Do women have autogynephiliac fantasies?

Introduction

Yesterday, I read an article by Noah Berlatsky entitled…

Why Are Trans Women Penalized For Body Fantasies Everyone Has? 

The article claims that when a crossdreamer gets turned on by lingerie or bimbofication, they are experiencing the same buzz a cis-woman experiences for lingerie or the idea of big boobs. In other words, it’s not some kind of ‘autogynephilia’ or ‘transvestic fetish’ but simply…a ciswoman’s sexuality trapped in a man’s body.

Not only is this idea nonsense, but it’s the sort of narrative that ends up doing more harm than good to the mental health of transwomen.

Why..?

…Because it causes cognitive dissonace and unrealistic expectations. They tell themselves they have a cis-woman’s sexuality but continue to experience fantasies that they know, deep down, aren’t very cis. For example, fantasies about…

_ Lactation, motherhood and/or female urination.

_ Being humiliated and abused for being a ‘sissy’ or a ‘transvestite.’

_ Wearing sanitary towels.

_ Particular fabrics such as satin or PVC.

_ Forced feminisation.

_ Exaggerated feminization.

_ A superficial attraction for men that includes stereotypical masculine traits (muscles etc.) but doesn’t include the face or true personality.

Today, I will argue that transwomen are happier when they have a more accurate conception of their sexuality.  Simplistic ideas like “my love of lingerie is just the same as a woman’s,” or myths like, “once I transition, my sexuality will be free of crossgender ‘fetishism” do not bring transwomen to the state of peace and acceptance they need for optimum mental health.

Fortunately, having an accurate conception of crossgender sexuality does not mean you have to subscribe to the ideas of Blanchard. All it means is that you accept its unique nature, and the simple fact that nobody – not me, not Blanchard, nor Serrano – truly understands its origins.

Main article

STROPPY CAVEAT

There might well be a transwoman reading this article whose attraction for wearing lingerie is the same as a biological woman’s. 

That means, by definition, you are not the sort of transgender woman this article was written for. This was written for transgender women who exhibit the behaviour described by the misguided theories of ‘autogynephilia’ and ‘transvestic fetishism.’ Therefore, don’t leave stroppy comments. I’m not talking about you!

The Moser Myth 

The main problem with Berlatsky’s article is that it is based on a Charles Moser experiment that claims to prove that ‘autogynephilia’ exists in women.

However, Berlatsky clearly hasn’t read the original paper, because the only thing it proved was that women find the idea they might have ‘autogynephilia’ so ridiculous that they refuse to participate in the experiment. That’s why the overwhelming majority of women did not fill in Moser’s questionnaire.

How many women responded? 18 or so.

Despite this pitiful level of participation, Moser believed he had enough data to draw the following conclusion: that women also have autogynephilia.

His argument goes something like this…

  • Women get turned on by lingerie.
  • Women get turned on by thinking of themselves as sexy women.
  • Women place themselves into the narrative of films they find erotic.
  • In fact, the projection of the self into imagined bodies, outfits and scenarios is the definition of fantasy itself. 
  • Ergo: crossdreamers imagining themselves as sexy women are  indulging in classic fantasy projection – as practiced by females the world over.

This is plainly untrue, and any crossdeamer who analyses their own fantasies knows it’s untrue. Putting aside forced feminisation and all our other weird fantasies, let’s stick to the basics: classic female embodiment.

Thought Experiment

Imagine you (a crossdreamer) are in a bar with your girlfriend (a heterosexual female) and a beautiful woman walks in, wearing a sexy PVC dress.

Your girlfriend – unless she has lesbian tendencies – is not going to look at the woman and get turned on. And if she does have any sense that she wanted to be that woman it’d be a straightforward case of envy and the desire to be more beautiful.

Even if she does get a quiver of excitement at the thought of wearing such a sexy dress and being that woman, it’s only a precursor to what really turns her on: the resulting sexual interaction with the target of her female heterosexuality: men.

You, however, will have a different reaction.

Firstly, there’s the possibility of an erotic interest purely in the PVC dress. Fetish fabrics dominate some crossdreamer sexualities and might have you looking over repeatedly at the shine and tightness of said fabric.

Secondly, the thought of being that beautiful woman is going to ratchet up the arousal level to an even greater degree.

Thirdly, as you stare at the woman during the night, your sexual fantasy won’t necessarily advance beyond SIMPLY BEING THE WOMAN. Other participants may or may not enter into the fantasy.

The difference between the crossdreamer’s concept of himself as a woman and that of his girlfriend, therefore, is that the biggest buzz for him is being the woman whereas the buzz for his girlfriend is the sexual activity which being that woman will lead to.

For females (I suspect) the idea of being a sexy woman is an optional extra – an added pizza topping – but certainly not the main course itself. With the crossdreamer, however, being a sexy woman is the crust, the cheese, the portion of fries and the diet coke. Simply being the beautiful woman in a PVC dress would be enough to send him into extreme arousal.

Thought Experiment 2

To see how ridiculous the idea of women with autogynephilia is… just imagine you’re Brad Pitt. Have you – or any other guy – ever got a hardon thinking you were Brad Pitt? No! You could get turned on by imagining you’re as handsome as Brad Pitt and having all the resultant sexual interactions…but you don’t look at Brad and get the horn imagining his face on your body.

Similarly, the idea that women look at pictures of Ariana Grande and start fingering themselves (imagining they’re Ariana Grande) is not viable.

A crossdreamer, however, would have no problem with such a fantasy.

Conclusion

So…

…Noah’s premise seems like a good idea. He’s trying to prove Blanchard wrong and show that a transwoman has a cis-woman’s sexuality. Unfortunately, though, it ends up laying the foundation for all mental pathologies: conflict. In this case, a conflict between…

An idealized conception of a transwoman’s pure female sexuality 

versus

The day to day reality of her not so pure fantasies

Trying to deny the true nature of crossdreamer fantasies by describing them as female (or by trying to say that ciswomen also have such fantasies) is a disservice to transwomen. You see, paradoxically, trying to whitewash female embodiment/feminization  ends up reinforcing the tenets of Blanchard: that these fantasies are shameful and invalidating.

How?

Because the implausibility of contemporary autogynephilia criticism communicates a powerful subtext to all transwomen: that whatever happens – they must always downplay certain aspects of their sexuality. When the transwoman asks herself why this is so, she can only come to a singular conclusion…

That yes, indeed: these fantasies are shameful and invalidating.

What are we supposed to do: call ourselves autogynephiliacs?

As stated before, having a more accurate conception of crossgender fantasy does not mean using the language of Blanchard or transvestic fetishism. It means that you remain fundamentally transgnostic and committed to the facts of modern transgender science: that there is none. As I’ve repeated ad nauseum: nobody knows the causes of the transgender condition or sexual orientation.

This allows you the cover to shootdown Blanchard or Berlatsky or anyone else who claims to definitively know what causes crossgender fantasy, without having to commit yourself to any alternative.

All you have to do is repeat to yourself and others just one, simple mantra: nobody knows!

Am I really attracted to men? (‘The Faceless Man’ and other essays)

 

The ‘faceless man’ and the terrifying possibility that we have no sexual orientation.

Hi, my name’s Felix Conrad and I love black coc*k.

I apologise in advance to black men across the world for this blatant sexualisation of their organs but, let’s face it, that’s what sexual organs are for. Furthermore, by the same logic I’ll have to start apologising to Swedish girls who work as au-pairs, French women that are actually French maids, and any other class of people who have become the object of saucy stereotypes.

So I repeat…I love black c%*k. In fact, I love black coc*s – plural…the more the better, and the blacker and bigger and shinier they are, the better too. I would stuff them one after the other in my cake hole and merrily chomp on them like there was no tomorrow.

Or would I?

You see, this love only exists in the heat of the moment. It may surprise you to know that I’ve never sucked…or even seen a black co*k in my life, and when I walk down the street and see a black guy I don’t ask myself if he’s packing eight inches down below. In fact, I have a strong suspicion that if you actually placed his black co*k, or indeed any co*k – white, yellow or russet brown – in my vicinity, I’d be more likely to spew on it than suck. This is in stark contrast to women in the street, who my eye greedily seeks out with unquenchable thirst and who can induce in me endless sighs of appreciation and erotic thoughts.

But here’s the thing: while it’s women that interest me in the outside world, I can honestly say I’ve never fantasised about penetrating a woman in my life. I have, of course, fantasised about being a woman, and have penetrated dozens, but most of my masturbatory fantasies since I was a kid, have always involved men. And not just any old men…but hulking slabs of meat with rippling muscles and big dicks. Oh yes…and I forgot to mention…they are faceless. I think you know where I’m going with this.

Yes, my friends, what we have here is a classic case of the ‘faceless man’ as mentioned in theories such as autogynephilia – also known as ‘I’m a crossdreamer – do you mind wearing a bag over your head while I suck your cock?’ syndrome and many other terms beside. All such labels describe a phenomenon long observed in gender variant sexuality – the propensity to fantasise about men but to not put a face to the man…he is just a hunk of male matter with no features other than his rippling muscles and generous sized member.

Curiously, I’ve never mentioned him before in my writing, which is strange as he looms so large in my fantasies (extra large!) This omission has no complex explanation: I’ve been thinking about him…analysing him…probing him just as he probes me, and have never been able to come up with much to say; he really is just a faceless slab of meat. But then the existence of gravitational waves changed everything.

What changed, exactly?

A recent flurry of Einsteinian experiments inspired me to make a fifth attempt to understand two things I have never been able to get my head around: relativity and quantum physics. I understand that time slows down and that a particle can be in two places at one time and something about a dead cat…but I want to understand why and have never been able to.

Not surprisingly, it wasn’t fifth time lucky, but in my reading I came across something that inspired this book: the way that tiny, seemingly irrelevant phenomena can lead directly to some of the biggest discoveries in science. For example – the seemingly irrelevant cosmic background radiation led to the extremely relevant Big Bang. And I contemplated the fact that in the universe you can understand massive things from a single micro component…and I began to wonder if the same might not be true in our search to understand transgender sexuality. And decided that it was.

Even on this page, for example, I have mentioned in passing something which I think is of big importance for understanding that sexuality: I have never fantasised about penetrating a woman. The fact that women interest me erotically but I never look at them and think…‘I’d give her one’…speaks volumes. However, penetration was not the phenomena I settled on. Instead it was our friend: the faceless man who lords it over my sexuality – sometimes my boss, sometimes my daddy, and sometimes my husband in a parallel word where I am a beautiful woman.

As you will discover in this essay, he did not disappoint. His beautiful veiny c%*k soon led to a deeper, richer vein of understanding, because to understand a crossdreamer’s erotic relationship with men you have to understand their erotic relationship with women and with themselves, and that is the point when I discovered that when Blanchard said that autogynephiliac orientation competed with heterosexual orientation, he was mistaken. The truth is far more unsettling, and that’s where our faceless man took me: towards the startling discovery that whatever you call yourself – sissy c%*k-whore, crossdreamer, two-spirit, transgender –

…You probably have no orientation at all.

 

What is crossdreaming?

What is a crossdreamer?

A crossdreamer is a person who gains sexual, emotional and psychic satisfaction from cross gender ideas or behaviour.

The sexual fantasies of male to female crossdreamers can include any or all of the following…

  • 1. Being dressed as a girl. (transvestic)
  • 2. Behaving like a girl. (behavioural)
  • 3. Being embodied as a female and having a vagina etc. (anatomical)

The common thread of these fantasies is the need to be feminine.

This does not mean they aren’t turned on by heterosexual sex. Many crossdreamers are married and able to play the sexual role expected of a husband. However, deep down their fantasies always return to being feminine.

Where does the term come from?

 

‘Crossdreaming’ is a term coined by Jack Molay for a phenomenon that some sexologists refer to as ‘autogynephilia’ (and psychiatrists as transvestic fetishism.) For many transgender theorists, however, crossdreamer sexuality is simply a logical consequence of being trapped in the wrong body.

The new term was coined not only because autogynephilia and transvestic fetishism are seen as offensive, but because they fail to adequately capture the behaviour they try to describe.

  • Autogynephilia overreaches and tries to create some elaborate theory of transsexualism.
  • Transvestic fetishism underreaches and attributes everything to a fetish for female clothing.

The good thing about ‘crossdreaming’ is that it is not entirely sexual. It includes fantasies that are emotional and centred on a broader sense of self. The picture above perfectly captures the concept. Unlike autogynephilia, it’s dreamy and includes the personality.

Why might someone see themselves as a ‘sissy’ or ‘autogynephiliac’ rather than a crossdreamer?

There are five stages in the development of crossgender sexuality. Some people never go past stage 2.

For many, reaching climax is the end of their cross gender experience. They have no desire to cross gender in any context other than a sexual one. Furthermore, they may be embarrassed about their sexuality. Therefore, they prefer to think of it as a fetish with no deeper ramifications for their psyche.

For those quacks who are determined to reduce cross gender arousal to a fetish, crossdreaming is seen as dressing it all up in flowery language to make it less sexual. It’s also a favored target of internet trolls who like to harass proponents of the term and accuse them of converting autogynephilia into transgenderism.

Is ‘crossdreaming’ the only politically correct term for cross gender arousal?

Because contemporary gender theory states that gender is a matter of self identification, all terms such as ‘cross gender arousal’ and the love of oneself ‘as’ a woman are deemed offensive. If a transgender person is engaging in such fantasy then they are not crossing gender at all, as their gender is that which they fantasize about.

This leaves Jack Molay’s term as the only acceptable label for such behavior.

(You can visit Jack’s website – crossdreamers.com

What’s the relationship between crossdreaming and late-onset transsexualism?

The causal relationship between a sexual interest in being a woman and the latent development of a transgender identity is fiercely controversial.

If you claim that late-onset transsexualism is an outgrowth of cross gender sexuality then many transwomen say you invalidate their identity. To them, it is reducing their femininity to a fetish.

If you want to save yourself a lot of time (and controversy) then be aware that such a causal link can never be empirically proven or disproven. Therefore, I advise you to keep an open mind. If someone says they find ‘autogynephilia’ offensive then respect their wish and don’t use the term.

[perfect_survey id=”18335″]

Comments that Jack Molay wanted to add to my definition…

“Thank you for this one, Felix. I can relate to all of this.

Several things happened after I came up with the term, which is — as you point out — a non-toxic alternative to the term “autogynephilia”.

  • 1. I realized that it was a much broader term than “autogynephilia”) which only covers people assigned male at birth who are attracted to women). I have learned to know MTF crossdreamers who love men as well as many FTM crossdreamers who love men.
  • 2. The term has taken on a life on its own. While it originally referred to sexual fantasies, crossdreamers found that that was a too narrow perspective, and included non-sexual interests, expressions and identity traits as well.

As for “sissy” fiction and imagery. This is definitely an expression of MTF crossdreamer sexuality, but it is not the only one. If you go over to sites like Fictionmania, you will find that a lot of crossdreamer fiction is not sexual at all, and that much of what is erotic or even pornographic, does not fit the “sissy” aesthetics of submission and “bimbofication”.

I am not saying this because “sissy” fantasies are wrong or amoral. Fantasies are fantasies and we should only be held accountable for our actions, but many MTF crossdreamers do dream about becoming strong, intelligent, independent women — also in bed.

In my own life I have also noticed that my fantasies change as I am able to integrate this part of me into my sense of self.”

Thanks, Jack 😉

What now?

If you are just starting to explore why you fantasize about being a woman then you have three options.

  1. If you are gender confused with a history of crossdreaming then start with the first article in this series. What is a transvestite, and why are women’s clothes so prevalent in cross gender psychology?Or…
  2. If you are interested in analyzing common features of crossdreamer sexuality and sissy porn (why do fantasies include weird stuff like men and french maids etc) then click on this link.
  3. Do our sissy test and see what the correct term is for your sexuality.

 

How crossdreamers can live longer and earn extra cash!

 

Having spent a sizable portion of my time recently, being intellectually skull fucked by the notorious WXLUP, I would like to extract something positive from the experience.

I initially thought of creating an app – The WXLUP generator – which would, on demand, produce the type of overlong sentences he seems to favour. This is not a real quote, but one from the generator…

It is the thing therein, therefore, which reflects the essential reductionist dimension of the fetish’s chief quality: that of being simultaneously constructed within both the microcosm and the macrocosm of latent…

Seeing little commercial application for such a generator – other than to induce migraines – I have shelved my plans and settled for a philosophical learning. Which is…

When it comes to transgender philosophy the emotion leads the intellect, making some disputes impossible to resolve. This is because the people involved have formulated an intellectual version of what is, essentially, a strategy to cope with a previous or ongoing gender crisis. Giving up their intellectual position, therefore, would collapse their coping strategy and cause them suffering.

There is no greater example of this than the current debate raging on the crossdreamer Reddit, which I thought was linguistic, but now realize is emotional, and impossible to reconcile.

Just in case you don’t know what this fucking boring debate is about (though, I must admit it was me who started it)… it’s very simple: some people don’t want other people on the Reddit to refer to crossdreaming as a fetish and some people do.

Now, instead of going through the usual debate about linguistics and sexuality which will surely call into action both the Conrad and WXLUP generators, let’s conduct an emotional analysis.

The two sides in the argument reflect the two types of visitors to the crossdreamer Reddit.

1) Those who think cross gender arousal is just a fetish and anything that results from it (transgender desire etc) just an outgrowth of that fetish.
2) Those who see crossdreaming (in differing degrees) as an expression of a deeper female self.

Both sides have a clear emotional investment in their position WHICH THEY WILL NEVER GIVE UP because they represent two common ways of interpreting and dealing with cross gender fantasies. Humans need to cognitivise stuff, they need to understand themselves, and once that understanding is reached no amount of argument will dislodge it.

The two methodologies for coping with cross gender desire are…

1) To downplay its importance as just an embarrassing, but harmless fetish.
2) To up-play its importance and see it as a sign of a deeper, transgender psychology.

You would think, though, that if they are coping strategies it should be easy to switch strategies if you see one working better than the other. This is rarely the case, however.

Why?

Because they are, in turn, reflections of a deeper emotion about transgenderism. You see, whatever his or her final verdict on their cross gender desires, there will always come a moment where the individual has to question their gender. They never have to ask the question… is this sexual? (they already know that because they’ve been getting a boner about it their whole life). But at some point, a new, testing question emerges: am I transgender? From here it’s easy to see the evolution of the two responses. In fact, three responses.

1) A person who hates the ideas of being transgender will decide the whole thing is a ‘fetish’. In fact, he will enjoy the negative connotation of the word fetish because it shows just how silly it is. He will therefore develop all the concepts and ideas that prove HE’S DEFINITELY NOT TRANSGENDER… and anyone that calls him trans will be offending him.

2) Someone who can’t quite make up their mind whether they want to be transgender or not will spend their whole life, hovering around the middle, not knowing whether it’s just sexual or something deeper. They remain in a permanent intellectual limbo that means… THEY ARE DEFINITELY MAYBE TRANSGENDER, and depending on the cycle of the moon or whatever else controls their constant turn-coating, may or may not see the fetish label as offensive.

3) Someone who embraces their transgender feelings – sexual, emotional, cerebral – will want to go the whole hog towards the gender they identify with. They will therefore interpret their cross gender arousal as just another example of the fact that they DEFINITELY ARE TRANSGENDER… and anyone who refers to fetishes will offend them.

Conclusion

There I was, thinking that if I could just explain to the fetishists about the origins of the term, and how it offends some people etc… that they would stop using it. BUT THEY CAN’T. Despite they’re talking about the removal of any stigma from the word fetish they kinda like it because it proves that the whole thing is just sexual and that they ARE DEFINITELY NOT TRANSGENDER.

Okay, guys… we get the message…YOU’RE DEFINITELY NOT TRANSGENDER. (Sorry to take the Mickey out of the fetishists, because we are all doing the same – turncoats and transgender: allowing our emotions to guide our intellect.)

We can conclude, therefore, that any intellectual debate about cross gender arousal with a person who experiences cross gender arousal, is a complete waste of time. You can have a much speedier, efficient discourse if you start with the simple question…

Would you like to transition and live as a girl? yes, no, or maybe.

With that one word answer you’ll already know if they’re a fetishist, a turncoat or a die-hard, and that they believe all the resulting philosophies that goes with those things. And you also know that they’ll never change their mind.

Knowing this simple trick in advance can literally save you hundreds, if not thousands of hours of wasted conversations, Reddit exchanges and forum interactions, with people who WERE NEVER GONNA CHANGE THEIR MIND… NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAID. It’s literally… extra hours of life. Now, all you need to do is take that previously dead-weight time and use it to move your career forward, and you’ll soon be generating extra cash!

And on that note, I’m happy to announce that it’s time for me to leave my musings in transgender philosophy for a couple of months, to work on other projects. I leave you in the hands of Electra.

See you in January…
Mua…

 

Is it acceptable to use the term ‘fetish’ and ‘paraphilia’ when talking about crossdreaming?

I’d like to speak today about a linguistic dispute in the reddit crossdreamer thread. A dispute which can be described in the following terms…

    1. – Some members of the community want to refer to crossdreaming as a

fetish

    1. . We will call them

fetishists.

    1. – Some members are offended by this. We will call them

crossdreamers

How to resolve this issue

First of all I want to make clear that this is solely a linguistic dispute. Crossdreamers have no problem with the idea that crossdreaming is fundamentally sexual.. ie… there are no hidden female identities, no transgender narrative… and that the crossdreamer is primarily motivated by a sexual urge. Crossdreamers do not believe that, but recognise it is a valid argument.

So that’s not the cause of the dispute. What offends the crossdreamers is the use of the words fetish and paraphilia when talking about that sexual urge.

The crossdreamers claim – and this is the heart of the issue – that fetish and paraphilia are stigmatising, loaded terms. They are basically synonyms for perversion and abnormality, and that there are a whole range of neutral terms which can be used to replace them. These neutral terms, such as ‘sexual preference /taste for/ sexuality/ erotic interest in/ orientation/ allow for the same debate – minus the offending language.

The fetishists argue that fetish and paraphilia are harmless, neutral terms – simply labels for a range of sexual tastes which differ from that of the majority.

Okay, so does everybody have the two sides clear? 1) fetish and paraphilia are loaded, stigmatising terms. 2) fetish and paraphilia are harmless labels for alternative sexual desires.

Step 1 – seperating ‘fetish’ from ‘paraphilia’

Fetish has three meanings:

1) Sexological:

‘A sexual focus on a nonliving object or nongenital body part.’ American institute of Psychiatry.

2) Common parlance A:

Any type of sexual taste that is different from classic heterosexual sex. This can be completely benign and harmless: “Tommy has a fetish for latex.”

3) Common parlance B:

Any type of sexual taste that is different from classic heterosexual sex and is considered perverted: “Tommy has a fetish for latex (said contemptuously.)

Initial Conclusion

Firstly, it is blatantly and abundantly clear that crossdreaming is not a fetish in academic, scientific or medical terms. In fact, James Cantor – qualified sexologist and virulent believer that transsexuals are motivated by sexuality – wrote here 3 weeks ago…

Finally, autogynephilia is not a fetish. (Fetishes are sexual interests in inanimate objects.)

…(And please… nobody throw transvestic fetishism into the equation because crossdreaming is not the same as crossdressing.)

Secondly, while there are some people for whom fetish is a benign word and a harmless reference to alternative sexual stimuli… it is undeniable that a substantial portion of the population see the word as synonymous with kinky, not normal, perverted.

Therefore, it is patently absurd to claim that the following phrase ‘crossdreaming is a fetish’ is a harmless statement when it is …1) scientifically, medically and sexologically inaccurate… and 2) well known that ‘fetish’ is synonymous with ‘perversion’ and ‘stigma’ in the public imagination.

But not only is it patently absurd… it is patently unacceptable to bring such language to a reddit described as…

a safe place for discussion and support for Crossdreamers…. Our goal is to foster a community that helps people to find what they’re looking for. We promote the exploration of gender, without stigmatizing your sexual interests.

THE WORST THING ABOUT THIS IS THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO COME TO REDDIT LOOKING FOR ADVICE… PEOPLE IN CRISIS… and their whole experience gets hijacked by obsessive fetishists projecting their humiliation fantasies onto the rest of the community.

The final argument of the fetishists: “Sexologists, academics, doctors and the general public are wrong… our meaning is the correct one. The word ‘fetish’ shouldn’t be stigmatised…”

Sorry, but you cant go back in linguistic time. Yes, for some people it’s not stigmatised, but for many it is, it always will be, and therefore the term will never be clean. It’s contaminated… and trying to hold onto it when there are so many alternative words makes no fucking sense. So give it up! Or at least… take it the fuck out of your crossdreamer discourse!

Peeople who try to say the word fetish and paraphilia are harmless just don’t know their history. The words were clearly invented by early sexologists to distinguish certain types of sexual behavior as errant and others as correct. Even now, if you enter paraphilia into google this is what you see… ABNORMAL, EXTREME, DANGEROUS!

 

An olive branch to the fetishists

At the end of the day we’re all just trying to understand our lives. The majority of the fetishists – people like interbeung – are not trolls, they have a sincere belief in their theory, and we shouldn’t attack them.

Let’s also remember that we have no problem with the argument that crossdreaming is just a sexual phenomena and that all that transgender stuff is nonsense… All we ask is that you refrain from using the word fetish and paraphilia when talking about crossdreamer sexuality; maybe you have no problem talking that way, but we do.

Maybe the difference between us comes down to a different experience of crossdreaming. It maybe that the fetishists only fantasize about domination and humiliation and therefore see it through that prism. For many crossdreamers, though, domination is not their turn on; many have classic romantic fantasies, many dream about being in a lesbian relationship, some are genuinely attracted to men and have loved/are in love with men.

Crossdreaming is, therefore, a general term for an enormous swathe of sexual, emotional and psychic behavior that occurs in the context of gender variant psychology. You simply can not come in, guns blazing, saying everyone has a ‘fetish’.

So let’s all chill the fuck out… and let’s not criticise anyone (not even WXLUP – whose Reddit I visited yesterday and found some interesting stuff in). But please… no more use of the word fetish with respect to crossdreaming… it’s factually incorrect and considered by many as offensive.

Crossdreaming has made me lonely and incapable of a normal relationship

 

Introduction

I have just read a classic description on Reddit of egodystonic crossdreaming… which means, basically, the person hates being a crossdreamer. As is often the way with such cases, the first implement they flagellate themselves with is shame.

What particularly upsets this person is their love of humiliation. However, I would point out that if you are turned on by submission then you should be grateful that all you require is forced feminisation. When it comes to BDSM, forced feminisation is child’s play. What is it, really? It’s basically a game of dress up followed by penetration. In contrast, other forms of domination require burning, whipping, binding, suffocation, being hung upside down, trampled on, shat on and pissed on. Then bear in mind that there are currently circulating in society – child molesters, zoophiliacs, amputee fetishsits and people who are into stuffed toys and balloons.

However, shame is not the subject of this article. Today I want to talk about those who believe that crossdreaming is pathological – ie. a mental affliction like addiction or neurosis that negatively affects one’s life. In many such cases the person believes that their inclination makes it impossible to engage in classic heterosexual sex and/or relationships. This is because – as the individual gets drawn ever deeper into a sexual and emotional relationship with their female side – they withdraw from the outside world and feel increasingly lonely.

Today I would like to examine this in detail and then ask if there is such a thing as pathological crossdreaming.

Diagnosing pathological crossdreaming

How do you know when a life isn’t going well?

I think we would all agree on the following…

If a person’s social, professional and romantic life is on a sharp decrease… while solitary time spent fantasizing and masturbating is on the increase… then there’s a problem.

The above description is relevant to a minority of crossdreamers who explain their stories in online forums. They are caught in a crossdreaming black hole… where an ever increasing amount of time gets sucked into porn, fantasy and related activities. The question is… why?

Is there something in the nature of crossdreamer sexuality that leads to black hole crossdreaming?

Yes. Their are two factors involved.

1.

For many reasons, the crossdreaming sexuality suffers a great deal of repression. This means that while heterosexuality has a lifetime to mature slowly like a fine wine… the crossdreaming sexuality develops in fits and bursts, or sometimes… all at one time. This means that a person can experience a massive escalation of fantasy as they unleash their sexuality.

Riding the wave of emerging crossdreamer sexuality can be extremely difficult because what’s happening is complex. It bears a strong similarity to sex addiction but it is also a process of self discovery. It often has three dimensions.

– Enjoyment of the desire
– An obsessive slide into semi-addictive behavior
– The joy of self-discovery and expression

2.

Crossdreaming is not as ‘auto’ as some people claim but it can not be denied that it is an extremely self-centered form of sexuality. It is here that Woody Allen’s quote ‘masturbation is sex with someone I love’ is highly relevant. There are all sorts of dimensions and personal narratives involved in crossdreaming which can make it far more involved and compelling on a solo level.

So it’s true that crossdreaming does have some properties which can lead to pathological behaviour ie. an excess of time spent on fantasy to the detriment of work, friends and romance. However, and this is a big HOWEVER, these properties should never be enough to suck in a mentally healthy person for too long, and although they can still be a little obsessive… they ride the wave and get on top of it. Some people don’t, though, and as they slide into the black hole, that is the point where they have to see this has nothing to do with their sexual inclination but a symptom of some deeper pathology.

The slogan to remember here is “depression is depression.” Whether it’s drinking, excessive masturbation, compulsive shopping, gambling or any other addictive behavior… a withdrawal from the world into some private, pleasure inducing activity is almost always a symptom of depression.

When thinking about depression, you must erase whatever ideas you have about the condition. Depression has many forms and many symptoms but always has at its center the same fundamental cause: there is something very wrong with your life. Apart from some cases – thought to be endogenous and chemical in origin – the something wrong is usually a lack of personally meaningful activity and meaningful emotional attachments.

If you are in this position, it is time to get yourself into therapy. This is non-negotiable. Life should be lived to the full, and trying to cope with this on your own will lead to a half life and a shadow existence.

5 tips to healthy crossdreaming

1. Embrace it. Fighting your sexuality is a war you’ll always lose… it’s like Vietnam and Iraq rolled into one.

2. Create a masturbation countdown. Colloquially known as a ‘wankdown’, this means you set a limit (literally… set the alarm on your mobile) on how long you’ll let yourself surf porn before you reach orgasm.

3. Don’t get all caught up in the pointless ‘do I want her, or to be her?’. It is a meaningless chicken and egg question that can’t actually be answered. Trust me… a hottie is a hottie and a boner is a boner. When she is guiding said boner to her vagina you won’t fail. And.. if she’s not a hottie… well, you won’t want ‘to be her’ anyway.

4. Set clear professional, social and romantic objectives in your life. Invest half the time you spend trawling porn, on using the internet to achieve your objectives: Linked-in, dating sites and writing to friends etc.

5. Masturbate/ have sex regularly. There is a clear corelation between the nonsense fantasies of a crossdreamer and the amount of sperm buildup. Get that shit out regularly – preferably with a man or woman you love – and you will calm down. (The question of being both a good lover and a crossdreamer will be the subject of a separate post.)

A Big Fat Complication

One problem with all this, however, is if the retreat into solitary compulsive fantasy is due to the advent of late onset transsexualism (remember, this does not mean the transsexual is old… but that they never realized before that they were transgender).

When a crossdreamer crosses the line to transsexual – ie. they have a strong urge to live as a member of the opposite sex – but no way to express or live it, then a retreat into fantasy is inevitable.

But then you have the complication within a complication. Because the body, manner and dress of the other gender feature so prominently in crossdreamer fantasy… they always end up in a circle of chicken and egg, trying to workout if it’s all a part of the sexual fantasy or something deeper.

Soloution

The soloution to discovering whether you are transsexual or not, is not – in my opinion – to start a low dose of hormones and see how you feel. That’s like taking cocaine to see if you like it or not… of course you’re gonna like it. I have come to believe that all crossdeamers are transgender and almost all will feel good with hormones.

Gender therapy is a good idea… but be careful. Here the danger is not so called ‘gatekeeping’ but them throwing the gate open and inviting all-comers to party. There are some gender therapists who are a little too steeped in the accepted narrative.

To be honest, I think a good solution is (rather conveniently) my book. The eccentric notion of ‘fusion’ is a chemical-free way to discover the depth of your transgender psychology, while moving your life forwards. The basic premise is this…

Give it one last try, and basically do everything you can to build a meaningful, healthy, stimulating life without HRT or surgery. I assure you… if you follow this program and still want to transition then you are definitely transsexual and you should definitely transition.

https://www.amazon.com/Felix-Conrad-ebook/dp/B01KPT0LC2/

So, to conclude, in my opinion crossdreaming can become pathological, but only as a symptom of a deeper pathology or the symptom of a late onset gender crisis.

felixconrad45@gmail.com Life-coach, and most excellent drinking companion.

If my transgender experience began with a sexual experience… is my female identity a creation of my sexuality?

 

 

This question is annoyingly persistent in the crossdreaming community, and it is a morbid, obsessive question which lingers in the transgender mentality, causing doubt and shame. It is so important we resolve this question that I am going to deal with it in detail and write down the different ways in which it is formulated. It goes like this…

1) Is the cross gender identity I’m developing now, motivated – deep down – by my sex drive?

2) While my female identity may be extremely nuanced, and based around a whole set of aesthetic and personal tastes that aren’t sexual – is it really just a sophisticated form of being horny – an outgrowth of my sexual urge to be a woman?

3) To put it bluntly, in a way which all of us would consider crude, offensive and wrong, but one that occurs to me in moments of doubt: am I just a pervert?

4) Is the deeper cross gender identity experienced by some femephiliacs just the result of their femephiliac sexuality?

5) Is the new me just some bizarre creation of my sexuality?

6) Is my sexual taste just a manifestation of my deeper female self, or is my deeper female self a derivative of my sexual taste.

This question is of existential importance to some crossdreamers because it seems to be the key to whether their cross gender identity is valid or not. They believe that if, deep down, it all has a sexual root, that would somehow invalidate their cross gender aspirations. It would be ‘just sex’ and therefore not real. If their cross gender identity and aspirations are not sexual, however, then that would make them valid and real.

Personally, I would dispute the validity of the question. It is prudish – old school – like sex is dirty and something to be ashamed of; and it is also simplistic in its understanding of sexuality and its relationship to the wider self. However, as the question is important to many in the community I will answer it.

First, let’s place the two – apparently irreconcilable – dimensions of crossdreaming, side by side. We have

1. The sexual: when the individual is engaging in sexual behaviour based on cross gender fantasies.
2. The deeper female self: all female behaviours, ideas, tastes, which are not sexual.

And now I want you to choose the correct answer to the million dollar question. Whether his deeper female self is…

a) The prime cause of his female identity with the sexual part just being one manifestation of that deeper self.
b) A derivative of the dominant psychological force at work here: his sexual desire to be a female.

Did you answer A or B? Well, it doesn’t matter because you’re wrong either way. I tricked you. The answer is…

C) Neither of the above.

Really, how the fuck would you prove A or B? The question is absurd because we know so little about the interplay of genetics, neuroscience and social conditioning at work. The real options would have to have be a,b,c,d,e and go on for several alphabets because there are many unknown variables involved. So, unless you work in some secret laboratory in Serne where a team of crack geneticists, neuroscientists and developmental psychologists are working on the problem, don’t start telling me, or more importantly – yourself, that you know the answer.

Therefore, because we don’t know, you cannot…

…Separate the sexual from the deeper female self, or vice versa.
…Create a convenient causal relationship between the two.
…Grant one a priori status. Sex drive says, “I got there first so I must be the boss.”

So, let’s try to escape the narrow polarisation of A versus B, and let me ask you a question: Who built the pyramids… the replaceable and expendable grunts who carried all the blocks of stone? Or the team of genius’s who, in a world without calculators or engineering degrees, designed them?

A smart Alec might reply… “the grunts built it… you didn’t ask who designed it?” and that would be valid, but we all know that if the geniuses hadn’t designed it then it would have been impossible to build. Similarly, the psyche of the crossdreamer in which he has both a sexual urge to be a woman, an emotional urge, and an aesthetic urge – are all part of the female identity which he develops, and you can’t separate them with amateur psychology or dogmatic ideas about gender that you want to force on the world. It’s like… a Macdonalds happy meal comes with nuggets, fries and a toy. It’s a package. In fact, the question about the sexual drive creating the psychological drive is like looking at your happy meal, picking up the nuggets and asking if they caused the fries… or did the toy make the nuggets and the fries? None of them made each other, they all came together and we cannot say with scientific certainty how it happened.

Now, I would like you to consider your reaction to what I’ve said. I think my answer will be unsatisfactory because we have a natural tendency to monocausal explanations. Tell the truth, we humans are… pretty fucking dumb. The idea that the sex came first so that must be the cause of all else is exactly the sort of idea we love. It’s sequential, tidy, logical. But unfortunately… crossdreaming is a mental and genetic and social phenomena, and not some simple, mechanical apparatus that can be explained with ease. Similarly, the argument from quantity is powerfully enticing … whatever there is the most of must be the dominant force: “Because the majority of my crossdreaming thoughts are sexual then it must all be sexual.” I would reply, “Well, of course, their mostly sexual… humans think about sex constantly… what do you expect most of the crossdreaming to be about… quantum mechanics?”

The first argument – the sequential – in no way addresses the nuances of sexuality and its wider effect on behaviour, nor powerful psychological forces such as repression. It is quite plausible to me that the infant mind immediately represses his contrary gender identity, but this force is only powerful enough to partially repress it… it cannot override a powerful human instinct like the sex drive and thus the sexual aspect of crossdreaming remains in the conscious mind while the gender identity gets buried.

To be honest, I’m not totally convinced by that theory, but try to prove or disprove it. My previous point is worth repeating: we are not even in the infancy of understanding the complex interplay of genetics, experience, neuroscience and social conditioning that gives rise to so much of human psychology. To say that the female identity of a late onset transsexual is just sex is only one notch of sophistication up from saying that the world doesn’t fall because it’s being held up by atlas, or that the sun moves across the sky dragged in a chariot by the sky god.

To show the complexity of the situation, think of some of the scientific data we do have, rather than unprovable psychological mechanisms. We know from numerous case studies that once a transsexual takes hormones their sex drive falls off the cliff (due to the absence of testosterone). This should mean, therefore, if their crossdreaming is sexually motivated that they should lose interest in transitioning. But they rarely do. Although they are no longer aroused by crossing gender it still feels right and natural and an arrival at their true self. Conversely, for those in the ‘it’s all a deeper psychological drive’ camp, consider the type of sexual fantasy this individual has from a very early age… surely, if he was in some deeper sense – female – the sexual behaviour would be that of a female and he would fantasise about men, as women do. However, the substance of his fantasy – even if it includes men – is always about being a woman, and that is the source of the erotic impulse.

So unfortunately for those who want a simple explanation, the deeper female self and the sexual self are not locked into a convenient causal relationship where we can say one causes the other. I believe they come in the same package. And I say ‘believe’ because – I repeat – at this moment no one can be completely – or even slightly – certain.

To conclude, if you are currently involved in the debate… is my female self, deep down, just a creation of my sex drive… the answer is… I don’t know, and no one will know until both you and your female identity are long dead, so stop being drawn to the wrong question and start asking the right questions.

Start Session 3… NOW

Who is Jack Molay?

We all know that he is the founder of crossdreamers.com and an ardent transgender activist… but what’s his favourite pasta sauce? Does he like football? What motivates him get to get out of bed each morning?” If you’ve ever wondered who Jack Molay is? (And I know I have) this is your chance.

Hi Jack. Let’s start with five random questions. What is your favourite pasta sauce and are you a good cook?

My pasta sauce will be very basic: A can of crushed tomatoes, some tomato puree, a couple of garlic cloves, virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh basil and oregano. Then let it simmer for some 45 minutes. We normally cook from scratch, my wife and me.

What’s your idea of a perfect Saturday?

We have a couple of favourite cafe’s where we live, and sometimes we just bring a book or our iPads and spend some time there over a latte. We may also go for a walk in the forest, but that is more likely to happen on a Sunday. The favorite part of a Saturday would be to spend a couple of hours in the sofa, watching one of our favorite TV series with our cat, Theophilius Paracelsus (real name withheld in order to protect his identity.) We could definitely make use of that pasta sauce, and have dinner at the same time.

By the way, have you seen the latest Wachowski/ Straczynski series, Sense8, over at Netflix? It is beautiful, and very relevant for male to female crossdreamers and female to male girlfags.

 

What do you think of the state of the world in 2015?

In some areas I see amazing progress. The fact that the majority of Americans now support marriage equality is mindblowing. This cultural shift is also of great importance to crossdreamers, transsexual and not transsexual, as it reflects a deeper respect for diversity in the realm of sexuality and gender.

But we should not forget that i other parts of the world — like in Russia, parts of Africa and in some countries in the Middle East — transgender and queer people are facing new obstacles and intensified persecution.

In other areas I see the same weird mix of progress (like more gender equality and reduced poverty in many parts of the world) and extreme danger (climate change, the aggression of Putin, ISIS and more). We have the know-how and the capability to solve most of our problems, if we manage to change people’s minds and reveal the true nature of the bigots. The success of the LGBT cause in many parts of the world tells me anything is possible if men and women of good will stand up and do something about it.

Who’s your favorite writer and why?

This is a hard question, as there are so many great authors out there. You should have seen our library! In the serious part of the collection: Fyodor Dostoevsky. I love his ability to reveal the deep emotional, spiritual and intellectual struggles of the human mind.

In the science fiction/fantasy section (which is extensive): Lois McMaster Bujold. She has written some really entertaining, funny and intelligent books.

Where would you like to be (physically or mentally) in five years time?

Well, I will still be presenting as a man, if that’s what you mean. But I hope I will have been able to make some kind of peace with my female myself. There is no doubt about it: Throughout my life I have managed to internalize far too much of the transphobia in our society and the contempt for men who feel and express anything associated with things female or feminine.

Those who have read my blogs over the years, will know that my head is anything but transphobic or homophobic. I have been trained to see through prejudices and bigotry and have for the most part managed to do so.

But social conditioning is not so much about the intellect as it is about feelings and the body. Society discipline young people by making them associate unwanted behavior with the fear of ostracization and lack of love. To handle that fear, most kids try to shut down the part of them that does not fit in, and they do so by repressing feelings. This is also a physical, muscular, process. In five years time I hope I have been able to connect to and accept most of those feelings.

Excellent. Okay…. let’s move onto crossdreaming. Would you find it funny or embarrassing if one day you were known as ‘the father of crossdreaming’ (sorry, tongue in cheek.) No seriously, could you tell us what crossdreaming is.

I guess I am — in one sense — the father of the crossdreaming concept. I am not ashamed of what we have achieved here. I know that the concept has helped many people find themselves and move on with their lives.

I normally define crossdreaming as “getting aroused by the idea of being your target sex”. Some use the word in a broader sense — to include all kinds of excitement, and not only sexual arousal, and that is OK with me. But the starting point was the need to have a non-toxic and trans-positive word that could describe the fact that some people, men and women, get turned on by the idea of being the “opposite sex” relative to the one assigned to them at birth.

Being a crossdreamer myself, I tried to find information about this phenomenon online, but most of what I found was referring to the “autogynephilia” theory of Dr. Ray Blanchard. It did not take me long to realize that his theory did not lead to liberation and self-respect.

The term crossdreamer is neutral. It simply acknowledges that some people have fantasies of this kind, and this is a word you can use to refer to this phenomenon, regardless of explanation. There are alternative terms: Trans-activist Julia Serano has suggested the terms Female/Feminine Embodiment Fantasies (FEF) and Male/Maculine Embodiment Fantasies (MEF), and the researcher and trans woman Jaimie Veal refers to cross-gender arousal. The term “autogynephilia” is in no way neutral: It refers to Blanchard’s explanation for what causes crossdreaming, and I strongly urge crossdreamers to stop using the term when describing themselves.

Are crossdreamers transgender?

Yes, in the sense of belonging to the broad family of gender variant people, they are. But not all crossdreamers are gender dysphoric, in the sense of suffering from a misalignment between their gender identity and the persona they show the world. And not all are transsexual.

My wife and I carried out an online survey of gender variant people last year, and the results indicated that approximately one third of the crossdreamers who responded were suffering from severe gender dysphoria.

The term transgender is an interesting one, as it has been used by many to put up walls between the “proper” transsexuals and the “fetishists”. There are so-called Harry Benjamin Syndrome separatists out there, who claim that the word was invented by crossdressers and crossdreamers to take over the transsexual movement. They get insulted if you call them transgender.

Recently we have seen attempts by so-called truscum activists over at Tumblr (mostly female to male transsexuals) who insist that the word transgender can only be used by people who suffer from gender dysphoria. Some of them have tried to stop me from using the word to describe myself — in spite of the fact that I, actually, do suffer from gender dysphoria.

Words and symbols have power, and these attempts at distancing themselves from — or taking over — the word transgender tells us a lot about the destructive stigmatization of crossdressers and crossdreamers.

Because of this, it is important to remember all the influential trans activists, and most health experts in the field, use the word transgender as an umbrella term for a wide variety of gender identities and expressions, including crossdressers, crossdreamers, genderqueer people and drag queens/drag kings.

Can you explain, concisely, why you don’t subscribe to the theory of autogynephilia?

First of all: The theory has been falsified. It has been proven wrong, not only by trans activists, but also by other scientists.

I have read all there is to read about autogynephilia, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind. This is bad science — extremely bad science — and the only reason a handful of people have gotten away with it is that they control the main science journal in the field, and that so few other psychologists and psychiatrists have taken a real interest in the topic.

And yes, I have included links to a lot of relevant material in my blog, Crossdreamers.

But do you know what? The main reason I have come to the conclusion that this is all bullshit, is that I have spent a lot of time studying the history of sexual research in general, and I see the same thing happening over and over again. The Powers that Be use science to exclude and invalidate ideas, identities and expressions they do not understand or condone.

In the late 19th/early 20th century women who demanded equal rights were diagnosed with hysteria and hospitalized and even sterilized. Women who expressed a healthy sexual appetite were pathologized as nymphomaniacs. Gay men were most often classified as hypersexual fetishists. Lesbian women were described as aggressive, masculine, narcissist. And the most offensive transgression of them all was — and is — for a man to desire to be a woman. Because even now women are considered second class citizens by many, and it is hard for many non-transgender people to understand why any “man” would voluntarily choose to identify as a woman.

The autogynephilia theory is nothing but sexist, misogynistic bullying in a scientific sounding wrapping.

How would you respond to someone who said that people who see themselves as crossdreamers are just autogynephiliacs in denial?

I have spent a lot of time patiently arguing with such people, many of them crossdreamers themselves. The reason I have done so, is that we have learned much from these discussions. And as I noted earlier, many crossdreamers — myself included — have internalized the cultural violence against feminine men, and we need time to dig ourselves out of that hole.

I am not sure I am going to be this patient in the future, however, at least not with those who are clearly enemies of the transgender community. Now that we have seen the Confederate flag taken down and the rainbow flag raised in the US, and now that Caitlyn Jenner — a late transitioner, if any — has been embraced by the American people, I think it is time for me to move on to a new phase, where we simply reveal this kind of bigotry for what it is.

But please note that I am not dismissing people who believe that crossdreaming is caused by psychological factors only. That is a valid point of view, even if I do not agree with it myself. What I cannot stand is those that turn the lives of transgender people into a sexual illness. That is unacceptable!

Why is there so much infighting in the trans community?

There isn’t as much infighting as there used to be. The separatists I mentioned before have close to zero clout today. There are only a handful of Harry Benjamin Syndrome activists left online, and the truscum movement collapsed after less than a year. Most transgender youth on tumblr soon saw them for what they were: People who have assimilated the hatred against gender variant people and who believe that the only way to be accepted is to become copies of their oppressors.

But the main reason has been systemic: If everyone tells a boy that expressing anything feminine is a perversion making him a weak sissy, he will often raise his own son in the same manner. He will often believe that he he is protecting his kid from harassment. But the truth is that he is the one causing the main suffering. The main conflicts in the transgender community are caused by people who share these prejudices.

Have you ever suffered personal attacks online? Tell us about the worse case.

I have clearly represented a threat to the separatist, both transsexual people who hate crossdressers, crossdreamers and drag queens, and crossdreamers who are not even willing to consider that they may be transsexual.

I strongly argue that there is no clear dividing line between crossdreamers on the one hand and transsexuals on the other. A lot of trans women and trans men have been crossdreamers. By saying so I raise the possibility that the separatists too, may have been crossdreamers and crossdressers once. Since many of them have, I threaten their status as “real women”, as they define this concept. They therefore, consciously or unconsciously, try to push me and people like me back into the closet.

There have been a couple of Harry Benjamin Syndrome activists who have done everything they can to ruin the discussions over at my blog, Crossdreamers.com, and at the Crossdream Life forum. Some of them used to lure themselves into the discussions, faking sympathy for crossdreamers, before using the autogynephilia theory to invalidate their lives and their identity. I have now implemented a zero tolerance policy for these trolls, as they tend to destroy any meaningful conversation for the rest of us.

Bearing in mind that some crossdreamers decide they will never get what they truly want…. what is your advice for someone trying to cope with a desire they can’t fulfill.

I do not believe in active repression, that is in denying this part of yourself any outlet whatsoever. I often use the metaphor “inner woman” to describe this side of myself, and I come to the conclusion that the only way to get a good life is to accept her, embrace her and learn to love her.

This means that “she” must have some way of expressing herself. Some write stories and captions, some crossdress, some take part in online role-playing; cosplay has become an outlet for some… There are many ways of doing this.

Crossdreaming can become obsessive, especially when repressed, and I realize that this means that many will have to find ways of handling this in a sensible manner, and that this may also mean rationing the time given to this side of you. But in this crossdreamers are no different from many other people struggling with undigested feelings, loneliness, identity conflicts or sexual frustration.

Being seen and accepted by others can make a huge difference. I kept this side of me secret from my wife, as I believed I might lose her if I told her about my crossdreaming. After I accidentally outed myself to her, and to my amazement found that doing so made our love stronger, and not weaker, I also got to feel how the acceptance of others can help you heal.

There are significant others who cannot live with a transgender partner, I get that, so there is a real risk involved with coming out. But the crossdreamers who believe that it is impossible to keep up a love relationship while being transgender or genderqueer are fortunately wrong.

Finally, what’s one thing you want to tell people in our community that I didn’t ask about?

 

We need to do more to include the female to male crossdreamers. I believe I must have been one of the first to actively try to include the lives crossdreamers assigned female at birth in the crossdreamer and crossdresser narrative.

There is so much to learn from them, and their very existence makes it so harder for people to reduce crossdreaming to an effect of a misdirected male sexuality. This is why Blanchard, even now, refuses to acknowledge their existence. To do so would be to admit that his world view was wrong all along.

By making female to male crossdreamers (and girlfags, which is a partly overlapping concept) more visible, it will also be easier for crossdreamers to find partners who understand and respect them for who they are. I have heard of quite a few crossdreamer+crossdreamer partnerships already, but it is hard to find someone like that, if you have no way of identifying them.

Thanks, Jack… you’ve been a great sport,and I hope this is the first of many correspondences we will have in the future.

Is autogynephilia a fetish?

‘Fetish’ is an extremely unhelpful word. It is not a neutral, scientific word, but a term that comes loaded with baggage, and to most people is a synonym of ‘perversion.’ Therefore, even if it was technically correct to say that femephilia is a fetish I would eliminate the term from any dialogue around femephilia.

However, while we’re on the subject, I don’t believe autogynephilia* is a fetish because, again, femephiliac sexual behaviour is too complex to label in one pen stroke. For example, its fantasies often involve a mix of hetero or homo lust, emotion for the sexual partner, and femephiliac lust… you can’t tease them apart and say it’s all about being a woman and that’s the only thing going on. Autogynephilia is fluid: it can sometimes form a major part or only a minor part of a sexual experience. It is also chameleon like and changes in different settings.

However, I feel I should step back from my analysis because it means I am giving the word ‘fetish’ some meaning. ‘Fetish’ is not a scientific statement but a value judgement. Here is a brief dialogue to explain…

YOU: “You’re talking bullshit. Think of a man who can only get aroused by latex boots… surely he has a fetish for latex boots.”

ME: “No. He gets turned on by latex boots. You wouldn’t say that a man who only got turned on by women had a fetish for women, would you? Why is it necessary to label the latex boots thing as a fetish?”

YOU: “Because wanting to fuck women… that’s normal… needing latex boots to fuck isn’t normal.”

ME: “Ahhh so here we get to the heart of what you’re saying. I’m hetero… you’re not. I’m normal… you’re abnormal. I have a healthy manly sexuality… you have a fetishist perverted sexuality. You see!!!! The word fetish is a value judgement that says ‘abnormal, errant.’ We should all know by now that there is no ‘normal’ in human sexuality just as there is no normal in animal sexuality where it has been demonstrated that homosexuality is widespread.  

I hope you get the point!

*Sorry, we have to use this word sometimes for the Google robots. If not, nobody will visit the site through ‘search’.

Read article 8 and continue exploring your Deeper Female Self…

Checking in with Jack Molay

I’m nosy…I’m a gossip…I admit it. I wanna know what’s going on with that mysterious blogger who does so much for our community: Jack Molay. 2016 is turning out to be a tumultuous year so let’s get his perspective on things.

How do you feel about Brexit?

It is a disaster. I am not too worried about the economic difficulties this will cause the Brits, but I do mind that they are undermining a system that has kept Europe at peace since 1951.

I am afraid the economists have had too much sway in Europe. They reduced the European peace project to a narrative about free trade and interest rates. That was not why the EEC/EU was established. It was put up to stop 1500 years of senseless bloodshed, and it worked!

I am also very worried about the undercurrent of xenophobia and racism the Brexit has revealed in Britain. I am not saying that all leave-voters are racist, far from it, but I do think it was the fear of foreigners that tipped the scale.

I believe in people collaborating and learning from each other, and the EU has become an important arena for such learning. It is far from perfect. It is, in fact, dysfunctional in some areas, but it has given us a space where Europeans can meet and see that those at the other side of the fence are human just like you and me. You are less likely to go to war with people from your own tribe, than with “The Other”.

What feelings does Donald Trump inspire in you?

I am sorry to say this, because I am normally able to see the suffering human being behind any scary facade, but in the case of Trump, I feel disgust. I shouldn’t. It is not the Christian thing to do. And I know that these are the kind of feelings he tries to instill in others, but there you go: I see nothing redeeming in that guy.

And the same applies to the US as to the UK. I was aware of the rampant racism among white Americans, but that some 40 percent + of Americans are considering voting for a sexist, bigoted, incompetent, narcissist is beyond me.

I have actually studied the rise of fascism in Germany, and I see so many similarities that it scares me: The longing for a strong leader that takes away your burden of thinking for yourself, the emotional release that comes from being allowed to hate the “inferior”, and the insane idea that feelings can replace facts.

I am still optimistic, though. We must not forget the progress we have seen both in Europe and in the US as regards respect and understanding for minorities, including the LGBT community. The younger generations are far less prejudiced than the older ones. And we should also keep in mind that a majority of Americans do not support Trump. This also applies to what I would call real Conservatives.

What is ISIS?

There are people who are unable to feel empathy with the suffering of others. In this way they are malfunctioning human beings. Such people become very dangerous if they have the intelligence and the resources needed to make a difference.

Even if they do not feel for others, they may have the intellect needed to manipulate the feelings of others, and especially the sexual frustration of men and women, their fears, and their natural need to feel wanted and important.

ISIS is an organization run by sociopaths who are able to harness the frustration of testosterone-driven, young men. These are men and boys who — for various reasons — are incapable of handling the complexity of life. They are looking for permission to give in to their basest instincts, and ISIS not only gives them permission; they give them opportunity, including guns, bombs and female sex slaves.

Poverty and war give a partial explanation for this, but we have to keep in mind that most poor people are decent people, (as are the great majority of muslims). There is more to this than economics.

Sometimes I think we have gone to far towards rationalizing the evil in man. Some people are truly evil, or at least too stupid to be able to stop the darkness that lives in all of us.

Now let’s move to more familiar territory. I’m a little confused over timelines. If you don’t mind talking about it…when did you come out to your wife and how is everything on the domestic front?

My wife has actually written a blog post about how I came out to her, by accident, back in 2014. I was in a very bad spot at the time, indeed, having had to live this double life out of fear of losing her.

It might be that I subconsciously used the wrong twitter account on purpose (which was how she found out). I don’t know. In any case, we are good. Actually, our life together is much better than it used to be. I am still gender dysphoric, and I know that it cannot be that easy to live with me at times. But she has her own struggles and we are there for each other. That helps. A lot!

How has your philosophy on transgender issues changed over the last 12 months?

It is constantly being refined, and I am learning a lot from people like you, Sandra and our good friends over at Crossdream Life. But I can’t say it has changed radically during the last 12 months or so. It could be that I am suffering from some kind of intellectual lock-in, but I hope not.

I am trying to reconcile two different trajectories these days.

On the one hand I am convinced that my own crossdreaming is just a symptom of me being transgender. or even transsexual. My own intense gender dysphoria tells me as much, and it seems to me that you have come to the same conclusion regarding your own life.

At the same time I have also become even more aware of the role sexual desire plays in how this transgender condition plays out.

I know that we need to keep sexuality and gender apart when we discuss transgender lives and identities, because gender identities cannot be reduced to sexuality. This applies to both transgender and non-transgender people.

At the same time I find it increasingly meaningless to decouple sex (as in sexuality) from sex (as in sex and gender). Like you, I refuse to accept that this has nothing to do with biology or the animal side of being human.

I know that this is not really a paradox, given that both sexuality and gender identity are end products of complex interactions between a lot of factors… genes, hormones, imprinting, life experiences, language, culture etc. etc. But saying so does not make me any wiser, even if I know it is true.

So, during the last 12 months I have become even more aware of the need to reconcile our ideas about sexual desire with the idea about gender identity, and I suspect that this requires more than new facts. We probably have to rewrite our whole belief system and the concepts we use to interpret the world. I don’t think I am up to that, but what you have written during the last year or so has definitely made me think about it.

Will you come and live here in Barcelona and help me build an ideal community?

Oh yes, let us do that!

Tell us about a person/something that’s really making you happy right now.

I have a news blog on Tumblr with close to 7000 followers, most of them young people.

Tumblr has a lot millenials and generation Z’s on board. Many of them are struggling hard, for sure, and many are also attacked by transphobic and homophobic people. But most of them refuse to play by the rules of traditional gender stereotypes.

Fewer and fewer of them believe in the idea that there are two types of transgender people: the perfect transsexual and the creepy crossdresser. Instead they argue for diversity and the necessity to accept and respect different kinds of gender identities, gender expressions and sexual orientations.

Even though many of them are severely gender dysphoric and others are content with crossdressing, they do not use words like transsexual or crossdresser. This can be a bit baffling for someone who has grown up with dichotomies like “transvestite”vs “drag queen” vs “classic transsexual”, but it makes perfect sense of people who think outside the various binaries.

What is a sissy?

A sissy is a male to female crossdreamer who uses gender stereotypes to get off sexually. These stereotypes are often sexist and misogynistic (like in fantasies of being a stupid, big breasted, bimbo taken by a big, brutal, dominant man) and the terminology stigmatizing (“faggot”, “sissy”), but I stick to the premise that we have to distinguish between the sexual fantasies of people and their real life attitudes.

Lilly O’Donnel wrote an interesting article over at the Guardian last month, where she argued that feminist porn can free women from shame, and that there is nothing wrong in having rape fantasies, as long as we stress the fact that they are fantasies.

So I am not going to condemn crossdreamers from having sissy fantasies. I have had similar fantasies myself.

We have to stare our fantasies straight in the eye; that is the only way we can integrate this side of ourselves into our whole personality, and I believe we have to do that, if we want to be happy. Sexual fantasies are in themselves neither good nor bad. They just are. But they demand to be heard.

Even if many sissies are perfectly aware of this distinction, I am afraid some of them have internalized some seriously messy attitudes towards women and gay men. It is tragic that we live in a culture that causes crossdreamers and male to female transgender people to couple the idea of being a woman with the idea of being a submissive, emasculated and failed man.

I do not think sexual submissiveness is a cultural construct. It is quite natural drive and we should stop being ashamed of that kind of sexual desire. But the fact that it is natural also means that it makes no sense to think of it as a sign of being inferior.

I am sure many sissy enthusiasts tell the truth when they say that these fantasies reflect nothing but an innocent sexual kink. But I also know that many of them are struggling with severe gender dysphoria. We should not — no, must not — exclude them from the broader transgender and genderqueer community.

Has gender dysphoria ever made you cry?

Unfortunately, no. I wish it had, because that would probably help me a lot, emotionally.

I know, intellectually, that there is still a part of me that dare not feel all the feelings that follow from my gender dysphoria. There is still a part of me that believes I would not be able to take it. There is still a part of me that clings to the commandment: “Boys don’t cry!” even if I am not a man on the inside.

I have still a lot of work to do.

The more I think about this, the more depressing I find the fact that culture has done so much to deny us and me the right to live as who we are. That is another good reason for fighting the good cause!

Thanks, Jack xxxxx

How would a crossdreamer get turned on in a Mao Tse Tung boiler suit society?

Eddie Izzard recently appeared on Bill Maher’s show on Saturday and made a comment which caught my attention. Bill mentioned performing in ‘women’s clothes’ and Eddie said…

‘Well, I don’t see them as women’s clothes anymore…there just clothes.’

This statement contains an interesting irony for the crossdreamer: that if women’s clothes ceased to be women’s clothes then the crossdreamer would lose all interest in them…which led me to the following thought experiment…

How would a crossdreamer fantasize in a completely unisex world – utterly starved of distinct femininity? What cross-gender kicks are to be had in a Mao Tse Tung society where men and women wear boiler suits, both sexes have the same haircut, and there’s no make up?

Your answer will very much depend on how you interpret crossdreamer sexuality. This is my interpretation…and therefore my answer to the thought experiment.

How would a crossdreamer get turned on in a unisex society?

A crossdreamer is a man with a unique sexuality in which instead of wanting to have sex with a girl, he wants to be a girl (this sexuality may – or may not – be the result of some underlying feminine essence.)

This sexuality means that anything that is uniquely girlish has the capacity to turn him on.

This sexuality is a fundamental part of his behavioral programming and in order to execute it he must first seek ‘girl’ in the environment (when he’s an infant) so that he knows what it is he wants to be. This – in Blanchard’s terms – would be locating the erotic target.

In today’s society there are numerous behaviors, clothes, habits and ideas that are uniquely female and thus it is easy for the infant crossdreamer to invest his sexuality with those behaviors, clothes, habits and ideas. Later, he will get turned on by imagining them with respect to him.

Anne Lawerence’s book is full of fascinating case histories where crossdreamers have been turned on by knitting, having periods and being housewives – which confirms to me that a crossdreamer can get turned on by anything – literally anything – female. In fact, if all women started riding elephants tomorrow…that would soon be an erotic fantasy for the crossdreamer.

If he was raised in a society that was utterly devoid of external femininity, however, none of these obvious targets would be available. It is likely that three things would happen.

1) His crossdreaming would be much more centered on the body of a woman (particularly breasts as the most obvious sign of the female gender). This is what Blanchard called ‘anatomical autogynephilia’.

2) His crossdreaming would also be much more centered on behavioral crossdreaming – i.e. on practicing the gestures and body language of females.

3) He would also develop a powerful zoom lens for any tiny difference in female/male style. Although everyone would have the same boiler suit and short hair, the fem-craving crossdreamer would soon notice if women tended to part their hair to the right oe whatever. Then he would dream about that.

To conclude, although a unisex society would be devoid of many external and well known female cues – makeup, lingerie, hairstyles etc – the crossdreamer would still locate and assimilate whatever female cues existed. These cues would then form the basis of his dreams and fantasies.