Hi! I love your work. It's really thrilling to find art at the intersection of philosophy, gender, and the erotic. You seem to be really thoughtful and intentional about your presentation of these pieces, so I'm curious about why you tag everything with "autoandrophilia" which IME is a pretty loaded word with a complex etymology. Would love to understand more!
Thanks, and good question. My answer is very long.
Before we go any futher, Blanchard's typology is transmisogynist bullshit. It's oversimplified, misinformed, and unimaginative. He actually abandoned the term 'autoandrophile' and has since switched to 'autohomoerotic'. More controversial online circles of trans people half-ironically identify with Blanchardian typology. For some, it's like MBTI, and for others, it's their self-diagnosis. Depends on the person.
When contemporary Western psychology began to take shape in the Wednesday Psychological Society's weekly meetings, one of the 'defects' they discussed was homosexuality. According to E. James Lieberman's biography of Otto Rank, he said in an informal setting that homosexuality is "love for one's self as seen in the persona of another like oneself whom one admires...strongly built up on narcissism. It is an ego symptom and not a sex symptom." Sound familiar? I don't think Blanchard's typology is all that different from that of early European psychoanalysis.
We see this same critique levied against trans people. That we're confusing attraction for identity, our self-love is fetishistic, and we're narcissistic neurotic perverts. But we can't just dismiss and ignore it, because we do indeed see trans people say things like "I can't tell if I want to be him or fuck him" or "become the person you'd want to date." 'Autoandrophile' starts to sound a lot like 'gender envy'. So what is actually happening here?
To even approach answering that, let's ask more questions. What does it mean to love people who look like you? If you are estranged from your own body, or if your body changes over time, is it morally objectionable to love a specific version of youself? Even a future one? It it also morally objectionable for that self-love to have a sexual dimension?
Trans people are expected to have the clarity of mind to separate who they are from who they're attracted to. (It's one of the demands society makes to ensure you are 'of sound mind' while still being suitably pathological to deserve hormonal/surgical treatment.) But if you don't necessarily identify with your body, then you already exist outside of that distinction. Like an open window, the barrier between inside (self) and outside (everything else) becomes troublesome.
Do you see now why I like the mirror metaphor so much? When you look in a reflection, that's not technically you. But it only exists because you are there to cast an image. The room's mirror image, too, is not necessarily real, but you gain insight into the room, maybe even see it in a new way, precisely because it's reflected back inaccurately. Your conception of yourself is filled out with detail when you cross-reference it with another version of yourself, one that doesn't exist in the same way you currently do.
It's some ontological quantum gender shit. And it's not unique to trans people. Cis people can experience it too, but they rely on the assumption that it's natural to have an oppositional 'counterpart', a 'complementary' partner. Somebody who completes them. Why, then, can't I complete myself?
We find ourselves back at your question. If Blanchard isn't going to use 'autoandrophile', then I will. One man's trash is another man's treasure. I'll use it to:
disrupt its definition.
challenge trans assimilationists.
discomfort cis men with my desire to be like them, or worse—to encourage them to define their masculinity.
provoke people into thoughtful discussions.
make people feel less alone.
But mostly, I use it so that when people look for the term, this blog will come up, and they'll see my porn. Or art. Or whatever they'll want to call it. And they'll start asking themselves the distinctions between any of these things.
There's so much more I could say about all this. Autoandrophilia's relationship to beauty standards, its usefulness (or lack thereof) as a coping mechanism for the limitation of transition, etcetera. But I'll stop here for now.
[Image ID: a typography edit that reads "if you can't stand to see happy transsexuals, look the other way!" in all caps. to the left is a cluster of dandelions. the dandelions have a gradient overlay of green, yellow, and orange. the entire image is textured to look aged and photocopied. /End ID]
thinkin about my particular brand of masochism and how apparently I've just been going through the world thinking it's much more common than it is. idk. this may be a bit of a ramble.
but it's like. I go to get a piercing. my piercer apologises for the pain. I say that it's fine, I love it, I'm having a great time. I smile as the spike goes through my nose. I tell people later, and they seem to think it's strange that I told my piercer that I enjoy it. I feel like this is something a piercer would hear often. I get the impression that it isn't.
I get my head tattooed. It's the time of my life. I tell the artist it's almost meditative for me, that I'm really enjoying it. I'm smiling throughout. They call me a "tough cunt" and say I'm sitting really well, surprised that I'm handling it well. I would've expected tattoo artists to have more experience with people like me.
I hit myself on my meaty thighs with a heavy, solid chain. It brings me pain; it brings me pleasure. I laugh as it hurts me. It's not horny per se, it's sensory seeking, it's dopamine seeking, it's power seeking. It's pure sadomasochism practiced unto myself, masturbatory pain in a way only I can give myself. It's safe and I can control every aspect of this play. I try to explain this to my partner of four years, excited to have found a new experience to enjoy. They get cagey and worried, telling me alright, well, as long as you're not self harming. I realise in this moment that they don't really understand what I'm getting out of it when we're fucking and they're slapping my face and I can only grin in response. A month or so later, we break up - not because of this moment, but for many like it, and partly for misaligned values on kink in general. I still haven't properly used the chain on myself since this conversation.
Pain is pleasure, in my eyes. Masochism is not about feeling bad, for me, it's about feeling good. And that feeling is innate to me in a way it doesn't seem to be with people I had assumed it was (various partners, lovers, friends I've discussed this with have all had wildly varying opinions; fewer have shared my proper lust for violence than expected, many are much more situational masochists).
This is not to say I don't have limits, obviously. There is pain that feels bad (and there is very much a place in my maso heart for that too, more situationally), and there is pain that is too much to bear. But it just seems I engage with this all much more casually than is typical, even for my casually kinky queer friend groups. Like, when people talk about The BDSM Lifestyle TM... damn. Like I guess I'm working on living it??
I'm so so happy being some kind of freak. Hurt me and I'll laugh about it. It brings me real joy. I love feeling the point of a blade under my chin. Danger, excitement, pain, with the back-of-mind certainty that I'm safe and this is a game. And I'm seeking that feeling constantly. I talk a big game on this blog, I know, and I go into a lot of fantasy content that obviously is not practicable IRL. But damn. Just hit me. Push me around a bit. I'll gladly push back if that's what you want. It'd just be a shame not to hurt me when I bruise so pretty.
Some ppl in the forcemasc tag are so funny, like "I can excuse unconsensual stabing and forced body modification but I draw the line at reinforcing gender norms"
The reinforcement of gender norms and stereotypical masculinity can be part of the kink to some people. There are all sorts of gender roles based kinks, the problematic aspects are part of the fantasy. Are we really going to moralize this specific part of the kink?
I know that for some of you forcemasc is more of a affirming (often nonsexual) fantasy (which i genuinely also like), but you need to remember that this is a kink. It doesn't have to be "good" and wholesome.
A lot of people were attracted to forcemasc bc they felt like they had to suppress their masculinity, that they could only be masc if there was a gnc/fem twist to it. Here they felt liberated to really lean into all aspects of masculinity. Now we seem to be circulating right back to "traditional masculinity is bad, let boys be soft and feminine". Of course boys can be feminine, but I'm not sure if the forcemasc tag is the best place for this. I'm not saying there's a wrong way to forcemasc, and I'm not telling your fantasy is bad bc it's not "masculine enough" but I am telling you that it's not better either.
Although this kink can be used to deconstruct masculinity, it doesn't have an obligation to. Sometimes you want to indulge in some toxic masculinity bc you never went through that phase when you were younger. Or sometimes you use kink to deal with your fears, and you are afraid of your own desires, of becoming or being seen as predatory. Remember that sexual fantasies are not literal, and can have many purposes.
Im really dapressed i dont look conventionaly attractive while im cutting onion on top of a pile of celeb magazines thats on my mattress without a cover on the floor thats covered in steel reserve cans and dirt and rat shit and JO tissues and crumbs and other shit while im very fucked off my ass crossed as shit and very crying hard and not even from the onion but becauese of my shitty life where theres not much going for me and really vwry few people that want to have special moments with me were i use my wet mouth to make u blast off
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