Thread by @anne_of_cybele

honestly the fact that my experience with AGP resembles how @elegationvain describes AAP is imo evidence for it being real. my transition was motivated primarily by what i felt was an identity disorder. i truly always imagined myself as a woman, and felt disgust for being male.

@elegationvain i don't relate to blanchard's core autogynephilia scale at all, but i consider myself to be AGP. i'm most aroused by being called pretty, beautiful, princess, baby girl by a partner. not by mentally envisioning the visual image of myself with disjointed female body parts.

@elegationvain i think male sexologists failed to recognize erotic target location errors when they weren't accompanied by masculine hypersexuality, overt eroticism, & object/partialist fetishisms.

i can't access sci hub rn (probably bc of the internet archive bullshit), but...

@elegationvain ...blanchard's 1987 study heterosexual and homosexual gender dysphoria featured a heterosexual female who imagined being the more masculine partner to an effeminate gay man. this resembles how i've always fantasized of being the more feminine lesbian in a butch/femme couple.

@elegationvain this is what blanchard labeled "autohomoeroticism", but it directly mirrors my experience of AGP. another mirror is in the fact that i love lesbian romance manga, paralleling females who love gay male romance manga.

@elegationvain what pushed me to transition was an intense disgust for my male body features, and the fact that i always fantasized of growing old as a woman. i fantasized about getting married in a bridal gown. i couldn't see a future for myself as a man.

@elegationvain i came out as trans when i was 15, and i didn't regularly masturbate until i was 18. overt eroticism was playing very little part. in fact, i always found male promiscuity and hypersexuality disgusting. this could be blamed on behavioral AGP, however, i felt this way...

@elegationvain ...long before i was aware that promiscuity, hyper-eroticism, and hypo-romanticism are traits more common in men (i learned this from louise perry's the case against the sexual revolution). i thought they were gender-neutral traits. when i was 16, i thought i was "demisexual"

@elegationvain which was, also, in my head gender-neutral, because that's what i'd learned on tumblr.

when i saw the mtf community i found the hypersexuality and polyamory disgusting. i also found all the penis shit disgusting, but that's more rooted in my anatomic dysphoria.

@elegationvain the fact that higher sentimentality, emotionality, and romanticism, and lower sociosexuality, are more common in females than males, makes it likely that AAP in females would more commonly resemble my manifestation of AGP, whereas my type of AGP would be relatively uncommon.

@elegationvain hence my alienation from the mtf trans community at large. most of them have male sociosexuality and promiscuity, which is off putting to me.

i think sexologists focused too much on promiscuous male manifestations of sexuality, automasturbation and object fetishes.

@elegationvain females rarely have these things compared to males, so their autosexuality would look different. males can also have low sociosexuality, but are simply less likely to. therefore, some AGPs will look like me. if i was the only AGP studied, they'd have thought it wasn't paraphilic.

@elegationvain i wasn't even convinced that i have AGP until i read anne lawrence's becoming what we love which frames it as an emotional experience and mentions the low sociosexuality male cohort. before that, i conceptualized of AGP as an exclusively sexual experience.

@elegationvain when i thought of AGP i thought of promiscuous male sexuality. boners and porn. my transsexualism didn't feel like this, it felt deeply emotional. i thought AGP was all about sex so i thought i couldn't be AGP, i was just dysphoric about being male and wanted to be female.

@elegationvain but i obviously had to explain why i felt that way. note that my dysphoria was always all about my biological sex. i never felt satisfied by "transgender identity". i did not want to be a type of biological male. the concept of AGP as an emotional experience, and an expanded...

@elegationvain ...view of sexual orientation in general allowed me to see myself in the concept & use it to explain my experiences.

ofc i experience sexual arousal (everyone does), but i usually have to read dynamic-based erotica to become aroused. images of nude bodies do little for me.

@elegationvain i can remain aroused by visual porn, but for some reason i can't *become* aroused by it. triggering arousal requires a response to an imagined erotic scenario where i am treated as a feminine woman by a partner.

@elegationvain i think sexual psychology's understanding of paraphilic sexuality needs to expand beyond only understanding promiscuous (male-typical) manifestations. the idea of women having a sexual orientation *in general* is missed due to over-focus on visual porn & promiscuity.

@elegationvain @threadreaderapp unroll