Leave The Sissies Alone

In Defense of Autogynephilic Males

I usually like Spiked! Magazine. Despite it being the descendent of a Marxist publication (Living Marxism), and led by a self-identified Marxist (Brendan O’Neill), I find it to be a great read most of the time.

But in their recent article “The White Lotus Expresses a Dark Truth about Trans” they go overboard and decide to pathologize and stigmatize a minority sexual orientation that is roughly as common as homosexuality – autoheterosexuality (also known as autogynephilia when present in the natally male). In addition, this article says nothing at all about autoheterosexuality in females (although it has been documented to exist – see Phil Illy’s Autoheterosexual for more). As such, this Spiked! article is not merely attacking a sexual minority but also engaging in misandry (as it criticizes the manifestation of that sexuality in males, but not females). Since I read Spiked! yet support equality of the sexes as well as equality for sexual minorities, I believe I am in a fair place to write a critique of this article.

Before I list what I object to about the article, I want to make clear that I agree with several things the article says (and that Spiked! has previously published articles in support of). For one, Gender Self-ID is a terrible policy that should not be implemented. For two, I do not believe in medical (surgical or hormonal) transition for anyone who is not yet post-pubertal, and I don’t believe those who are not yet post-pubertal are capable of consenting to puberty suppression any more than they are capable of consenting to contracts, smoking, drinking, gambling, surgical procedures, or sexual activity. For three, I absolutely accept there are legitimate reasons in some situations for spaces segregated by birth sex, that there are situations in which official government documents should reflect birth sex, and I also support the right of any person of either sex to set up a single-sex space. For four, and most critically, I do agree that there are many examples of autoheterosexual males (autogynephilic males) who have behaved terribly and hidden behind “but I’m trans” (the sacred identitarian-left victim group of the current moment) in order to shield themselves from criticism.

But this article goes well beyond criticizing bad behaviour from autoheterosexual males (or making one of the many rational critiques that can be made about contemporary “trans” activism). It attacks the very sexual orientation itself as inherently misogynist and completely ignores the fact that many autoheterosexual males and many expressions of male autoheterosexuality (i.e. autogynephilia) are completely consensual and thus both acceptable and deserving of tolerance under the standard norms of a free society. In this particular article, Spiked! magazine is not merely demanding that autoheterosexual males respect the rights of others (a completely fair demand to make) but telling a specifically male sexual minority (yet not its female corresponding cohort) to Stay In The Closet.

What is Autogynephilia? As the article not-entirely-incorrectly summarizes it, “some men have a sexual fetish for pretending to be women.” But as the primary sexologists who study this phenomenon (Ray Blanchard, J Michael Bailey and Anne Lawrence) point out, it isn’t “just a fetish.” It is, in every respect, just as much a sexual orientation as being straight or bi or gay is, and/or it is an internalization of being straight. All the relevant scholarship says it cannot be changed, and that it goes beyond a bedroom kink and into a full-on lifestyle requirement in many cases. This is why some autogynephilic males undergo gender transition, and since I am an ethical egoist, I cannot see any fair objection to their transition. If they have to live as women (as socially defined) in order to achieve happiness, even if this happiness is achieved via a sexual fulfillment pathway, then they should transition.

But, according to the Spiked! article, autogynephilia (i.e. autoheterosexuality in males) is a “dark truth.” Now, if the article merely meant that a large cohort (likely the majority) of trans activists have attempted to suppress the scholarship surrounding the subject, this is an unobjectionable statement and is quite nicely documented in Alice Dreger’s Galileo’s Middle Finger. But clearly what the article means by “dark truth” goes beyond the distaste for the theory and for the fact it is seen as politically inconvenient – the article instead sees autogynephilia (specifically in males) as an evil thing that damns all trans ANYTHING as inherently misogynist and, consequentially, worthy of societal (if not necessarily political) shaming and marginalization.

The article’s core arguments for this are the facts that many trans activists are basically insane, have promoted demented policies, and have behaved terribly. Whilst I accept all these things are true, bad sexual or romantic behaviour knows no sex or sexual orientation. There are atrocious domestic abusers of both sexes across all possible sex combinations (and this is much more sex-symmetrical than the feminist movement will publicly admit, as Murray Straus shows here), rapists of both sexes exist, rape victims of both sexes exist, and rapists of all sexual orientations exist. Sexual misbehaviour is not confined to males, let alone to gynephilic males, let alone to autogynephilic males. Whilst it is fair to suggest that sexually misbehaving autogynephilic males are taking advantage of the current emphasis on “trans” as a way to get away with sexually misbehaving, the problem is not their sexual orientation but rather their sexual misbehaviour.

The article’s other primary argument for the “all autogynephiles hate women” position is also deeply flawed, but before I explore it, I want to make note of what the article fails to mention: autoheterosexuality exists in women too, and a substantial majority of the most recently transitioning cohort within the transgender community is natally female. An article about transgender issues in Spiked! magazine cannot really avoid this fact, given that Spiked! is a Gender-Critical publication and Gender-Criticals have frequently (and correctly) pointed out that the preponderance of natal females in the current cohort of gender transitioners is a significant factor that suggests deep problems with the contemporary “trans” movement (given that it is a very sudden inversion of the historical norm). Yet the article is chronically fixated on males who transition to living as women, without even mentioning the inverse (despite the inverse being, at the moment, the majority of the trans movement, and this particular fact being commonly referenced in multiple other articles in Spiked!). As previously mentioned before, the editor of Spiked! is Brendan O’Neill, who has written a different article on the subject of trans issues entitled Her Penis. Yet one must ask, why is it always about Her Penis and never about His Vulva? If the issues are sexual predation being enabled by badly designed accommodations for the transgender, and the preponderance of this predation being committed by natal males who transition, then the problem is really one of sexual misbehaviour rather than one of the epistemic validity of transgender identification. After all, I seriously doubt Brendan (or any other Spiked! writer, including that of the article under discussion right now) would be okay with a transman forcing His Vulva upon him by sitting on his face without his consent. Joking aside, the article’s complete lack of engagement with autoheterosexuality’s existence in natal females is a severe blind spot that shows it is more influenced by 70s-era Radical Feminist ideology (and, consequently, an imperative to complain about males) than the relevant sexology research.

But as for the article’s most potent argument, that argument too fails. In an argumentative version of what pornographers call the “money shot,” the article quotes openly-autogynephilic feminist transwoman Andrea Long Chu in support of the proposition that autogynephilia is inherently misogynist. After noting that Long Chu has openly admitted she was motivated to transition by forced-feminization erotica, the article quotes her as saying the following:

“getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is.”

I don’t like this quote (nor do I like Andrea Long Chu, for that matter) but I don’t think her quote is necessarily proof of hatred of (or, specifically, contempt for) women.

Firstly, taking the receptive position in a penetrative sex act is not the same as taking a submissive or a degraded role. Plenty of heterosexual females and homosexual males who enjoy taking a receptive position (i.e. people who like “getting fucked”) are not sexual submissives and/or not into being humiliated or degraded. And that’s before we discuss the bisexuals and the “submissive tops” of both sexes. To put it briefly, you can be the sucker, licker or fuck-ee and both decide the flow of the action and refuse to be humiliated.

Secondly, if a feminization fetish on the part of male submissives counts as misogyny, why wouldn’t classic femdom (heterosexual BDSM with the female as the dominant) count as misandry (or, for the males who enjoy it, internalized misandry)? Classic femdom, after all, depicts the ultimate case of the “chivalrous knight” submissive male gender role (and Courtly Love historically began in precisely that medieval context). Not to mention, given how so many autogynephilic males with fetishes for submitting to females there are, it becomes hard to say that autogynephilic submissiveness, when it involves being “sissified” by a female, shows misogyny. Rather, it seems to reflect a kind of admiration – “please my lady teacher, make me like you! Make me more feminine!” That places a negative value significance on masculinity and a positive value significance on femininity.

Thirdly, the fact that our societal concepts of sex and gender, of both maleness/femaleness and masculinity/femininity/both/other/neither (depending on the language) arose before we developed a full understanding of biological sex and sexual dimorphism, illustrates that there may be a perfectly reasonable in-historical-context epistemic case for seeing the receptive role in penetrative sex as emblematic of femaleness in the absence of any misogyny. We knew that his frontal organs were contoured for insertion and her frontal organs were contoured for reception before we even knew the sperm and ovum existed. Or several other facts about sexual reproduction. Hell, the Greeks didn’t even know women contributed 50% of the offspring’s genetics but they still had concepts of maleness, femaleness, proper-appearance-and-characteristics-for-males (i.e. masculinity) and proper-appearance-and-characteristics-for-females (i.e. femininity). I totally agree that the concepts the Greeks had specifically were misogynist (Aristotle’s own words confess a truly heinous misogyny), but there is nothing inherently irrational or misogynist with associating a receptive sexual position with femaleness. Sexually unimaginative? Perhaps. Hateful of women? Not really.

Finally, if Long Chu felt contempt for women (i.e. felt women were beneath her) why would she want to become one?

In conclusion, whilst I do think there is no neurological basis for “gender identity” that exists independently of sexual orientation, and whilst I am a fan of Spiked!, the article they published is just deeply flawed on many levels. Yes, autogynephilia exists. Yes, some autogynephiles behave atrociously. Yes, contemporary “trans ideology” enables bad behaviour. But some males, and some females, are autoheterosexual, and this sexual orientation they have sometimes induces clinically significant suffering (Gender Dysphoria) that, in many cases, is ameliorated by transition. In addition, Spiked!’s allegiance to Radical Feminism is allegiance to a deeply misandrist ideology. I’ve already written about this in a previous article – Radical Feminism condemns men being attracted to women, men being attracted to men, men being attracted to women-whom-are-attracted-to-women, and men being attracted to being women. There’s just no way a male can get off without some Radical Feminist being offended by it. By all means, call out sexually predatory behaviour, criticize “Trans Inc” and oppose the Dutch Protocol (a.k.a. “Gender-Affirmative Care”) being prescribed to children, but stop listening to the Radical Feminists (for whom there is essentially no expression of male sexuality that isn’t misogynist), and start listening to the actual sexologists who study autogynephilia (who make it very clear that it is fundamentally a sexual orientation rather than a moral defect). Leave the sissies alone.