The distinction between AGPs and gender non-conforming ("girly") boys is also critical to women's and girls' safety and rights. The fact that transvestites/AGPs/fetishists have been included under the "trans" umbrella and treated as some kind of oppressed minority in need of expanded rights and cultural uplift has meant that politicians and media alike have gotten behind pushing these fetishistic straight men into women's and girls' private spaces, prisons, rape shelters, domestic violence shelters, and sports teams. The AGPs are having a field day with this, as entry into each of these spaces feeds into their fetish while eroding the rights of women and girls to privacy, dignity, and safety.
Doesn't matter which men are pretending to be women and using women's spaces, no men should be pretending to be women and using women's spaces. Not even the gay ones. Especially now with so many straight men in the developed world being more or less accepting of male homosexuality. We've come a long way in fifty years. No more excuses, and men need to stop using women as human shields.
And the TRAs have not-so-unwittingly gone along with, if not doubled down on, this in order to signal their virtue. I was never a rabid "trans rights" supporter, but I always had my doubts about even when I was going along with even the pronoun stuff. The discovery of the AGP archetype was a revelation for me and brought so much clarity to understanding how straight men could be trans.
Thank you, Ben, for addressing the topic so calmly yet directly.
Question: Do you think we should drop the AGP label and just call it transvestic fetishism?
I feel like "autogynephilia" is a pseudomedical term that only draws us into arguments about whether AGP really exists and how many AGPs there are, distracting us from the actual point, which is this: Cross dressers -- ie, around 3% of adult men -- have been included under the trans umbrella and invited to flaunt and escalate their fetish while being lauded by the public as stunning and brave.
Heh, I don't think anyone belongs under the trans umbrella, because "transgender" isn't a real thing - not an ontological category, anyway.
As for what to call the so-called AGPs, I think "transvestite" is as good a word as any. Anyone born before 1980 immediately hears Tim Curry belting out "I'm just a sweet transvestite ..." and that's exactly the right image. Nothing wrong with it, in fact it can be fun and hot in the right (adults only) context, but it's not behavior to be normalized. And no one was confused about Frank N. Furter's sex, lol.
Agree with the post and that Rachel Levine is a monster. As to who belongs under the trans umbrella--not sure who should be in, but NOT children, or adults, who fail to display gender stereotypical behaviour. Those are boys and girls full stop.
I highly recommend the Gender: A Wider Lens episode with Dr. Az Hakeem as he seems to break down “trans” into four categories, including (if I remember correctly) saying that AGP and transvestic fetishism are two different things.
You act like there's any actual such thing as a trans umbrella.
Unpopular take: There's no such thing as trans.
I know there are people who think they are trans, and I know it makes a lot of us happy to pretend that's a thing, but it's not a thing.
One, human beings don't change sex. Two, thoughts and feelings don't determine sex. Three, sex-based stereotypes are not sexes. Under no definition of trans does trans actually work in the real world. It's just a thought construct people like to use to label themselves.
If people understood this was just fantasy and pretend and approached it in that spirit, I'd have no problem with seeing people talking about "trans umbrellas." But they're acting like "being trans" is on par with being a man or being a woman and nope, I'm not going to support that. Women and men are materially real. Thinking you're not the sex you were born is delusion.
100% agree with every word here. No one is “really” trans. It’s a fantasy/delusion like any other, but it’s also a particularly harmful one if indulged like it has been.
I think the majority of people reading here agree with you completely that there’s no such thing as trans, as would nearly all listeners of the Wider Lens podcast. However, there are people who believe themselves to be trans and who transition, and I do think it’s helpful to try to understand some of the different motivations and beliefs that they have. That helps us counter some of those beliefs, rescue loved ones caught up in it, and teach our kids to resist indoctrination.
Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter. However, there is one point that I want to comment on, one that you allude to in your sole footnote: "...the huge uptick in trans identification in recent years... there are now many other reasons why a person might identify as trans (social contagion, social cache, radical politics, etc.)."
That huge uptick now constitutes the overwhelming majority of those who identify as trans. To give you an idea about the relative magnitudes, a 2015 systematic review (SR) concluded that the meta-estimate of the clinical population of transgender is 0.0046% (doi: 10.1016/j.eurpsy.2015.04.005).
(A parenthesized sidenote: I got alerted to this meta-estimate because the SR was cited by Baker et al., 2021 https://doi.org/10.1210/jendso/bvab011. This is the SR that was commissioned by WPATH to find the mental health benefits of cross-sex hormones. The short story - there was extremely weak evidence for any benefit because all the studies had a very high risk of bias, and there was no evidence at all for making any pronouncement on death by suicide, and yet, this being a WPATH-commissioned review, the authors concluded that "these benefits make hormone therapy an essential component of care that promotes the health and well-being of transgender people." Baker, incidentally, is Kellan Baker, one of the coauthors of the "Yale Integrity Project" paper that tries to strike down the Cass Report with unintentionally humorous effects.)
Anyway, back to the 0.0046% - this was the population that Blanchard, Bailey, or even Lawrence (BBL hereafter) saw more than two decades back. In fact, this was the estimate from as recently as 2015 - that is when the SR came out. Let's say that the number is now, thanks to social contagion, social cache, radical politics, and other factors, conservatively at 1%. Then, this number - 1% - is more than 217 times larger than the population that Blanchard developed his typology (1%/0.0046%).
Unfortunately, however, the BBL trio continues to insist that this new population, which is 217 times larger than the population they looked at, is the same AGP population that they looked at when Blanchard developed his typology, Bailey wrote his book "The Man Who Would Be Queen," and Lawrence compiled his (I agree with your use of pronouns) "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies." Which, scientifically speaking, is nuts! Is it possible that these 216 new boys who suddenly identify as trans have now been conditioned (I don't want to use the word "groomed" because it is so overused) to get excited by thinking of themselves in women's clothing? That is entirely possible - the human mind is infinitely pliable, after all: show an adult only videos of bestiality from the dark corners of the internet for an extended period of time, and they might just start thinking that maybe this bestiality thing is not such a perversion after all.
However, that only means that we should have an urgent discussion about how the likes of Adm. Richard Levine are essentially using these boys as a fertile ground for their unfulfilled fantasies.
If 0.0046% of the population are clinically afflicted by this paraphilia (one way to think of this extremely small number is this - if you were an extremely social person who had conversations with three *new* people *every* day of your life, it would take you roughly 18 years to have a conversation with one Richard Levine), let us try to ensure that we do not *create* 216 new Richard Levines. And not, as BBL insists, declare to these boys, "Oh yeah, you are AGP; let's make sure you get fast-tracked to hormones and castration."
Anyway, this is a side comment. Great article, and thank you.
Excellent response. You echo the data on trans I was aware of back as far as late 70’s and 80’s from sex researchers I knew from Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
There are quite some stories from time I spent at the Gay and Lesbian Center in LA about gay kids, but the phenomenon I see today is completely unlike that time. The only boys I saw presenting as female then indeed were groomed to do so by their johns, and not coincidentally they looked like… hookers.
One of the first transwomen I ever personally interacted with (as a hair stylist, so pretty intimately and in service of his desire to look more feminine) was such a classic example of AGP it triggered something in me, even though I didn’t know about AGP and wouldn’t for a few years yet.
He had been in special forces military, was in a motorcycle group/gang, and started transitioning in his 50s. He was built like a line/backer, and while coloring and cutting his hair, he enjoyed telling me how exciting it was to go through puberty “as a girl”.
Puberty is rarely enjoyable for anyone of either sex, but my memories included so much shame and confusion around periods and my fast-developing body—including new and unwanted attention from middle aged men—that it was very difficult for me to listen and nod along to what he was saying.
Not only can no 50-something male go through “puberty as a girl”—because he is an adult—but whatever he thought puberty for girls was is so divorced from the actual experience of girlhood puberty as to be offensive.
Drag is a mockery of women. Trans women (who are eunuchs) are also a mockery of women. Very few pass. The face is too big. The chest is too big, and usually the boobs are placed too far apart. The Adam's apple is still apparent. Usually they are too tall - men over 6'2" who think that they are delicate flower-like sylphs are completely ridiculous.
You don't have to apologize for using sex-based pronouns.
We are told to be kind, that it's respectful, a courtesy, no more, to go along with the pretense. When we do, we are prioritizing the feelings of these men, and making it easier for them to claim entry to previously women-only places, from prisons to PCOS support groups, from lesbian dating apps to La Leche League meetings.
They are not another type of woman. There is only one kind of woman, and we deserve to be centered in our own spaces and the language used to refer to us.
>>The problem with all of this—besides the fact that it’s insane—is that the vast majority of the effeminate boys will desist (stop thinking they were supposed to be born as girls) once they commence through puberty, and the vast majority of those desisters will grow up to be gay men. The very few whose gender identity disorder (referred to today as “gender dysphoria”) persists might decide to medically transition as adults and attempt to live and pass as women. ...
There is no clinical test to determine which boys’ gender dysphoria will persist into adulthood and which boys’ will not persist. And since we cannot tell the future, there is no way to determine which boys will grow up to identify as gay—with their bodies and endocrine systems intact—and which boys will grow up to identify as transwomen. Therefore, it is totally unethical to subject young males to this protocol. It is, I believe, a violation of their human rights.<<
Thank you , Ben for laying this all out so well. After becoming aware of this, it's hard to not want to shout it from the roof tops. I too feel despair for the the more feminine boys and our tomboy girls. Their lives are being stolen. AGP's and Queer Theory followers have combined powers. This feels biblical. James Lindsay has a lot to say about this and I'm learning terms such as nihilism and gnosticism. How do we get more of the mainstream people to reject this dangerous worldview before more damage is done? Could Stonewall be reasoned with? Can we stop well-funded NGO's like HRC & ACLU and anti West orgs like CAIR to stop promoting trangenderism? Thank you for speaking out and writing and doing your part. I hope this doesn't get you down too much. When you have a heart, it can be hard to see what is happening to boys. 2025 will hopefully bring more rejection and policies geared toward stopping their ideology from saturating absolutely everything. The TransArmy may get violent...especially on campuses.
Thank you for writing about this, and for drawing such a clear distinction.
(Did you mean to say, 'You are NOT and never were like the girly young boys that wrestle with deep internal shame about their same-sex attraction' rather than, 'You are and never were like'? )
The link between AGP and trans ideology remains largely unexplored but a major tell was revealed in the reactions of transsexuals (using nomenclature of the time they transitioned) Andrea James and Lynn Conway to the publication of J. Michael Bailey's book "The Man Who Would Be Queen." In that book (which I have not read) Bailey looks at AGP in relation to transsexualism and finds that, in some instances, AGP men may turn to surgery. Conway and James were furious with that conclusion and went to great lengths to destroy Mr. Bailey's career (reported in Alice Dreger's book "Galileo's Middle Finger.") In other words, they didn't want the eros of paraphilia to be any where near their motivations because, for them, that would undermine the project itself.
Acknowledgment of AGP punctures the fantasy that they can be, or are, the vision of themselves they hold in their minds.
Not so dissimilar to how fragile many transwomen feel around women discussing periods or pregnancy—things that inevitably remind them that they are not truly female and can never be. The pain of this knowledge seems almost unbearable for them, and triggers intense loathing and often hatred.
I spoke to Lynn Conway at length in 2001 at an event I set up in a LGBT setting a few years before Bailey’s book came out.
He was in an extreme corner already on transing children. He spoke glowingly about puberty blockers using all the standard falsehoods, and simply deflected “are they really trans” questions with “kids know” responses. He spoke at length on hijra in India and how those kids were emasculated (not just castrated) so young they had beautiful vulvas for life. His website on the subject goes on at length. I realized he was completely bonkers, and dangerously misinformed in both biology, and how impressionable children are.
Bailey’s book, which has a really poor title, proposes that the post-puberty trans who operated identically as Conway did, found trans one of many options to express their fetish. I think Conway may have reacted badly to hints that he too was a male who operated as a male for decades but then found life more fulfilling to give in to the fantasy delusion.
Have you read Hunter Schafer’s old journal entries he used to have on his Instagram? They’re insane. And kind of lend some credence to the argument that the distinction between so-called “AGPs” and so-called “HSTS’s” is an over-simplification and that the through-line for both is developmental issues coupled with profound misogyny/sexism. Schafer has dated men, but has also identified as a lesbian and bi and pan- he was partially puberty blocked, so he might genuinely not know what his sexual orientation is. But anyways, I have the photos from his Instagram saved on my phone, and here’s some of the things they say:
“My sexual orientation was not gay, it was not straight, it was an attraction, IS an attraction,
always, to misogyny."
“My gender was so influenced by a need to be
used by men"
“Not feeling femme enough w/o being a victim
of rape”
Horrifying.
Hard not to wonder if exposure to violent, misogynistic pornography as a child has anything to do with this.
> The vast majority of adult trans-identified males (transwomen) are thought to
> be autogynephilic.
I find this totally plausible, but a reference would be good.
Also, for what it is worth, and ignoring for a moment the thing in itself that is the obsession with highly sexualised femininity that transwomen, unlike actual women, almost universally exhibit, there is something immediately and obviously wrong with Hunter Schaefer's breasts.
Not only are Hunter's breasts 'too perfect' and actually quite weird, but everything about Hunter is stereotypically female. This propping up of the male perspective on what is seen to be attractive and sexually appealing in women and then shoe-horning a male body into it (through blockers, hormones, surgery, you name it) is deeply mysogynistic and is another symptom of the male urge to own, control, and dominate the female body.
Sean, I bow to your magnificently constructed, paragraph-long last sentence. I didn’t expect one of any of the comments on Ben’s piece to make me laugh out loud. 😹
The distinction between AGPs and gender non-conforming ("girly") boys is also critical to women's and girls' safety and rights. The fact that transvestites/AGPs/fetishists have been included under the "trans" umbrella and treated as some kind of oppressed minority in need of expanded rights and cultural uplift has meant that politicians and media alike have gotten behind pushing these fetishistic straight men into women's and girls' private spaces, prisons, rape shelters, domestic violence shelters, and sports teams. The AGPs are having a field day with this, as entry into each of these spaces feeds into their fetish while eroding the rights of women and girls to privacy, dignity, and safety.
Doesn't matter which men are pretending to be women and using women's spaces, no men should be pretending to be women and using women's spaces. Not even the gay ones. Especially now with so many straight men in the developed world being more or less accepting of male homosexuality. We've come a long way in fifty years. No more excuses, and men need to stop using women as human shields.
Yes I agree
And the TRAs have not-so-unwittingly gone along with, if not doubled down on, this in order to signal their virtue. I was never a rabid "trans rights" supporter, but I always had my doubts about even when I was going along with even the pronoun stuff. The discovery of the AGP archetype was a revelation for me and brought so much clarity to understanding how straight men could be trans.
Yep
Thank you, Ben, for addressing the topic so calmly yet directly.
Question: Do you think we should drop the AGP label and just call it transvestic fetishism?
I feel like "autogynephilia" is a pseudomedical term that only draws us into arguments about whether AGP really exists and how many AGPs there are, distracting us from the actual point, which is this: Cross dressers -- ie, around 3% of adult men -- have been included under the trans umbrella and invited to flaunt and escalate their fetish while being lauded by the public as stunning and brave.
Good question. What do you think?
That’s kind of a mouthful too.
Who do you think belongs under the trans umbrella?
Heh, I don't think anyone belongs under the trans umbrella, because "transgender" isn't a real thing - not an ontological category, anyway.
As for what to call the so-called AGPs, I think "transvestite" is as good a word as any. Anyone born before 1980 immediately hears Tim Curry belting out "I'm just a sweet transvestite ..." and that's exactly the right image. Nothing wrong with it, in fact it can be fun and hot in the right (adults only) context, but it's not behavior to be normalized. And no one was confused about Frank N. Furter's sex, lol.
I think the term "transvestite" is too tied to clothing, and AGP males will point to their breast implants and say that it doesn't apply to them.
"Autogynephilia" cuts to the chase. Let them try to deny its existence. We have a thousand photos to counter that ridiculous claim.
Agree with the post and that Rachel Levine is a monster. As to who belongs under the trans umbrella--not sure who should be in, but NOT children, or adults, who fail to display gender stereotypical behaviour. Those are boys and girls full stop.
I highly recommend the Gender: A Wider Lens episode with Dr. Az Hakeem as he seems to break down “trans” into four categories, including (if I remember correctly) saying that AGP and transvestic fetishism are two different things.
You act like there's any actual such thing as a trans umbrella.
Unpopular take: There's no such thing as trans.
I know there are people who think they are trans, and I know it makes a lot of us happy to pretend that's a thing, but it's not a thing.
One, human beings don't change sex. Two, thoughts and feelings don't determine sex. Three, sex-based stereotypes are not sexes. Under no definition of trans does trans actually work in the real world. It's just a thought construct people like to use to label themselves.
If people understood this was just fantasy and pretend and approached it in that spirit, I'd have no problem with seeing people talking about "trans umbrellas." But they're acting like "being trans" is on par with being a man or being a woman and nope, I'm not going to support that. Women and men are materially real. Thinking you're not the sex you were born is delusion.
100% agree with every word here. No one is “really” trans. It’s a fantasy/delusion like any other, but it’s also a particularly harmful one if indulged like it has been.
I think the majority of people reading here agree with you completely that there’s no such thing as trans, as would nearly all listeners of the Wider Lens podcast. However, there are people who believe themselves to be trans and who transition, and I do think it’s helpful to try to understand some of the different motivations and beliefs that they have. That helps us counter some of those beliefs, rescue loved ones caught up in it, and teach our kids to resist indoctrination.
Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter. However, there is one point that I want to comment on, one that you allude to in your sole footnote: "...the huge uptick in trans identification in recent years... there are now many other reasons why a person might identify as trans (social contagion, social cache, radical politics, etc.)."
That huge uptick now constitutes the overwhelming majority of those who identify as trans. To give you an idea about the relative magnitudes, a 2015 systematic review (SR) concluded that the meta-estimate of the clinical population of transgender is 0.0046% (doi: 10.1016/j.eurpsy.2015.04.005).
(A parenthesized sidenote: I got alerted to this meta-estimate because the SR was cited by Baker et al., 2021 https://doi.org/10.1210/jendso/bvab011. This is the SR that was commissioned by WPATH to find the mental health benefits of cross-sex hormones. The short story - there was extremely weak evidence for any benefit because all the studies had a very high risk of bias, and there was no evidence at all for making any pronouncement on death by suicide, and yet, this being a WPATH-commissioned review, the authors concluded that "these benefits make hormone therapy an essential component of care that promotes the health and well-being of transgender people." Baker, incidentally, is Kellan Baker, one of the coauthors of the "Yale Integrity Project" paper that tries to strike down the Cass Report with unintentionally humorous effects.)
Anyway, back to the 0.0046% - this was the population that Blanchard, Bailey, or even Lawrence (BBL hereafter) saw more than two decades back. In fact, this was the estimate from as recently as 2015 - that is when the SR came out. Let's say that the number is now, thanks to social contagion, social cache, radical politics, and other factors, conservatively at 1%. Then, this number - 1% - is more than 217 times larger than the population that Blanchard developed his typology (1%/0.0046%).
Unfortunately, however, the BBL trio continues to insist that this new population, which is 217 times larger than the population they looked at, is the same AGP population that they looked at when Blanchard developed his typology, Bailey wrote his book "The Man Who Would Be Queen," and Lawrence compiled his (I agree with your use of pronouns) "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies." Which, scientifically speaking, is nuts! Is it possible that these 216 new boys who suddenly identify as trans have now been conditioned (I don't want to use the word "groomed" because it is so overused) to get excited by thinking of themselves in women's clothing? That is entirely possible - the human mind is infinitely pliable, after all: show an adult only videos of bestiality from the dark corners of the internet for an extended period of time, and they might just start thinking that maybe this bestiality thing is not such a perversion after all.
However, that only means that we should have an urgent discussion about how the likes of Adm. Richard Levine are essentially using these boys as a fertile ground for their unfulfilled fantasies.
If 0.0046% of the population are clinically afflicted by this paraphilia (one way to think of this extremely small number is this - if you were an extremely social person who had conversations with three *new* people *every* day of your life, it would take you roughly 18 years to have a conversation with one Richard Levine), let us try to ensure that we do not *create* 216 new Richard Levines. And not, as BBL insists, declare to these boys, "Oh yeah, you are AGP; let's make sure you get fast-tracked to hormones and castration."
Anyway, this is a side comment. Great article, and thank you.
Excellent response. You echo the data on trans I was aware of back as far as late 70’s and 80’s from sex researchers I knew from Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
There are quite some stories from time I spent at the Gay and Lesbian Center in LA about gay kids, but the phenomenon I see today is completely unlike that time. The only boys I saw presenting as female then indeed were groomed to do so by their johns, and not coincidentally they looked like… hookers.
Thanks
One of the first transwomen I ever personally interacted with (as a hair stylist, so pretty intimately and in service of his desire to look more feminine) was such a classic example of AGP it triggered something in me, even though I didn’t know about AGP and wouldn’t for a few years yet.
He had been in special forces military, was in a motorcycle group/gang, and started transitioning in his 50s. He was built like a line/backer, and while coloring and cutting his hair, he enjoyed telling me how exciting it was to go through puberty “as a girl”.
Puberty is rarely enjoyable for anyone of either sex, but my memories included so much shame and confusion around periods and my fast-developing body—including new and unwanted attention from middle aged men—that it was very difficult for me to listen and nod along to what he was saying.
Not only can no 50-something male go through “puberty as a girl”—because he is an adult—but whatever he thought puberty for girls was is so divorced from the actual experience of girlhood puberty as to be offensive.
Drag is a mockery of women. Trans women (who are eunuchs) are also a mockery of women. Very few pass. The face is too big. The chest is too big, and usually the boobs are placed too far apart. The Adam's apple is still apparent. Usually they are too tall - men over 6'2" who think that they are delicate flower-like sylphs are completely ridiculous.
You don't have to apologize for using sex-based pronouns.
We are told to be kind, that it's respectful, a courtesy, no more, to go along with the pretense. When we do, we are prioritizing the feelings of these men, and making it easier for them to claim entry to previously women-only places, from prisons to PCOS support groups, from lesbian dating apps to La Leche League meetings.
They are not another type of woman. There is only one kind of woman, and we deserve to be centered in our own spaces and the language used to refer to us.
Ben Appel writes:
>>The problem with all of this—besides the fact that it’s insane—is that the vast majority of the effeminate boys will desist (stop thinking they were supposed to be born as girls) once they commence through puberty, and the vast majority of those desisters will grow up to be gay men. The very few whose gender identity disorder (referred to today as “gender dysphoria”) persists might decide to medically transition as adults and attempt to live and pass as women. ...
There is no clinical test to determine which boys’ gender dysphoria will persist into adulthood and which boys’ will not persist. And since we cannot tell the future, there is no way to determine which boys will grow up to identify as gay—with their bodies and endocrine systems intact—and which boys will grow up to identify as transwomen. Therefore, it is totally unethical to subject young males to this protocol. It is, I believe, a violation of their human rights.<<
Thank you , Ben for laying this all out so well. After becoming aware of this, it's hard to not want to shout it from the roof tops. I too feel despair for the the more feminine boys and our tomboy girls. Their lives are being stolen. AGP's and Queer Theory followers have combined powers. This feels biblical. James Lindsay has a lot to say about this and I'm learning terms such as nihilism and gnosticism. How do we get more of the mainstream people to reject this dangerous worldview before more damage is done? Could Stonewall be reasoned with? Can we stop well-funded NGO's like HRC & ACLU and anti West orgs like CAIR to stop promoting trangenderism? Thank you for speaking out and writing and doing your part. I hope this doesn't get you down too much. When you have a heart, it can be hard to see what is happening to boys. 2025 will hopefully bring more rejection and policies geared toward stopping their ideology from saturating absolutely everything. The TransArmy may get violent...especially on campuses.
Thank you, Shelly.
Thank you for writing this.
Thank you for writing about this, and for drawing such a clear distinction.
(Did you mean to say, 'You are NOT and never were like the girly young boys that wrestle with deep internal shame about their same-sex attraction' rather than, 'You are and never were like'? )
I did! Thank you. 🙏🏼
The link between AGP and trans ideology remains largely unexplored but a major tell was revealed in the reactions of transsexuals (using nomenclature of the time they transitioned) Andrea James and Lynn Conway to the publication of J. Michael Bailey's book "The Man Who Would Be Queen." In that book (which I have not read) Bailey looks at AGP in relation to transsexualism and finds that, in some instances, AGP men may turn to surgery. Conway and James were furious with that conclusion and went to great lengths to destroy Mr. Bailey's career (reported in Alice Dreger's book "Galileo's Middle Finger.") In other words, they didn't want the eros of paraphilia to be any where near their motivations because, for them, that would undermine the project itself.
Acknowledgment of AGP punctures the fantasy that they can be, or are, the vision of themselves they hold in their minds.
Not so dissimilar to how fragile many transwomen feel around women discussing periods or pregnancy—things that inevitably remind them that they are not truly female and can never be. The pain of this knowledge seems almost unbearable for them, and triggers intense loathing and often hatred.
It's reminiscent of narcissistic injury and narcissistic rage
I think it’s been directly likened to that in papers, hasn’t it?
Yes, there is talk of overlap between the two conditions
I spoke to Lynn Conway at length in 2001 at an event I set up in a LGBT setting a few years before Bailey’s book came out.
He was in an extreme corner already on transing children. He spoke glowingly about puberty blockers using all the standard falsehoods, and simply deflected “are they really trans” questions with “kids know” responses. He spoke at length on hijra in India and how those kids were emasculated (not just castrated) so young they had beautiful vulvas for life. His website on the subject goes on at length. I realized he was completely bonkers, and dangerously misinformed in both biology, and how impressionable children are.
Bailey’s book, which has a really poor title, proposes that the post-puberty trans who operated identically as Conway did, found trans one of many options to express their fetish. I think Conway may have reacted badly to hints that he too was a male who operated as a male for decades but then found life more fulfilling to give in to the fantasy delusion.
Have you read Hunter Schafer’s old journal entries he used to have on his Instagram? They’re insane. And kind of lend some credence to the argument that the distinction between so-called “AGPs” and so-called “HSTS’s” is an over-simplification and that the through-line for both is developmental issues coupled with profound misogyny/sexism. Schafer has dated men, but has also identified as a lesbian and bi and pan- he was partially puberty blocked, so he might genuinely not know what his sexual orientation is. But anyways, I have the photos from his Instagram saved on my phone, and here’s some of the things they say:
“My sexual orientation was not gay, it was not straight, it was an attraction, IS an attraction,
always, to misogyny."
“My gender was so influenced by a need to be
used by men"
“Not feeling femme enough w/o being a victim
of rape”
Horrifying.
Hard not to wonder if exposure to violent, misogynistic pornography as a child has anything to do with this.
Thank you for writing this, Ben.
Thank you so much for saying it out loud.
> The vast majority of adult trans-identified males (transwomen) are thought to
> be autogynephilic.
I find this totally plausible, but a reference would be good.
Also, for what it is worth, and ignoring for a moment the thing in itself that is the obsession with highly sexualised femininity that transwomen, unlike actual women, almost universally exhibit, there is something immediately and obviously wrong with Hunter Schaefer's breasts.
Not only are Hunter's breasts 'too perfect' and actually quite weird, but everything about Hunter is stereotypically female. This propping up of the male perspective on what is seen to be attractive and sexually appealing in women and then shoe-horning a male body into it (through blockers, hormones, surgery, you name it) is deeply mysogynistic and is another symptom of the male urge to own, control, and dominate the female body.
Sean, I bow to your magnificently constructed, paragraph-long last sentence. I didn’t expect one of any of the comments on Ben’s piece to make me laugh out loud. 😹
I believe it was Blanchard who came up with this estimate, from his decades-long career working primarily with transwomen.
It struck me while reading that AGP is an NPD version of sexuality. A closed loop.
Genevieve Gluck / Reduxx has many devastating examples of the cross pollination between adult fetishes and the entire field of child transition.
Thank you for this excellent piece.
A respectful and informative post, but I will need to read a second or third time and perhaps create a visual or flow chart to really get it.