This Is what I Have Been Saying

There is a word that the trans community hates, it has been labeled on us without any scholarly research it just used a “convenience sample” of trans people at gay bars. No validation of the survey instrument, no control group, no random samples, nothing just a bunch of questions that someone put together and asked trans people at a gay bar.

Why Are Trans Women Penalized For Body Fantasies Everyone Has?
The Establishment
By Noah Berlatsky
May 16, 2016

“Autogynephilia” is an ugly word that is supposed to describe an ugly mental state. The term was developed by sexologist Ray Blanchard to classify what he saw as a specific type of “transgender” woman—those who were sexually aroused by the idea of having a female body. For Blanchard, the identity of these “transgender” women was built on a fetish. Anti-trans feminist Janice Raymond argued that “transgendered” women were innately rapists who stole female bodies. Blanchard was less confrontational, but also suggested that many trans women were perverts motivated by deviant sexuality.

Treating trans women as sexual deviants has done them real, concrete harm. As activist Julia Serano writes, “Reducing a person to their sexual bodies or behaviors sexualizes them. And in our culture, sexualizing someone (i.e., reducing them to their sexuality, rather than seeing them as a whole person) is one of the most effective ways of invalidating a person.” Feministing editor Jos Truitt writes that that the diagnosis of autogynephilia presumes that “the concept of autogynephilia has had a cruel impact on trans women who aren’t straight, telling us our genders are actually just sexual perversions.” Truitt points out that autogynephilia has been used in the past to deny trans women access to medical services and that this can still be a problem, especially in rural areas.

Autogynephilia continues to be touted by some high-profile writers and gender theorists, most notably Alice Dreger. Nonetheless, as a scientific theory, autogynephilia has been largely debunked. In particular, a 2009 study found that more than 90% of cis women experience “erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman.” In other words, autogynephilia—or, in less pathologizing terminology, female embodiment fantasies—does not represent deviance at all. It’s normal.

I don’t like ad hominem attacks on the person who are pushing autogynephilia, their lack of scientific research is enough to disprove their theories without the name calling.

Back in 2015 I wrote,

If I did a study to see if drinking coffee lead to a life of crime and I studied only prisoners who drank coffee and then said that it was true you would be laugh at. But suppose you studied only trans people from a gay bar and said that all trans people are autogynephilic, you would become famous.

And that is the problem with the research, the data was collected a gay bar! They chose a sample that proved their hypothesis; they didn’t try to get a cross section of the trans community. They didn’t have a control group of women. Just a bunch of drag queens (not that there is anything wrong with drag queens).

When we were putting together a pilot program to survey the trans community for AIDS/HIV we chose our seeds (individuals picked to begin the sampling) with care, we made sure we had trans people from all socioeconomic classes, race, and broad sample of the trans community to minimize sample bias.

As Charles Moser showed in his non- scientific research (which he states in the beginning of his paper “A convenience sample of female professional employees of an urban hospital was obtained.”) women also have autogynephilic fantasies. I think that just about everyone on the planet have autogynephilic fantasies, who doesn’t think of themselves as sexy.

So to sum it up… a garbage study generated more garbage at the detriment of the trans community.