Interpersonal Autogynephilia: Socially Being a Woman
Interpersonal Autogynephilia: Socially Being a Woman
how autogynephilic people socially summon their inner woman
This is chapter 2.5 of Autoheterosexual: Attracted to Being the Other Sex, a comprehensive science book about autoheterosexuality, the inverted heterosexuality responsible for cross-gender attraction. Comprised of 36 chapters in total, Autoheterosexual not only covers this most common cause of transgenderism, it also explores rarer forms of trans identity such as transrace and transspecies identity.
In order to coordinate behavior and complete necessary tasks, cultures tend to develop sex-based social roles that prescribe the range of acceptable behaviors and the expected responsibilities of people based on their apparent sex.
Men do this; women do that.
Men and women are seen and treated differently in social situations, so autogynephilic people often want to be in the gender role associated with females. This desire is associated with interpersonal autogynephilia, a sexual interest in socially being a woman.
Interpersonal autogynephilia is about being seen and treated as a woman by others. It commonly includes the desire to be admired as a woman, to pass and be treated as a woman, or to attract men as a woman.
The way others treat us has an outsized impact on how we see ourselves[i], so feminine reinforcement from interpersonal AGP is an especially strong contributor to cross-gender identity formation.
Just being in a group where everyone else is a woman can be emotionally rewarding for autogynephilic people, even if they aren’t being explicitly treated as one of them. When they are treated as one of the ladies, however, it can be a big deal[ii].
Being a Woman Among Women
Plenty of transfems in old sexology narratives expressed a desire to be accepted into the world of women.
Their narratives suggest that this interest wasn’t consciously sexual to them. Instead, it was a powerful source of emotional validation. After all, who else has the standing to decide who counts as a woman other than women themselves?
This interest wasn’t limited to overt acceptance by women. Just talking with women about feminine things brought satisfaction to some transfems. To some extent, being the only male in a group of women could also satisfy the desire to be a woman among women (surrounded by women, it’s easier to feel like one of them).
Magnus Hirschfeld remarked on this desire to be a woman among women because he saw it often: “It is even more striking that many times there is the wish to be in the company of women when dressed like this, as one of them says, ‘Above all, I like to appear in the company of ladies as a lady’”[iii].
Hirschfeld knew how important this symbolic inclusion in womanhood was to his transfeminine patients, so he arranged for one of them to spend a vacation under the guidance of a woman who was willing to support her efforts to socially present as a woman.
She spent the most memorable evening in the company of women, cracking nuts and listening to poetry together. The patient said of this experience, “From the bottom of my heart I felt so comfortable in their midst”, and “at no other time had I ever wanted to be a lady so much as this evening”[iv].
Her language is unambiguous: it was enormously meaningful to her to be considered a woman by women and to be able to socialize with them in that role. The lasting memory of this experience alleviated her depression for a long time afterward[v].
Another transfem remarked that even though she’d had sex with plenty of women, she preferred to talk to them about womanly things like clothing and jewelry. On the odd occasion when women noticed her pierced ears and placed one of their earrings in it, it was a “moment of the greatest pleasure”[vi].
Other transfems said they felt most comfortable among women or that they felt magnetically drawn to their company[vii]. “I should like to be a woman in order to enter utterly into their lives as one of themselves”, shared one transfem[viii].
This interest in being a woman among women didn’t seem to stem from a desire to have sexual access to women. If anything, experiencing sexual attraction to women would interfere with their aims.
R. L. acknowledged that although she wanted to be “admitted to the inner sanctuary of a woman’s life”, she didn’t want to “intrude or wish to be subject to temptation as a man by being in a woman’s bedroom”[ix].
Being sexually attracted to women at these times would actively interfere with their goal of being a woman among women, so these autogynephilic transfems explicitly did not want to feel amorous toward women in women’s spaces. The powerful emotional validation of being included as a woman was much more important to them. Regular heterosexuality was contrary to their goals and a distant concern in comparison to the emotional rewards they sought from inclusion in womanhood.
Ambigynephilia and Autogynephilic Meta-Attraction
Autogynephilia can shift sexual partner preferences toward masculinity because a partner’s masculinity helps the autogynephilic person embody femininity in comparison. The more masculine their partner is, the easier it is to feel feminine. The more feminine their partner is, the harder it is to feel feminine in contrast.
This gender-affirming sexual attraction, meta-attraction, is an increased attraction to others based on what that person’s traits imply about oneself. Autogynephilic meta-attraction increases sexual interest in men, masculine women, and lesbians.
Autogynephilic people who are simultaneously attracted to women and to being one are ambigynephilic. Their gynephilia is bidirectional, pointing both internally and externally at the same time.
For an ambigynephilic person, a woman with masculine traits can appeal to both sides of their gynephilia. Her female body appeals to their allogynephilia (attraction to others as women), and any of her physical or mental traits they interpret as masculine play into their autogynephilic meta-attraction. Women who are energetic, confident, assertive, strong, competent, dominant, or intelligent tend to be especially attractive in this way.
Autogynephilic meta-attraction also makes lesbians more appealing, but not necessarily because lesbians are typically more masculine than heterosexual women. More importantly, their sexual identity as lesbians implies that people who are with them sexually are women, or at least feminine enough to attract a lesbian.
Narratives of Meta-Attraction to Women
In Hirschfeld’s day, homosexuality was heavily stigmatized, so most of his transfeminine patients stuck to relationships with women. The women they sought had a consistent type: “The majority of male transvestites feel attracted to women though as a rule they prefer the mannish type of woman who is more masculine in her mental than in her physical make-up”[x].
The more masculine a woman was, the more attractive she became to these transfems. Hirschfeld noted that they desired “a woman with contrasting characteristics to the ones they themselves possessed”[xi]. This desire for gender affirmation through contrast is the heart of autohet meta-attraction.
“Strong, manly women were always my ideal lovers. They always make me feel like a woman”, explained one transfem[xii]. She knew exactly what she wanted: an “energetic, strong woman who would impress me mentally and physically”—one who would “make the first move” and ideally have “a very small moustache”[xiii].
One transfem described her wife as “an energetic, educated lady”[xiv], while another transfem described her ideal woman as “physically, totally a woman; yet emotionally strongly developed, an intellectual”[xv].
Meta-attraction could even influence how they saw their wives. One transfem’s wife found intercourse painful, so they stopped having it. After this, she started to perceive “the male element in the energetic and…stubborn character” of her wife[xvi].
Sometimes transfems enacted their desire for a masculine sexual partner through sexual role play in which their partners would dress as a man or seduce them like one[xvii]. For instance, one of Ellis’s cases, C. T., reported, “One night I got my wife to dress in a suit of mine. The result was that I was almost mad with desire to be a girl and to love her as a boy”[xviii].
The Hungarian physician “married an energetic, amiable lady, of a family in which female government was rampant”[xix]. She felt that their love was an “amor lesbicus” and that their marriage was “like two women living together, one of whom regards herself as in the mask of a man”[xx].
She wasn’t the only one who identified with lesbians. One transfem said that she felt “attracted as a woman to women”[xxi] and that if she were a woman, she’d still want to be with women. When another transfem saw two women being close, intimate friends, she “immediately wanted to be one of the two”. After she learned about lesbianism, such scenes could even make her feel envious[xxii].
With few exceptions, these autogynephilic transfems sought masculine, energetic women with strong intellects or dominant personalities. In relation to this female masculinity, they could feel more feminine in contrast.
Meta-Androphilia: Gender-Affirming Attraction to Men
For some autogynephilic people, the erotic impulse to feel feminine in contrast with a partner’s masculinity can also make them have sexual fantasies about playing a female sexual role with a man. This sexual interest, meta-androphilia, is an attraction to being a woman with a man.
Meta-androphilia is unlike the direct attraction to male bodies that a gay male or straight female experiences. Instead, it’s more about being in the sexual role of a woman and the validation that comes from feeling attractive to men.
In meta-androphilic sexual fantasies, the men are often faceless[xxiii]. Some autogynephilic people have reported that when they actually tried to live out the fantasy, they found it to be a letdown or even disgusting[xxiv]. Others have reported that they enjoy sex with men but can only fall in love with women[xxv].
This attraction to men is contingent upon being a woman, so autogynephilic trans women frequently report that their sexual orientation shifted after undergoing gender transition[xxvi]. Some autogynephilic trans women have even concluded in retrospect that they were actually attracted to men their whole lives, but internalized homophobia held them back from realizing their true orientation[xxvii].
Understandably, fantasies of having sex with men as a woman can make an autogynephilic person confused about their sexual orientation. It can also lead them to identify as bisexual or gay.
Bisexual identity and behavior are both uncommonly prevalent in autogynephilic people. A population-representative study of Swedish men found that those who had ever been aroused by crossdressing were eight times as likely to have ever had sex with another male[xxviii]. Likewise, an online study found that among males who reported any sexual interest in behaving or dressing as women, about 30% identified as bisexual[xxix]. In comparison, only about 5% of American males report bisexual attractions (see Chapter 5.0).
I suspect that meta-androphilia and attraction to androgyny are the autogynephilia-associated phenomena that contribute to male bisexuality the most—both make males more likely to have sexual interest in other males.
Blanchard found that among trans women, the bisexual ones tended to be the most sexually interested in interpersonal autogynephilia[xxx]. He also found that attraction to men was significantly related to interpersonal autogynephilia[xxxi], which suggested that meta-androphilia was behind this increased attraction to men.
Meta-androphilia can be so influential on an autogynephilic person’s sexuality that prior to gender transition they may even identify as gay men if meta-androphilia is their primary source of sexual interest in others.
From the inside, it can be hard to discern the difference between meta-androphilia and conventional androphilia. It is likely even harder to tell the difference for autogynephilic people who lack sexual interest in women yet are meta-attracted to men: without a conventional sexual attraction for comparison purposes, how can they know the attraction they’re experiencing is different from conventional attraction to men?
Preferential Androphilia in Autogynephilic People
Assuming that sexual arousal from crossdressing is a valid indicator of autogynephilia, it seems that some MTFs who sexually prefer men are also autogynephilic.
Blanchard’s first typology study found that 15% of androphilic MTFs reported past arousal from crossdressing[xxxii]. A similar study found that 23% of their androphilic MTFs reported past arousal from crossdressing[xxxiii].
Data on males who identify as crossdressers also suggests that some pre-transition autogynephilic people prefer to be with men.
The crossdresser identity is typically adopted by heterosexual males and the drag queen identity is typically adopted by homosexual males[xxxiv]. However, in the two largest surveys of trans people conducted to date, 9%[xxxv] and 13%[xxxvi] of male crossdressers seemingly preferred men as sexual partners.
These numbers strongly suggest that autogynephilic people can have strictly androphilic partner preferences, even though much of the attraction seemingly originates in autoheterosexuality rather than homosexuality.
Meta-Androphilia: A Contentious Concept
Since meta-androphilia is a downstream effect of autogynephilia, the concept of meta-androphilia is sometimes perceived as offensive or invalidating by bisexual trans women.
To complicate matters, sexologists have sometimes used terms like “pseudobisexuality”[xxxvii] or “pseudo-androphilia”[xxxviii] which seem to imply that this attraction to men is not a real attraction or is somehow less legitimate than conventional androphilia.
But regardless of which words people use to describe it, meta-androphilia definitely exists—it’s been a known phenomenon for over a century at this point.
Historical Narratives of Meta-Androphilia
It didn’t take long for sexologists to notice that meta-androphilia was obviously different from conventional androphilia.
The big dawgs of early transgender science—Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis—both clearly articulated that the crossdressing males they studied weren’t into men in the same way that homosexuals were.
In fact, when Ellis wrote about the differences between sexual inversion (homosexuality) and eonism (transgenderism), he got so close to the insight that there are two types of MTF transgenderism:
Sexual inversion when it appears in Eonism would appear to be merely a secondary result of the aesthetically inverted psychic state. Eonism, when it appears in homosexual persons, is perhaps merely a secondary result of the sexually inverted psychic state.[xxxix]
Ellis knew that the interest in men shown by the transfems he studied was different than conventional homosexuality. So did Hirschfeld.
As a gay man and the world’s foremost expert on both homosexuality and transvestism, Hirschfeld could easily suss out that meta-androphilia was distinct from homosexuality:
It had the appearance of being only ‘episodic’ and accidental in character. It was either a matter of an undesired interlude…or as a desired experiment, but which was soon given up as being an unsatisfying and depressing experience. Number 2 clearly brings the basic core of these relationships to expression when he observes, “I have never felt an inclination toward men; only dressed as a lady did I enjoy flirting with them, because I was greatly flattered when I was thought to be a lady.”[xl]
Writing twenty years earlier, the Hungarian physician described her meta-androphilia in ways that don’t resemble conventional androphilia at all. She described it as “female desire, though not directed to any particular man”[xli] and said it was “more a longing to be possessed than a wish for coitus”[xlii]. Her erotic dreamworld contained two core aspects of meta-androphilic fantasy—being a woman and there being at least one penis present: “When erotic dreams or ideas occur, I see myself in the form I have as a woman, and see erected organs presenting”[xliii].
Not only were the men in her dreams faceless, they also might not have been much more than disembodied penises.
Although homosexuality has been greatly destigmatized in the present day, and it has become more common for autogynephilic people to act upon their meta-androphilic impulses, homophobia was rampant when these narratives were written. When transvestites fantasized about men, it could be alarming to their sense of self.
One transfem, whom Ellis described as having “a profound repugnance to homosexual relationships”[xliv], thought that acting on her meta-androphilia would be a step too far, and actively resisted her desire to be with a man: “I become absolutely intoxicated with the exquisite femininity of my feelings and I feel that the next development of wanting a male lover would be actual madness and so must be resisted with all the means in my power”[xlv].
Although it was uncommon, one of Hirschfeld’s transvestites actually acted upon her interest in men at least once. Perhaps out of caution, she did this when she was far away from home. Hirschfeld reported, “At 21, on vacation in the Orient, he consented to anal intercourse by Arabians”[xlvi].
One transfem even reported experiencing meta-androphilia in the realm of emotions as a child: after she developed feelings for a male teacher, she wanted to be his wife[xlvii].
Another transfem fantasized about being a prostitute with a “strapping young fellow” who would be forceful and sexually dominant[xlviii], while another could clearly tell that she wasn’t legitimately attracted to men but enjoyed receiving their flirtations anyways[xlix].
Overall, it seems that meta-androphilia is an attraction to being a woman with a man rather than a direct attraction to male bodies.
In Sum
Interpersonal autogynephilia is a sexual interest in socially being a woman. It can drive a desire to be treated as a woman, admired as a woman, seen as a woman, or accepted as a woman by women. In short, it is about being perceived as a woman by others.
This desire to have one’s femininity validated by others opens the possibility of meta-attraction: attraction to others based on what their traits imply about oneself. Through autogynephilic meta-attraction, interpersonal autogynephilia plays an outsized role in determining the sexual partner preferences of autogynephilic people. It alters taste in women by making masculine women and lesbians more attractive. It also creates gender-affirming sexual interest in men (meta-androphilia).
Although meta-androphilia usually leads to bisexuality, it can make autogynephilic people prefer men as sexual partners to the point that they have little to no interest in women, and therefore lead to preferential homosexuality. Transgender typology studies have found that there are some MTFs in the “homosexual” group who report prior crossdressing arousal, which suggests that sorting based on the two-type typology underestimates the true proportion of autoheterosexuals among trans people.
[i] Richard F. Docter, Transvestites and Transsexuals: Toward a Theory of Cross-Gender Behavior, Perspectives in Sexuality (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), 76–77, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0997-0.
[ii] William J. Beischel, “Gender Pleasure: The Positive Affective Component of Gender/Sex” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2022), 44, https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/174393.
[iii] Magnus Hirschfeld, Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress, trans. Michael A. Lombardi-Nash (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991), 127.
[iv] Hirschfeld, 23.
[v] Hirschfeld, 24.
[vi] Hirschfeld, 26.
[vii] Hirschfeld, 63, 143.
[viii] Havelock Ellis, “Eonism,” in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 7, Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1928), 98, https://archive.org/details/b30010172/page/98/mode/2up.
[ix] Ellis, 80.
[x] Magnus Hirschfeld, Sexual Anomalies and Perversions: A Summary of the Works of the Late Professor Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, ed. Norman Haire (London: Encyclopaedic Press, 1966), 206.
[xi] Hirschfeld, Transvestites, 132.
[xii] Hirschfeld, 84.
[xiii] Hirschfeld, 92–93.
[xiv] Hirschfeld, 94.
[xv] Hirschfeld, 61.
[xvi] Hirschfeld, 31.
[xvii] Ellis, “Eonism,” 49; Hirschfeld, Transvestites, 117.
[xviii] Ellis, “Eonism,” 67.
[xix] Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 12th ed., trans. F. J. Rebman (Rebman Company, 1906), 310.
[xx] Von Krafft-Ebing, 321.
[xxi] Hirschfeld, Transvestites, 116.
[xxii] Hirschfeld, 71.
[xxiii] Anne A. Lawrence, Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism, Focus on Sexuality Research (New York: Springer, 2013), 130, https://www.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5182-2; Ray Blanchard, “Clinical Observations and Systematic Studies of Autogynephilia,” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 17, no. 4 (1991): 237, https://doi.org/10.1080/00926239108404348.
[xxiv] Lawrence, Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies, 132.
[xxv] Lawrence, 133.
[xxvi] Lawrence, 135.
[xxvii] Lawrence, 136.
[xxviii] Niklas Långström and Kenneth J. Zucker, “Transvestic Fetishism in the General Population,” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 31, no. 2 (March–April 2005): 90, https://doi.org/10.1080/00926230590477934.
[xxix] Ashley Brown, Edward D. Barker, and Qazi Rahman, “Erotic Target Identity Inversions Among Men and Women in an Internet Sample,” The Journal of Sexual Medicine 17, no. 1 (January 2020): 99–110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2019.10.018.
[xxx] Ray Blanchard, “The Concept of Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male Gender Dysphoria,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 177, no. 10 (October 1989): 621, https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-198910000-00004.
[xxxi] Ray Blanchard, “Nonmonotonic Relation of Autogynephilia and Heterosexual Attraction,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 101, no. 2 (May 1992): 275, https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.101.2.271.
[xxxii] Ray Blanchard, “Typology of Male-to-Female Transsexualism,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 14, no. 3 (June 1985): 247–61, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01542107.
[xxxiii] Larry Nuttbrock et al., “A Further Assessment of Blanchard’s Typology of Homosexual versus Non-Homosexual or Autogynephilic Gender Dysphoria,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 40, no. 2 (April 2011): 247–57, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-009-9579-2.
[xxxiv] Jaime M. Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011), 177, https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/resources/NTDS_Report.pdf.
[xxxv] Grant et al., 174.
[xxxvi] Sandy E. James et al., The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality, 2016), 59, https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf.
[xxxvii] Blanchard, “The Concept of Autogynephilia,” 622.
[xxxviii] Kurt Freund, Robin Watson, and Robert Dickey, “The Types of Heterosexual Gender Identity Disorder,” Annals of Sex Research, 4, no. 1 (1991): 96, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00850141.
[xxxix] Ellis, “Eonism,” 101.
[xl] Hirschfeld, Transvestites, 130.
[xli] Von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 322.
[xlii] Von Krafft-Ebing, 316.
[xliii] Von Krafft-Ebing, 318.
[xliv] Ellis, “Eonism,” 53.
[xlv] Ellis, 52.
[xlvi] Hirschfeld, Transvestites, 51.
[xlvii] Hirschfeld, 54.
[xlviii] Hirschfeld, 61.
[xlix] Hirschfeld, 94.