Pre-Blanchard Autogynephilia
This is probably going to be one of my more incendiary essays, all things considered, but I wanted to publish it anyways since I've been thinking about it a lot. This came from an investigation into the sources that Blanchard originally built on for the autogynephilia hypothesis back in 1989 (Blanchard 1989). All english bits from Hirschfeld's 1921 work Sexualpathologie are me shittly translating it with DeepL, I am very sorry.
“The main thing that brings him sexual satisfaction is putting on complete women's clothing. Just the thought of this makes him happy (...) [and] the stronger he fought against the urge to appear as a woman, the more violently and irresistibly the passion broke through again after a while[.] (...) That is why he cannot stand it when people talk about him ‘dressing up, which is masking, disguising himself’” (Hirschfeld, 1921, 198).
All these quotes demonstrate the central tenant of what Magnus Hirschfeld, arguably one of the most influential sexologist of the 20th century, calls transvestitic automonosexualism, a “sexual perversion” as Hirschfeld himself classified it, but what we would today understand to be a fetish or a sexual orientation, as per Anne Lawrence (2004), one of Blanchard’s most faithful disciples. Something that strikes me as interesting is that, if you think about what Ireland and Kronic say in Cute Accelerationism - that “the shaming of autophilias is literally nothing more or less than a prohibition on liking yourself” (Ireland & Kronic, 2024, 94) - this is exactly that. The case study Hirschfeld bases a lot of his conclusions about transvestitic automonosexualism on, is of someone who “cannot stand it when people talk about him ‘dressing up, which is masking, disguising himself.’” Their sexual enjoyment of crossdressing is brought into the forefront - it is, after all, called a “sexual perversion” by Hirschfeld - but there is clearly some undercurrent of wanting to be a woman, or, at the very least, womanly. Even if they derive pleasure from this, even if they are listed as an transvestitic automonosexual, they still believe this to be something more than a fetish, something more than “masking [or] disguising himself,” right? Even when Hirschfeld mentions that their main form of “sexual satisfaction is putting on complete women's clothing” he follows it up by saying that “[j]ust the thought of this makes him happy.” Their sexual attraction to their own womanly form, achieved most successfully when in full feminine dress, is also their source of happiness. Why can’t trans women enjoy their own bodies sexually, why must that be classified and pathologized? It’s literally just “liking yourself” as Ireland and Kronic rightfully point out and, furthermore, sexual interest in a female body doesn’t eschew other reasons for transition nor does it invalidate people who transition because of it. I am essentially arguing against the pathologization of transness, the different typologies Blanchard dreamed up (AGP and HSTS), but giving him the W in terms of him saying that trans women transition because they “love themselves as women” (the literal meaning of autogynephilia) because, as far back as Mr. T[1] in Hirschfeld’s 1921 chapter on automonosexualism, that’s been exactly the case, be it romantically, sexually, spiritually, societally, or for other reasons.
Thank you for reading.
[1] Mr. T is the name of the subject in the case that Hirschfeld analyzes.
Sources:
Hirschfeld, Magnus. (1921). Sexualpathologie (3. Vol).
Ireland, Amy & Kronic, B. Maya. (2024). Cute Accelerationism.
Lawrence, Anne. (2004). "Autogynephilia: A paraphilic model of gender identity disorder."
Blanchard, Ray. (1989). "The classification and labeling of nonhomosexual gender dysphorias."
