TRIGGER ALERT: Don’t read this article if you hate the paraphilia discourse. The mission of this site is to explore all aspects of gender variance. But you don’t have to! You can pick and choose! So don’t read this if you suffer with the fetish argument. xx
Fucking Youtube and its ‘suggested videos‘!
I opened my page and this suggested video was staring out at me. I suppose the suggestion was based on my research into ‘paraphilias.’
You will notice that there’s no mention of sexual gratification in this video. Nobody mentions the A word (Apotemnophilia). This puzzled me, so I entered BIID in Google and was sent to this research paper. I recommend you take 10 minutes to look through it.
Then I found myself on a page describing xenomelia…
It seems there exists the same tension in the BIID community as there does in our community. There are a bunch of people who describe the behaviour as a paraphilia that’s sexual in origin, and other people who see it as a phenomena concerned with identity. To the latter, the A word (apotemnophilia) is as dirty as our own A word (Autogynephilia).
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to consider the relevance of apotemnophilia right now, but I will finish this rapid post by explaining the uncomfortable aspect of all this…
From the first moment I read it, I recognized this passage of Anne Lawrence’s work as a grave challenge to the ‘feminine essence’ argument (Page 24 Men Trapped In Mens’ Bodies)
As we see in the video and resulting literature, there are both amputee fetishists…and a sub-class of amputee fetishists who want the amputation themselves. They feel that having this amputation is a key part of their identity that goes way beyond sex…
Sound familiar?
As I said…it makes for uncomfortable reading!
6 Comments
what I have told myself Felix is that if this were to be true in the case of transsexuals but it solves a problem and they are happier living as women then the operation would have been worth it. However I do not agree that transsexualism is a paraphilia because female to males as well as androphilic transsexuals are not driven exclusively by sexual motives (although Blanchard postulated that androphilics were also in order to make AGP more consistent). It seems rather that gender dysphoria is a universal concept that bridges across sex and orientation and gynephilics just suffer the unfortunate confusion of cross wiring through the process of puberty in that their orientation also aligns with their target sex. Let me know if you agree or disagree…
Hola Guapa,
I had previously mentioned this point about paraphilias where the goal mirrors crossdreaming in the sense that the person wants to ‘become’ the love object rather than mate with it. However, I conveniently managed to put it out of my mind until seeing this video.
The video has brought it all back again, however… and I really can’t see anyway past it.
While crossdreaming remains a unique sexological phenomona we can claim many things about its origins. However, if it turns out that exactly the same process happens in a whole list of paraphilias (people wanting to be plushtoys /amputees/little kids etc) and it all becomes a key part of their identity…then it seems highly probable that crossdreaming is of that family.
Yesterday I walked around the city looking for a counter argument but I just couldn’t find one.
The problem with your point is that it presumes that transgender crisis and dysphoria must all come from the same source. However, there is no reason why that should be so. Salmomella poisoning must come from the salmonella bacteria but we don’t have the foggiest idea on the literal mechanisms of gender dysphoria.
As I always say, ultimately we don’t know and probably never will. Everything is what’s probable. But…much as i hate it..this defintely adds a few points to the sexological origins. Please tell me the contrary… I’d love to change my mind! More later…
xx
true that dysphoria need not come from the same source and we know very little about it. But then are you now considering that the cross-gender identities are based on paraphilias and are therefore null and void as Blanchard proposed? I am still of the opinion that the cross gender feelings come first which then mess up the sexuality as a consequence. And here you had me thinking that you were convinced regarding your gender core concept 🙂
What you wrote, perfectly represents something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Therefore, I will be replying via a post soon. Un abrazo,.
I do not understand, why should it be unconfortable reading? 🙂
From the paper it’s quite obvious that desire to amputate a limb is a quantum one — it can be sexualized, or it can be about being complete, and we can’t make a clear line between them.
The same quantum nature we can see (if we look good enough) everywhere, which suggests that it’s something fundamental about human nature that there are no clear boundaries.
Also, drawing direct analogies between desire to amputate a limb and desire to change gender can be dangerous, because we do not know, how far the similarity goes. The logic “if features 1, 2, 3 matches then feature 4 also would match” is wrong, speaking generally.
Sorry to go off the rails with politics, but psychology textbooks will point out that something is only a mental disorder if it impairs day to day functioning. Taken in a broader context it means the condition isn’t compatible with the culture you live in.
In which case I consider myself lucky that I wasn’t born with this condition, or a nastier one that wants me to harm people. But instead I like to dress up pretty.
In terms of my own sexuality I figure the need to my express myself as a woman is a built in trait that predated puberty and got suppressed because it wasn’t an acceptable part of the culture growing up. Like any teenage girl puberty struck and the need to be beautiful hit BAD! I would plan out everything and get dressed up, but circumstances like the parents pulling into the driveway at any moment dictated that I needed to get the clothes off asap. Quickly faping and pulling off the clothes in shame was a natural adaption to the circumstances. Just as much as being introverted because I didn’t have the social energy to put on a fake self.
The real confusing part is we are going through a massive cultural shift right now. In my childhood a man had to be a man and take care of his family, anything less was shirking responsibility and harmful to the culture. Thus transgenderism was considered an impairment for day to day functioning.
Now that I am almost XX, there is nothing more anti-pc than a man being a man, and we are flooded with propaganda destroying the classic male image. Women’s rights are everywhere including in the work place, since everyone needs to be a productive unit and the new cultural has a bias towards nurturing and open-mindedness. Transgenderism is no longer considered an impairment according to the TV, but this type of reprogramming takes time, just like racism or women’s rights there is a lag between what the media devices say and actual cultural practice.
I suspect in the distant future transgender people (especially transgender women) will be the polar opposite to being psychologically impaired, and may even be a priest class. They are both women and needed as a foundation for economically productive trans-humanism.
So like many others minorities we are stuck with the dilemma of being suppressed by the old system or being used by the new.