The Truth about Trans

Until the medical profession recognises that there are different reasons behind cross-sex identification, and that “trans” is not explained by an innate and supposedly knowable “gender identity”, then they are arguably likely to be harming, rather than helping, those who seek their care.

The idea that “trans” is explainable by an apparent “gender identity” “trapped” in the wrong body is contested. The concept of “gender identity” used in this way can be seen as a continuation of what researchers called, in the case of males identifying as women, the “feminine essence narrative”, which suggests that “Male-to-female transsexuals are, in some literal sense and not just in a figurative sense, women inside men’s bodies”. ¹

In disagreement with the “feminine essence narrative”, researchers instead see that cross-sex identification is in fact a matter of atypical sexual orientation. In the late 1980s, a researcher named Dr Ray Blanchard posed that the root cause for all male-to-female cross-sex identification was a matter of either homosexuality or autogynephilia, which is a word he coined that meant “love of the concept of oneself as a woman”.²

Homosexual cross-sex identification

In the DSM-5, the “two types” of cross-sex identification disorder are recognised as “early-onset”, and “late-onset”. The first, early-onset, in the case of males, is characterised as being when a particularly feminine boy has the persistent wish to be a girl. At the onset of puberty, they will usually find that they are homosexual, and this persistent wish will, in the majority of cases, stop. ^{3 and 4}

Blaire White’s life experience follows the pattern of the homosexual transsexual type.

Autogynephilic cross-sex identification

The second type, autogynephilic, or late-onset, occurs from puberty onwards, when an otherwise masculine boy, might suddenly declare that he wants to be a woman, or a man might suddenly present as wanting to be a woman in later life, even after marriage and having children.

Dr Blanchard writes that the cause of this type of cross-sex identification is also connected with sexual orientation. In this case, rather than a heterosexual male being oriented solely towards women in the outside world, he is also oriented to the concept of himself as a woman:

Gender identity disturbance in males is always accompanied by one of two erotic anomalies. All gender dysphoric males who are not sexually oriented toward men are instead sexually oriented toward the thought or image of themselves as women. … the writer would prefer to replace it with the term autogynephilia (“love of oneself as a woman”).

It should be noted that the concept of autogynephilia does not imply that autogynephilic males are always sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as women, or by dressing in women’s clothes, or by contemplating themselves cross-dressed in the mirror – any more than a man in love always obtains an erection at the sight of his sweetheart, or pair-bonded geese copulate continuously.⁵

The phenomenon of autogynephilia appears less well known than homosexuality, as not every male who experiences it will find themselves compelled to adopt the outward identity of a woman.⁶ In itself, autogynephilia is neither a disorder nor a diagnosis—for most, it will be an entirely private experience:

History of autogynephilia

Although Dr Blanchard coined the word “autogynephilia”, it is not a modern phenomenon and can be observed in history. The researcher Henry Havelock Ellis recognised the phenomenon in the 1930s, and named it “Eonism”, after the Chevalier d’Éon, the cross-dressing French diplomat:

On the psychic side, as I view it, the Eonist is embodying, in an extreme degree, the aesthetic attitude of imitation of, and identification with, the admired object. It is normal for a man to identify himself with the woman he loves. The Eonist carries that identification too far…⁷

It is conceivable that David Bowie had autogynephilia, given his experiment with cross-sex presentation and his relationship with the male-to-female homosexual transsexual Romy Haag,⁸ as the attraction in this relationship correlates with autogynephilia.⁹

Bowie’s apparent ambiguous bisexuality would also be explained by what Dr Blanchard termed “pseudobisexuality”.¹⁰ For a male with autogynephilia, men are not the target for romantic or personal attraction but are rather “faceless” props, used only insofar as they further the conceit of the attraction to the concept of oneself as a woman.

The recurring phenomenon of autogynephilia through time and place suggests that there is an innate propensity behind the phenomenon. Dr Blanchard considered the question of whether or not autogynephilia is innate in an interview:

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 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…¹¹

The preference for certain types of materials is recognisable in accounts of autogynephilia, which reference such preference for certain fabrics:

The idea of autogynephilia as a misdirected sexual orientation is compelling when one observes examples of cross-sex identification. The impression is arguably that of an otherwise masculine male who is not searching for a girlfriend in the outside world, but who searches for their girlfriend in the internal world of the concept of himself as a woman:

Why “gender identity”?

The two-type theory of male cross-sex identification, of homosexuality and autogynephilia, is arguably the truth about “trans”. However, it was met with a backlash, particularly amongst transsexual male activists who preferred to believe in the narrative of the “trapped” “gender identity”, for political and psychological reasons.

These activists in particular targeted a contemporary of Dr Blanchard, Prof. J. Michael Bailey, in a campaign of harassment after the publication of his book The Man Who Would Be Queen, which covered the research on the two-type theory in a popular manner easily accessible to the public.

Alice Dreger, a bioethicist whose work included campaigning for the rights of people born with disorders of sexual development (DSDs), described the issue:

The shame and derision accorded trans women like Juanita and Cher doesn’t disappear just because a few scientists may be personally fine with the idea that men might become women primarily because of reasons of sexuality, not “trapped” gender identity… the trans women who attacked Bailey for his book understood that the world would probably not agree… They wanted the whole business of Blanchard’s taxonomic division shot down. Transsexuality should appear only as the public could stomach it, as one simple story of gender, a tale of “true” females tragically born into male bodies, rescued by medical and surgical reassignment. And there should be absolutely no mention of autogynephilia or any other sexual desires that might make trans women look to the sexually sheltered like the perverts they were historically assumed to be.¹²

Arguably, many of these activists were delusional, as they genuinely believed that they had a female “essence”—or “gender identity”. The campaign of harassment appears therefore not only motivated by political reasons but also by personal psychological reasons: to avoid shattering the delusion that they were, in fact, not women but males with atypical sexuality. Anne Lawrence, a self-described autogynephilic transsexual, writes in the book Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies:

The theory of autogynephilic transsexualism forces us to confront the fact that both our essential natures and our motives seem to directly contradict our desired ends. We autogynephilic transsexuals want to be women; but the theory tells us that we are not women and that we don’t even resemble women—not in the least. We would like to believe that our desire to be women springs from our need to express some internal feminine essence; but the theory tells us that we have no internal feminine essence and that our desire to be women actually springs from our paraphilic male sexuality.¹³

Today, knowledge of the two-type theory of male cross-sex identification has been shut down. In its place, the belief that transsexuals literally have the “essence” or “gender identity” of the opposite sex prevails.

Males with autogynephilia, who have a propensity for cross-sex identification, are being told by every position in authority, by schools, charities and non-governmental organisations, that what they are feeling, literally makes them in some way the opposite sex.

Whereas in previous generations, many boys and men with autogynephilia would have kept their experience of autogynephilia private or tried to integrate the phenomenon with their male identity, now, the belief in “gender identity” is revealing the latent phenomenon of autogynephilia: increasingly more males are now “coming out” as “trans women” with the belief that they have a female “gender identity”.

Despite Prof. J. Michael Bailey, and his family, being attacked by those wishing to suppress research on autogynephilia, Bailey remains of the opinion that those hurt the most regarding the suppression of research, are males with autogynephilia themselves.¹⁴

This is because not every male who experiences autogynephilic cross-sex identity disorder is invested in a delusion of womanhood, but rather many are trying the best they can to understand what they are feeling: they are not being served by the myth that they have the “gender identity” or “essence” of the opposite sex, which can lead to a dangerous pathway towards inappropriate medical intervention.

The medical profession

It is arguable that the medical profession has abandoned research-led care and is now captured by a belief in “gender identity”, leading the medical community to harm, rather than help those who approach them, regarding their distress related to cross-sex identification.

Medical professionals cannot advise parents of remarkably feminine boys that they will likely grow out of their cross-sex identification at the onset of puberty, and can discount the narratives of older typically masculine males with autogynephilia.

Neither can they advise parents of girls that statistics and history suggest they are likely suffering from a social contagion.

Medical professionals cannot give this advice, as to do so would be to undermine the belief that it is possible for someone to know their own “gender identity”, and that cross-sex identification is solely a matter of a “trapped” “gender identity”. The medical profession is disregarding the evidence and providing interventions based on a belief in “gender identity”.

Dr Blanchard talks about how the pathway to medical treatment has changed:

Blanchard: Oh, for sure. I mean, the people who approve, who are in favour of transition in children, who are in favour of earlier medical interventions, whether it’s puberty preventing medications, whether it’s testosterone for young girls, whether it’s surgical procedures carried out on kids as young as 16, I think they all believe that they know—they know what’s going to happen to this person in 10 years or 20 years. These people believe they know: that they can see into somebody’s soul, and they know how things are going to be. I’m not that good.¹⁵

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This article is part of a memo published here first.

Photo by Lena Balk on Unsplash

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1. “The Classification and labelling of nonhomosexual gender dysphorias”. Blanchard, R., Ph. D. Archives of Sexual Behavior 18(4) 315-334 p. 323. ↩︎
2. “Deconstructing the Feminine Essence Narrative”, Blanchard, R. PhD. Archives of Sexual Behavior (2008) 37:434–438. ↩︎
3. “Boys clinic-referred for gender identity concerns in childhood had a high rate of desistance and a high rate of a biphilic/androphilic sexual orientation.” Singh, D., Bradley, S. J., & Zucker, K. J. (2021). “A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder”. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12. ↩︎
4. See also the story of Danny in The Man who would be Queen, Bailey, J. M. B., Ph. D. (Joseph Henry Press, 2003). The book is available legally for free here. ↩︎
5. “The Classification and labelling of nonhomosexual gender dysphorias”. ↩︎
6. “It is important to distinguish between autogynephilia and autogynephilic gender dysphoria. Autogynephilia is basically a sexual orientation, and once present does not go away, although its intensity may wax and wane. Autogynephilic gender dysphoria sometimes follows autogynephilia, and is the strong wish to transition from male to female. A male must have autogynephilia to have autogynephilic gender dysphoria, but just because he is autogynephilic doesn’t mean he will be gender dysphoric. Many autogynephilic males live their lives contented to remain male. Furthermore, sometimes autogynephilic gender dysphoria remits so that a male who wanted to change sex no longer does so”.
   “Gender dysphoria is not one thing” Bailey, J. M., Ph.D and Blanchard, R., Ph.D., 4th Wave Now: A community of people who question the medicalization of gender-atypical youth. ↩︎
7. Psychology of Sex. By Havelock Ellis. (New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1933.) ↩︎
8. “David Bowie’s Transgender Muse Romy Haag”, Dangerous Minds, 23rd June 2015. ↩︎
9. The attraction to male-to-female transsexuals (gynandromorphs – GAMs), also known as gynandromorphophilia (GAMP), correlates with autogynephilia, making it likely Bowie’s experimentation with sex presentation was an expression of autogynephilia.
   “Sexual Arousal Patterns of Autogynephilic Male Cross-Dressers” Kevin J Hsu, A. M. Rosenthal, David Miller, J. Michael Bailey Archives of Sexual Behavior 46 January 2017. ↩︎
10. “Autogynephilic males might be labelled bisexual, but this is arguably qualitatively different from that experienced by homosexual gender dysphorics… this type of “bisexual” orientation need not reflect an equal attraction to male and female physiques and would perhaps be better characterised as pseudobisexuality”.
    Blanchard, R., & Steiner, B. W. (Eds.). (1990). Clinical management of gender identity disorders in children and adults. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press. Available on the author’s website: http://individual.utoronto.ca/ray_blanchard/ ↩︎
11. “Pioneer Series: Autogynephilia: Myth and Meaning with Ray Blanchard” Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast. O’Malley, S., Ayad, S. 4 February 2022. ↩︎
12. Galileo’s Middle Finger, Dreger, A., (Penguin, 2015) pp. 65-66. ↩︎
13. Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: narratives of autoynephilic transsexualism Lawrence, A. (Springer, 2013) p. 203. The book is available legally for free at https://annelawrence.com/book/ ↩︎
14. “Conway is responsible more than any other person for suppression of research and rational discussion of autogynephilia. And gender critical followers: there are many good, decent, and kind autogynephiles, and most of them would like to know what is true about their condition. They have suffered most by its suppression.” Prof. J. Michael Bailey. X. 27th August 2023 https://twitter.com/profjmb/status/1695922373780799955 ↩︎
15. “The Life & Research of Dr. Ray Blanchard”, interview with Benjamin A. Boyce. ↩︎