Growing Autosexual Group-Identity

increasing the size of the self-aware autosexual community with reddit and other online platforms

On Reddit, people in the process of questioning their gender identity often make posts in large transgender subreddits with descriptions of their gender-related experiences, feelings, and sentiments with the hope that the trans people there will be able to tell them whether they too are trans. Most of these posts are made by autosexuals who likely do not know they are autosexual. As a result, many such posts are of the “am I trans or is it a fetish?” genre.

Commenters responding to the original poster often say they felt similar feelings before transitioning (and that although it may not be socially appropriate to diagnose you as trans, dear stranger, the feelings you described nonetheless do not sound very cis). Their responses commonly include links to articles or essays which nudge the reader into the conclusion they are trans. Of all these recruitment documents, the gender dysphoria bible is the most influential; it typically appears at least once in nearly all these threads. In threads where the OP reports cross-gender eroticism, essays tailored to that situation are often posted which frame that eroticism as a byproduct of underlying cross-gender identity (e.g., It’s Just a Fetish, Right?, Beneath the Surface). Links to turn-me-into-a-girl.com, a website seemingly tailor-made to appeal to autogynephilic males, also commonly show up.

Together, these information resources serve a recruiting function that increases the size of the transgender population. They nudge people who are questioning their gender down the path toward transsexualism, all without disclosing the ultimate causes of transsexualism. Although well-intentioned, it bothers me to see this happen day after day. I’m okay with adults consciously choosing to medically transition after understanding the specific type of gender dysphoria they have, but it bothers me to see people channeled into pursuing transsexualism without understanding the ultimate cause of their wish to do so. I don’t think this state of affairs optimizes the number of people who benefit from medical transition versus those who are harmed by it.

While I don’t like how this recruitment apparatus functions because it implicitly prescribes a course of action to its targets, I readily admit it is highly effective at its core function of increasing the number of transsexuals in existence. I would like autosexuals to have an analogous recruitment apparatus which funnels autosexuals into self-awareness about their sexuality. While it wouldn’t implicitly prescribe any particular course of action with respect to gender transition, it would still describe the gender feelings that accompany autoheterosexuality so that autosexuals could make sense of their experiences.

In the past year, more autogynephilia and autoandrophilic people have begun to speak openly about their experiences with these autosexual orientations. For example, Ray Williams (Substack | YouTube | Twitter) and Jared Kavan (Twitter | podcast appearance) have spoken about their experience with autogynephilia. Similarly, Aaron Terrell (YouTube | Substack | Twitter), Courtney Coulson (YouTube | podcast appearance), and OakLeavesAndOnions (YouTube | podcast appearance) have spoken publicly about their experience with autoandrophilia. I applaud these early adopters for stepping into the arena in this way. Not only for their bravery, but also for the positive effect they’re having in helping other autosexuals feel less alone in their experiences.

As more autoheterosexuals come out and speak openly about their experiences, it will become progressively safer to do so. As the perceived reputational risk of coming out continues to decline, more autoheterosexuals will come out. This virtuous cycle will grow the size of the self-aware autoheterosexual population.

While working on Autoheterosexual, I was excited by the magnitude of the opportunity I saw before us. We are comparable in size to the homosexual population. There are millions of us. Although the rise of our collective group identity has been delayed by the transsexual subset of our kind who chose to suppress the truth rather than accept it, the sheer size of our population guarantees that there will eventually be one or more well-known group identities pertaining to us. These group identities will either coalesce around umbrella terms such as autosexual or autoheterosexual, or sex-specific labels such as autogynephilic and autoandrophilic. But regardless of which labels we eventually rally around, we have the numbers to rally.

So let’s get to it.

Reddit

Join and participate in subreddits devoted to self-aware autoheterosexuals such as r/askAGP, r/autogynephilia, r/autoandrophilia, r/autosexual, and r/AGAMP).

In addition, join some mainstream transgender subreddits so that when you see a gender-questioning person come through, you can let them know about the self-aware A*P subs. You can do this either by commenting on their thread or sending them a DM. Each approach has its upsides and downsides.

Commenting directly on their thread is a good way to reach not only the OP, but also any lurkers who may read your comment. Since it is out in the open, however, there is a chance that you’ll be banned from the sub for your heresy. For example, treating autogynephilia or autoandrophilia as real and related to transness is literally against the rules in r/mtf and r/ftm. If you’re worried about being banned from any particular sub, DMing may be a better option.

DMing has the benefit of being private and discreet. There’s no element of public performance, just a 1-on-1. The DM can be as simple as “hey I saw your thread in r/xxxxx, you might want to check out r/askAGP in case you find it relatable” or “I’ve had similar feelings to what you described in your post and I found it helpful to read r/askAGP”. You may also want to mention one or more details from their post that resonated with you or made you think they might be experiencing autosexuality. A lot of autoheterosexuals are skittish or cagey when others allude to the sexual aspect of their cross-gender inclination, so it is best to come across as calm, helpful, and nonjudgmental when you reach out to them.

Whereas making comments or posts can get you banned from a subreddit, private messages fall under site-wide jurisdiction., so if enough people complain about receiving a DM from you, your account could get banned from Reddit. However, you wouldn’t be banned the first time someone reports you, so you could just stop sending these sort of DMs after the first time someone reports you. But if you’re not worried about losing your account and having to make a new one, this isn’t really anything to worry about.

In my experience, people who have not yet transitioned are more open to hearing about autosexuality causing trans identity. It is most effective to reach people in their questioning phase before they’ve gone all-in on the cross-gender path—you want to reach them before their cross-identity has solidified and developed defenses to protect itself.

If you were to join just one transgender subreddit for the purpose of making contact with gender-questioning autosexuals and letting them know about the autosexuality subs, r/asktransgender is probably the most important one to join. There is at least one new thread every single day there from someone who is trying to figure out their gender situation, and they currently aren’t being given a fair shot at learning the truth about the source of their gender feelings.

You can also encounter people questioning their gender or sexuality in other subreddits such as r/MtF, r/ftm, r/trans, r/egg_irl, r/transgender, r/sissyology, and r/gaytransguys. Join some of these subreddits and send a DM when you see a poster who is likely autosexual and trying to make sense of their experiences. They deserve to be pointed toward the truth.

Other Platforms

This post focused on recruiting from Reddit because I’ve paid the most attention to Reddit in the past several years. However, we will need to build a presence on other social media platforms as well.

Video is an important medium, so it would be beneficial if more YouTubers made videos in which they talk about their experiences with autosexual orientations such as autogynephilia and autoandrophilia. Even if you don’t make videos yourself, you can grow autosexuality discourse by mentioning autosexuality in the comments of other people’s videos.

Instagram also has great potential. It would help a lot if we had one or more accounts posting images of text analogous to the postings made by autogynephilies_anonymous and cursed_cancellations. After all, images with text have such potential for memetic virality that they’re now called “memes” in colloquial speech. To my knowledge, there is virtually no self-aware autosexuality discourse on Instagram. Are you into graphic design? Do you like making memes? If so, please consider playing a role on this front.

If you are the type of person who can keep calm while your conversational partners are losing their shit and lashing out with personal attacks and other silliness, please consider joining me and others on Twitter. Twitter has an outsized impact on discourse because of how many intelligent, influential people are on there. If you can hang, please do. When participating in online discourse, keep in mind that most witnesses are lurkers and you can’t see them. Do your best to stay calm and conduct yourself with decent behavior so that these unseen onlookers develop favorable impressions of self-aware autosexuals. Always remember the lurker.

It’s also possible to help with organizing and community building by creating or maintaining Discord servers for self-aware autosexuals. There are countless servers populated by trans people who buy into the mainstream transgender ideas, but there are comparatively few in which self-aware autosexuals are a majority. Although discord servers themselves are quite invisible to the broader public, they are quite effective for coordinating action and building micro-communities, so it would be beneficial to have a constellation of Discord servers for our kind.

If you have any ideas about other ways to contribute or simply want to share your thoughts, please make a comment below. By working together, we can accomplish a great deal. If you want to get in on the ground floor, now is a great time to join in and offer a hand.