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- we need to talk about 'autogynephilia'...
we need to talk about 'autogynephilia'...
this almost-forgotten long-discredited theory is creeping back into mainstream discourse....
QUEER WORD
AUTOGYNEPHILIA

What It Means:
Literally, it means 'love of oneself as a woman'—auto (self) + gyne (woman) + philia (love/attraction).
But when people use the term autogynephilia today, they're almost always referring to a discredited theory from the 1980s that claims trans women aren't actually women, but rather men with a sexual fetish for imagining themselves as female.
Let’s Use It In A Sentence:
My aunt Pam sent me a video from a right-wing YouTube 'influencer' claiming that trans women only transition because of autogynephilia, and now he's left me no choice but to put together a powerpoint rebuttal to whip out over Christmas lunch.
A little bit of history:
Modern transphobia is weird.
Rather than coming up with any new arguments for why they think it’s ok to hate an entire group of people, transphobes seem to instead be drudging up long resolved arguments (They’re groomers! They have unfair advantages at sport! They want to sit in the cubicle next to us and listen to us tinkle!), and seeing whether or not they still work, before doubling down and repeating them ad nauseum.
And right this very moment you can guarantee that there are different pockets of the internet obsessing over different theories - fringe ‘experts’ debating and propagating rumours, wonky science, and downright lies.

And one term that seems to be making more inroads recently, creeping from obscure forums into mainstream discourse, is autogynephilia: the belief that trans women aren't really women at all, but rather men with a sexual fetish for imagining themselves as female.
And if you’ve just scrunched up your face in confusion after reading that sentence, then I want you to know that I am right there with you. It makes no sense. Surely any logical person knows that’s just ridiculous?
But sometimes you’re ambushed by a well-meaning but misinformed cousin/neighbour/shop-keeper who has been reading too many Facebook comments and somehow absorbed these ludicrous talking points without realising where they came from.
Or sometimes you might even be feeling brave enough to wade right into those Facebook comments yourself (though, for your own wellbeing, I don’t endorse this type of activity).
And, so, for those times, I thought it might be worth putting together a little explainer to give you enough ammunition to push back.
What is autogynephilia (the condensed version)?

Ray Blanchard
In the 1980s, an American-Canadian psychologist named Ray Blanchard came up with a theory about why trans women transition. From seemingly nowhere he decided that there are two types of trans women:
Homosexual transsexuals - Trans women who are attracted to men. Blanchard claimed these women transition because they want to attract straight men (basically claiming they're just very feminine gay men who would go to extremes to get a man to be attracted to them).
Autogynephilic transsexuals - Trans women who are attracted to women (or anyone who isn't exclusively attracted to men). Blanchard claimed these women don't transition because they're actually women - no, they transition because they have a sexual fetish. Specifically, they get sexually aroused when they imagine themselves as a women.
In both of these scenarios, Blanchard seems to insinuate that trans women are not really women - just men with either an overly complex strategy for attracting a man, or an abnormal sexual desire.
(and, before you ask, Blanchard didn’t even bother thinking about trans men).
Modern-day transphobes have taken this a step further, and said that, actually, ALL transgender women are autogynephilic and the only reason that anyone transitions is because they are turned on by the idea of themselves as a woman.
So why is this a load of old nonsense?
Many, many reasons, some of which are:
It doesn't match trans women's actual experiences - When researchers actually asked trans women about their experiences, the vast majority said ‘no, that's not why I transitioned at all.’ They described genuine gender dysphoria and/or a deep sense of being women, not sexual arousal.
Cis women failed the ‘test’ - When researchers decided to test the diagnostic questions they’d devised to measure autogynephilia on cisgender women, they found that many of them reported feeling aroused sometimes when imagining themselves as attractive women. So if autogynephilia is real, then by Blanchard's logic, cis women also have a fetish for being women... which kind of invalidates the entire argument.
It's based on bad science - Blanchard's research had small sample sizes, cherry-picked data, and made sweeping assumptions. He also only studied trans women who came to his specific clinic, not a representative sample. Basically, he decided that his theory was correct and then would only consider evidence that supported this.
Major medical organisations outright rejected it - The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the American Psychological Association, and other mainstream medical bodies have said this theory is not supported by evidence and shouldn't be used in clinical practice.
It's reductive and harmful - It conflates sexuality and gender identity, ignores trans women's own testimony about their lives, and kind of just misses the point about self-identity.
So why is this resurfacing now?
It’s hard to apply logic to out-and-out transphobia, but I think it’s gaining traction again because it kind-of-almost-sort-of sounds scientific and gives transphobes a seemingly ‘intellectual’ reason to deny trans women’s identities.
It’s much more palatable to say ‘I read this research….’ rather than ‘I just don’t like trans people’, and all of it sounds just legitimate enough to confuse their unsuspecting audiences.

Repeat after me: trans women are women, trans men are men
And if you dehumanise people - stop referring to them as women, and start referring to them as deviants - then you can justify almost anything. Strip away someone's humanity in the discourse, and suddenly denying them healthcare, safety, and basic rights doesn't seem so extreme.
That's probably the biggest danger here - not just that the theory is wrong, but that it's being weaponised to make cruelty seem reasonable.
Had you heard of autogynephilia before this article? |