I got a response from another person preferring to be anonymous, who brought up to points:
That trans women tend to feel that autogynephilia does not explain much of their feelings;
Whether Blanchardianism can properly account for asexual trans women.
Here’s my responses to each of the points:
When it comes to whether autogynephilia explains most of trans women’s gender feelings, I think there are several aspects to this that I eventually want to write about. I can only go briefly into them here, but:
Most autogynephiles don’t transition, don’t develop serious gender dysphoria, etc.., so clearly there must be something distinguishing those who do from those who don’t. So actually yes, it’s not the only thing going on (though I think it is one of the biggest ones, but that’s another discussion). Some Blanchardians try to focus on hypothesizing moderators which influence the effect of autogynephilia on gender issues, but I see no reason that the distinguishing factors couldn’t just be different causes entirely unrelated to autogynephilia.
I think the methods people use for causal inference on their individual life don’t necessarily become relevant on the population level. For instance, if you see some sort of problem with being a man, but most cis men also see the same problem, then it may be a cause of gender dysphoria in the sense of being something that explains why one would rather want to be a woman than be a man, but it’s not a cause of your gender dysphoria in the sense of being something that explains why you, compared to other AMABs, would rather want to be a woman than be a man.
When it comes to asexual trans women, a lot of people seem to think asexual trans women are very hard to account for and need strange contortions when applying Blanchardianism. But it’s fairly consistently found that asexual trans women self-report similar levels of autogynephilia (usually measured by transvestic fetishism, having ever experienced sexual arousal while wearing women’s clothes) to gynephilic trans women. See this post for details. I think this is actually one of the strengths of Blanchardianism; there’s this highly counterintuitive phenomenon which Blanchardianism acknowledges and attempts to explain, and which is so counterintuitive that critics tend to just dismiss Blanchardianism because it acknowledges it.
I got a response from another person preferring to be anonymous, who brought up to points:
That trans women tend to feel that autogynephilia does not explain much of their feelings;
Whether Blanchardianism can properly account for asexual trans women.
Here’s my responses to each of the points:
When it comes to whether autogynephilia explains most of trans women’s gender feelings, I think there are several aspects to this that I eventually want to write about. I can only go briefly into them here, but:
Most autogynephiles don’t transition, don’t develop serious gender dysphoria, etc.., so clearly there must be something distinguishing those who do from those who don’t. So actually yes, it’s not the only thing going on (though I think it is one of the biggest ones, but that’s another discussion). Some Blanchardians try to focus on hypothesizing moderators which influence the effect of autogynephilia on gender issues, but I see no reason that the distinguishing factors couldn’t just be different causes entirely unrelated to autogynephilia.
I think the methods people use for causal inference on their individual life don’t necessarily become relevant on the population level. For instance, if you see some sort of problem with being a man, but most cis men also see the same problem, then it may be a cause of gender dysphoria in the sense of being something that explains why one would rather want to be a woman than be a man, but it’s not a cause of your gender dysphoria in the sense of being something that explains why you, compared to other AMABs, would rather want to be a woman than be a man.
When it comes to asexual trans women, a lot of people seem to think asexual trans women are very hard to account for and need strange contortions when applying Blanchardianism. But it’s fairly consistently found that asexual trans women self-report similar levels of autogynephilia (usually measured by transvestic fetishism, having ever experienced sexual arousal while wearing women’s clothes) to gynephilic trans women. See this post for details. I think this is actually one of the strengths of Blanchardianism; there’s this highly counterintuitive phenomenon which Blanchardianism acknowledges and attempts to explain, and which is so counterintuitive that critics tend to just dismiss Blanchardianism because it acknowledges it.