Interesting. I’ve been arguing for a while now from a Feminist perspective that the “poor little fragile ROGD girls/women” and the “sick sexual fetish obsessed boys/men”perspective is yet another sexist gender stereotype stemming from the misogynistic notion that girls are passive and sexless and that boys are active and sexual. The reality is that there are A LOT of girls and women for whom their identity as a trans man is anywhere from a little to hugely sexual/romantic aka erotic. Part of the issue is that we are so completely blind to female sexuality. The gay men fan fiction and drawings and k-pop and anime- HELLO that’s about SEX. Girls are fantasizing and MASTURBATING over it. Girls have sex drives and sexual needs, even if we never speak about it to the extent that some (especially the neurodivergent kind) might not even know that they do. And there are a lot of ROGD boys (the true predator cross dressers- and they exist- are a different matter) who yes have some messed up psychosexual issues going on...bc they are neurodivergent people struggling socially and mentally and emotionally and yes, with sexuality too, just like ROGD girls. The reality is that chemically and surgically altering the sexual parts of your body obviously has a lot to do with sex. I don’t think that is acknowledged enough. And sex is about WAY more than just orgasms. It’s about deep emotional needs and fears, etc. And that’s genderless.
How do I encourage my rigid-thinking high functioning spectrum 17yr old son to adopt this thinking? He won’t talk about it but he is intent on transitioning. How do we influence him??!
“If you’re a teenage boy experiencing autogynephilia, the first thing you need to hear is that it doesn’t mean you have to transition; and the second thing you need to hear is that you aren’t doomed to feel like this forever.” Yes!! All these kids need to hear that there are alternative ways of being and thinking.
I am a gay man. For decades I have noticed, and have been saying that AGP is absolutely linked to repressed homosexual desire.
The fact that a significant majority of autogynephiles come from cultural backgrounds that enforce strict gender roles and have traditionally held a negative view of homosexuality (religious, military, lower social economic classes, etc.) point to it being used as a “justification” for engaging in same sex behavior.
Many gay men from those backgrounds also struggle with self acceptance even after coming out.
Even in western societies, where homosexuality is purportedly accepted, it’s not hard to scratch the surface and find negative attitudes around gay male sex; particularly performing the receptive role during sex.
As a straight guy who has had a AGP fetish for 20 years (but like most with fetishes im not "trans") which started as a porn addiction, and was an alcoholic before that, i usually consider younger people who have AGP to be primarily attracted to the non sexual aspects of AGP and "trans" - what it provides in terms of escapism. current culture can and dose create pressure to escape the discomforts and reality of life for males in late teens or early 20s. celebrated male behavior is often the male who tackles all of the worlds problems. but some kids just arent ready to have the weight of the world on their shoulders.
its not difficult to see how intoxicating messaging would be that includes the ability to avoid all these "male" responsibilities. i read somewhere a parent survey that 75% of these "trans" kids are supported finanically by their parents. living at home for kids is a type of institutionalization itself. some jail prisoners who have been in jail for for a certain amount of time dont want to be released. they dont feel confident they can cope with life outside of prison. parents who faced reality their entire life may not be able to imagine the non reality a suburban homelife provides. a young adult supported by their parents is imagining what life would be like if they had to support themselves. many are convinced that emotionally they just couldnt do that. even the thought of it can create an unbearable stress. when parents support kids away at college it can have the same effect. many parents report a child started taking gender meds at age 19 while living away from home near college. another stress placed on these kids is the thought of romance after being immersed in online porn. online porn can create a cycle where normal social skills dont develop. using porn can also create a psych problem that includes social isolation and extreme anxiety when thinking about social situations. this creates another emotional conflict which can be a similar burden. young people want to have romance and sexual relations of course. but the
effects of online porn has made this seem impossible. imagine if pre history humans were provided an effortless source of food. would they continue to hunt and gather? no they likely wouldnt. it would be stressful after a life a free food to be suddenly handed a bow and a tent and told to go hunt.
its important to give teens messages that theres no right way to be. i like the message the son gives to the mom at the end of the movie plesentvillie. that its not supposed to be anything. iow take the pressure off yourself, especially if that pressure is debilitating. that dosent mean opt out forever. but just do your best. take it slow. its ok to do a little at a time. detrans man Tulip wrote many trans ppl grew up in religious homes. does this type of home also place added expectations? or constant messages of celebrations of male behavior? or maybe its the binary of belief and non belief. the failure to conceptualize religion as just one of many belief systems. teach how islam
started. about how mormanismn did.
parents often have messages that include the reality of life. but this is impossible to imagine from the safe and plenty suburban environment. i often tell my own kids that if i lost my job our whole family who i support with one income would have to go live under a tree outdoors somewhere. just to remind them of reality in a humorous way . i dont mean to blame parents.
we are victims of our own sucess. going from childhood to
adulthood is like entering earths atmosphere for some. emotionally its just too much. one has to enter the atmosphere gradually to avoid burning up. but whats causing the friction is the stress. and stress is caused by perceptions. from the outside it may seem like these kids have nothing to worry about. but from their view the tinyesy step looks like a huge cliff. straight males may have these emotions and not know it. i think gay males would be more aware of this issue, but they can face even more challenges operating in the world due to being gay so can face what also may seem like an unsurmountable set of challenges.
imo, some are being cynical when they ID as trans. having a fetish is not a curse. but some are opting into the curse and just pretending to have a fetish. imo, only one in 50 who actually have agp ID as trans. one of my favorite groups now surprisingly are guys they used to call maskers. these guys purchase full body rubber female costumes. but the main thing is they go to work each day as men and wear the costume for fun. they know theyre not women. that idea would seem crazy to them. i used to see photos of these guys in their costumes online and their appearance still scares me and gives me a chill. but now these guys are my heros. they know they have a fetish but theyre not pretending to be the opposite sex.
i dont really think bruce jenner (i forget his fem name) and other adult trans ppl really think theyre womem. its only kids who are tricked by this.
Good point. We mustn’t abandon boys who are also sucked into this cult, albeit in different ways and for different reasons. Bottom line is all the young people who disappear into the gender machine are being exploited and abused. Letting them know there’s a way out and a path to a healthier life is essential.
The DSM makes the distinction between autogynephilia as a phenomenon and a disorder, which is when it starts affecting everyday life, or sense of self; autogynephilia in itself is not in itself a medical condition.
I don't think you can unlearn the autogynephilia-the-phenomenon, but I do think autogynephilia-the-disorder can be unlearned, or cured, to revert back to where it no longer affects the sense of self, nor everday life.
I think social aspects e.g. online communities, "gender identity" ideology, feminist myths around autogynephilia and niche pornography can increase the chances of autogynephilia turning into a disorder, and that this can be reversed by removing that stimulus.
Of course, this is easier said than done, given that society, including schools, have been captured by "gender identity" ideology. In previous generations, I think the majority of experiences autogynephilia went unobserved under the different social environment, and would have in no way lead what we call "transition" today.
I don't think it is an easy job to remove boys from this stimulus. I think that will largely have to depend on their own motivation, and some quite existential questions: what kind of lives do they want to lead? How do they imagine themselves in the future, ten, twenty, forty, years from now? Is there a better life than that primarily spent online? How did men in the past live their lives, looking at men like David Bowie?
The idea that autogynephilia itself is somehow a slippery-slope to "transition" as a harmful myth, and it is ironically spread most by those who position themselves as against the transitioning of children, e.g. with comments liked by feminists, such as "Starts with clothes, escalates to body modifications.... AGP in a nutshell", or by "gender critical" counsellors who view autogynephilia as a "highway to Yaniv-ery, with no exit ramps". [1]
Regarding whether or not autogynephilia is innate, I think I agree with Ray Blanchard: [2]
"I don’t think that people are born with fully formed paraphilias, fully formed specific paraphilic interests and I don’t think that anybody is born with a fully-formed cross-gender identity. What I think is that people are born with predispositions or vulnerabilities to a kind of erotic miss-learning, which then predisposes them to things like autogynephilia, perhaps it predisposes them to develop a cross-gender identity […]
I don’t think think people are born with that specific crystallised paraphilia, but I think they are born with some sort of defect, where erotic learning is not self-correcting… some paraphilias definitely cluster: autogynephilia and masochism, for example, and autogynephilia, masochism and what we might call “stuff fetishism”: fetishism for particular materials, like leather, silk, rubber… it’s not completely at random…"
Wow - I have just come across your Substack and I'm blown away by how interesting it is. I'll be thinking about the implications of what you are writing for a long time. Thank you.
I have seen the anime hentai to gay to furry to endless fetish... And at that point it makes sense to feel refuge and sustenance in a community of wrongly reviled people. Enough revulsion of the not quite right identities and stereotypes already ascribed and ill-fit to a young man. The AgP has looked like the ROGD boy imagining wearing the dress and sexy thigh highs and finally being able to arrive and accept who he really is, and being able to not worry, no matter how strange he might find himself to be. It's taking time to understand how that experience might feel. I even imagine that it is potentially easier to conceive of one's own self as a verifiable and certified trans rather than some minimized variation of a boy going through puberty and life change and adhd+ and open to the influence of the culture of those around. I mean, weird is just not legitimate. The Breakfast Club is changed from the strangeness of hoping people according to their low scope experiences and limited society into it becoming necessary to find oneself in a terrain much vaster. If you want to inhabit your own strangeness, it is like you have to be legit defined into a self which is both strange and yet asserts its own acceptability against the estranging forces. If it were a ritual sufficient to make one OK, it is better to be trans because it allows one to just take clear action and have a clear path. I don't know. Because how do you ever understand yourself if you're left up to your own uneasy unclarity? It's hard to wait and see how life goes without struggling to make it the right way and know what it is and attempt to feel solid in that action. These kinds of posts help me understand more.
Thank you for this sensible essay, i hope the boys and men who need it the most can fid their way to it.
Although i'm not sure one can say every AGP male is able to get over it or enter full remission (i believe it can set an unrealistic expectation that everyone can do it just like it happens with other paraphilias and mental health conditions, but we can agree to disagree on that point), i agree with this sentiment that it doesnt inherently make them a monster just for having it and that there is more than one pathway is quite needed in the conversation about this phenomenon. There is too much distortion and overdemonization of the concept as it is, be it from gender identity extremists (trans, cis allies) or from trans critical people (conservatives, leftist radfems, GCs). I don't see how most of it actually helps the young males questioning or struggling with it, i'd dare to say it selflishly makes it worse but they don't care to improve the conversation as long as they get their 5min of self-righteousness. Too much talking with not enough listening from people who have not gone through it.
Thank you for writing this. I’m dismayed at the fractures I’m seeing on Twitter between people I like and respect as important voices. What you’re saying seems an accurate explanation of what I’ve seen in my own family as well as others I know in the same boat. Take care.
Interesting. I’ve been arguing for a while now from a Feminist perspective that the “poor little fragile ROGD girls/women” and the “sick sexual fetish obsessed boys/men”perspective is yet another sexist gender stereotype stemming from the misogynistic notion that girls are passive and sexless and that boys are active and sexual. The reality is that there are A LOT of girls and women for whom their identity as a trans man is anywhere from a little to hugely sexual/romantic aka erotic. Part of the issue is that we are so completely blind to female sexuality. The gay men fan fiction and drawings and k-pop and anime- HELLO that’s about SEX. Girls are fantasizing and MASTURBATING over it. Girls have sex drives and sexual needs, even if we never speak about it to the extent that some (especially the neurodivergent kind) might not even know that they do. And there are a lot of ROGD boys (the true predator cross dressers- and they exist- are a different matter) who yes have some messed up psychosexual issues going on...bc they are neurodivergent people struggling socially and mentally and emotionally and yes, with sexuality too, just like ROGD girls. The reality is that chemically and surgically altering the sexual parts of your body obviously has a lot to do with sex. I don’t think that is acknowledged enough. And sex is about WAY more than just orgasms. It’s about deep emotional needs and fears, etc. And that’s genderless.
How do I encourage my rigid-thinking high functioning spectrum 17yr old son to adopt this thinking? He won’t talk about it but he is intent on transitioning. How do we influence him??!
“If you’re a teenage boy experiencing autogynephilia, the first thing you need to hear is that it doesn’t mean you have to transition; and the second thing you need to hear is that you aren’t doomed to feel like this forever.” Yes!! All these kids need to hear that there are alternative ways of being and thinking.
I am a gay man. For decades I have noticed, and have been saying that AGP is absolutely linked to repressed homosexual desire.
The fact that a significant majority of autogynephiles come from cultural backgrounds that enforce strict gender roles and have traditionally held a negative view of homosexuality (religious, military, lower social economic classes, etc.) point to it being used as a “justification” for engaging in same sex behavior.
Many gay men from those backgrounds also struggle with self acceptance even after coming out.
Even in western societies, where homosexuality is purportedly accepted, it’s not hard to scratch the surface and find negative attitudes around gay male sex; particularly performing the receptive role during sex.
It’s homophobia, misogyny and self loathing.
As a straight guy who has had a AGP fetish for 20 years (but like most with fetishes im not "trans") which started as a porn addiction, and was an alcoholic before that, i usually consider younger people who have AGP to be primarily attracted to the non sexual aspects of AGP and "trans" - what it provides in terms of escapism. current culture can and dose create pressure to escape the discomforts and reality of life for males in late teens or early 20s. celebrated male behavior is often the male who tackles all of the worlds problems. but some kids just arent ready to have the weight of the world on their shoulders.
its not difficult to see how intoxicating messaging would be that includes the ability to avoid all these "male" responsibilities. i read somewhere a parent survey that 75% of these "trans" kids are supported finanically by their parents. living at home for kids is a type of institutionalization itself. some jail prisoners who have been in jail for for a certain amount of time dont want to be released. they dont feel confident they can cope with life outside of prison. parents who faced reality their entire life may not be able to imagine the non reality a suburban homelife provides. a young adult supported by their parents is imagining what life would be like if they had to support themselves. many are convinced that emotionally they just couldnt do that. even the thought of it can create an unbearable stress. when parents support kids away at college it can have the same effect. many parents report a child started taking gender meds at age 19 while living away from home near college. another stress placed on these kids is the thought of romance after being immersed in online porn. online porn can create a cycle where normal social skills dont develop. using porn can also create a psych problem that includes social isolation and extreme anxiety when thinking about social situations. this creates another emotional conflict which can be a similar burden. young people want to have romance and sexual relations of course. but the
effects of online porn has made this seem impossible. imagine if pre history humans were provided an effortless source of food. would they continue to hunt and gather? no they likely wouldnt. it would be stressful after a life a free food to be suddenly handed a bow and a tent and told to go hunt.
its important to give teens messages that theres no right way to be. i like the message the son gives to the mom at the end of the movie plesentvillie. that its not supposed to be anything. iow take the pressure off yourself, especially if that pressure is debilitating. that dosent mean opt out forever. but just do your best. take it slow. its ok to do a little at a time. detrans man Tulip wrote many trans ppl grew up in religious homes. does this type of home also place added expectations? or constant messages of celebrations of male behavior? or maybe its the binary of belief and non belief. the failure to conceptualize religion as just one of many belief systems. teach how islam
started. about how mormanismn did.
parents often have messages that include the reality of life. but this is impossible to imagine from the safe and plenty suburban environment. i often tell my own kids that if i lost my job our whole family who i support with one income would have to go live under a tree outdoors somewhere. just to remind them of reality in a humorous way . i dont mean to blame parents.
we are victims of our own sucess. going from childhood to
adulthood is like entering earths atmosphere for some. emotionally its just too much. one has to enter the atmosphere gradually to avoid burning up. but whats causing the friction is the stress. and stress is caused by perceptions. from the outside it may seem like these kids have nothing to worry about. but from their view the tinyesy step looks like a huge cliff. straight males may have these emotions and not know it. i think gay males would be more aware of this issue, but they can face even more challenges operating in the world due to being gay so can face what also may seem like an unsurmountable set of challenges.
imo, some are being cynical when they ID as trans. having a fetish is not a curse. but some are opting into the curse and just pretending to have a fetish. imo, only one in 50 who actually have agp ID as trans. one of my favorite groups now surprisingly are guys they used to call maskers. these guys purchase full body rubber female costumes. but the main thing is they go to work each day as men and wear the costume for fun. they know theyre not women. that idea would seem crazy to them. i used to see photos of these guys in their costumes online and their appearance still scares me and gives me a chill. but now these guys are my heros. they know they have a fetish but theyre not pretending to be the opposite sex.
i dont really think bruce jenner (i forget his fem name) and other adult trans ppl really think theyre womem. its only kids who are tricked by this.
Good point. We mustn’t abandon boys who are also sucked into this cult, albeit in different ways and for different reasons. Bottom line is all the young people who disappear into the gender machine are being exploited and abused. Letting them know there’s a way out and a path to a healthier life is essential.
The DSM makes the distinction between autogynephilia as a phenomenon and a disorder, which is when it starts affecting everyday life, or sense of self; autogynephilia in itself is not in itself a medical condition.
I don't think you can unlearn the autogynephilia-the-phenomenon, but I do think autogynephilia-the-disorder can be unlearned, or cured, to revert back to where it no longer affects the sense of self, nor everday life.
I think social aspects e.g. online communities, "gender identity" ideology, feminist myths around autogynephilia and niche pornography can increase the chances of autogynephilia turning into a disorder, and that this can be reversed by removing that stimulus.
Of course, this is easier said than done, given that society, including schools, have been captured by "gender identity" ideology. In previous generations, I think the majority of experiences autogynephilia went unobserved under the different social environment, and would have in no way lead what we call "transition" today.
I don't think it is an easy job to remove boys from this stimulus. I think that will largely have to depend on their own motivation, and some quite existential questions: what kind of lives do they want to lead? How do they imagine themselves in the future, ten, twenty, forty, years from now? Is there a better life than that primarily spent online? How did men in the past live their lives, looking at men like David Bowie?
The idea that autogynephilia itself is somehow a slippery-slope to "transition" as a harmful myth, and it is ironically spread most by those who position themselves as against the transitioning of children, e.g. with comments liked by feminists, such as "Starts with clothes, escalates to body modifications.... AGP in a nutshell", or by "gender critical" counsellors who view autogynephilia as a "highway to Yaniv-ery, with no exit ramps". [1]
Regarding whether or not autogynephilia is innate, I think I agree with Ray Blanchard: [2]
"I don’t think that people are born with fully formed paraphilias, fully formed specific paraphilic interests and I don’t think that anybody is born with a fully-formed cross-gender identity. What I think is that people are born with predispositions or vulnerabilities to a kind of erotic miss-learning, which then predisposes them to things like autogynephilia, perhaps it predisposes them to develop a cross-gender identity […]
I don’t think think people are born with that specific crystallised paraphilia, but I think they are born with some sort of defect, where erotic learning is not self-correcting… some paraphilias definitely cluster: autogynephilia and masochism, for example, and autogynephilia, masochism and what we might call “stuff fetishism”: fetishism for particular materials, like leather, silk, rubber… it’s not completely at random…"
[1] https://since2010.substack.com/p/part-7-rogd-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria
[2] https://gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/61-pioneers-series-autogynephilia-myth-and-meaning-with-ray-blanchard
Wow - I have just come across your Substack and I'm blown away by how interesting it is. I'll be thinking about the implications of what you are writing for a long time. Thank you.
I have seen the anime hentai to gay to furry to endless fetish... And at that point it makes sense to feel refuge and sustenance in a community of wrongly reviled people. Enough revulsion of the not quite right identities and stereotypes already ascribed and ill-fit to a young man. The AgP has looked like the ROGD boy imagining wearing the dress and sexy thigh highs and finally being able to arrive and accept who he really is, and being able to not worry, no matter how strange he might find himself to be. It's taking time to understand how that experience might feel. I even imagine that it is potentially easier to conceive of one's own self as a verifiable and certified trans rather than some minimized variation of a boy going through puberty and life change and adhd+ and open to the influence of the culture of those around. I mean, weird is just not legitimate. The Breakfast Club is changed from the strangeness of hoping people according to their low scope experiences and limited society into it becoming necessary to find oneself in a terrain much vaster. If you want to inhabit your own strangeness, it is like you have to be legit defined into a self which is both strange and yet asserts its own acceptability against the estranging forces. If it were a ritual sufficient to make one OK, it is better to be trans because it allows one to just take clear action and have a clear path. I don't know. Because how do you ever understand yourself if you're left up to your own uneasy unclarity? It's hard to wait and see how life goes without struggling to make it the right way and know what it is and attempt to feel solid in that action. These kinds of posts help me understand more.
Thank you for this sensible essay, i hope the boys and men who need it the most can fid their way to it.
Although i'm not sure one can say every AGP male is able to get over it or enter full remission (i believe it can set an unrealistic expectation that everyone can do it just like it happens with other paraphilias and mental health conditions, but we can agree to disagree on that point), i agree with this sentiment that it doesnt inherently make them a monster just for having it and that there is more than one pathway is quite needed in the conversation about this phenomenon. There is too much distortion and overdemonization of the concept as it is, be it from gender identity extremists (trans, cis allies) or from trans critical people (conservatives, leftist radfems, GCs). I don't see how most of it actually helps the young males questioning or struggling with it, i'd dare to say it selflishly makes it worse but they don't care to improve the conversation as long as they get their 5min of self-righteousness. Too much talking with not enough listening from people who have not gone through it.
Have you seen this before? https://archive.is/ppAzo your essay reminded me of it.
This is excellent. Thank you for writing this.
Great writing. Thanks for sharing this . Really important to get an insight into male sexuality and how it's so open to exploitation.
Thank you for writing this. I’m dismayed at the fractures I’m seeing on Twitter between people I like and respect as important voices. What you’re saying seems an accurate explanation of what I’ve seen in my own family as well as others I know in the same boat. Take care.