Im biological female and bisexual. I think I've been both autohomosexual and autoheterosexual.
When i was younger and teenager i tought i was transman for a while. (But i never physically transitioned). Back then i was very sexually attracted of idea of having sex as man with a woman or with man. Back then i read alot of fanfics and yaoi. And i roleplayed with my other bisexual female friends and girlfriend that we were gay anime men. I also experienced alot of bodydysphoria back then of having female body. And i felt disgust of my boobs, thigs and butt.
But then i realised i wasnt trans and im just bisexual woman. And i realised body dysphoria i felt was actually sexual attraction towards my own body. And feeling what i tought was disgust towards my body was actually me being sexually aroused and being ashamed of myself. I guess it was because i hadnt fully accepted that i also like girls. I like if my partner is turned on my female body. And im myself turned on from my female body.
I think its great because this makes me love my body more. And im very grateful i never transitioned.
I'll copy the review part in here for convenience.
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Anyway, pseudo autogynephilia vs true autogynephilia is one thing, but perhaps more important is the direction of causality between autogynephilia and transness. This is a highly controversial question, because it determines whether autogynephilia can be seen as the cause of transness or just a byproduct of it.
I’m not really satisfied with Phil’s treatment of the question of causality. It seems to me that there are good arguments to be made, but instead he makes bad ones. Specifically, Phil has a chapter of the question, where he makes six arguments:
1. Some critics argue that autogynephilia cannot be causal for transness because cis women are autogynephilic too. But actually those people are wrong because cis women aren’t all that autogynephilic, and even if they were, that has nothing to do with what is going on in trans women.
2. Some critics argue that trans women might have autogynephilia-like sexuality because they want to be female and dislike being male. But if that is true, then how does one explain the following facts:
a: Autogynephilia-like sexuality is less common among trans women exclusively attracted to men,
b: There are men with autogynephilia-like sexuality who don’t transition,
c: Sexual orientation labels like “gay” are usually causally downstream from sexual attractions like getting boners when seeing hunks, so by analogy gender identity labels like “trans” should be causally downstream of sexual autogynephilic attraction.
3. Trans women often have experiences in their childhood where they wanted to be girls, before their autogynephilic sexual arousal in puberty. This is analogous to how people of other sexual orientations often have childhood crushes, so this supports autogynephilia being causal.
I’ll address these in reverse order; 3-2c-2b-2a. I’ll skip responding to 1 because the whole debate on it is a giant mess that would take a long and convoluted text to sort out while mainly concluding that I am too confused about the matter to know anything about it**.
3: I was really confused when reading argument 3. You might think I’ve made a mistake when explaining it – usually when you see a correlation between A and B, you’d think the one that comes first is the cause. But instead the author is arguing the opposite, that this shows autogynephilia to be the cause.
Phil’s argument seems to be in response to people arguing the opposite, obvious thing: that cross-gender ideation coming before autogynephilia means that autogynephilia is a side-effect and not a cause. I am sympathetic to Phil’s argument that childhood crushes that develop before one has unambiguous sexual arousal seem common, and that therefore the argument from timing isn’t as strong as one would think.
However, I think Phil goes too far when he concludes that the ordering is therefore evidence for autogynephilia being causal. This seems to be an error that I often see him making: he often jumps from the fact that one can shoehorn a phenomenon into his model, to the assumption that this phenomenon is therefore evidence for his model.
2c: I think the argument about the causality of labels misses the point. Yes, it is true that labels like “homosexual” are causally downstream of experiences of sexual attraction to men. But what people are suggesting is not that an arbitrary gender label causes trans women to have sexual fantasies involving themselves as women, but rather that trans women’s dysphoria about being male and desire to be female causes this sexuality.
In the section where he makes the argument, Phil is very focused on the idea that gender identity labels change but sexual orientations do not change. He argues that since the change in self-identity happens much later than the autogynephilic arousal, identity cannot be taken to cause autogynephilia.
But in my experience, even way prior to transition, if you go out and ask autogynephiles how they feel about being male, they will give very different answers from what you get if you ask ordinary men. For instance one study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25277693/) found effect sizes of d=1.86 to d=2.85 (depending on how you count).
2b: It is true that there are autogynephiles who don’t transition. Some of them really want to transition and dislike being male; for instance I’ve seen one of them say the following:
"I have always felt deep down that I would prefer to be female. I prefer the way they dress and act and it always made me a bit jealous of girls. I feel I would be more comfortable in my own skin as a female. I have come to terms with the way that I feel and accept that I wouldn’t want to go through a transition. I am okay with the way that I feel now and have learned to accept those feelings.
I don’t feel that I am traditionally very manly and feel more comfortable around girls"
I think people who advocate the theory that gender dysphoria causes autogynephilia would be perfectly happy to bite the bullet that this guy’s gender feelings caused him to eroticize feminization, even though he doesn’t literally label himself as a woman.
On the other hand, there seems to be some autogynephiles who this doesn’t apply to; whose autogynephilia seems to exceed what could be explained by their desire to be a woman. But that just means that autogynephilia and gender identity are not deterministically correlated. As nondeterminism is a symmetric relationship, it doesn’t disprove that gender identity influences autogynephilia any more than it disproves that autogynephilia influences gender identity. It just means that there are other factors in play.
You can make up stories about what those factors are – ideology, sexual success, experience, etc. – but the opposing side can also make up stories about what the alternate factors that could cause autogynephilia are (e.g. I am pretty sure I’ve seen someone suggest that curiosity may play a role in causing autogynephilia without feminine gender identity).
2a: The argument goes that if autogynephilia was influenced by gender identity, then it should be as common among trans women who are attracted to women as it is among trans women who are attracted to men.
I don’t understand this argument. Elsewhere in the book, Phil says that attraction to women is a contributor to autogynephilia because this attraction gets “inverted” onto oneself in some sense. This seems intuitively sufficient to explain sexual orientation differences in autogynephilia among trans women by sexual orientation.
I enjoy your very well explained reasons and your personal experience of this phenomenon. I've been at a loss trying to understand my 25yo son, and why he is a transbian. I have a question for you, how much do you think porn, and sissy porn may also play a role in this? Also, do you think that teens being socially isolated, because of our online culture, can be an influence on becoming this way? I'd love to hear your thoughts, thank you for this information while I'm struggling so hard to understand my son.
Im biological female and bisexual. I think I've been both autohomosexual and autoheterosexual.
When i was younger and teenager i tought i was transman for a while. (But i never physically transitioned). Back then i was very sexually attracted of idea of having sex as man with a woman or with man. Back then i read alot of fanfics and yaoi. And i roleplayed with my other bisexual female friends and girlfriend that we were gay anime men. I also experienced alot of bodydysphoria back then of having female body. And i felt disgust of my boobs, thigs and butt.
But then i realised i wasnt trans and im just bisexual woman. And i realised body dysphoria i felt was actually sexual attraction towards my own body. And feeling what i tought was disgust towards my body was actually me being sexually aroused and being ashamed of myself. I guess it was because i hadnt fully accepted that i also like girls. I like if my partner is turned on my female body. And im myself turned on from my female body.
I think its great because this makes me love my body more. And im very grateful i never transitioned.
I reviewed this chapter as part of my review: https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2023/06/12/book-review-autoheterosexuality/
I'll copy the review part in here for convenience.
---
Anyway, pseudo autogynephilia vs true autogynephilia is one thing, but perhaps more important is the direction of causality between autogynephilia and transness. This is a highly controversial question, because it determines whether autogynephilia can be seen as the cause of transness or just a byproduct of it.
I’m not really satisfied with Phil’s treatment of the question of causality. It seems to me that there are good arguments to be made, but instead he makes bad ones. Specifically, Phil has a chapter of the question, where he makes six arguments:
1. Some critics argue that autogynephilia cannot be causal for transness because cis women are autogynephilic too. But actually those people are wrong because cis women aren’t all that autogynephilic, and even if they were, that has nothing to do with what is going on in trans women.
2. Some critics argue that trans women might have autogynephilia-like sexuality because they want to be female and dislike being male. But if that is true, then how does one explain the following facts:
a: Autogynephilia-like sexuality is less common among trans women exclusively attracted to men,
b: There are men with autogynephilia-like sexuality who don’t transition,
c: Sexual orientation labels like “gay” are usually causally downstream from sexual attractions like getting boners when seeing hunks, so by analogy gender identity labels like “trans” should be causally downstream of sexual autogynephilic attraction.
3. Trans women often have experiences in their childhood where they wanted to be girls, before their autogynephilic sexual arousal in puberty. This is analogous to how people of other sexual orientations often have childhood crushes, so this supports autogynephilia being causal.
I’ll address these in reverse order; 3-2c-2b-2a. I’ll skip responding to 1 because the whole debate on it is a giant mess that would take a long and convoluted text to sort out while mainly concluding that I am too confused about the matter to know anything about it**.
3: I was really confused when reading argument 3. You might think I’ve made a mistake when explaining it – usually when you see a correlation between A and B, you’d think the one that comes first is the cause. But instead the author is arguing the opposite, that this shows autogynephilia to be the cause.
Phil’s argument seems to be in response to people arguing the opposite, obvious thing: that cross-gender ideation coming before autogynephilia means that autogynephilia is a side-effect and not a cause. I am sympathetic to Phil’s argument that childhood crushes that develop before one has unambiguous sexual arousal seem common, and that therefore the argument from timing isn’t as strong as one would think.
However, I think Phil goes too far when he concludes that the ordering is therefore evidence for autogynephilia being causal. This seems to be an error that I often see him making: he often jumps from the fact that one can shoehorn a phenomenon into his model, to the assumption that this phenomenon is therefore evidence for his model.
2c: I think the argument about the causality of labels misses the point. Yes, it is true that labels like “homosexual” are causally downstream of experiences of sexual attraction to men. But what people are suggesting is not that an arbitrary gender label causes trans women to have sexual fantasies involving themselves as women, but rather that trans women’s dysphoria about being male and desire to be female causes this sexuality.
In the section where he makes the argument, Phil is very focused on the idea that gender identity labels change but sexual orientations do not change. He argues that since the change in self-identity happens much later than the autogynephilic arousal, identity cannot be taken to cause autogynephilia.
But in my experience, even way prior to transition, if you go out and ask autogynephiles how they feel about being male, they will give very different answers from what you get if you ask ordinary men. For instance one study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25277693/) found effect sizes of d=1.86 to d=2.85 (depending on how you count).
2b: It is true that there are autogynephiles who don’t transition. Some of them really want to transition and dislike being male; for instance I’ve seen one of them say the following:
"I have always felt deep down that I would prefer to be female. I prefer the way they dress and act and it always made me a bit jealous of girls. I feel I would be more comfortable in my own skin as a female. I have come to terms with the way that I feel and accept that I wouldn’t want to go through a transition. I am okay with the way that I feel now and have learned to accept those feelings.
I don’t feel that I am traditionally very manly and feel more comfortable around girls"
I think people who advocate the theory that gender dysphoria causes autogynephilia would be perfectly happy to bite the bullet that this guy’s gender feelings caused him to eroticize feminization, even though he doesn’t literally label himself as a woman.
On the other hand, there seems to be some autogynephiles who this doesn’t apply to; whose autogynephilia seems to exceed what could be explained by their desire to be a woman. But that just means that autogynephilia and gender identity are not deterministically correlated. As nondeterminism is a symmetric relationship, it doesn’t disprove that gender identity influences autogynephilia any more than it disproves that autogynephilia influences gender identity. It just means that there are other factors in play.
You can make up stories about what those factors are – ideology, sexual success, experience, etc. – but the opposing side can also make up stories about what the alternate factors that could cause autogynephilia are (e.g. I am pretty sure I’ve seen someone suggest that curiosity may play a role in causing autogynephilia without feminine gender identity).
2a: The argument goes that if autogynephilia was influenced by gender identity, then it should be as common among trans women who are attracted to women as it is among trans women who are attracted to men.
I don’t understand this argument. Elsewhere in the book, Phil says that attraction to women is a contributor to autogynephilia because this attraction gets “inverted” onto oneself in some sense. This seems intuitively sufficient to explain sexual orientation differences in autogynephilia among trans women by sexual orientation.
✱ If you want to see the most recent serious entry into the debate about autogynephilia in cis women, then it is the paper It Helps If You Stop Confusing Gender Dysphoria and Transvestism (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363429868_A_Response_to_Bailey_and_Hsu_2022_It_Helps_If_You_Stop_Confusing_Gender_Dysphoria_and_Transvestism). It is somewhat biased against autogynephilia theory, though. See also my post, Transvestism vs Gender Dysphoria vs … (https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2023/05/27/transvestism-vs-gender-dysphoria-vs/) for more.
I enjoy your very well explained reasons and your personal experience of this phenomenon. I've been at a loss trying to understand my 25yo son, and why he is a transbian. I have a question for you, how much do you think porn, and sissy porn may also play a role in this? Also, do you think that teens being socially isolated, because of our online culture, can be an influence on becoming this way? I'd love to hear your thoughts, thank you for this information while I'm struggling so hard to understand my son.