Transgendering, Migrating and Love of Oneself as a Woman: A Contribution to a Sociology of Autogynephilia¹

By Richard Ekins, Dave King

Citation: Ekins R., King D. (2001) Transgendering, Migrating and Love of Oneself as a Woman: A Contribution to a Sociology of Autogynephilia. IJT 5,3, http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtvo05no03_01.htm

• Abstract
• Keywords
• Introduction
• Transgendering, Migrating and Autogynephilia
• Towards a Sociology of Transgendering
• Three Lives
• Discussion
• Concluding Comment
• Acknowledgements
• References

Abstract

This paper considers Ray Blanchard’s taxonomic, typological and diagnostic approach to his concept of ‘autogynephilia’ (‘love of oneself as a woman’) in male-to-female transsexuals, in the context of Anne Lawrence’s appropriation of the concept in the service of her personal transgendering identity formation and transgendering identity politics. A striking contemporary example of the umbilical cord that exists between the formulations of science and those of sections of the transgendered community is provided by the interrelations between Blanchard’s and Lawrence’s work on autogynephilia. The concept of autogynephilia is considered from the standpoint of the sociology of transgendering put forward in Ekins (1997) and Ekins and King (1999, 2001a, 2001b). In particular, the interrelations between transgendering, ‘migrating’ and the role of autogynephilia are examined with reference to selected material from life history work with three male-to-female transsexual informants. While it is not difficult to find autogynephilic components in transgendering trajectories, the interesting questions relate to the status of those components over diverse trajectories, including the constituting and consolidating (Ekins, 1993, 1997) of autogynephilic identities. The sociological approach presented in this paper provides the conceptual wherewithal to unpack a number of controversial issues surrounding the concept of autogynephilia and its reception.

Keywords: transgendering, transsexual, autogynephilia, erotic femaling, identity.

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to set the stage for a dialogue about the role of the erotic (sexuality) within the ‘migrating’ mode of transgendering (Ekins and King, 1999, 2001a, 2001b). In particular, we raise a topic which is currently hotly debated within some sections of the transgender community, namely that of ‘autogynephilia’.²

We first introduce our particular focus by saying something about each of the three concepts in the title of the paper – transgendering, migrating and autogynephilia. We then elaborate upon the sociological approach we are developing in our theoretical and empirical work on transgendering, in order to provide a conceptual framework to explore the fullest possible range of transgender diversity. Thirdly, we illustrate our approach with reference to selected material drawn from life history work with three informants, in order to provide relevant examples of the role of autogynephilia in actual transgender lives, to which we might all relate our own experience. A discussion section is followed by a brief conclusion.
  

Transgendering, Migrating and Autogynephilia

In recent years, it has become orthodox within the transgender community to use the term ‘transgender’ as a broad and inclusive term. A particularly apt definition is that of Thom and More (1998:3) who use the term ‘transgender’ to describe "the community of all self identified cross gender people whether intersex, transsexual men and women, cross dressers, drag kings and drag queens, transgenderists, androgynous, bi-gendered, third gendered or as yet unnamed gender gifted people". Similarly, in a scholarly context, when the electronic The International Journal of Transgenderism was established in 1997, its name was chosen to reflect its standpoint as "more neutral on etiology", to encompass "the vast complexity of gender manifestations and identities", and "to stimulate new ways of thinking and understanding various aspects of transgenderism" (Pfaefflin and Coleman, 1997). We are happy enough to follow these broad usages of the term, but we prefer to place the initial focus on the gerund of transgender, namely ‘transgendering’. This is to highlight (1) that transgendering is a generic social process; (2) that manifestations of the dimensions and properties of this generic social process will depend on the very different relations that different modes of transgendering have to the male/female binary divide which, from the sociological point of view, constitutes the principal social structural determinant within which the various social processes of transgendering are played out; and (3) that the various and changing categorisations of transgender phenomena and transgender identities are emergents within ongoing social processes of transgendering.

Depending on their relationship to the binary male/female divide, transgendering processes are classifiable into four major modes or styles. These we term, respectively, ‘migrating’, ‘oscillating’, ‘negating’, and ‘transcending’ (Ekins and King, 2001a).³ Migrating involves moving from one side of the binary divide to the other on a permanent basis. Oscillating involves moving to and fro between male and female polarities, across and between the divide, as in the case with the part-time cross-dresser. Negating indicates those processes tending towards eliminating the binary divide – a move to the ungendered: the ‘gender-less’ (Ekins and King, 2001a). Finally, transcending presupposes going beyond the binary divide – a move to the ‘gender-full’, as is graphically illustrated in the following statement from an internet mailing list called ‘Sphere’ which states:

"We take our name from the idea that gender isn’t a dichotomy (where there’s either male or female) or a continuum (where there’s a rainbow of stuff in between, all in a line and all related to male or female) but a sphere, where male and female are just two of an infinite number of possible points and you can be anywhere on, inside, or outside the gendered world."

(Sphere, http://www.devrandom.net/~aidan/sphere.html)

In this paper, we restrict our comments to ‘migrating’ which, to repeat, involves moving from one side of the binary divide to the other on a permanent basis. Migrating presupposes the male/female binary divide – with those migrating, in large measure, accepting that divide, and seeking movement from one side of the divide to the other and acceptance and legitimacy in their new place of abode.

The term ‘autogynephilia’ (‘love of oneself as a woman’) may well be unknown to many. It was orginally introduced into the transgendering literature by Ray Blanchard (1989a), a clinical psychologist, presently Head of the Clinical Sexology Programme of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto, Canada. Blanchard (1989b: 616) defines autogynephilia as "a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female".⁴ The concept came to have a great importance to Blanchard in his attempts to refine diagnostic categories of ‘gender disorder’ and implement management strategies for his adult male gender patients (e.g., Blanchard, 1985a, 1985b, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1992, 1993a, 1993b). Just as Hirschfeld ([1910] 1991) had classified his ‘transvestites’ according to their erotic interest, so Blanchard did likewise with ‘transsexuals’. His empirical research convinced him that bisexual, asexual, and heterosexual transsexuals were similar to each other, and dissimilar to homosexual transsexuals, with regard to, inter alia, degree of recalled childhood femininity, extent of interpersonal heterosexual experience, a history of transvestic fetishism, and a history of erotic arousal in association with the thought of being a woman. Such findings led him to the view that there are only two fundamentally different types of transsexualism in males: homosexual and nonhomosexual, and, moreover, that the common characteristic of the nonhomosexual category is their tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women – an erotic orientation that he labeled autogynephilia.⁵
  

Towards a Sociology of Transgendering

Our empirical sociological work with cross-dressers and sex-changers over many years (e.g., Ekins, 1983, 1997; King, 1981, 1993), suggests to us that all transgendered identities – whether older and medicalised ones such as ‘transsexual’ and ‘transvestite’, or newer transgender activist ones such as ‘gender transient’ and ‘gender outlaw’ – are emergents within three sets of interrelations. These interrelations are those between (1) sex (the body), sexuality (erotic and sensuous response) and gender (the social and cultural correlates of the division between the sexes);⁶ (2) ‘scientific’, sub-cultural and lay conceptualisations and theorisations – what we refer to as ‘scientific’, ‘member’ and ‘lay’ knowledge of transgendering phenomena; and (3) self, identity and social worlds (Ekins, 1997).

Up until the 16th Biennial Harry Benjamin Conference of 1999, we had not given much thought to Blanchard’s concept of autogynephilia. For us, Blanchard’s work was yet another example of that tradition within the medical model and positivist science which seemed overly preoccupied with classification, in the service of diagnosis, etiological theorising and the management of ‘disorders’. Blanchard’s re-emphasis upon sexuality was important, but as one of us (Ekins) was already exploring the role of sexuality in transgendering using the concept of ‘erotic femaling’ and exploring its interrelations with ‘body femaling’ and ‘gender femaling’ (Ekins, 1993, 1997), we felt no pressing need to explore Blanchard’s work in detail.⁷

Two papers by Anne Lawrence (Lawrence, 1999a, 1999b) presented at the 16th Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Conference in London, however, led us to rethink this view. Indeed, we found Lawrence's papers to be amongst the highlights of the conference. Anne Lawrence identifies as a post-operative transsexual woman, and for some years has been popularising Blanchard's concept (Lawrence, 1998, 1999c, 1999d, 1999e, 2000). In brief, she identifies with the concept, describes herself as an 'autogynephilic transsexual', conceptualises autogynephilic feelings as one of her principal motivations for seeking re-assignment surgery, maintains her autogynephilic identity post-operatively, and presents papers giving impressive evidence that she is not alone, but rather, is part of a sizeable number of the transgender community (Lawrence, 1999c, 1999d).

It would not be exaggerating to say that Anne Lawrence and her work have created something of a storm within sections of the transgender community. There is no doubt that some (male-to-female) transsexual women find Lawrence’s work courageous and affirming. They feel it validates their own experiences and commend her for bringing the erotic out of the transsexual closet. However, her many critics are considerably more vocal. The force of their criticisms and the personal nature of many of their verbal assaults left Lawrence "feeling defensive, perplexed, and deeply troubled" (Lawrence, 2000). The criticisms are wide-ranging. She is variously accused of being self-serving, confused, misguided, a source of personal distress to many transgendered people, and a political disaster. The contrast between her impressive candour and grasp of her subject, and the invective that her life and work provokes, both intrigues us and commands our interest and respect. So much so, that on returning from the Harry Benjamin conference, one of us (Ekins) was led to explore her website,⁸ read her work and study its reception. We also studied the relevant papers by Blanchard. It soon emerged from her papers, that Lawrence, after periods of personal confusion, ‘found herself’ with reference to Blanchard’s concept, in much the same way that so many transgendered people speak of ‘finding themselves’ when first becoming acquainted and adopting the medical terms ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’. Here was a striking late 20th century example of the umbilical cord existing between ‘member’ and ‘scientific’ (‘expert’) conceptualisations of transgendering phenomena, which entailed the constituting and consolidating (Ekins, 1993, 1997) of an emergent transgender identity right before our eyes, so to speak.
  

Three Lives⁹

In the main, it is uncontroversial to consider ‘transvestism’ in terms of its erotic (autogynephilic) components; to do likewise with ‘transsexualism’ is controversial. At this point, we won’t speculate further on Blanchard’s particular use of the term,¹⁰ or, indeed, elaborate upon its hostile reception within sections of the transgender community, though we would be very interested to receive feedback on these matters (rjm.ekins@ulst.ac.uk). Rather, we will consider, briefly, the role of sexuality in three selected transgendering trajectories, to provide some background material to relate to in order to set the stage for dialogue about the role of autogynephilia in transgendering trajectories. All three informants identify as ‘transsexuals’. All three are post-operative and ‘pass’ in most settings as ‘genetic women’. All three came to identify as transsexual and began their ‘migrating’ in their late 30s - early 40s. However, each informant provides very different ‘vocabularies of motive’ (Mills, 1940; Ekins, 1983) for their migrating. ‘Rachael’ places the emphasis upon her envy of female bodies and a distaste and revulsion of her male body – her migrating might be seen as, principally, ‘body-led’. ‘Gail’ reports an autogynephilic phase on the way to re-assignment. In different phases of her migrating trajectory the autogynephilic component varied. ‘Janice’ also describes her transition as being ‘body-led’, but she specifically identifies as autogynephilic, both pre- and post-operatively. We will outline their respective migrating trajectories with particular reference to the role of autogynephilia.

Prior to preparing this paper, Ekins had been carrying out life-history work with Rachael for 15 years and with Gail for 6 years. Throughout this work, Rachael never spoke of being sexually aroused by the thought of herself as female, a girl or as a woman. Gail spoke of her ‘erotic femaling’ as being limited to a particular phase of her male femaling trajectory (Ekins, 1997: 146-154). Rachael and Gail were selected to provide examples of very different life-history material relating to the autogynephilic, in order to compare their trajectories with the self-identified ‘autogynephilic transsexual’, Janice. Janice has been an informant for some eighteen months; we were introduced to her after we began to consider Blanchard’s concept seriously. In preparing this paper, Ekins then re-interviewed Rachael and Gail, after introducing them to Blanchard’s concept. A series of open-ended questions were designed to elicit responses from them about their ‘autogynephilic’ responses over the course of their transgendering trajectories.

Rachael

Rachael’s earliest recollections of what she now refers to as ‘transsexual’ feelings occurred when she was six or seven years old. She was playing with a girl playmate, who lived next door to her and she remembers feeling she wanted her body to be like her playmate’s. The playmate’s clothes were of no particular interest to Rachael: both the children played in similar clothes – sandals and shorts. Rachael has no recollection of any erotic element to the wish. She simply wanted her playmate’s body, instead of her own. Her first sexual encounter was when she was the victim of homosexual abuse when nine years old. This left her confused and frightened. During adolescence she had a number of homosexual encounters, all of which she found unsatisfactory because, as she put it: "I wanted to be making love to a man, but I wanted to be a woman making love to a man". During this period, she had "indecisive sorts of relationships" with a couple of older women. At no time during this period does she recall being sexually aroused by the thought or image of herself as a female. Rather, desperately wanting the physical body of a woman and being unable to face up to doing anything about it, she took flight into large quantities of drugs. When 19 years old, she married her first wife intending to embark on a heterosexual relationship as a man. Sexual relations were only possible when Rachael fantasised that she had her wife’s body. The marriage fell apart when Rachael was 30 and she consulted a psychiatrist about her ‘transsexual’ feelings. She felt unable to proceed with re-assignment procedure although, for a while, did take oestrogen. Later, she married, again, with similar feelings and consequences to her first marriage. On occasions Rachael would masturbate, but says she did not think about herself as a woman when she masturbated. Rather, as she puts it: "I thought of a man making love to me as a woman". She felt that to be ‘transsexual’, her psychiatrists expected her to naturally take the woman’s role, to wear make-up, and so on. Because she felt no pressing need to do these things, she doubted her commitment to re-assignment; indeed, could not accept that she was transsexual.¹¹ Rachael was a lorry driver by profession. Her ‘Damascus Road’ experience came when she was sitting in her lorry as a man, and had the flash of insight that this is what she wanted – to be a woman doing this; to be a woman lorry driver. Henceforth, she pursued re-assignment surgery. Throughout, her priority was to "remove any and every physical manifestation of maleness within my body". Post-operatively, Rachael came to have sexual relations with men, feeling that she thinks, "like any other woman . . . I talk things over with women friends. There are difficulties having a relationship with a man . . . but it just seems the right thing to do".

Gail

Gail’s first recollections relating to her later ‘transsexual’ identity are clearly autogynephilic. They began when she started masturbating in her early teens. She used to cut pictures of girls she found attractive out of magazines and "masturbate to them", imagining that she was the girl in the picture. In particular, ‘hair’ was the big turn on at the start: "long, wavy, shiny and very feminine hair gained my attention. The face and body next". She was shy with girls but did have one steady girlfriend she was dating at the time of her 17th birthday: "I certainly didn’t have intercourse or anything like that. I was still relatively shy". She continues: "And then, on my 17th birthday, completely out of the blue . . . I went downstairs . . . and to this day, I’ll never know why, I put on some of my mother’s mascara and eye-shadow and lipstick". There followed an episodic pattern of making-up and curling her hair and dressing in her mother’s clothes. She was, she speculates "becoming the woman that I used to masturbate to in the pictures". Over the years, however, the sexual kick of her cross-dressing reduced and gave way to a feeling of inner peace and tranquillity. Meanwhile, the total confusion of not knowing who or what she was, in doing these ‘strange’ things, led her to the library and the discovery of ‘transvestites’ and ‘transsexuals’. In due time she approached the Beaumont Society, met self-identified ‘transvestites’ and ‘transsexuals’, began to identify with the latter, and approached a psychiatrist about the possibility of her being transsexual. The psychiatrist put her on a course of oestrogen, the premise being, Gail reports, that when her sexual desire dropped – which it did fairly quickly – if she was getting a sexual kick from cross-dressing and wasn’t transsexual, she would be horrified at the loss of her masculinity. In the event, she soon became unable to sustain an erection, went on to anti-androgen hormones, started electrolysis, and from this time onwards "knew that (she) was transsexual". A divorce followed. Whilst pre-operative, she had her first sexual relationship with a man. It was a revelation to her. For the first time she realised that this was where her sexual orientation was. She felt "totally happy as a woman, with a man". She enjoyed fellatio, whereas cunnilingus had disgusted her. Once post-operative, she soon met her present male partner, with whom she has been living for a number of years. She does not report autogynephilic arousal, rather the sexual pleasure of giving and receiving in a heterosexual sexual relationship.

Janice

Janice was six years old when she first recalls actively fantasising about wearing girls’ clothes and having visible breasts beneath her sweaters. The fantasies produced "a pleasant state of excitement", which she later came to conceptualise as erotic. At eight years old, Janice was dressing in her mother’s clothes whenever she had the privacy to do so. Although she became sexually aroused with cross-dressing, she hated her erect penis, which reminded her of her maleness. Her fantasies quickly became more body-focused. By the time she was 14, she was fantasising primarily about having a female body – having breasts, long hair, no penis, a vagina, and a hairless face. She affected an androgynous appearance and continued to cross-dress in private. These activities, like her fantasies, were highly erotic to Janice, which distressed her not only because this reminded her of her maleness, but because it seemed to preclude her (she thought) from being ‘really’ transsexual.

In her early twenties, Janice started experimenting with black market oestrogens. After taking oestrogen for a number of weeks her sex drive would disappear and with it most of her desire for a woman’s body. The desire would return when she stopped taking the oestrogen. Eventually she found a dosage of oestrogen that she wanted to take continuously but, after a few years, stopped, concluding that she did not have the courage to transition. Instead, she focused on developing a career, later marrying and having a family. Sexual relations with her wife were accompanied and enabled by her fantasising her body as female. Shortly after the birth of her children, she began taking oestrogen again, and during this period first encountered Blanchard’s concept of autogynephilia. It was her ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Her immediate reaction was "This is me!" A year later, at the age of 39, she began living full-time as a woman and, aged 41, she underwent sex-reassignment surgery. She remains as sexually excited by her actual migrating as she was by her fantasying it: "Nowadays my most common masturbatory fantasies usually involve little more than the sequential mental consideration of all the physical feminisation I’ve undergone. It’s like going through a list: now I have breasts; now I have a vagina; now I have hair to my shoulders; now I have pierced ears, etc. Just the contemplation of all these physical changes is enough to get me reliably excited."
  

Discussion

Rachael is insistent that she has never masturbated to the thought of herself as a woman. This might seem prima facie evidence that she has no autogynephilic response. However, she does speak of masturbating to the thought of herself having intercourse as a woman with a man. Blanchard would, presumably, see this as an example of what he calls an "autogynephilic interpersonal fantasy" (Blanchard, 1989b). Anne Lawrence (A. Lawrence, personal communication, 2000) suggests that perhaps Rachael is primarily aroused by her feminised self, reflected not in a mirror, but in another (male) person. She remarks: "I doubt that Rachael is truly aroused by men or by men’s bodies".¹² Much the same might be said of the later phases of Gail’s trajectory. But again, much the same might be said of many prima facie ‘heterosexual’ genetic women.

This debate raises important issues concerning, inter alia, the relations of autogynephilic fantasies in the transgendered with what one informant referred to as "the basic ingredients of heterosexuality". Many of Blanchard’s and Lawrence’s transgendered critics argue that the autogynephilic fantasies they describe are no different from the fantasies of heterosexual genetic women. When this move is made, Blanchard’s concept of autogynephilia as a male’s love of himself as a woman is extended to a female’s love of herself as a woman. There is no doubt, for instance, that many genetic women find erotic the thought of themselves as desirable and/or desired women. Relatedly, those who research ‘heterosexual’ spectator response to ‘heterosexual’ pornographic film claim that the male spectator typically desires the females claimed by the (desiring) male protagonist, whilst the female spectator fantasises about being the desirable and/or desired woman – the ‘love of oneself as a woman’ that this fantasising may trigger may make the desiring person variously irrelevant. Put another way, the degree of narcissism in episodes of desire varies. From this standpoint the ‘love of oneself as a woman’ experienced by genetic women and male-to-female women might seem indistinguishable.

One transgendered male-to-female informant described how she would dress herself up as a provocative woman, attract the desire of a ‘straight’ man at a ‘straight’ disco, and on returning home, on her own, position a mirror in front of herself angled to reflect the image the man would have had of her when he found her sexually desirable. She would then masturbate to that image – of herself through the imagined eyes of the male admirer.¹³ It is evident that ‘actual’ others (and parts of others), memories of actual others, fantasy others, actual and fantasy interactions, actual and fantasy scripts, actual and fantasy props, and so on, may be variously implicated in erotic episodes, variously scripted and enacted. Others and props (both actual and fantasy) may be variously essential, optional, or irrelevant in particular episodes of arousal, arousal maintenance, and orgasm.

However, it is important to remember that on our sociological, processual and relational understanding of these issues, meanings of narratives and their constituents emerge within the frameworks they are placed. For the purposes of this preparatory paper, from the standpoint of autogynephilia, we have been content to structure our discussion around just one mode of transgendering (migrating) and three short narratives. Elsewhere, however, we have distinguished five major sub-processes as being variously implicated within each mode or style of transgendering (Ekins and King, 2001a). These are the sub-processeses of ‘erasing’ (eliminating aspects of sex, sexuality, gender), ‘substituting’ (replacing aspects of sex, sexuality and gender with their ‘opposite’), ‘concealing’ (concealing aspects of sex, sexuality and gender that are seen to conflict with the intended gender display), ‘implying’ (implying ‘opposite’ aspects of sex, sexuality and gender), and ‘redefining’ (redefining components within the binary gender divide and/or redefining the divide itself).¹⁴  Within the migrating mode of transgendering, the sub-processes of erasing, concealing, implying, and redefining are variously co-opted and implicated in the service of the sub-process of substituting.

Once autogynephilia is considered in the light of the sub-processes and their interrelations, it becomes possible, inter alia, to detail the ways in which autogynephilic response in migrating differs from autogynephilic response in those not migrating, i.e., in the other modes of transgendering and in genetic women. Many of our migrating informants, for instance, tell us of their erotic arousal to the thought of actual and fantasied erasing and substituting. The eroticising of the respective sub-processes, the degree of the respective eroticising, and the interrelations between the various erotisations will vary between individuals and within individual trajectories. This is an exceedingly complex business. In our judgement, our framework provides the conceptual wherewithal to unpack such issues in a way denied to the taxonomic, typological and diagnostic approach followed by Blanchard.
  

Concluding Comment

As Ekins has argued elsewhere – in his conceptualisation of ‘erotic femaling’ (Ekins, 1993, 1997) – it is not difficult to find autogynephilic components in the transgendering trajectories of informants who, in Blanchard’s terms, are ‘nonhomosexual transsexuals’ – or, for that matter, in the trajectories of those he would term ‘homosexual transsexuals’. Rather, the interesting questions relate to the status of these components. As qualitative sociologists, what interests us is the nature and extent of the autogynephilic component and its interrelations with other components of transgendering over diverse trajectories, including the constituting and consolidating of full-blown autogynephilic identities.

We might also note that the recent furore concerning Blanchard’s work provides rich material for studies in the management of sexual stigma, the sociology of secrecy, and related issues. It would also make an excellent case study in the interrelations between transgender politics, clinical psychology and the social construction of reality. Meanwhile, we present our paper as a modest start in the direction of a sociology of autogynephilia.
  

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Anne Lawrence, Wendy Saunderson, Ray Blanchard, and two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in the preparation of this paper. Special appreciation goes to Rachael, Gail Hill and Janice Epstein. The quotations from trans-theory discussants A.J. Annala, Nicole Storme and Suzan Cooke are reproduced with thanks and with permission.
  

1. An earlier version of this paper, "Transgendering, migrating and the role of autogynephilia", was presented at the 6^th International Gender Dysphoria Conference, Hume Hall, University of Manchester, UK, 1-3 September 2000.
2. See, for example, the archives of the trans-theory list (trans-theory@mailbase.ac.uk). Our preparation of this paper was punctuated by yet more irate comments about autogynephilia and the concept’s originator, Ray Blanchard, sent to us as trans-theory list subscribers. On 14 August 2000, A.J. Annala renewed the debate with a brief comment: "What do you think of Blanchard’s notions about autogynephilia? It seems to me this theory is about as dismissive of large numbers of transsexuals as is the categorization of primary vs secondary transsexuals". Within minutes, the debate was re-activated, yet again. Nicole Storme, in measured tone, was prepared to grant the concept a certain legitimacy: "I think enough transwomen have said that it describes their experience that I’ll grant it a certain legitimacy". However, she adds: "I think Blanchard’s ‘autogynephilia’ has become a deus ex machina, a sort of catch-all category to explain away anyone who didn’t transition by the time they were in their early 20s, or otherwise doesn’t fit the classic AP (or ‘homosexual’) model for transwomen . . . What I object to is the binary they’ve come to represent: That you’re either one or the other. I’m pretty convinced that transsexuals as a group are a lot more complicated than that." Suzan Cooke, on the other hand, would have none of this: "I vehemently object to this stupid theory in that it thinks that my liking men was in any way shape or form homosexuality . . . I actually had sex with 3 or 4 homosexuals. They said fucking me was having sex with a girl. I trust their evaluation more than some stupid bigot like Blanchard. I stopped having sex with homosexuals after that and started having sex with heterosexual men. Blanchard’s calling them homosexual is weird trans/homo phobia. HE REALLY HAS A PROBLEM AND SHOULD GO INTO THERAPY."
3. In previous less dense theorisations, we identified the four core processes as ‘migrating’, ‘oscillating’, ‘erasing’, and ‘transcending’. See, Ekins and King (1999: 591-595, 600 and 2001b).
4. ‘Autoandrophilia’ has not appeared in the published literature to our knowledge. The term would refer to sexual arousal to the thought or image of oneself as male or masculine, on the part of a female. According to Anne Lawrence (personal communication, 2001), the term has been used and discussed at length privately, and in on-line forums such as SEXNET. Lawrence writes: "I've heard one or two FtMs (female-to-males) talk about it, but have not seen or heard detailed fantasy descriptions. I also do not know if there is a corresponding body of autoandrophilic erotica."
5. This summary follows Blanchard (2000).
6. We take the sociological view that aspects of sex, sexuality and gender (not just gender), including the binary divide, all have socially constructed components. On other occasions, we have reserved the term ‘Gender’ with a capital ‘G’ for this latter sense, keeping ‘gender’ with a small ‘g’ to refer to the distinction between sex, sexuality and gender. For the purposes of this paper, however, we find it too cumbersome to adopt this device. It should be clear from the context which sense(s) of G/gender is (are) relevant. Kessler and McKenna (1978) is the seminal text on matters pertaining to these issues. See also Kessler (1998).
7. Blanchard (1989b) recognises, of course, that many observers have alluded to the ‘same’ phenomena. His contribution has been to elaborate the observations within the perspective of contemporary clinical psychology.
8. Transsexual Women’s Resources, http://www.annelawrence.com/twr
9. In the following life-history material, some biographical details have been altered to protect the identities of the informants.
10. It is perhaps necessary to point out that Blanchard’s concept is primarily descriptive and diagnostic. Bailey (2000) places Blanchard’s work on autogynephilia within the diagnostic tradition of ‘lumping’, which occurs "when two or more apparently different conditions are found to be different forms of the same, underlying pathology". Blanchard sees the term as "primarily descriptive" (R. Blanchard, personal communication, 2000). Many commentators attribute to Blanchard an explanatory intent greater than he, himself, claims. In the main, Blanchard’s less disciplined critics tend to conflate a number of rather different criticisms: the pathologising and heteronormative trends in clinical psychology; the explanatory trends in Blanchard’s work; the political (and, in some instances, personal) unacceptability of his ‘findings’; and the ‘lumping’, indeed reductionist, trends, in his work on autogynephilia. To a sociologist these things matter because, as W.I.Thomas never tired of pointing out: "if men (sic) define situations as real they are real in their consequences" (Thomas, 1923: 14).
11. Rachael now considers that her medical consultants were offering her "a transvestite solution to a transsexual problem" and thereby prolonged her distress.
12. One anonymous reviewer of an earlier draft of this paper took exception to the tone of "strange in-crowd narcissism" created by our citing our personal communications with Blanchard and Lawrence. Relatedly, a reviewer of Ekins (1997) took issue with its "implicit valorization of expert over member knowledges" (Norton: 1998: 23). We stress that, in our sociological view, the ‘realities’ of transgendering are emergents within the interrelations between ‘lay’ (‘common sense’), ‘member’ and ‘scientific’ (‘expert’) knowledge (Ekins, 1997). What ‘autogynephilia’ means to Blanchard and Lawrence is a significant and researchable component within these interrelations. Lawrence, as a self-identified autogynephilic transsexual, an M.D., a clinical sexologist, and a transgender activist, provides an exemplar of the fact that particular individuals may, of course, be the site of particularly complex interrelations between the various ‘knowledges’. As empirical social scientists, we situate our theory, methodology and research techniques within the interactionist view of science put forward by George Herbert Mead (Strauss, 1964) and Herbert Blumer (1969), and the sociological view of motivation put forward by C. Wright Mills (1940). For more recent statements within this interactionist tradition, see Strauss (1993) and Prus (1997). Although Barney Glaser does not share the same ontology and epistemology, his contribution to our approach is seminal (Glaser, 1978).
13. For an example of a similar dynamic in ‘transvestite’ pornography, see Saxon (n.d., c. 1980: 121): "holding a mirror to his face, he masturbated to a shattering climax as he saw the image of himself as he imagined Arthur saw him when he came the previous night . . ."
14. We now prefer this formulation to the less dense formulation presented earlier in Ekins and King (1999, 2001b).
      

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Correspondence to Richard Ekins (rjm.ekins@ulst.ac.uk) or Dave King (d.king@liverpool.ac.uk)