Homosexual Preferences Don't Make You HSTS

When engaged in autogynephilia discourse, I’ve repeatedly encountered MTFs who claim that having a sexual preference for men means they cannot fall within the autogynephilic category.

This is a common misunderstanding.

Although gender dysphoria in nonhomosexual males is caused by autogynephilia, not all gender dysphoria among males who report same-sex preferences is ultimately of homosexual etiology. In fact, some gender-dysphoric males who report homosexual preferences are autogynephilic. This possibility is a corollary of two observations Blanchard made with respect to bisexual MTFs and analloerotic MTFs.

In the first published paper that used the term autogynephilia, Blanchard explained autogynephilia's relation to the sexual preferences of nonhomosexual gender-dysphoric males. Blanchard’s remarks about the latter two groups—bisexuals and analloerotics—are relevant here:

• "Heterosexual gender dysphorics represent those cases in which the autogynephilic disorder interferes the least with normal erotic attraction to other persons."

• "Bisexual gender dysphorics represent those cases in which the autogynephilic disorder gives rise to some secondary erotic interest in males that coexists with the individual's basic attraction to females." [emphasis added]

• "Analloerotic gender dysphorics represent those cases in which the autogynephilic disorder nullifies or overshadows any erotic attraction to women; those cases, in Hirschfeld's metaphor, in which "the woman within" completely supplants her fleshly rivals." [emphasis added]

From pps. 323–324 of "The classification and labeling of nonhomosexual gender dysphorias"

Bisexual MTFs experience meta-attaction to men.

Analloerotic MTFs have their conventional attraction to women overshadowed and nullified by the strength of their autogynephilia.

If you combine these two aspects of autogynephilia:

1. autogynephilia can create attraction to men (meta-androphilia)

2. autogynephilia can remove attraction to women (auto>>allo)

it follows that some autogynephilic males will be attracted to men yet not attracted to women—and therefore will have homosexual preferences.

This 2x2 table shows the logic at play:

Sexual preferences in AGPs based on presence of meta-attraction and the strength of autogynephilia in relation to allogynephilia.

In cases where autogynephilia is strong enough to overshadow and nullify allogynephilia, the presence of meta-androphilia can lead to homosexual partner preferences.

Suddenly it makes a lot more sense why some MTFs who report homosexuality also report prior cross-gender arousal (eg, 15% in Blanchard 1985, 23% in Nuttbrock et al. 2011).