" and "thrusting", attitude. They may fall for the feminine side of gynephilic M2F crossdreamers as well.

I have already refered to Sahar in the post Girlfags and Gudykes, Unite! He clearly believes Girlfags are very much like male bodied crossdreamers, only in revers.

Talking to girlfags

"Well as you know, I've been talking to girlfags," he tells me. "I actually seem to be one of the few that do this. They really are truly amazing and they always respond if you write to them."

Sahar's personal journey will feel familiar to many a male to female crossdreamer. He unearthed the crossdreamer side of his personality earlier this year, and his whole world fell apart. His academic achievements took a serious blow:

"I had this just awful mindfog, the same one Renee talks about. I couldnt think of anything else but about agp [autogynephilia, ie. male to female crossdreaming]. I then went into a period of that gut wrenching feelings whenever I saw a beautiful girl. That got worse and by [late summer], I was having full blown dysphoria. I couldn't look in mirrors. I felt so terrible all the time. I didnt want to leave my room as i didn't want to see another beautiful girl. I stayed in my room nearly all day, sometimes I'd even shed a tear. I struggled with going out with friends. My mother would cry as i wasn't talking much and wouldn't tell her what was wrong. ... I was sooooo very confused, and just in a very bad place."

Dysphoria and narcissism

This feeling of gender dysphoria -- i.e. a strong feeling of being the wrong sex, often followed by deep depression -- is found among many, but not all, crossdreamers. I definitely know what he is talking about. The mindfog he is talking about is very similar to the condition I have called spellbound.

Among psychiatrists like Ray Blanchard this mindfog is taken as a sign of narcissism. You are an autogynephiliac, a man in love with the idea of himself being a woman. He has internalized his external love object, and the reason he gets depressed is partly that he is unable to love a real woman out there and partly the fact that he cannot really become the woman he loves: himself.

I find this theory extremely convulted. I believe it is a good scientific principle to see if there is a simpler theory that fits the observed facts first, and in this case that means taking the feelings of Sahar seriously. He feels pain because he wants to be a woman. Maybe this is because he, in some way, is a woman. Not in the sense of a person being a helpless, submissive and caring Barbie (or any gender stereotype you might want to consider), mind you, but in the sense that parts of his basic level "wiring" or "programming" is more like the one you would find in a majority of women.

Sahar's experience may be interpreted in both ways.

Help from Jasper

Sahar took control of his own life:

"I then talked to girlfags. At first conversations were pretty straightforward. Just learning about each other. I'd ask so many questions and they would always reply. I found out how their inner masculinity manifested and how they were dealing with it all. It was at this time i started really watching Jasper Gregory's stuff and I also wrote to him. That message seems like my opinion was very concrete. In fact I was just hopeful he was right."

Jasper has a very interesting alternative theory of autogynephilia. For him autogynephilia or crossdreaming is "the erotics of manifesting the feminine social imagery". For him all sexual desire -- including "normal" heterosexual sex -- is fetishistic. As he says: "Real world desire is immanent to every aspect of life."

Jasper gave Sahar the hope he needed to get on with his life.

"From that hope, I managed to [get back on track]. I no longer had the mindfog but the dysphoria remained."

Jasper gave him the respect he needed to start accepting himself.

The Girfag Girlfriend

"I then talked to a girlfag in particular. She is awesome. And its got pretty erotic i must say. I can honestly say though beautiful looking, she is 100% masculine. She tells me that she has that pelvic thrust that my guy friends do all the time. She feels protective over me. She likes to call me baby and i love that. Her fantasies are just incredible for me to hear. Interestingly she isn't so good socially. She accepts that she is like a nerdy guy. (And she really is)..."

He then gives two citations from a discussion between whyxslup and me at this blog. Whyxslup is very much in line with Jasper. Like both of them I believe that gender expressions are socially constructed and that no personality trait is uniquely male or female.

I have the deepest respect for both of them. Unlike them, however, my gut feeling is that at least some crossdreamer conditions have a biological core beyond language and culture.

Here are Sahar's quotes:

"The female body is simply a part of the web of feminine associations of which ones self-image is subjected." (whyxslup)

'I doubt that, but even it this is the case, there may still be a subconscious feminine self causing this association.'(Jack Molay)

Curing the dysphoria

Sahar continues:

"For me this is at the root of everything. Do I have a 'inner woman' or 'inner femininity'? For me its definitely not just fetishes and I'm not sure I believe the person if they say that. It [is] all encompassing. I love feeling feminine and that can be in the way I move, in the way I interact with people etc. I now hate wearing masculine clothes, and I am on a diet to reduce my muscle size.

"But after embracing my male body with the help of a girlfag, the dysphoria has completely disappeared. No more do i get that gut wrenching stomach turning feeling when i see a sexy girl. i want to be that sexy male that the girlfags talk about. I now no longer crossdream. I am just a beautiful feminine male being taken by a girlfag.

"At first i could not believe the masculinity in a female and believe the femininity when presenting as a male, and so it could not work in fantasies, but after speaking to one in particular I can feel it, and now I fantasise about being desired and being dominated by a woman as a male. And being told that I actually am beautiful as I am, as a male, and being told her fantasies and my place in them has made me so much more balanced. She says I'm sexy, and cute etc. I find myself constantly aroused during entire conversations with her. I have come to realise how feminine my sexuality is and just how amazingly masculine her's is. I don't look at my bone structure and feel pain. I don't look at my height with sickness.

"I say this as at this moment I feel very balanced, and I'm productive again and can be cheerful and not think of agp for hours and hours. I think that maybe the female body is just an association with femininity, and one that I have stopped. But I am worried that I am wrong and Jack you are right. I worry that in a few months, I'll realise that i was just deluding myself and ill start crossdreaming again. The crux of it all, is whether I have a 'inner woman' or 'inner femininity'. I guess ill find out soon enough..."

Acceptance and healing

My first comment to all of this is that I think has already demostrated that he has an "inner woman" or "inner femininity". It is a fair guess that the reason his dysphoria has disappeared or subsided is that he has finally been recognized and valued as "feminine" by someone who truly matters to him.

He has been reaffirmed as as desireable sexual being by another human being. He has been seen. He is loved for who he is. This is the kind of affirmation all human beings need: the foundation for all psychic health and happiness. This applies to our roles as a social and spiritual beings as well as our roles as a sexual beings.

As for the sexual side, a basic course in psychodynamics will tell you that pyschological health is dependent on having a healthy outlet for your sexuality. Sahar, like many (most?) male to female crossdreamers, is wired the majority of women in this respect: He wants to be the catcher and not the pitcher. And what do you know! Here is a woman who desires him for wanting to be the bottom! The frustration and feeling of inadeqacy most M2F crossdreamers feel when being with the women they love is absent.

His girfag lover reaffirms his feminine longings and expressions, while at the same time being sexually attracted to his male body.

Redefining reality

In this scenario three myths are challenged:

That all men ough to be agressive and all women submssive
That all women ought to be feminine and all men masculine
That all people who violate rules 1 and 2 are homosexual

We have in fact seen that body, sexual orientation and the feminine/masculine spectrum can be completely independent of one another.

We have now come to a point where language fails me. I am using the male pronoun for Sahar, simply because he does so himself. The male pronoun is here referring to his male body. If he feels his "inner woman" requires the female pronoun, I will definitely use it. In fact, if we are to follow the basic rule of all transgender and transsexual discourses, it is that we respect the inner sense of self, which in this case is feminine. In which case Sahar is a woman in a man's body.

This is where it gets really interesting. If Sahar is correct in his assumption that the respect given by his lover has cured his dysphoria, then he is not a woman trapped in a man's body. His feminine self is at peace with his male body, in the same sense his girlfag friend is at peace with her female body. He is, in a sense, a woman in a male body.

A fetishsitic explanation

Does this prove that Jasper and whyxslup are right and I am wrong? In other words: Sex identity is a socially constructed, fetishistic complex independent of any biological or instinctual bias?

It seems to me Sahar's story can be interpreted either way:

If we say that all sexual preferences are fetishes, i.e. preferences caused by various types of symbolic associations, then Sahar's preference for a dominant, "masculine", girl, may be a result of -- let's say -- some childhood experience that made him associate desirability with submission. This has then led to the desire for a female body, as the cultural context symbolizes submission with the female body. The female body here being a symbol of feminine behavior and desires.

(I am not referring to Jasper or whyxslup here. I am making this up as I go.)

In the same way crossdressers may associate nylon stockings with femininity and get turned on by wearing such stockings. Other men may be turned on by breasts of particular sizes, ankles, a specific perfume, blonde hair, wearing leather and so on and so forth. These are all personal associations, not preferences programmed in the genes.

Yes, such a theory can be used to explain Sahar's feelings, and I am sure there is a fetishistic aspect to his sexuality, as is the case with us all.

However, if it turns out that his gender dysphoria has been cured by the love of his girlfag, we face a problem. Fetishes do not go away if affirmed by someone else. If that was the case, there would not have been many S&M clubs around. In fact, fetishes seem to be strengthened by having someone else take part in the play.

To explain the (possible) "death" of his gender dysphoria within a fetishistic framwork, we must therefore stress the fact that longing for a female body is a displacement of a more fundamental need: Namely the need to be desired as a woman. It is the experience of being a woman that is the basis, not having a woman's body per se. When his crossdreamer girlfriend reaffirms his womanhood, the desire for a female body seems to go away.

But if one side of the fetishistic associations become more important than others, it isn't that far fetched to argue that that aspect may have an instinctual or biological core.

Beyond the fetish

Note that Sahar himself does not believe that all of this is a fetish only. And I have a large number of crossdreaming transgender people saying the same. Yes, they do get aroused by the idea of being the opposite sex, but there is so much more to this than a pure sexual fetish. This especially applies to those that experience gender dysphoria ( pain from the feeling of being the wrong sex). This applies to Sahar and it applies to me, and it definitely applies to those trangender persons that decide to transition.

I am very reluctant to dismiss these convictions, not only because they apply to me, but because theories of fetishes systematically have been used to discredit the lives of both crossdressers, crossdreamers and transsexuals. If people feel so strongly about this that they decide to turn their lives upside down through surgery, all of us should take a deep breath and consider once more whether there is something more to all of this than mere sexual desire.

Again: Sahar's case can be interpreted both ways: You may also argue that Sahar's need to be recognized as a woman/feminine being is based on something more fundamental, something instinctual, something based in biology. Then this core identity triggers all the culturally defined associations found in the fetish theory. What this basis is, we do not know, but it would explain why some people desire to be the opposite sex, while others are satisfied with a candle lit dinner.

To me the old transvestic fetishism theory, Blanchard's autogynephilia theory and the new post-structuralist fetish theory all taste of reductionism, i.e. attempts at reducing complex social, psychological and biological phenomena to one and only one cause. I have come to the conclusion that complex systems like human beings and their interaction with the surroundings should never be oversimplified in this way, which is also why I try to keep an eye on both biological and psychological explanations in this blog.

Carl Gustav Jung's critique of Sigmund Freud's theories apply also here, I believe. If everything is reduced to sex, nothing is sex.

I will come back to the new fetish theory in a later blog post, time permitted.

Now what?

Sahar worries that in a few months, he will realise that he was just deluding myself and he will start crossdreaming again: "The crux of it all, is whether I have a 'inner woman' or 'inner femininity'."

As I said: He may perfectly well have an "inner femininity", even if he no longer suffers from gender dysphoria. His girlfriend has reaffirmed his inner femininity. She has not abolished it.

I am perfectly aware that there are transsexuals that have turned gender dysphoria into a virtue, and who claim that you cannot be considered a woman unless you hate your male body and go for sex reaffirmation surgery. Since I suffer from gender dysphoria myself, I can relate to that. But what makes perfect sense for them, does not necessarily have to apply to all transgender persons. Their dogma is just that: A dogma used to in a political struggle to keep the "pervos" at bay.

I know for a fact that "op or not to op" is not the only question of relevance here (although it is a very important one). There are crossdreamers who have to transition in order to find peace with themselves, and there are those that do not. But I am convinced that this is -- for all of them -- a question of making peace with your inner counterpart.

I sincerely hope that Sahar has found an alternative route to crossdreamer peace. I really do. And if my idea of getting your "inner woman" affirmed by a lover is what it takes, this may be the case.

But I am not sure.

From the litterature we know that the crossdreamer fantasies of crossdressers and crossdreamers subside when they find love, but they nearly always come back again when the relationship enters its more stable, post-euphoric, phase. It seems that both male to female and female to male crossdreamers manage to get some kind of affirmation when in love, and that this affirmation is enough to keep the inner man or woman at bay for a while. But he or she will not be denied. Maybe this is what is going to happen to Sahar, as well.

Still, there is a huge difference between the cases found in the science papers and the story of Sahar. Sahar is not in a relationship with a traditional heterosexual "ciswoman" who mainly affirms him as a man. He is in a relationship with a woman who accepts him as a woman.

The only parallel I can find to this, is the cases where the wife or girl friend of a male to female crossdreamer choses to respect their lover's inner woman, by taking part in role playing (See My Husband is an Autogynephiliac). In some of those stories, the role playing seems to be enough. In others the partner still ends up transitioning.

I am afraid the simple answers elude me.

Americans believe "transgender" means "transsexual"

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:07:00 +0000

Those who have followed the transsexual/transgender debate (or "war", rather), will have seen that a major argument made by so called "classic transsexuals" against the umbrella term "transgender" is that it mixes up real transsexuals with crossdressers, crossdreamers and the genderqueer.

Because of this, they are trying to change the meaning of "transgender". They use it as a term for every type of transgender condition they do not like, and would like to keep the term "transsexual" for the real women.

Transsexual is not the same as transgender

I have no problem with limiting the use of the word transsexual those that have undergone surgery, who plan to do so or who want to transition. But the attempts at splitting at turning the umbrella term "transgender" into a label for everything perverted, makes me angry.

This is not because all crossdressers and crossdreamers are the same as transsexuals. Most of them are not. Most of the male to female crossdreamers and crossdressers do not even identify as women. Nor do the female to male crossdreamers and crossdressers always identify as men.

Click on comic to enlarge!

That does not stop them from having a lot in common with transsexuals, though. They all are, like the transsexual men and women, suppressed by people who feel threatened by those who do not adhere to the gender stereotypes of the day.

And whatever the classic transsexuals say or believe: The real bigots out there do not accept any male bodied person who feel like a woman.

What is even more important, though, is that there a quite a few crossdreamers and crossdressers who actually suffer from severe gender dysphoria. Some of them again are actually transwomen.

If you ban every transwoman or transman who has ever crossdressed or crossdreamed from the transsexual family, there won't be that many left.

The American public supports transsexuals

It now turns out that the term "transgender" does not undermine the status of transwomen and transmen in the eyes of the American public.

It, is in fact, the non-transsexual transgender who are under threat, including many of the readers of this blog.

A study made by the Public Religion Research Institute seems to indicate that overwhelming majorities of Americans agree that transgender people should have the same general rights and legal protections as others.

Here is what they say:

Overwhelming majorities of all major religious groups agree that transgender people should have the same rights and protections as other Americans, including approximately 8-in-10 (83%) white evangelical Protestants, and roughly 9-in-10 Catholics (93%), white mainline Protestants (90%), and the unaffiliated (95%).
Overwhelming majorities of Republicans (86%), Independents (94%), and Democrats (92%) also agree.

Given the toxic atmosphere of current American politics, these are mind blowing numbers, indeed.

It gets better:

"Approximately three-quarters of Americans both say Congress should pass employment nondiscrimination laws to protect transgender people, and favor Congress’s recent expansion of hate crimes legislation to protect transgender people."

This is seriously good news, regardless of how you interpret the word "transgender". The poll does not, however, reflect a correct understanding of the word "transgender".

Transgender is understood to mean transsexual

The Institute thinks so, enthusiastically telling the world that approximately two-thirds of Americans both report being well informed about transgender people and issues, and generally understand what the term “transgender” means.

It turns out the neither the respondents, nor the researchers, understand what the word means.

Take a look at this:

"Two-thirds of Americans agree that they feel well informed about transgender persons and issues, while 3-in-10 disagree.
In order to determine whether Americans understood the term “transgender,” PRRI conducted a follow-up survey in September 2011 that asked respondents to report what the term “transgender” meant to them in their own words. Among the 91% of Americans who report that they have heard of the term transgender, 76% give an essentially accurate definition. Thus, overall, more than two-thirds (69%) of Americans are able to identify what the term “transgender” means without any assistance.

Forty-six percent define a transgender person as someone who switches from one gender to another, either generally (39%) or through a medical procedure (7%).
Eleven percent define a transgender person as someone who lives like the opposite gender (6%) or identifies more with the opposite gender (5%).
Ten percent describe a transgender person as someone who is born the wrong sex or born in the wrong body.
Nine percent define a transgender person as someone who has identified with both genders.

The following are examples of verbatim responses:

“A person who feels like they are more like the other sex”
“It’s someone born one sex, and they think they’re another”
“Generally someone who thinks they are in the wrong body” "

What this means is that the great majority of Americans interpret "transgender" to mean "transsexual". None of the four definitions listed above are in line with the current definitions of the word "transgender"

I see the following meanings of the word in the litterature and in the online debate:

1. (common use) Umbrella term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles connected to their original biological sex, including transsexuals.
2. (derogatory) Autogynephiliacs and crossdressers, as opposed to "classic transsexuals" or HBS transwomen.

It seems to me that 9 percent of Americans interpret the word "transgender" to mean "genderqueer", 5 percent allows for some other type of ambiguity, while the rest believes it is a synonym for transsexual.

That does not surprise me, and I am not blaming them, but it does represent a problem.

The gender regime is powerful

I guess that within a culture that even now adheres strictly to traditional gender roles, the only type of transgender that makes sense is the one where a person switches completely from one role to the other. That kind of change is not a threat to the division of roles society is built on.

This also means that Americans find transsexuals less of threat to the social and moral order than homosexuals, who actually do break with the "heterosexist hegemony".

The fate of those that live in both worlds, or who -- for some reason -- cannot or will not make the switch is unfathomable. They do not fit into the paradigm. Heck, they cannot even be understood as "proper" homosexuals.

This explains why the classic transsexuals make so much fuzz about the not being put in the same box as crossdreamers and crossdressers.

Male to female crossdressers and crossdreamers are understood as men who violate the "proper" gender configuration. They live as men, but still claim to have some kind of femininity. This does not fit with the stereotype universe of the classic transsexuals, where men are men and women are women. Any association with crossdressers and crossdreamers must therefore undermine their legitimacy as women, they believe.

As the study shows, it does not.

If they really wanted to exclude the crossdreamers and crossdressers from "decent society", they should have held on to the word "transgender", and then forced the queers and the perverts out of that family. By giving up the word "transgender" they have actually lost a great opportunity to use the traditionalism of America to beat the crap out of us "paraphiliacs".

But it is also clear that the transgender movement (if there is such a thing) has lost, as neither activists nor experts have managed to explain the paradigm shattering part of the transgender narrative to the American public. For the majority crossdressers and genderqueer are not even on the radar.

Unhate! Or: How love finds a way.

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:51:00 +0000

Benetton's unhate campaign communicates tolerance in a way that moves you.

So is this another capitalist plot to milk the sentimentality of the masses? Well, if preaching love and tolerance is a sentimental sin, I am all for it!

Unfortunately, Benetton had to pull its pope kisses imam poster due to protests from the Vatican. I guess Mr. Ratzinger is too busy persecuting homosexuals and transsexuals to understand all the innumerable ways Love can express itself.

Gender and sexuality diversity is not a disease!

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:42:00 +0000

Imagine there was no social stigma attached to crossdreaming, crossdressing or being transgender.

Imagine you were allowed to talk about it without risking your job, you family and your circle of friends.

Imagine you could find friends with the same interest as yourself, not only online, but in the physical world. Imagine you could find a lover who, based on is or her own life experience, gets who you are.

As long as conditions like these are considered paraphilias and mental illnesses, that is going to be hard. As long as the medical authorities, the priesthood of the Church of Science, label you as a pervert, there will always be doubts.

For the gay movement, the removal of homosexuality from medical manuals in the 1970s was an important step towards social acceptance.

I am perfectly aware of the homophobia found in parts of the Western world (cp. the American Tea Party movement), but the fact that a majority of Amercians now support gay marriage tells me that the decisive battle has been won. It is clear to most sensible persons that the psychological suffering of gays and lesbians are not caused by their homosexuality, but by the way the surrounding society has treated them.

While I have -- partly for personal reasons -- focused on the gender dysphoria of crossdreaming and crossdressing, others have focused on the fact that such interests may just as well be harmless expressions of the diversity of natural sexuality.

Take away the stigma and "paraphiliacs", and crossdressers and crossdreamers are no more likely to be maladjusted, unhappy or mentally ill than other people. If society could accept, and maybe even embrace this diversity, there would be no mental illness of this sort.

In Europe these insights have led to the establishment of an alliance between homosexuals, BDSM enthusiasts and crossdressers aiming at the removal of "fetishes" from the WHO manual.

Among the leaders we find Svein Skeid, the leader of Revise F65, who has been working with gay and BDSM human rights for 30 years. Another influential activist is Odd Reiersøl, a well known psychologist in my country, from the University of Oslo and the Solverv Psychotherapy Institute.

I must admit I cringe a little at their use of the word "fetish". I am still not convinced that the term may be salvaged from the stigmatizing use of the medical community. The term is also often used to belittle those that suffer from a clear sex identity misalignment, and it is -- in may opinion -- hard to categorize non-crossdressing crossdreamers as fetishists.

Still, their main message makes perfect sense to me:

"The fetish/BDSM group is an equal contributor to the society and scores on the level with most people on psychosocial features and democratic values such as self control, empathy, responsibility, love, equality, and non-discrimination. Because the ICD fetish and SM diagnoses are superfluous, outdated, non scientific and stigmatizing to the fetish/BDSM minority, these diagnoses have been removed in nearly all of the Nordic countries. The diagnoses are so seldom in use, that neither care, statistics, nor research are affected by their abolition."

Revise F65 has now presented a report to the Word Health Organisation where they explain why the diagnoses as mental illnesses have to go.

The report concludes that a removal of the fetish- and SM diagnoses in the forthcoming edition of the WHO ICD-11 manual of mental illnesses, may have "health promoting effects and be valuable to the society, in addition to an improved human rights situation regarding legal safety, real freedom of speech, and less experienced discrimination based on fetish- and BDSM identity and orientation."

The report documents the similarities between the treatment of "sado-masochists" and crossdressers, especially in the attempts made by scientists to present them as maladjusted and mentally ill citizens who are unable to establish stable love relationships. The data tells another story.

Photo from Revise 65: Protesters in Oslo

ChristopherStreet Day Parade 2011.

The poster says: "SM and Fetish declared

healthy. Norway 2010!, The Nordic Countries 2011!,
The World 2012?

I am taking the liberty of republishing the Transvestic fetishism/Transvestism chapter of their report, as it contains some very interesting observations that should be of interest to crossdreamers and their associates.

Transvestic fetishism/Transvestism

"[Ray] Blanchard (2009) acknowledges implicitly that there are ego-syntonic well-adjusted transvestites. He still argues for keeping the diagnosis with some alterations.

In his reference list is a survey by Langstrom and Zucker (2005).

The sample for the study consisted of 2450 randomly selected men and women aged 18 to 60 from the general population of Sweden who agreed to participate in a larger study of sexual attitudes and behaviours. Items concerning cross-dressing behaviours were embedded in the survey questionnaire. One item asked (the dependent variable): "Have you ever dressed in clothes pertaining to the opposite sex and become sexually aroused by this?"

A total of 2.8% (n = 36) of the men and 0.4% (n = 5) of the women reported that they had ever become sexually aroused by cross-dressing. Most of these men (85.7%) reported that they were only sexually attracted to women and none reported a main or exclusive attraction to men.

Among the variables that were NOT significantly associated with cross-dressing behaviour among men were socioeconomic status, history of sexual victimization, satisfaction with life in general, psychological and physical health, or current psychiatric morbidity.

Among the variables that were significantly associated with cross-dressing among men were being separated from parents during childhood, being easily sexually aroused, having same-sex sexual experiences, use of pornography, and masturbation frequency.

Blanchard is following a traditional basic assumption about a “syndrome” of Transvestism (also called Transvestic Fetishism) consisting of four elements. “These four elements are: (1) cross-dressing (2) associated with sexual arousal (3) in a biological male (4) with a heterosexual orientation. ”This clinical consensus is supported by the available epidemiological data (Langstrom & Zucker, 2005)” (quotes from Blanchard, 2009).

While Langstrom’s study supports the notion that there are more men than women who fit the (1) and (2) criteria above, it does not, however, support the idea that this constitutes a syndrome or that it should be diagnosed. If a phenomenon is to be called a “syndrome”, there must be strong enough evidence that this phenomenon constitutes medical or psychiatric pathology. In our opinion this is not sufficiently substantiated in Langstrom’s article. Blanchard does not refer to any other “epidemiological data” in the article mentioned.

Potentially problematic results from this study were: “Transvestic fetishism also was strongly related to experiences of sexual arousal from using pain, spying on others having sex, and exposing one’s genitals to a stranger.”

There is no clarity in the report of what this really means, if for example these strangers were informed, whether they consented or not. The authors point out some limitations of this study, and cautions about the fallacy of drawing conclusions about cause and effect. One could speculate that people who get specially easily sexually aroused are more likely than others to be sexually aroused by just about anything, including “exhibitionism” and “voyeurism”. There is no reason to believe that problematic sexual behaviors or transgressions originate in transvestism.

We will also argue that people who may have their sexuality diagnosed may be more likely to be sexually transgressive than others, because acting out some kind of alternative sexuality will likely be perceived as a transgression. A self image of somebody sexually transgressive could easily create self fulfilling prophesies. Also: diagnosing a specific kind of sexuality will probably increase the likelihood of becoming ego dystonic which in turn could increase the likelihood of transgressions.

An earlier study from 1996 (Brown, et. al., 1996) suggests that cross-dressers not seen for clinical reasons are virtually indistinguishable from non-cross-dressing men using a measure of personality traits, a sexual functioning inventory, and measures of psychological distress.

In an article, Moser and Kleinplatz provide a case study of a person who could be diagnosed with transvestic fetishism. They give a convincing argument for removing this diagnosis: “Should this behavior, which can be regarded as adaptive rather than distressing, be construed as psychopathological? The rationale for pathologizing a coping skill is questionable.” (Moser and Kleinplatz, 2002).

Basen together with Langstrom (2006) published a book about “unusual sex”. They try to evaluate the current thinking about the paraphilias including SM, fetishism and transvestic fetishism. Included in the book are interviews with several practitioners. ”Our goal when starting on this book was to try and understand sexual deviation or paraphilia. We encountered the project with some prejudice. We were mentally prepared for meeting “weird” people who could even be dangerous. But we met people who, apart from having statistically unusual sex, for the most part were obviously ‘usual’ ” (Basen & Langstrom, 2006: 255,256). “Socially speaking, we experienced people who comprised an average segment of the Swedish society” (Basen & Langstrom, 2006:256). “Our basic view is that every one has the right to assert his or her sexual peculiarity as long as it does no harm. It is of course not acceptable that people suffer due to intolerance and prejudice. If so, the attitudes of society should be targeted - rather than giving treatment to the individuals” (Basen & Langstrom, 2006:260, 261).

We want to point out that one year after the survey by Langstrom and Zucker (2005), Langstrom in 2006 has taken a more accepting position to these sexual minorities. And we again want to emphasize that Blanchard (2009) mistakenly claims that Langstrom and Zucker’s article corroborates the notion of a “syndrome” of Transvestic Fetishism. We will further argue that such a claim could contribute to intolerance and prejudice.

According to Eisfeld, who in 2011 gave an oral presentation at the 20th World Congress for Sexual Health, there have been instances of Transvestic Fetishism being used against male to female transsexuals. People who have been seeking help for sexual reassignment have been rejected by psychiatrists who have diagnosed them with Transvestic Fetishism and therefore they have not been taken seriously as having Gender Identity Disorders.

If the diagnosis of Transvestic Fetishism stands in the way of giving people appropriate treatment, this is in our opinion an additional reason to repeal that diagnosis. Eisfeld also had a comment concerning the B criteria of the paraphilias: It would be important to add that the distress, as expressed in the B criteria, is not caused by discrimination or external prejudice. (Eisfeld,J., 2011)"

Watching the wildlife (on unnatural animals)

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Ok, this is old news, but I would like to share it with you anyway, as the story says a lot about people's reluctance to abandoned cherished prejudices.

In 2006 the Natural History Museum in Oslo arranged an exhibition called Against Nature. The idea was to document same-sex relationships between animals.

The project leader for the exhibition, Geir E. Søli, hoped that it would weaken prejudices against human homosexuals.

He said:

"It turns out that as many as 20 percent of the black-headed gull [Larus ridibundus] pairs are of the same sex. Same sex relationships have been documented among 1500 species in modern times. The percentage of 'gay' animals varies from five to forty percent. The record is held by a species of parrot."

He pointed out that 100 percent of our nearest relative, the bonobo, is bisexual. Among the orcas scientists have found life long sexual relationships between males.

I have argued that information on "gay" animals is important for transgender people, partly because it tells us that the word "unnatural" is meaningless. If animals display same-sex behavior, same-sex relationships between humans cannot be "unnatural".

Secondly: What we are seeing here is not necessarily homosexuality in the modern Western sense, but various types of gender-crossing behavior. Being transgender is not "unnatural". Male birds who behave like female birds are not "autogynephiliacs".

And if this is the case among other mammals, we should be very careful before we reduce all human transgender conditions to sexual perversions or merely a cultural phenomena.

The reaction to the exhibit demonstrated clearly that many use the word "unnatural" to brand people as perverts. It has nothing to do with nature per se.

Jan-Aage Torp, pastor in a local Pentecostal church, was for instance shocked when told about the exhibition, arguing that there must be better ways of using the tax payers' money.

"These are two separate sexes, meant by nature to produce kids," he argued, Tea Party wise, doubting that these researchers could be right.

At his blog he argued that the exhibition photos showed "animals in natural play" (ref. photo of playing males above).

"But if this was true, that does not mean that it is good," he continued. "This might be a perversion or sickness we should help the animals cure."

I still have this image in my head of him running around in the Norwegian forests with a looking glass, checking the sex of blue tits, and stopping them from unnatural fornication.

Here is more info on the exhibition.

See also:
Female to male crossdressing among red deer
Can [Non-Human] Animals Be Gay?

What is the difference between fetishistic and non-fetishistic crossdressing? (The ICD and beyond)

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:17:00 +0000

The WHO medical manual says that only crossdreaming crossdressers can become tranwomen, not the ones that do not get aroused by the idea of being a woman. How did sexual arousal become such a sin?

I have spent some time looking at the American DSM manual here at Crossdreamers. The American psychiatric manual say a lot about how some psychiatrist try to draw the line between different types of cross-gender identification.

There is another manual that is just as interesting, namely the WHO ICD manual (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision, Version for 2007)

Under "Mental and behavioural disorders" there is a category called "Disorders of adult personality and behaviour", where you will find both transsexualism and crossdressing/crossdreaming categorized as mental illnesses.

On the difference between transsexuals, crossdreaming crossdressers and non-crossdreaming crossdressers

I am not going to repeat my objection to transsexuals and crossdreamers being classified as ill here. Instead I am going to draw your attention to the fact that this manual classifies crossdreamers (people who get aroused by the idea of being the other sex) as completely separate from other crossdressers. In this manual the crossdreamers are actually overlapping with the transsexuals!

There are three categories of interest to my readers:

F64.0 Transsexualism
F64.1 Dual-role transvestism
F65.1 Fetishistic transvestism

What I find so utterly bizarre is the fact that "fetishistic transvestism", which includes -- I surmise -- crossdressing crossdreamers, is categorized as "a fetish", while the other crossdressers are given "a gender identity disorder".

Note that "dual-role transvestism" is defined as the "wearing of clothes of the opposite sex for part of the individual's existence in order to enjoy the temporary experience of membership of the opposite sex, but without any desire for a more permanent sex change or associated surgical reassignment, and without sexual excitement accompanying the cross-dressing."

The fetishists (crossdreamers), on the other hand, are wearing "clothes of the opposite sex principally to obtain sexual excitement and to create the appearance of a person of the opposite sex."

The dual-role transvestite apparently feels like a woman; the fetishist does not.

How they are able to distinguish between these two types of crossdressers is beyond me.

I am sure there are crossdressers who are never aroused sexually while crossdressing, but why the absence of arousal in itself is needed for you to have "a gender identity disorder" is just strange. It is as if sexual feelings are incompatible with feeling like a woman.

Some crossdressers report that the arousal that follows crossdressing disappears as they get older. Does that mean that the underlying condition has changed, and that they have moved from one category to the other? And do you need to be asexual to have a gender idenity disorder?

If you have a gender identity disorder you cannot become a transwoman

It gets even more bizarre. "Fetishistic transvestism" can apparently "occur as an earlier phase in the development of transsexualism". The "dual-role transvestism", on the other hand, cannot, even if it is in the same sub-category as transsexualism. In fact dual-role transvestite is defined as being "without any desire for a more permanent sex change".

In other words: The "experts", who have done the best to keep the "tainted" perverts away from the "pure" transsexuals and "dual role transvestites", are now opening the door again, by admitting that crossdreamers -- and only crossdreaming crossdressers -- can become transsexuals.

This is so strange, that I will repeat it once more:

Male to female crossdressers who do not get turned on by imagining themselves as women have a gender identity disorder, but cannot become transwomen. Crossdressers who do get aroused en femme do not have a gender identity disorder, but can become transwomen!

The source of all this confusion

I think one explanation for all this confusion is the fact that the psychiatrists who have written these categories are still caught up in a stereotypical view of women. This can be the only explanation for using sexual arousal as the most important dimension for dividing crossdressers into sub-categories.

Men who get aroused by imagining themselves as women, are -- according to this way of thinking -- not feminine, because women do not get aroused by imagining themselves as women. Crossdressers who focus on dressing up and copying the behavior and mannerisms of women, on the other hand, do suffer from a gender identity disorder, because women do love dressing up, paint their nails and have tea parties (or whatever it is women and crossdressers are supposed to do).

Hm.

I have know a few women in my life. As an academic I have studied history, psycho-social development and cultural variation, and I can say with 100 percent certainty that women are sexual beings. They fantasize, they get aroused, they masturbate and they make love, and unless they are asexual or psychologically traumatized, they also like it. Given their superior ability as regards orgasms, you could actually argue that they are more strongly sexually charged than men. (That was actually considered common wisdom in pre-Victorian Europe!)

Then why is sexual arousal removed from our understanding of what it means to be a woman?

I believe we have to look at the way crossdreaming crossdressers are perceived by the doctors. The stories these doctors are told are about men who dress up alone, and who then get aroused by the idea of being a woman and/or having a woman's body. Many of them also live alone, as it may the only way they can find room for this part of their lives. This, again, means that their only sex life consists of masturbatory fantasies.

"Aha!" the doctor concludes, "this man is a auto-erotic narcissistic fetishist" (read: "a perverted wanker"). "He has nothing in common with real women!"

Some crossdreamers probably also believe this themselves: "Doctor, I am a filthy pervert! Help me!"

So what about real women?

What I find puzzling is that these doctors must know that women do masturbate -- alone and a lot. The sales of dildos and vibrators are sky rocketing and they are not all bought by male to female crossdreamers. Many women live by themselves as well. The same doctor would not call them auto-erotic narcissists.

Women also imagine themselves making love to a man while fantasizing. That is a good thing, isn't it?

So why is the crossdreaming crossdresser a pervert, classified in another category than the non-crossdreaming crossdressers and transsexuals who are suffering from a "gender identity disorder"?

Could it be that these so-called experts are incapable of putting the life of a crossdreaming crossdresser into its proper social context?

Why do crossdreamers behave as they do?

First: Do crossdreamers primarily get aroused by (1) the idea of being a woman or having a woman's body or do they get aroused by (2) the idea of having sex as a woman?

People like Ray Blanchard focus on 1, and it is the fact that they get aroused by the idea of having a woman's body that makes them autogynephiliacs.

I would focus on the second part of the equation. In nearly all the erotic transgender fiction fantasies I have read, the crossdreamers end up having sex with someone else. To have sex as a woman, you need a woman's body (or at least a female appearance). Then the change itself becomes erotic by association. To become a woman becomes erotic, because it opens up the possibility of having sex as a woman.

Women love having sex as a woman, but they already have a female body. The idea of having a female body is therefore not as eroticized as in the case of male to female crossdreamers.

That being said, women may perfectly well get turned on by admiring their own looks and their own body (i.e suffer from "autogynephilia"). The reason for this is that being beautiful and attractive is an powerful aphrodisiac in itself. The desire of others is a confirmation of your very being, and imagining yourself being desired by others can therefore be an enormous turn-on. That is one of many factors leading women to spend so much money on clothes, make-up and cosmetic surgery.

It should therefore come as no surprise that male to female crossdreamers may get aroused, not only by the idea of having sex, but also by the idea of being sexy. If you are alienated from you male body, the other healthy alternative -- a pride in your own male body -- is not an alternative.

So why are crossdressers doing this alone?

Crossdreaming crossdressers are considered "autoerotic" or "autogynephiliacs" (i.e. people who make love to themselves) or even "narcissistic" because they often explore these fantasies by themselves.

Isn't that to be expected?

The way their sexuality is stigmatized and pathologized it should come as no surprise to these researchers that the crossdreamers do not always share them with their partner, if they have one. The risk of losing that partner is high, because this is a condition that is so poorly understood.

The fact that at least some of these men seem to be wired for sex as a woman, must also make it harder for them to establish functioning relationships with heterosexual women wired for the same type of sexual behavior. So why does their loneliness make them autoerotic narcissists?

The logic breaks down

Sexual arousal can, as far as I see it, not be used to distinguish one group of crossdressers from another. The obvious question is not: "Why do some crossdressers and transwomen get turned on by the idea of being a woman?" The obvious question should be: "Why do some crossdressers and transwomen not experience such cross-gender arousal?"

That is a question I find very hard to answer.

There are, as far as I can see, three possible explanations for this.

The first is that they deceive themselves, in the sense that their arousal is sublimated into a ritual of dress and manners. If they have been told that women are asexual beings, and they are alienated from their own penis, it is possible to be aroused without the telltale sign of an erection. In fact, there are male to female crossdreamers who are proud of the fact that they no longer get an erection, as they fel that this makes them more like women. They are still turned on, though. Maybe some crossdressers are not consciously aware of this kind of excitement.

The other possibility is that they truly are asexual, not in the sense of not being interested in a relationship, but in the sense of having a low libido. That happens.

The third is that they only get excited as a man with a woman. I guess anything is possible, but I must admit I find this very unlikely.

I welcome any input from knowledgeable crossdressers here, as this is a phenomenon that has to be explained in a theory of crossdressing.

Post-orgasmic anti-climax

I guess the experts behind the manual would argue that I am missing the point. You see, the document adds the following to the definition of the fetishists:

"Fetishistic transvestism is distinguished from transsexual transvestism by its clear association with sexual arousal and the strong desire to remove the clothing once orgasm occurs and sexual arousal declines."

The point is, I believe, that this proves that this sense of being a woman is sexual, and sexual only. If they had been truly feminine, they would have kept their female clothes on, also after orgasm.

I am not a crossdressers, so there are limits to what I can add here, but from a purely practical point of view, keeping your dress on after orgam seems ...eh... sticky...

However, as a non-crossdressing crossdreamer I recognize the pattern of fantasy and arousal, followed by orgasm and some kind of exhaustion. That is actually quite common in most male bodied persons, and make no mistake about it: crossdreamers and crossdressers may feel like a woman, but their bodies are male. In my case, however, the longing after being a woman does not subside, even if the sexual arousal does. It is there, always! I suspect this is the case among many crossdressers as well.

If arousal associated with crossdressing is an expression of a suppressed female self, you should expect the gender dysphoria to subside somewhat after orgasm, as this orgasm will be an outlet for the sub-conscious feminine self. That would not mean that the sub-conscious feminine self disappeared after orgasm, no more than a regular guy stops being a regular guy after sex.

In other words: Removing feminine attire after orgasm is not in itself proof of this being a different condition than "dual-role transvestism".

From what I know of regular XX women, they also feel a need to get out of their feminine attire before going to sleep. Or maybe they just want to put on their pyjamas and crawl up in the sofa with a bucket of ice-cream and a chick flick. I would love to do that!

The Nordics get it right

The fetishistic transvestism paragraph, the one on transvestites, as well as all other "perversions" under F65, have been removed from the manual in all the Nordic countries. Crossdreamers are no longer considered mentally ill in this part of the world.

The Norwegian Directorate of Health said this when it announced its decision to remove fetishes from the manual:

"The Norwegian Directorate of Health puts great emphasis on the fact that interest organisations and research environments for a long time have delivered knowledge showing that many find the diagnoses in themselves offending and [that the diagnoses] contribute to the stigmatization of the sexuality of groups and individuals.

"The diagnoses involved are out of date and not in accordance with the scientific standards otherwise found in the ICD-10 manual.

"The content of these diagnoses have not been significantly changed in over 100 years. They were developed on the basis of theories based on the knowledge of that time and its view of sexual variation among humans in society. At best the diagnoses are completely superfluous. At worst they stigmatize minority groups in society."

Head of The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, Lars-Erik Holm said was even clearer when Sweden abolished these paragraphs:

"These diagnoses are rooted in a time when everything other than the heterosexual missionary position were seen as sexual perversions"

The role of fetishes

It is the logic behind documents like these that makes me so reluctant to use the world fetish in connection with crossdreaming. For more than 100 years it has been used to label people as mentally ill perverts.

That does not mean that I do not see the value of a discussion of crossdreamers expressing fetishistic traits. As Freud argued in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality all human sexuality has fetishistic aspects. In this respect crossdreamers are no different than other ordinary Joes and Janes (whoever they are). But if we are to do that we have to take the word "fetish" back from the conservative psychiatrists and turn it into something positive. I am not sure if that is feasible, but we can always try.

The Finns remove crossdressing from their medical manual

APPENDIX: THE ICD ON GENDER IDENTITY AND CROSSDRESSING

According to the current ICD-11 Alpha Draft, Fetishism, Fetishistic transvestism, Sadomasochism and dual-role transvestism are not yet taken off the list of disorders of psychological development and gender identity.

The full text can be found here.

F64 Gender identity disorders

F64.0 Transsexualism

A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one's anatomic sex, and a wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one's body as congruent as possible with one's preferred sex.

F64.1 Dual-role transvestism

The wearing of clothes of the opposite sex for part of the individual's existence in order to enjoy the temporary experience of membership of the opposite sex, but without any desire for a more permanent sex change or associated surgical reassignment, and without sexual excitement accompanying the cross-dressing.

Gender identity disorder of adolescence or adulthood, nontranssexual type

Excludes:fetishistic transvestism ( F65.1 )

F64.2 Gender identity disorder of childhood

A disorder, usually first manifest during early childhood (and always well before puberty), characterized by a persistent and intense distress about assigned sex, together with a desire to be (or insistence that one is) of the other sex. There is a persistent preoccupation with the dress and activities of the opposite sex and repudiation of the individual's own sex. The diagnosis requires a profound disturbance of the normal gender identity; mere tomboyishness in girls or girlish behaviour in boys is not sufficient. Gender identity disorders in individuals who have reached or are entering puberty should not be classified here but in F66.-.

Excludes:egodystonic sexual orientation ( F66.1 )
sexual maturation disorder ( F66.0 )

F64.8 Other gender identity disorders

F64.9 Gender identity disorder, unspecified

Gender-role disorder NOS

...

F65 Disorders of sexual preference
Includes:paraphilias

F65.1 Fetishistic transvestism
The wearing of clothes of the opposite sex principally to obtain sexual excitement and to create the appearance of a person of the opposite sex. Fetishistic transvestism is distinguished from transsexual transvestism by its clear association with sexual arousal and the strong desire to remove the clothing once orgasm occurs and sexual arousal declines. It can occur as an earlier phase in the development of transsexualism.
Transvestic fetishism

Revise65

This post was originally published over at Sex Gender Body.Some changes and additions have been made..

The end of the chick flick -- on the media industry and gender

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:50:00 +0000

What comes first? Or inborn femininity or masculinity, or the expectations of the culture around it?

Those who have followed this blog will know that I am pretty much convinced that most of what we consider masculine or feminine is culturally defined, and that all "masculine" of "feminine" personality traits are -- in fact -- common to both sexes.

This does not mean that there cannot be some kind of pre-cultural personality core that is male of female, but it means that we cannot reduce what it means to be a man or a woman to, let's say, a propensity to ask for directions when out travelling.

The advertising industry has a set of categories that are closely correlated to cultural stereotypes. In this TED conference video, Johanna Blakely argues that the fact that women dominates social media will not make media more feminine. Instead they will kill off the genre categories like -- for instance -- chick flicks. The diversity among women will change the media industry.

Johanna Blakley is Deputy Director of the Norman Lear Center (a media-focused think tank at the University of Southern California).

Zagria on crossdreaming

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:39:00 +0000

Zagria has put up a very interesting post about gender variance and crossdreaming over at her A Gender Variance Who's Who blog.

She argues that one of the problems we are facing when discussing gender variance is that only trans people are considered gender variant. The act is that there is a lot of gender variance among "cisgender" people too.

Please note that cisgender was coined as a term to describe those that were not transgender. Transgender is the starting point. Cisgender is the residual category.

Cisgender may be defined as "gender identities formed by a match between an individual's gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one's sex" or "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity".

In one sense I believe she is right, in the way that there are many people who do not consider themselves trans in any way, but who still allow themselves to cross the border of what is considered gender normative.

In my discussions with crossdreamers (people who get aroused by the idea of being the other sex) and crossdressers (people who like to display certain aspects of the behavior of the opposite sex through clothing and behavior), I find that many of them identify with their birth sex.

The inside and the outside

However, this an extremely complex issue, for several reasons:

We have to distinguish between social facade and inner gender identity (which applies to the cultural, social and psychological traits and expressions) or even sex identity (which refers to your sense of body).

Many crossdreamers and crossdressers live and act like their birth sex in public, as this is what society expects of them.

Given the history of their personal lives, living as the opposite sex full time might seem as unreal to them as the lives they are living now, even if they are expressing their sense of gender through clothing and mannerisms at home , and even if they should feel "trapped in the wrong body".

And make no mistake about it: Many crossdreamers are truly gender dysphoric, and some of them are also transsexual. This makes me hesitate when Zagria makes crossdreamers a prime example of cisgender variance.

Crossdreamers as cis

Zagria writes:

"I will be treating crossdreamers (to use Jack Molay’s term) as cis, in that that is how the people around them regard them. Arguably they are wannabe trans, and might persuade a psychologist or a gender therapist that they are such, but one of the points that I will be making is that the dividing line between cis and trans is movable."

If cis is defined on the basis of "how the people around them regard them", this is mostly true. Most male to female or female to male crossdreamers present as their birth sex.

Still, since we do not define transgender on the basis of outward appearance, but on the inner sense of self, the same should apply to the cisgender category, and a significant portion of the crossdreamer and crossdresser population truly identify with the opposite sex.

How many these are in real numbers or as a percentage of the total crossdreamer population we do not know, as no one has ever done any serious research on this group, but from what I hear and see there must be millions world wide.

The subconscious inner woman or man

Note also that many crossdreamers do everything in their power to suppress their inner woman and inner man. This especially apply to the male to female group, as it seems to be harder from male bodied persons to present as women than it is for a female bodied person to present as men.

These are not, as Zagria formulates it, "wannabe trans". A lot of male to female crossdreamers do, for instance, end up in the military in a desperate attempt to condition themselves to become "real men". The fact that they normally fail in this, tells me that they are transgender and not cisgender. They are "wanna-not-to-be-trans", but trans all the same.

Then there are the many crossdreamers who go to a psychologist or gender therapist and say that they are trans, as Zagria points out. Zagria's phrase emanates an aura of mistrust: "[they] might persuade a psychologist and therapist that they are such", implicitly saying that that they may not be real transwomen, being instead self deceiving cisgendered males driven by -- I don't know -- lust maybe?

I would not be surprised if there are crossdreamers who go all the way with hormones and surgery and who should not have done so, as they find themselves unable to adapt to the social role of a woman. In other words: As there are male to female crossdreamers who actively suppress their female identity, there might be others who suppress the complexity of their own gender or sex identity.

But that does not stop them from being transgendered. You do not go to the extreme point of surgery unless there is some kind of mismatch between your physical sex and your experienced sex.

Significant overlap

This means that I believe the final section of the quoted paragraph is the most important one: "the dividing line between cis and trans is movable".

If you, like Zagria does, open up for gender variance among the "normal" cisgender population, you will soon find that there are no "gender normal" people anywhere.

As I have argued (to the point of boring you to death) there are no personality traits that are uniquely male or female. This applies to traits like extroversion vs. introversion, analytical vs. empathic as well as sexual dichotomies like active vs. passive and penetrative vs. receptive.

This does indeed lead to gender variance among the cisgender as well as among the transgender. This is why you will find XY women who -- like most XX women -- do not behave like -- let's say -- Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. They are still women. Very much so.

And I agree that this kind of variation does not necessarily signify some kind of transgender condition. These may be just normal variations. Many do not experience a deep mismatch between these traits or behaviors and their sense of being a man or a woman.

Sex and gender

I have become more and more aware of the importance of distinguishing between gender and sex lately. It seems to me that one important reason for the transgender/transsexual war is caused by this mix up.

The "gender" in transgender has made both crossdressers/crossdreamers and militant separatist transwomen argue that transgender is only a matter of expressing traits and behaviors that violate socially accepted mores and conventions. The suffering of transgender people is therefore not the result of them being born with the wrong body, but the fact that arbitrary social rules do not allow them to express their full personality. If they were allowed to do so, there would be no transgender persons. We would all be happily living as "cis", making the term meaningless.

Many crossdresser and crossdreamers argue that this is all there is to it, and that this therefore also applies to transsexuals. This is why many transsexual women react so violently towards this line of reasoning. They feel -- correctly, in my option -- that it invalidates their sense of being women, as opposed to playing the role of women.

Unfortunately some separatist transwomen have no qualms about applying the everything is gender kind of logic towards others, arguing that this applies to all crossdreamers, crossdressers and gender queer, but not to themselves. They and they alone suffer from being in the wrong body (misaligned sex), the hated "transgender" are just gender confused.

On the other hand there are crossdreamers and crossdressers who do not experience gender dysphoria, and who therefore conclude that no one does. This gives the separatist transsexuals the argument they need to define all crossdressers and crossdreamers as "TG" men, misled by sexual desire or bizarre fetishes.

This forces the crossdreamers and crossdressers that are truly gender dysphoric -- in the sense of having a deep-felt belief of being born the wrong sex -- to hide their crossdressing or crossdreaming, which again leads to a new layer of psychological repression.

It is truly a mess, and I cannot see that defining crossdreamers as "cis" is going to help us sort this out.

Three levels

All of this leads me to conclude that a gender variance discussion on the distinction between cis and trans may lead us astray, unless we manage to distinguish clearly between at least three levels of gender variance, namely:

The outward expression of gender (to what extent persons behave in accordance with the roles assigned to their birth sex).
The inner personality of a person and how this makes him or her want to express that personality through behavior that is in conflict with culturally defined gender roles (e.g a man with a "femme" personality).
The inner sense of sex and body (as in a male bodied person who truly feels that she is born in the wrong body).

The term transgender encompasses both 2 and 3, as it is an umbrella term for both crossdressers, gender queers and transsexuals.

The fact is that the term crossdreamer also includes persons identifying with both 2 and 3 as well, means that all crossdreamers are in one way or the other transgender. And some of them are transsexual. You cannot get less cis than that.

Transgender love

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:08:00 +0000

A female to male crossdreamer made a very interesting comment on my "Girlfags and Guydykes Unite!" post.

She says:

'I am just learning about the "girlfag" [female to male crossdreamers, in this case women who love men] idea and I think I really do identify as one. The idea of gay male sex turns me on, but when I read about the feelings of MtF crossdreamers, that also can actually turn me on. I think what I am attracted to is the mixture of masculine and feminine. I mean the confusion itself is attractive. I read one person's feelings of wanting to be sexually dominated, but also cherished, and I thought, I would love to give that to someone. It would make me feel strong and nurturing the way I want to.'

'... I think that in a better, freer world we would meet each other on a spectrum of sexual desires and not have to label that part of ourselves as different from our biological sex.

'But on the other hand, the presence of cultural gender norms actually adds some spice by creating taboos. Would it be as much fun to play to gender games it if wasn't just a bit "dirty"? I guess we'll never know.'

Note how she breaks down the dichotomy strong (i.e. stereotypical masculine) and nurturing (stereotypical feminine). By using her strong, aggressive, dominant side she could actually please a male to female crossdreamer so much that it would be like nurturing.

This means that love between a male to female and female to male crossdreamer would actually be like transcending the traditional gender roles, while at the same time reaffirming them.

I am sorry if I sound too philosophically obtruse here, but she has made a very important point: We need the contrasts between feminine and masculine, yin and yang, the moon and the sun, earth and sky in order to make sense of our own multifaceted personalities. These contrasts help us navigate the world and our own feelings.

The problem is that since these contrasts have been fixated into dogmas by culture, we cannot make her leap into the sky and look at these dynamics from above. We are not allowed to. Even if we perfectly well know that men can be nurturing, and that many of the women in our lives have been much stronger than the men, we cannot use that insight to forgive ourselves: i.e. that it is OK for a man to cuddle and for a woman to f**k her sweet guy senseless.

I never seize to be amazed at how much pain our own stupidity causes us. We are not only the prisoners. We are the prison guards.

Transgenderisms: Outdated Psych Textbooks

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:55:00 +0000

It seems to be we know more about the dark side of the moon, than we know about sex and gender.

Oh sure, we believe we know it all. After all, what could be more simple: men are men and women are women and sometimes they meet and make babies, and that is all there is to it.

This is why being transgender is so interesting and so exhausting at the same time. As soon as you start to really look at sex, sexuality and gender all the certainties dissolve into thin air.

Scientists and philosophers are doing one heck of a job trying to make sense of it all, but the thing is: Most of them try to force the square blocks into the round openings, in desperate attempts to make the story they grew up with continue to make sense. You know: men are men and women are women and sometimes they meet and make babies.

Right...

wxhluyp recommended Judith Butler to me. Butler is a post-modernist philosopher who has done a very important attempt at trying to get to the core about why it is that we think about sex and gender in the way we do. I will come back to her philosophy later. Here I will just point to her story about what made her think twice about femininity and masculinity:

"...you might as well know that in the United States the only way to describe me in my younger years was as a bar dyke who spent her days reading Hegel and her evenings, well, at the gay bar, which occasionally became a drag bar."

It was there she experienced an "implicit theorization of gender":

"...it quickly dawned on me that some of these so-called med could do femininity much better than I ever could, ever wanted to, ever would. And so I was confronted by what can only be called the transferability of the attribute. Femininity, which I understood never to have belonged to me anyway, was clearing [sic] belonging elsewhere, and I was happier to be its audience than I ever was or would be being the embodiment of it."

Judith Butler: Undoing Gender, NY 2004.

It is quotes like these that tells me that the gay and lesbian community and transgender do have something in common (apart from being outcasts): Many of us are struggling with the traditional concepts of femininity and masculinity. They do not fit!

Over at Small Pecuiliar Eyeteeth has made a wonderful series of comic strips presenting "Outdated Psych Textbooks" -- in the process revealing how helpless and speculative many of the theories explaining homosexuality are.

I think they say a lot about the role of sex and gender in psychology and psychiatry and therefore something about how they often think about the transgender population.

Enjoy!

(Click on images to enlarge!)

Two new crossdreamer and autogynephilia blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:33:00 +0000

Please tell me about new and relevant crossdreamer and crossdresser blogs. Here are two that I nearly missed:

Autogynephilia and Stuff

Autogynephilia and Stuff is a blog established by ThinkingAboutGynephilia. "TAG" is an 18 year old man trying to make sense of his life as a crossdreamer.

There is only one post there so far, but that one is definitely worth a read.

Many of my readers will recognize the signs:

He writes:

"Since I was 12 I've had sexual fantasies of inhabiting a female body. This desire ebbs and flows, it is not consistent, I do not find myself desiring to be a female for the most part of my waking consciousness, and neither do I feel out of place in my male body.

"I cannot, however, becomes sexually aroused unless I imagine myself as a female - even during the brief sexual encounters I've had in my life, for most of them I could only turn myself on by imagining myself as a woman, and having lesbian sex with my partner. I of course, did not tell her this - and for contiguous reasons, the relationship did not last very long; I was scared of intimacy."

"Am i mad? or just different?" he asks.

He is definitely not mad. The text tells me that this is a very intelligent you man with the spiritual resources needed to handle this mess.

Different? Well, aren't we all!

Please, write more TAG!

Mirror Sister

Mirror Sister is also written by a male to female crossdreamer, but this one is under control of the female persona: Deborah Kate. This blog is more of the artistic and essayistic kind.

"I crossdream because an important part of me deep down within I identify as feminine," she writes.

"After many years' obfuscation it feels crucial now that I do not belittle Deborah Kate as being merely sexual fantasy or sub-personality. No, I need to assert 'I am Deborah Kate'. That feels good, if slightly scary.

"Yet it's important that I do not disown the masculine elements of my personality as a false front. No, there is much that I hate about my masculine upbringing and standard masculine values, but I have engaged with how I have been educated and regarded and I have developed an authentic masculine personality in response. Certainly not alpha, but not camp either. A personality I rather like, in fact."

This points to something I am also struggling with: To accept the inner woman, while at the same time learning to like the man I have become.

The following paragraphs really touched me:

"Brother, I feel your sadness, your tiredness, your heavy-heartedness.

"Sister, I feel your repression, your awful denial of expression. It's a denial that is continuous through every moment: expression in looks, in words, in movement, in sex. That;'s one hell of a lot of denial. You bear it bravely.

"Now we both feel like hugging each other and crying. A slow tear rolling down a sad face from brother, a big, big, girly sob from me."

Spellbound transgender

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:49:00 +0000

I'd like to share a painting with you. It is called "Alvelek" (Elves' Play) and is made by the Norwegian painter Theodor Kittelsen.

I think it is relevant for many crossdreamers, because it says something about how male bodied persons can be ensnared or bewitched by their inner woman.

When that happens, their whole lives are at stake. If she can keep them spellbound, they will never be able to become what God or Nature wanted them to be. They will not be able to follow their "inner bliss", to quote the great Joseph Campbell.

The female elf in this case is clearly one of the many species of "little people" found in Scandinavian folklore.

A related being is huldra, a blonde and beautiful girl-like figure with the tail of a cow. While the elves are "over-earthly", huldra is more of the subterranean type.

While the female elf ensnares the man with her unearthly femininity, the hulder captures him with her animalistic sexuality.

Below you will see another painting by Kittelsen, called "Huldra disappeared". Huldra has lured a man into a swamp and he is now lost for humanity. He is probably also in danger of sinking into the marsh.

Fairy tales are real

But these are all fairy tales, right? They don't mean anything real.

I can assure you they do.

The people who made these fairy tales were like all great artists: They tried to capture that which cannot be defined by science and dogma -- the parts of our minds that can only be reached through metaphors and symbols.

In these cases the fairy tales clearly tries to tell us something about how forces in the unconscious may ensnare us.

The man caught by the elf is caught up in her magical mist, like a fly in a spider's web. The man sinking into the mash -- into the underworld -- tells us the story about someone who is engulfed by his unconscious: The sub-conscious parts of his own psyche is dominating his life.

Addiction

The inner woman of a crossdreamer and crossdresser may become a hulder or a feminine elf. She may take over his life in ways that are destructive.

What happens is often that the crossdressing or crossdreaming becomes the focal point of a man's life. He will let the dressing or the fantasies come before anything else, being that family, friends, job or other social responsibilities. He will, in effect, become very much like an addict, constantly seeking the next exotic or erotic endorphin fix. His emotional and intellectual growth will be stunted.

There is one important difference between the alcoholic and crossdreamer addict, though: As many crossdreamers and crossdressers will tell you: It is possible for a male bodied person to integrate the female side in a constructive manner.

To use fairy tale terminology: If you treat the witch standing by the roadside with respect and courtesy, she will reward you with useful advice and powerful magic.

In psychological terms this means that if you accept the inner woman completely and recognize that she is an essential part of yourself, the spell is broken. She is still there, but you are no longer in her power. She is now a loved part of your own being.

Mental illness

I know that a lot of people think of crossdressing and crossdreaming as mental illnesses.

And -- of course -- if you become addicted to silk stockings or feminization porn, you are in a way mentally ill. This condition is often followed by anxiety and depression, which are also -- in some ways -- diseases.

But the suffering is the effect, not the cause, of the transgender condition. I am pretty much convinced that the sexual fantasies and the urge to crossdress is the psyche's way of trying to rebalance the mind. There is a part that has been suppressed, by family, friends and society, a part that will not be denied and that needs to find a voice.

To the extent the inner woman represents the need to express stereotypical "feminine" personality traits, she is like the ensnaring elf. To the extent she represents the need to express female sexual instincts, she is like the hulder. Women are, like men, highly sexually charged beings. The fact that the female side is expressed through sexual dreams should therefore come as no surprise.

Female to male transformations

So far I have focused on images helping the male to female crossdreamer.

Kittelsen has also a painting that for me at least can be used to illustrate the dilemma of the female to male transgender person. This is an illustration of the Norwegian fairy tale Kvitbjørn Kong Valemon (White Bear King Valemon).

Kvitbjørn King Valemon has its roots in the ancient Roman fairy tale about Eros and Psyche, and is also related to the story about the Beauty and the Beast.

King Valemon has been changed into a white bear by an evil witch. Out heroine agrees to marry him in order to get his magic garland of gold. Her acceptance of his animalistic masculine side finally breaks the spell.

The wreath -- i.e. the circle -- is a symbol of wholeness or completeness. The masculine and feminine side of the psyche has been reconciled, and I think Kittelsen's painting expresses this in a wonderful way.

Crossgender vs. transgender

I guess some of you will argue that these fairy tales are not really about the transgender condition, but rather about some kind of "crossgender" condition that is common to all human beings. All men should accept and embrace their "feminine" side. That does not make them transgender, and definitely not transsexual.

This is correct. Like all myths, fairy tales and great works of art, these stories and these images speak on many levels. I still think they can be of great value to those of us who struggle with our sex and gender identities, though. And they definitely tell us something about the power of the unconscious.

If you are truly transsexual, your transsexual condition cannot be overcome through myths, arts or psychotherapy. But I am sure the symbols can be used by you to make sense of the life you are living.

This is why I will start a new series looking at the psychodynamics of crossdreaming. Those of you who want to follow me on this quest, should take a look at the following movie: Ponyo.

That is right: I am going to make use of a wonderful Japanese animated movie made for children to discuss crossdreaming and the transgender conditions. I assure you: It is going to make sense in the end.

(And if it doesn't, you have at least had the chance to share a great movie experience with your friends or your family.)

Transgenderisms 7

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 06:13:00 +0000

Another alternative look at the science of autogynephilia.

Click on comic to enlarge!

Take part in research on "Trans Gender Embodied States of Recognition"

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:29:00 +0000

Tre Wentling invites transgender people to participate in the Trans Gender Embodied States of Recognition research project, which explores recognition and experiences using personal identification documentation (IDs).

The survey, which may take 10 to 30 minutes to complete, includes questions about your gender identification, IDs and experiences using them, name and pronoun recognition, your transition-related decisions, how you have felt in the past week, and basic demographic information.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TG_States_of_Recognition

Tre adds:

"As a transguy, I am personally affected and committed to positive contributions regarding trans research. My goal is to provide information that can be used by social justice advocates to help improve our lives. One benefit of this research includes contributing to existing gaps in current research on recognition. Specifically, I hope to provide more evidence and support of the diversity among trans people in order to expand our legal recognition.

Please feel free to contact me or my advisor with any questions you may have about this research or your participation. I may be reached by email at tlwentli@maxwell.syr.edu. My advisor, Andrew London, may be reached by telephone at (315) 443-3252 or by email at anlondon@maxwell.syr.edu.

If you have any further questions regarding your rights as a participant, or if you have any questions, concerns, or complaints that you would like to address to someone other than the investigator and project advisor, or you cannot reach either, you may contact the Syracuse University Office of Research and Integrity Protections by phone at (315) 443-3013.

This research has been approved by the Syracuse University IRB (reference # 11-125).Your participation is deeply appreciated."

Tre Wentling, PhD Candidate
Syracuse University
Department of Sociology, 302 Maxwell Hall
Syracuse, New York 13244

(Taken from Trans-Academics.org).

Julia Serano on the concept of autogynephilia

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Molay) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:05:00 +0000

The International Journal of Transgenderism has a paper by Julia M. Serano on autogynephilia in its latest issue. It was published late last year, and I tweeted the news, but I haven't had time finish the post until now.

Julia Serano is a biologist and a trans-activist, and one of the few that has dared to look into the role of crossdreaming in transsexualism in a constructive manner.

Serano follows up on the critique of the autogynephilia concept made by Moser, and I guess this is another intervention in the battle of the American DSM-5 (The American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), .

In other words: Are men who fantasize about having the body of the opposite sex paraphiliacs (perverts), as the autogynephilia theory claims, or are they just another variation of this wonderful thing called life?

For a popular summary of the autogynephilia theory, see my article: Autogynephilia on a Napkin.

The Case Against Autogynephilia

In the paper "The Case Against Autogynephilia" Serano (who is herself a transsexual woman) notes that Ray Blanchard, the father of autogynephilia, and his followers have used the term to dscribe to significantly different phenomena:

"First, it is used descriptively to denote a type of erotic fantasy common to many (but not all) MtF [male to female] spectrum individuals in which they become aroused at the idea of becoming women."

This Serano calls cross-gender arousal, which is -- I believe -- more and less the same as I call crossdreaming.

Like me Serano readily accepts that such fantasies exist.

She continues:

"Second, the term [autogynephilia] has been used to theoretically describe a paraphilic model in which the aforementioned fantasies arise as a result of a misdirected heterosexual sex drive (i.e instead of or in addition to being attracted to women, the individual becomes attracted to the idea of becoming a woman) and once established, such fantasies become the primary cause of any gender dysphoria and desire to physically transition to female that the individual might experience."

In other words: the male to female crossdresser, crossdreamer and/or transsexual has the hots for the idea of himself as a woman and it is this desire that causes the gender dysphoria.

Serano uses the word "autogynephilia" for this theoretical explanation of cross-gender arousal, as opposed to such arousal as a phenomenon in and for itself.

I think this is a very sensible way of using the terms, and plan to use the distinction myself in the future. So I will call the very act of having arousing feminization fantasies among the male to female population crossdreaming, while Blanchard's explanation for this act will be called "the autogynephilia theory".

Like me, Serano avoids the bewildering a misleading use of terminology found among Blanchard and his supporters. Blanchards "homosexual transsexuals" are called "androphilic transwomen" (man-loving women), while the "heterosexual transsexuals" become "gynephilic transsexuals" (woman-loving transwomen).

The autogynephilia theory

Serano points out that the autogynephilia theory grew out of observation made by many therapists: There were transwomen that did not fit the traditional transsexual archetype of the feminine, non-fetishistic or asexual ideal of womanhood promoted by many sexologists and psychologists. Instead they found men seeking sex reassignment surgery that

"...were not especially feminine as children or adults, and/or tended to seek out sex reassignment much later in life after having lived for many years as heterosexual men. There were also indications that many in this latter group had previously identified as crossdressers and/or had a history of cross-gender arousal."

Based on a data from a questionnaire given to patients at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Canada Blanchard subdivided MtF transsexuals by sexual orientation into four groups: androphilic, gynephilic, bisexual and asexual.

Non-homosexuals

He found that a majority of the gynephilic, asexual, and bisexual groups reported having experienced cross-gender arousal (crossdreaming) in response to wearing women's clothing on at least one occasion in their lives. (Yepp, only once is enough to become labelled as an autogynephiliac in the world of Blanchard!) As for the androphilic transwomen, only 15 percent reported such arousal.

He called the gynephilic, asexual and bisexual transwomen autogynephiliacs, while the androphilic (man-loving) transwomen were called homosexual transsexuals (HSTS).

By continuing to use the term "homosexual transsexual" Blanchard strengthened the idea of these women being extremely effeminate gay men -- not real women.

Gays are not paraphiliacs

Given that homosexuality no longer could be called a perversion, the androphilic transwomen were not given the stigmatizing label of "paraphilia" in Blanchard's work. The autogynephiliacs, however, were considered perverted men.

Serano says:

"The fact that paraphilias are presumed to be male-specific...seems consistent with the fact that, according to the medical literature of the time, there appeared to be no FtM (female to male) equivalent to nonandrophilic [i.e. autogynephilic] transsexualism."

Those who have followed this blog know that this is not true. The female to male crossdreamer definitely exist. "Autogynephilia/autoandrophilia can therefore not be an expression of a typical male sexuality, as Blanchard believes.

Target location error

Serano continues:

"Blanchard hypothesized that autogynephilia arose from a 'misdirected type of heterosexual impulse, which arises in association with normal heterosexuality but also competes with it...' He proposed that gynephilic MtF transexuals experience both autogynephilia and 'normal' attraction to women', whereas, asexual MtF transsexuals 'represents those cases in which the autogynephilic disorder nullifies or overshadows any erotic attraction to women'.

"He also argues that bisexuality in MtF transsexuals is better described as 'pseudobisexuality': 'The effective erotic stimulus in these interactions...is not the male physique of the partner, as it is in true homosexual attraction, but rather the thought of being female, which is symbolized by the fantasy of being penetrated by a man. For these persons, the male sexual partner serves the same function as women's apparel or makeup, namely, to aid and intensify the fantasy of being a woman.'"

Serano here refers to what I have called the man as a dildo theory. From what I hear in crossdreamer life stories, some crossdreamers do indeed treat their male lovers as props. They are at least not initially attracted to them in the same way as they are to men.

The problem with this line of argument is that even if some of the bisexual or androphilic crossdreaming transwomen may be of this sort, there is no proof that all of them are. In other words: there may be "true" bisexuals in the various samples used in this kind of research, and I doubt very much that there are no "true androphilic transwomen" among the crossdreamers.

Blanchard also sticks to a strict dichotomy between heterosexual and homosexual that is not supported in other types of research.

The gender variance model

The supporters of Blanchard pit the autogynephilia theory up against the so-called "feminine essence theory" (the women trapped in men's bodies theory). Serano says that this

"...ignores a more nuanced view that I will refer to here as the gender variance model, which holds that gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and physical sex are largely separatable traits that may tend to correlate in the general population but do not necessarily align in the same direction within any given individual."

This gender variance model is very similar to the mixing slider model Natalie and I have presented at this blog.

I have argued that much of the so-called "narcisssism" found in MtF crosdreamers is caused by sexual frustration which again is caused by the fact that the gynephilic crossdreamers find it hard to identify potential female partners that can let them play the role of "the bottom".

People expect their sexual orientation towards women to be followed by a wish to be "the top" and the penetrator. Instead they long to take the stereotypical female position when having sex. So not only is gender identity and sexual orientation two independent variables; sexual orientation and the typical proactive/reactive sexual preference are also independent.

Serano explains:

"According to this model, transsexuals share the experience of discordance between their gender
identity and physical sex (which leads to gender dysphoria and a desire to physically transition) but are expected to differ with respect to their gender expression and sexual orientation (just as nontranssexuals vary in these aspects).

"This variation in gender expression and sexual orientation may lead individuals to follow
different transgender trajectories and develop different sexual histories."

"If autogynephilia is to be taken seriously as a theory, it should explain the observed differences as well as (if not better than) the gender variance model," Serano argues. It does not.

The two-subtype model

Is autogynephilia's two-subtype model valid?

One huge problem with arguing against Blanchard is that most of the research done in this field is done by researchers that live and breathe within the same tradition as him. Many of the follow-up studies adopt Blanchard's typology and then set out to prove or disprove his assumptions.

The problem is that if you have already accepted the premise that there are two types of transwomen, and that these two are defined by sexual orientation, it becomes close to impossible for you to develop an alternative explanation, i.e. one based on another typology.

I, for one, think the division between androphilic and non-androphilic transwomen can make sense in some areas, as long as you keep in mind that you are talking about a categorization based on observations, and not on the mapping of the cause of these categories.

In other words: the division between androphilic and non-androphilic transwomen reflects sets we define to describe what we are seeing. The categories are not necessarily attributes that define the persons as having substantially different natures. Nor do they lay out the cause for these differences.

I often use the use of the word "immigrant" as an example. To divide the population into "immigrants" and "non-immigrants" may make sense if you are developing a policy to integrate refugees and foreign job-seekers into the native poulation of the country, but this does not mean that Somalian immigrants are less human than the native population, or that Somalians are the same as Tamils or Kurds.

Indeed, in the case of androphilic vs. non-androphilic transwomen. I think the differences observed can easily be explained by the radical different lesbian and straight transwomen face when growing up in a male body.

Methodological weaknesses

Serano finds other great methodological weaknesses in Blanchard's research. These include:

that the subtypes were not empirically derived but rather stemmed from his initial grouping of the individuals based on their sexual orientation
he did not include nontranssexual female control groups
he relied on clinical samples that may not accurately reflect the greater nonclinical transgender population (there were, for instance, no non-transsexual crossdreamers on board)
his results have not been replicated

Serano points to a lot of researchers who dismiss the argument that only nonandrophilic transwomen experience cross-gender arousal. Even Blanchard's own research shows that androphilic transwomen can "crossdream".

Serano writes:

"One of the most troubling aspects regarding autogynephilia is that the proponents of the theory have consistently tried to dismiss the aforementioned exceptions as being the result of misreporting on the part of research subjects.

"Notably, it is always those transsexuals who are constructed as 'autogynephiles' that are accused of either lying about their sexual orientation, or of supposedly denying their experiences with cross-gender arousal; in contrast, the reports of those who neatly fit the 'androphile' archetype are never questioned ...

"This double standard is not only illogical (as someone who wished to appear like the 'classic' transsexual would likely deny both attraction to women and cross-gender arousal), but it is tantamount to hand-picking which evidence counts and which does not based upon how well it conforms to the model."

I would add that Blanchard's model would never have been conceived hadn't it been for the fact that the crossdreamers approaching his clinic were so open about their cross-gender fantasies. It seems that they were be unable to hold back any of their secret fantasies, and by God have they been punished for it! This does not in any way point to the conclusion that crossdreamers are secretive liers.

Serano again:

"If proponents of autogynephilia insits that every exception to the model is due to misreporting, the autogynephilia theory must be rejected on the grounds that it is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. If, on the other hand, we accept that these exceptions are legitimate, then it is clear that autogynephilia theory's two-subtype taxonomy does not hold true."

Love of oneself as a woman

Next Serano attacks Blanchard's use of his "erotic location error theory" to prove the causality between crossdreaming and gender dysphoria.

As I have argued repeatedly, Blanchard has never provided any kind of proof for the idea that crossdreaming is caused by a kind of alternative sexuality, where the "autogynephiliac" is in love with the idea of himself as a woman. In other words: It is more likely that the crossdreaming is the result of gender dysphoria, instead of the gender dysphoria being the result of cross-gender arousal.

Serano also adds another possible explanation: That both traits may simply correlate in non-androphilic male to female individuals for some other reason.

Serano points out that if we are to believe the androphilic transwomen who do report crossdreaming, cross-gender arousal must be considered the cause of transsexualism also in this group. If it does not cause transsexualism in these individuals, "this would suggest that cross-gender arousal might not cause transsexualism in the nonandrophilic group either."

She adds that the causal relationship forwarded by Blanchard is also brought into question by the fact that many nonandrophilic MtF transsexuals never experience cross-gender arousal.

Blanchard's supporters normally solve this dilemma by arguing that the androphilic transsexuals that do report crossdreaming are self-deceiving androphiliacs, while the autogynephilacs that do not report crossdreaming are lying or sublimating their crossdreaming into some kind of romantic relationship to their inner woman. Which brings us back to the impossibility of falsifying their theory.

Non-erotic crossdressing

Seranon adds:

"While early explorations of feminine clothing and thoughts of female embodiment may be highly arousing (perhaps related to the sexual symbolism associated with femaleness and femininity on our culture), this sexual charge wanes for many MtF cross-dressers and pretransition transsexuals as they begin to interact socially in the feminine role, to develop a conscious female identity, and/or to view their transgender inclinations as authentic and nothing to be ashamed of."

This points to crossdreaming being the effect of an underlying transgender condition, rather than the cause of that condition.

Blanchard tries to solve this challenge to his theory by arguing that "autogynephiles" who come to identify as female has developed a pair-bond with their female selves. He is comparing the relationship between the autgynephiliac and his female self as an old couple who has stopped having sex! (Yeah, seriously!)

For me this is the ultimate proof of how far Blanchard's theory is removed from reality. First of all this argument proves that even Blanchard sees the weakness of his own argument. Secondly, his attempt at saving it is beyond belief.

Serano puts it this way:

"This explanation is quite a stretch, as there is no biological evidence to suggest that humans or other animals are capable of pair-bonding with themselves and/or their own physically sexed bodies... The fact that many MtF cross-dressers and nonandrophilic transsexual continue to engage in relationships with other people after experiencing this sharp decrease in cross-gender arousal strongly suggest that they are not pair-bonded with their female selves. "

But there is more to it than this. Both Blanchard and Bailey belong to a tradition that tries to explain sexuality in evolutionary terms. They have both done a lot of work on homosexual men, trying to explain why such a trait is inherited, in spite of the fact that it should be detrimental to generating offspring. Here, on the other hand, Blanchard is proposing the existence of a third kind of sexuality, where the man is having sex with himself, without even trying to explain how this kind of trait can be propagated throughout generations.

Pre-puberty crossdressing

Finally, Serano points to the fact that many nonandrophilic MtF individuals report that they experienced an awareness of wanting to be female long before they ever experienced cross-gender arousal.

Serano also delivers a devastating attack at Anne Lawrence's attempts at explaining away this weakness in the autogynephilia theory. Lawrence has suggested that nonandrophilic MtF transsexuals who have not experienced cross-gender arousal, or who have experienced such arousal only after becoming aware of their desire to be female, may nevertheless be motivated by a romantic-love version of autogynephilia.

"By the same reasoning," Serano says, "men who love their children, but who are not sexually aroused by them, could nevertheless be said to experience pedophilia."

Summing up

Serano concludes her paper in this way:

"In summary, as a theory of transsexual etiology and taxonomy, autogynephilia seems to have little merit. For this reason, and because its terminology is especially maligning to MtF spectrum people, it is recommended that autogynephilia theory (and the language associated with it) should be avoided in favor of more accurate (and less stigmatizing) terminology. Like all human beings, MtF spectrum people have rich and diverse fantasy lives. Future studies that seek to understand the phenomena of cross-gender arousal, or female/feminine embodiment fantasies, should be conducted in a manner that is respectful of this diversity, deferential to what MtF spectrum individuals say about their own experiences, and careful not to needlessly exacerbate the nonconsensual sexualization that this population already faces in society."

Note that Serano also discusses cross-gender arousal or crossdreaming in her book, the Whipping Girl:

Click here for the Kindle Edition

Reference: Serano, Julia M.(2010) 'The Case Against Autogynephilia', International Journal of Transgenderism, 12: 3, 176 — 187

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