Introduction
Within a short space of time a concept can go from plausible, rational and necessary, to being utterly absurd. When I was young, for example, I believed – like Goerge Carlin – that there was an all powerful being called God who knew what I and everyone else was thinking, and that if I ever did certain things…like believe in other Gods…he would torture me for eternity with unspeakable brutality. But he loved me!
When you finally realise the absurdity of such concepts you don’t know how you ever believed such a thing in the first place. And that’s what has happened to me with contemporary transgender theory. I have come to see with absolute clarity that not only is it absurd, but psychologically damaging as well.
Self-knowledge is one of the most important qualities of a happy, enlightened human being. To use an example close to home, a transgender awakening is a major life-event. And that’s the problem with current transgender theory: there are millions of transgender people who are not only denied that rite of self-knowledge – the transgender awakening – but the transgender community actively conspires to make them think they are not transgender.
These people have different names – sissies, crossdreamers, transvestites – but they are linked by a single phenomenon – that they all identify as female in their sexual fantasies. For developmental reasons (discussed in my book, Transgender – Fact or Fetish?) the fantasy may not be an anatomical female, but there is a lifelong female identification in their sexuality. Many of these people grow up not understanding themselves because the only vocabulary they have to describe their behaviour are terms like ‘fetish,’ ‘sissy’ ‘transvestite’ and ‘paraphilia’. Unless such people become self-identified fetishists, they can’t build their sexuality and gender variance into their self-image, so they lock it away. Healthy individuals take pride in their sexuality/gender and incorporate it into their self-image, which means that by denoting sissies and crossdressers as fetishists we are contributing to their alienation. This leads to a poverty of self-identification.
Such people either exist in silent embarrassment or in communities founded on hypersexualised identities such as ‘the sissy slut.’ They have been told that their female side is purely a fetish, and thus they identify as fetishists in online communities of fetishists. This rips them away from the knowledge that they are a beautiful and unique type of human being called ‘transgender.’
Yes, I know…you’re probably shouting at your computer screens, “But they’re not transgender…In fact, most of them don’t even wanna be transgender!”
And I used to think the same. But that’s when I believed that the meaning of the word ‘transgender’ was ‘a person who identifies as a gender different from that they were assigned at birth.’ As I will explain in the next twenty minutes, this cancerous definition is not only impossible, but is responsible for everything we should be trying to remove from the transgender community: shame, division and confusion.
The Contradiction at the Heart of Transgender Theory
Phase 1: The Mockingbird Experiment
I want you to look at the following photo and imagine it’s 2012. We have a well-known transwoman, Janet Mock, and standing next to her is Alex King – a lifelong erotic crossdresser who identifies as male, and next to him is Johnny Bird – also a lifelong erotic crossdresser who identifies as male.
- Explain who’s transgender and why?
- Explain each gender variant behaviour.

Of course, your answer will be the following.
- Janet Mock is transgender.
- Alex King is not transgender…he has a fetish.
- Johnny Bird is not transgender…he also has a fetish.
That analysis may seem neat and tidy, but there’s a slight problem: you have just acknowledged a key part of Raymond Blanchard’s autogynephilia thesis: that there exists a distinct paraphilia in which a man gets turned on by dressing, behaving or looking like a woman. Right now, confirming such a paraphilia may not be a problem for you, but let’s jump forward two years.

- Janet is still impeccably transgender.
- Alex King has had a transgender awakening and is now called Alexa King. Deep down she always knew she was transgender but she was in denial, and all that sissy stuff…well, that was just some weird manifestation of her female sexuality put through the mincer of male biology and socialisation.
- Johnny Bird: still just a crossdressing sissy who identifies as male.
But here’s the problem: can we really view Jonny in the same way as before, after what happened to Alexa? We say he’s just a crossdressing sissy, but how do we know that he isn’t in denial and transgender just the way Alexa was? And there’s more…
Let’s return to the previous picture.
Unless we are going to say that the transgender condition grows out of a fetish (thus developing a full blown autogynephilia theory) we now have to label Alexa King as transgender when we look back at the 2012 photo. The seemingly fetishist behaviour wasn’t fetishist…she just hadn’t realised she was transgender. And that’s what throws our evaluation of Johnny in 2014 on its head: if we admit that there exist people with crossdressing/sissy behaviour who don´t know they are transgender, then we can’t be sure that Johnny isn’t one too i.e. a transwoman in denial.
It’s at this point that I can separate the naïve reader from the savvy, because some might say that just because Alexa turned out to be transgender doesn’t mean we have to think that every tranny and sissy may be transgender. Alexa’s being a sissy before was just either coincidental or, as she said, just some weird manifestation of being trapped in the wrong body.
This analysis is incorrect. Alexa previously identified as male and only realised later in life that she was transgender, so we call her a LOT: late onset transsexual. A history of cross gender arousal – be it sissification, female embodiment or erotic cross dressing – in combination with denial, is not just coincidental in LOTs but universal. Okay, maybe there are some exceptions: early onset transsexuals who were so deeply suppressed that they didn’t realise til’ they were older…or maybe some with zero sex drive…or maybe there really are a few (and I mean a few genuine exceptions), but any transgender theorist who lives on this planet and not fantasyland has figured out that cross gender arousal is not a coincidental companion to late onset transsexualism. In fact, as it statistically correlates with late onset transsexualism we’d have to call it in medical terms… a symptom of late onset transsexualism.
Obviously, this does not mean that all incidences of cross gender arousal equal being transgender…just as all sneezes aren’t indicative of flu (it could be allergies or the common cold.) However, as cross gender arousal is a symptom of late onset transsexualism it makes sense to ask oneself upon meeting an erotic cross dresser if they are transgender, because we know that such behaviour could be symptomatic of an underlying transgender psychology.
Accepting that cross gender arousal and denial are symptoms of being transgender has two profound consequences for transgender theory and politics. They are…
- Unless you believe in a theory like autogynephilia, it is no longer accurate or acceptable to label a crossdresser or sissy as a ‘fetishist’ because you don’t know if they are a transwoman in denial.
- Given that so many transgender people don’t understand that they are transgender, transgender activists have a moral obligation to raise awareness of the signs of a repressed transgender psychology, one of the most important being – a lifelong history of cross gender arousal. Due to the transgender community’s insecurity they have done the opposite – desperately running from cross gender arousal because they are scared of the ‘fetish label’.
I understand this fear, but it is pretty easy to explain cross gender arousal as a secondary effect of a biologically caused transgender condition. If transgender activists are not only ignoring one of the most important symptoms of our condition, but spreading false information (that sissies have a fetish) then I’d say we’re doing a fucking bad job. It’s like a bulimia community telling people that intentional vomiting after dinner is not a symptom of bulimia but of another unrelated disorder…in fact, not even a disorder but of a forced vomiting fetish.
Phase 2: A stark choice – either all sissies are late onset transgender or all late onset transgender are sissies
It would be convenient if the transgender theorist could now pack up and go home…after all, we’ve formulated two important learnings and probably had enough of thought experiments for one day. But unfortunately, we have only just begun to deconstruct contemporary transgender theory. Let’s return to our photo…but imagine the picture this time.
The year is 2035 and our photo is the same for the transwomen, Janet and Alexa (apart from the fact they are older), but Johnny – the poor love – has passed away. The most important fact about is that he died without ever identifying as female. He also produced an autobiography and called his love of forced feminisation nothing more than ‘a fetish.’
This is the moment where those who don’t want to label so called ‘fetishists’ as transgender will be proclaiming… “Come on…the guy had decades to see if he was transgender or not…and he clearly wasn’t. He even made a point of stating it in his biography and wasn’t embarrassed about his fetish.”
But this illustrates the paradox perfectly: the more fetishistic and embarrassing the behaviour (sissy maids, for example) the greater your desire to divorce him from the transgender movement. But the more you divorce him from being transgender the more you vouch for the existence of a distinct autogynephilia style fetish, making it inevitable that any transgender women who indulged in the same behaviour get labelled as fetishist.
You see, if the transwoman used to get turned on by the behaviour you already deemed fetishistic, she must have had the fetish…or are you going for the implausible position of two fetishes with identical behaviour but somehow different? That’s just wishful thinking. Much more likely is…they had the same fetish. Similarly, nobody’s going to buy any bogus explanations like ‘she was just pretending’ or ‘she didn’t really enjoy it’ or ‘she was just a part timer’. Both have the same lifelong history of cross gender arousal and both have the same fetish. That’s not something I want to believe or even a language I would use…but that was the place you took us by marking the sissy as a fetishist.
“Well okay, she had the damn fetish! But now she’s transgender and doesn’t do that stuff anymore… so let’s just forget about it!”
I wish we could…but look at the absurd position you’ve got yourself in now.
- You admit the existence of a distinct feminisation fetish in millions of men worldwide (be it forced fem, crossdressing or sissification).
- You now admit, because there’s no other logical alternative, that almost all late onset transwomen had the same fetish.
And now, what do you think the transphobes and the right wing sexologists and the detractors are going to say? They’re going to say… “You see! All those middle aged men who transition…they just have a feminisation fetish taken to its logical end. Just like there are amputee fetishists obsessed enough to want a full on amputation these trannies wanna go all the way.”
And then you have four options…
- Backtrack and deny they have any fetish at all, or say that only a few have it.
Counter-argument: simply not true…millions of Reddit posts, biographies, personal anecdotes attest to the strong statistical correlation between cross gender arousal and late onset transsexualism.
- Vanilla coat the erotic desire by saying that women also get turned on by thinking of themselves as sexy women (reference an experiment by Moser that proved women had autogynephilia.
Counter-argument: the so called experiment was a questionnaire which only a dozen or so women filled in. Of course we can all get off imagining we are a sexy man or woman, but cross gender arousal is right at the heart of the individual’s erotic being and not an added extra or some dreamy desire to be girly.
- Try and claim they have a different fetish with similar behaviours:
Counter-argument: we already deemed that ridiculous.
- Try and claim that the ‘fetish’ is some kind of symptom of being trapped in the wrong body.
Counter-argument: this works well when you talk about transwomen in isolation. I myself have written of a transwoman’s sexuality working through male plumbing and neurology and obviously something strange will come out as a result. Unfortunately, though, this is like counter-argument 3 because it makes the behaviour unique to the transgender condition – a concept pulled to pieces by the existence of millions of men with the same behaviour who don’t identify as female. They prove the existence of a feminisation fetish and it can be no coincidence that transwomen have the same erotic interest. They obviously have the same ‘fetish’. (Like I say…this is the place YOU took us…not me!)
Final consequence: once you concede that late-onset transwomen have the same feminisation fetish as transvestites and sissies, you make Blanchard’s sexually motivated transition the most plausible explanations for late onset transsexualism. Congratulations.
Solution: End the absurdity of contemporary transgender theory!
Firstly…
Let’s stop being all chicken shit about cross-gender arousal. We’ve basically let a bunch of transphobes get us so scared of the fetish label, that we are shining the spotlight on our transgender brothers and sisters hoping it stays off us. It is impossible to prove any causal relationship between late onset transsexualism and sexual behaviour UNLESS WE OPEN OUR CHICKEN SHIT MOUTHS AND START POINTING THE FETISH FINGER, THUS PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF A FEMINISATION FETISH.
Secondly…
Let’s see a lifelong history of cross gender arousal for what it is: a symptom of an underlying transgender psychology. Whether the crossdreamer realises it or not, they have a female gender core and while socialisation can overpower it in most areas of the psyche, it can’t overpower it in sexuality. As any evolutionary biologist will tell you, sexuality trumps all. Forgive the plug but…read my book and you’ll see how easy it is to explain why transforming to a female body becomes habitualised, why early onsetters don’t have cross gender arousal, and answers to other anomalies that transphobes routinely attack us with.
Thirdly…
Let’s stop centring the transgender experience on ‘identifying as’ and ‘transition.’ More and more transgender people – myself included – are going non-binary, and as well as choosing not to identify as any gender they are retooling transition as a state of mind rather than a state of appearance. You do not have to transition or identify as anything in particular to be transgender…you just have to be gender variant.
Fourthly…
Let’s be inclusive and understand that there are many different forms of the transgender condition. I’m sure there are transwomen who wince at being related in any way to sissies, but that is how the absurdity of transgender theory was born: when certain people tried to create a distinct identity, because they were terrified of the fetish label. The result is a longstanding tension at the heart of the transgender community as different groups seek to establish themselves as the one, true manifestation of transgender. There is no single, authentic, transgender experience…but a whole range of gender variant behaviours. Furthermore, ‘transgender’ has traditionally been an umbrella term for all such behaviours – including erotic crossdressing! It is no coincidence that Transgender finds itself together with Lesbian, gay and bisexual.
Fifthly…
Don’t claim that the status of crossdreamers and sissies is not important. Every month I receive letters from husbands who have either been caught crossdressing, or want to tell their wives about their sexual desire to be female, or from women who are trying to understand their husband’s behaviour. Because transgender theory is now so blinkered, and they think you have to ‘identify as female’ to be transgender, they cannot explain their behaviour in terms of gender variance. Instead, they resort to the vocabulary of sex: transvestite, sissy, autogynephiliac, cross dresser… all of which are loaded with value judgements. The result is a narrative of base desires and shameful urges. If they could interpret their experience through the transgender prism then they would understand themselves better.
Thinking of my own experience, I didn’t fly from being transgender because I was in denial, I flew from being transgender because I was in a state of ignorance. I thought ‘transgender’ could only mean one thing, and anyone who got turned on by being a woman had a fetish. That added years to my wilderness years…and then I spent a few more years being confused, thinking transgender meant you had to ‘identify as a woman.’
The only thing we have in life is time, and it is tragic that so many transgender people have to wait years to recognise and value their identity because they grow up around a transgender community that doesn’t embrace the erotic cross gender experience and fails to see it for what it is: a symptom of being transgender.
Conclusion:
People should be allowed to label themselves as they like. If a sissy wants to go to his grave insisting he has a fetish, then that’s his right. However, when people come to ask themselves who and what they are, they must make informed choices…and the most important thing is that they don’t face the stark binary of transgender or fetishist. I see it as our moral imperative to inform erotic cross dressers, sissies and crossdreamers, that we consider them as brothers and sisters of the transgender community. A sissy maid may be something of an embarrassment, but as we all know, little brothers and sisters often embarrass their older siblings.
Thus, I will finish my essay with an impassioned plea to dismantle the transgender caste system, and to remind people that transgender is an umbrella term that is defined something like this…
A person who identifies as a gender different from that which they were assigned at birth – either completely, partially or sexually.
Thank-you.