This is somewhat unconvincing on its own, because clearly at the very least the trans community does some Motte/Bailey on it.
Yeah I bet that does happen. A more charitable lens that explains some of what might come across that way, though, is that “women trapped in men’s bodies” is a neat and succinct way to explain trans women to someone who it would otherwise take too long to explain to, in situations where an extended lecture would be impractical, inappropriate or unappreciated.
I think autogynephilia is correlated with gender identity?
In extension, it’s true that learning that someone experiences autogynephilic sexual fantasies should increase your credence that they will report a feminine gender identity.
What I mean is that the Blanchardian model and the gender variance model barely make reference to the same concepts. Orthogonal in theory space, not in people space. But another way of putting my point is that endorsing autogynephilia as an explanation for most trans women’s motivation for transition in no way binds you to any position on whether trans women are women.
This hypothesis seems like it should be at or near the top of the list. It explains a lot of Sam’s alleged behavior. If she’s exhibiting signs of psychosis then he might be trying to get her to get care, which would explain the strings-attached access to resources. Possibly she is either altering the story or misunderstanding about her inheritance being conditional on Zoloft, it might have been an antipsychotic instead.
On the other hand, while psychosis can manifest in subtle ways, I’m skeptical that someone whose psychosis is severe enough that they’d be unable to maintain stable employment or housing would be able to host a podcast where their psychosis isn’t clearly visible. (I haven’t listened to it yet, but I would expect it to be obvious enough that others would have pointed it out)
A variation on this hypothesis that I find more likely is that Annie is psychologically unwell in exactly the ways she says she is, and out of some mixture of concern for her wellbeing and fear that her instability could hurt his own reputation or business interests, Sam has used some amount of coercion to get her to seek psychiatric care. She then justifiably got upset about her rich and powerful family members using their financial power to coerce her into taking drugs she knows she doesn’t want to take. You don’t have to be psychotic to develop some paranoia in a situation like that.