Thread by @LaraAdamsMille1

In order to understand why the modern trans movement would burn through so much good will and allyship by pressuring people to “examine their dating preferences,” you HAVE to remember that an AGP’s trans identity evolved from their sexual compulsion - crossdressing.

They started as boys, usually between ages 8 and 11 (although that varies), with stealing pieces of their mother’s or sisters’ clothing and putting them on and masturbating.

I’m not shaming them for this. They didn’t invent this or mean any harm. I think the compulsion probably springs from having a rigid form of masculinity foisted on them, masculinity that precludes the vulnerability necessary for an uninhibited sexual and emotional state.

Their fathers are always “masculine,” and I put the ellipses there because it’s all stereotypical, closed-off, and often toxic & abusive. I wouldn’t call it truly masculine, because it’s dysfunctional in a way I won’t generalize.

The crossdressing is the bubble containing all the things that aren’t safe to think or feel while in “man mode.” These boys are raised with rigid sexual rules. They’ve likely been shamed for masturbating at all, let alone in women’s clothes.

The shame they’re taught is counterproductive. It serves its purpose in reinforcing the approved masculine presentation, but it does that by pushing more and more of their emotional range into the “pink haze” of the crossdressed state.

They become more manly but less human.

Wives of crossdressers will often say that their husbands, while in “girl mode,” are sweet, vulnerable, open — the opposite of their “man mode” selves, which are often closed-off and angry. This newly uncovered vulnerability often makes wives want to make it work.

Wives are less impressed when time passes and they discover that their marriage is a three-way — wife, husband, and his inner woman. Worse, all the focus is on the inner woman. The marriage becomes an exercise in adorning and worshiping his alter ego.

The selfishness inherent in an AGP’s “girl mode” again springs from the rigid dividing of approved “manly” emotions, and taboo “feminine” ones. Neither side of him has enough parts to be a functional, sharing half of a relationship, because critical pieces are missing on both.

The “man” side is angry, competitive, withholding; but he’s also efficient, driven, and competent. The “girl” side is seductive, emotional, and playful — but “she” lacks the sense of responsibility and logistical caretaking that he carries while fully in his “man” state of mind.

The nice thing about good, firm boundaries is that having them allows you to feel compassion for someone without letting them use that compassion to hurt you. And I do feel compassion for these men, even as I stand “hell no” firm on my boundaries with them.

These men grew up being taught (by parents, religion, culture) there were pieces of them that didn’t fit into what a correct man was. Unfortunately, those pieces weren’t spare parts. They were needed for those men to function in a healthy way. But they were made to discard them.

But human beings are amazing and resilient! The soul will be felt!

The feminine clothing became a conduit between their “respectable, manly” selves and all the emotional and sexual feelings that didn’t fit inside that macho container.

Anything can happen in a space where one is living a taboo. Once you’ve broken THE rule (never be like a woman), you can be or do or feel anything. There are no inhibitions, no telling yourself “no.” You are brave, and free — and NOT yourself.

Because most AGPs are not, in fact, total pieces of shit. Most of them do feel deep caring and responsibility to their families. Nearly all of them repeatedly try to stop CDing, purging all their clothes and supplies, only to re-accumulate it all later on.

So, in man mode, these men have good, important qualities that they NEED in order to be functional and considerate to others.

But there’s that solid wall between their “femme” self and their “man” self — they don’t carry much back and forth. There is always a splitting.

That split, along with the addictive nature of the compulsion, are what make the practice unstable and unsustainable. They may be happier in femme mode, but they’re also wholly unequipped to emotionally regulate or meaningfully consider others’ experiences - That’s “man stuff.”

The AGP’s femme self is a cartoon built of their boyhood sexual fantasies and emotional scraps carved off of them by their fathers.

“She” wasn’t built to be told no, or to think about anything except “her” own pleasure and expression.

And “she” was built a long time ago.

By the time an AGP progresses to presenting himself as a trans “woman,” he’s been slipping into this abstract identify privately for years, usually decades. “She” is well-developed and set in her ways.

And “she” wants to get laid. Men are like women in that they need to access a certain amount of vulnerability to perform sexually. AGPs were trained not to be vulnerable, and can only get there via the femininity conduit. So this IS how they manage to be sexual beings.

Some people can’t feel sexual without physical force or roleplay. Some need the lights off or a few beers in them. An AGP needs to access the emotional safety of perceived-as-feminine mental state.

“What about with their wives?”

Some men report needing to imagine themselves as women every time in order to perform. But I think that more of them are able, at least early in the marriage, to project themselves onto their WIVES’ femininity and feel safe that way.

This is why a lot of them, at the beginning of a relationship, will be able to use their idealized image of their gf/wife as a proxy for their “woman within.” They often think they’re “cured.” But, when their wife shows her humanity, the perfect fictional woman must return.

Because the issue isn’t with their wife, or their sexuality. It’s with the lack of internal cohesion, the inability to own those aspects of themselves that they don’t think are okay for a man. But they’re usually not aware of it on that level. It’s just a compelling need.

So now, today, we see the MTM coming at lesbians about being open to them sexually, etc., even though such tactics are clearly harming the movement overall. To groups like ours, used to grappling with oppression, such a move seems like insanity.

But this was always the aim. Emotional and sexual realization was always the function of the AGP’s “female” identity. An AGP who can be a woman but not have sex & relationships with women is about as happy as a kid at the beach who’s allowed to put on his trunks but not get wet.

And they don’t see how they come across or why it’s so inappropriate, because the functional parts of them that would have that insight or even think to wonder about it live inside the “male” persona. They don’t cooperate, and they don’t give — the “femme” self is the “ME” self.

An AGP who escalates to the point of claiming a trans identity is making a choice. Rather than step back and forth over the line, an approach which isn’t ideal but at least lets them regularly visit the full range of emotion, they permanently disavow the “masculine” traits.

And that leaves them just as incomplete as when they were “masculine” and walled off those forbidden “girly” traits.

They make a choice, but the choice isn’t for wholeness, and the personality that is produced by that choice is lacking crucial pieces.

The HSTS (homosexual transsexual) adopts a female identity in order to incorporate the parts of himself he finds “unmanly” INTO his psyche. It’s an adaptation, just like AGP is an adaptation, but HSTSism is a consistent model the HSTS adopts and incorporates into his identity.

By contrast, the AGP uses his adaptive model to HOUSE his “unmanly” aspects in such a way that he can connect with them on his own terms.

The long-term HSTS doesn’t satellite his emotions that way.

AGP works because the feminine persona is who he ISN’T while fully present and accountable.

For the HSTS, the “female” self is what LET’S HIM be fully present and accountable.

AGPs are unpredictable and difficult to relate to because talking with them is literally communicating with someone who is actively disassociating from your shared reality.

HTSTs stay more or less on the “real world” side of the fence.

Keep that in mind the next time you get into a debate with a TRA or read their writing. That “crazy-making” feeling will lift, and things will start making a lot more sense.

A daydream is a reckless thing.