I tumbled down the rabbit-hole again today, and emerged with another Scrabble-winner: autogynephilia.
Minus the auto, this term describes the state of being sexually attracted to women or femininity. Most men on Earth are thus gynephiles, and most women are androphiles.
But if you include the prefix, it describes the state of being sexually attracted to being female or feminine yourself. Likewise, autoandrophiliacs get tumescent at the idea of being blokes.
Clear as mud. But the fun times don’t end there.
You don’t need to be male to have autogynephilia.
Women can also be sexually aroused by the idea of being female or feminine. Picture the triumphant male autoandrophile busting a nut because he finally grew a proper beard! Huzzah!
Not just feminine or masculine, but more feminine, more masculine.
Recognising that some women (and men) get their rocks off being hyper-feminine explains a lot. What is a drag queen if not a hyper-feminine man? What is a bull dyke if not a hyper-masculine woman?
Think about it for a second.
Modern psychology treats paraphilias like mild allergies, if at all. Shrinks ignore you unless you swerve toward problematic deviance. Otherwise, your paraphilias are rooted (sorry) in your base sexual identity.
And like the ad says — from little things, big things grow.
If your base sexual identity influences your sexual identity, then a lifelong yearning for huge boobs (for example) might just determine where in alphabetland you stick, irrespective of the bits you were born with.
For those of us exhausted by the hurley-burley of the gender-identity wars, this is a godsend. It’s not the answer: too much self interest is vested in advancing the prospects, nay, rights, of your particular niche.
For me, though, what a relief.
I had just started reading some utter bullshit about the “cotton ceiling” from a guy who became a trans woman only to find that gay women don’t want to shag her because she still has a dick.
I used to say, “Oh, what a wicked web we weave”, but now I’ll just mutter “Oh, just another autogynephile”, and move on.