Autogynephelia - a follow up

Comment by Rachel King on August 31, 2012 at 5:22am

The theory of autogynephelia, along with Blanchards reputation, have long been shown to be such a flawed thinking that there is not a creditable person on this planet who would give credence to such dribble.

We can look for all the excuses we like but at the end of the day, we are who we are and must take responsibility for ourselves and our actions.

Sorry to put a dampener on your thinking but Blanchard and his crackpot theories were long ago shown to be seriously flawed and on a par with electric shock treatment as a cure.

Comment by Joanna on August 31, 2012 at 6:51am

I understand why you feel this way Rachel. I don't want to think of myself as a flawed freak believe me!!

I spent decades in a self imposed purgatory over my desire to be and feel feminine. I guess I am looking for answers that just are'by there. I don't necessarily think that it's wrong to say that we are not statistically normal and that we have a treatable condition. Some people choose to treat this dysphoria through only crossdressing and others need to transition.

I have corresponded with Dr Lawrence and she admits that sometimes the best answer is to transition. This is something that scares the Jesus out of me but realize I may need to do in order to stay sane and functional.

Maybe the answer for me is to stop over analyzing the source of this condition of ours and just find a way to deal with it.

Thanks for your feedback!!....Joanna

Comment by Karen Moate on August 31, 2012 at 10:03am

This is a hot potato nobody will want to touch but let me show you how to do it without getting burned.  My 2 cents worth is that as transgendered persons we deal with finding a way to balance two types of energy that reside within us.  For lack of a better term for these let us use a commonly used eastern philosophical term  yin for the female energy and yang  for the male.  So you have both of these energies competing for dominance within you (everyone has some of both its just that most people can't use both of them the same way trans folk can).  Study soulflyers or shamans in native american history if you want more info on this.  You have all heard that men think with their thingies and to a degree this is true.  Women think with their heart.  What if the only way that a male ego can process being feminine is to sexualize it someway?  This is how men think, thus to bring this issue to a point where they can honestly deal with it eventually it FIRST has to pass through this sexual filter in the male part of the brain.  So it isn't merely the love of oneself as a woman but rather the most common way of the male's identity of being able to start dealing with the issue of having a feminine side.

That is my take on the issue and no I don't buy into the Blanchard theory because while it is easy to think my gosh this is me...It isn't .  It wasn't done well enough and I think most trans people would agree with that.  Sexuality can be a part of the issue but it isn't the whole can of beans. 

 

Comment by Rachel King on August 31, 2012 at 10:09am

I don't believe you can ever " deal with it' by crossdressing.

I know only to well that frustration.

A saying I love to use is," You can take the person out of transgender but you can never take the transgender out of a person."

It's a truism and we can hide as much as we like but one day we all have to face our truth.

I'm not trying to be mean here but given your pic is genuine, how on earth do you pass for male?

Not knowing a thing about you or your life and lifestyle, you must find it hard to convince others.

Anyway, I wish you well in your quest for peace.

I already know the answer but I have the benefit of hindsight.

Been there, done that.

It's a no-brainer.

Comment by Joanna on August 31, 2012 at 10:41am

Rachel yes it is my picture and yes I pass for a woman even now without hormones. People say I look very young for my age but they must see the femininity but say nothing prolly not to appear rude. Admittedly I am having trouble dealing with it just by crossdressing.

Kevin I like your thinking. We are a ying and yang. Your attitude is admittedly more positive than mine as I have been trying hard to avoid the road to transition. I'm most worried for my kids who know I'm trans but have told me they would be very distraught if I became a woman. They already went through divorce and this would be the clincher!

Again thanks to both of you!

Comment by Rachel King on August 31, 2012 at 10:02pm

The anomaly between a parent devoting their lives to their kids and the kids devoting their lives to themselves, until they too become parents, is not lost on me.

Sorry but I feel your kids are being totally selfish and need a wake-up call that after a lifetime of misery and what was probably a major factor in your marriage break-up( well it was in mine anyway) don't they think you deserve some degree of happiness or are they feeling so self-centred that how they are perceived, is all that matters.

I am not nor will I be the the last who has lost family due to intransigence in attitude, to the degree that I was totally accepted when they thought I was gay but how dare I want to live as a woman.

"But I am", I plead, which falls on deaf ears, so I am perfectly happy today and have only a twinge of regret now and again for the born-with family I have lost, which is more than adequately compensated by the family of friends that I have gained.

Unless you allow yourself to become reclusive which is the daftest thing a trans person can do, the 1000's of blogs, comments and words I have read here, all attest to the fact that life is infinitely better once we allow ourselves the freedom to be me, we become and are so much better people.

You think your a good person now?

Well, a good person doesn't torture themselves

Masochism needs to be taken out of the trans vocabulary.

I make it plain that I don't agree with any of the phychiatric "diagnosis" because I have never considered myself to being "abnormal."

After years of confused ignorance, of not having the means to "discover" who we are, today, in this computer world, we have every opportunity to learn our truth about ourselves and more importantly, learn that we have a medical condition not a psychiatric one although the stigma an unforgiving world would heap upon us, often leads to our developing such a psychiatric condition.

The lies fed us, lead us into that condition.......but only if we allow it to be so.

So, are we actually who we think we are?

In spite of the populism with which therapists and psych's are held, I firmly believe that we know in our own minds and our hearts whether we should transition.

It is certainly not everyones path, but we should never confuse filial love and their demands upon us, with what is best and ultimately healthiest for ourselves.

It is not selfish to transition, if that is your proper path.

Indeed, it is selfish not to transition because we then deny all others, and ourselves, the best that we can offer of ourselves.

And that's the bottom line of it all.

The "clincher" is when they and yourself, concede that you are a happier, healthier and ultimately a better woman than you could ever be as a "man".

Let there be no doubt about that.

 

Comment by Rachel King on August 31, 2012 at 11:04pm

Kevin, there is a lot of sense in what you are saying.

I blogged about such a thing in my very early days of transition.

The fight in my mind, between my female self and my male self was an incredibly difficult event in my life.

I described it as a "battle royale" one where my testosterone was battling my estrogen and though it was in my mind, it felt like a truly physical happening for me.

I got so much support for this, that the silence was deafening and for the 6 months this battle raged, I doubted and raged against my own knowing that what was happening was real.

I am about the most down-to-earth person I possibly can be, so I don't glamorise anything here.

There did come a time when the estrogen won and it was like a physical weight being lifted from me and I have never felt confusion about my being since.

So I am quite comfortable with your theory and maybe Joanna will find some solace in this thought you have given us.

Comment by Joanna on September 1, 2012 at 7:33am

Rachel I completely understand you and I wont hold myself back if the question comes down to insanity or transition. I will let time decide whether I must and my kids will adjust just as they adjusted to the divorce.

I am going to drop the analysis for now and concentrate on living one day at a time. I think I also need a bit more gender therapy.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Comment by Lauren Elisabeth Tancyus on September 2, 2012 at 10:38am

I object to the use of the concept of autogynophilia because that means that a person who is labled as such has a fetish. That some of us are aroused sexually by the idea of having sex as a woman solely based on whether the person they fantasize about is a female as opposed to male is simply not a fetish. Nor do I believe when someone who is dressing in a very seductive manner anticipating an evening of intimacy is not aroused by the things she wears, whether she is a gg or a woman of transgender experience is a fetish. In an odd way those who propose the concept of autogynophilia, to my way of thinking  are heterophobic.

In my practice as a psychotherapist, I simply will not use that modifer in my diagnostic workup.

Comment by Joanna on September 2, 2012 at 12:03pm

Actually Sheryl I do take exception to some of what you are saying. Firstly the concept of autogynephelia deals with a kind of narcissism because it revolves around a love of ourselves as women. The reason I find at least some credibility still in that concept is because I have found myself becoming obsessive around my crossdressing and getting beyond irritable when I could not do so. I have chatted with many who seem to agree that there is at least some form of dysfunctional mania there.

One could argue that this stems from the frustration of not being able to realize our true selves and that's fair enough as I won't speak for others. But the behavior I have noticed in myself at least in part finds some explaination. It amounts to almost a sexual orientation in that it would keep me from realizing normal relationships with women since I was the woman being focused on.

Regardless of whether we want to view ourselves as normal or not it does not change the fact that we are a statistically small percentage of the population. I don't feel necessarily worse for knowing that I have a condition and just like people who are bi polar or have chronic depression we need to function and live normal lives. If that answer for many of us is to transition then more power to those who do since I am not criticizing the treatments but trying to understand the pathology behind my own observed behavior.

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