Autohetero Files

Zack M. Davis is the writer behind 'The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought' (http://unremediatedgender.space), a blog about social science and epistemology with an emphasis on autogynephilia and gender issues. He describes how the romantic/non-erotic side of autogynephilia—which he calls his "beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing"—compelled him to alter his handwriting, grow his hair out, and try using a gender-neutral name. Sympathetic to gender egalitarianism, he originally took a blank-slate stance on psychological sex differences, but further reading on the subject brought an end to his denial of psychological sex differences.

For Zack, encountering the concept of autogynephilia was revelatory, but it took many years before he realized its direct connection to being transgender. After he did, he started a blog to talk about autogynephilia, the MtF typology, and related subjects. He quickly realized that many people were not so concerned about the ultimate causes of MtF transgenderism and instead tended to insist that language could be constructed to suit people's preferences. In response, he shifted toward talking about the philosophy of language and why language should carve reality at its joints.

Transcript: http://unremediatedgender.space/2024/Jul/transcript-agp-and-epistemic-despair/ Watch on YouTube

I highly recommend checking out Zack's blog. Some of his best articles are listed here: http://unremediatedgender.space/about/

A few of his other noteworthy posts: Psychology Is About Invalidating People's IdentitiesDon't Negotiate With Terrorist MemeplexesA Beacon Through the Darkness; Or, Getting It Right the First TimeThe Categories Were Made for Man to Make PredictionsUnnatural Categories Are Optimized for DeceptionBlanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer

Are you autoheterosexual? Want to add your story to the collection?

Reach out and let me know (email: autoheterosexual at gmail, Reddit: u/gockstar, Twitter: @autogynephil)

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Courtney Coulson is a FTMTF detransitioner of autoandrophilic etiology. On her YouTube channel  (@CourtneyCoulson), she catalogues her journey to understand herself and improve her life—or as she often puts it: "on this channel we try to figure out what the hell is wrong with me". I enjoyed Courtney's sense of humor and unapologetic disposition in this conversation, and I think you will too.

Watch on YouTube

Courtney’s 'Autoandrophilia' video

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Reach out and let me know (email: autoheterosexual at gmail, Reddit: u/gockstar, Twitter: @autogynephil)

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Naxelas is working toward a neuroscience PhD. He is also autogynephilic. Like me, he thinks knowledge of autogynephilia can help people with this orientation understand themselves and better estimate whether they'd benefit from gender transition. He shared some of his own personal experience with autogynephilia, but for the most part our discussion jumped across many adjacent topics such as:

* Differentiating between "is" and "ought" in conversations about paraphilias

* Thinking of sexed traits not in one dimension as masculine-feminine but as two dimensions: 1) masculinization vs demasculinization and 2) feminization vs defeminization

* Demographic overlap between autism and autogynephilia

* How understanding autogynephilia can help AGPs have greater capacity to steer the trajectory of their gender development

* The relative contributions of nature and nurture to autogynephilia - Shame and whether it is productive

* Why NoFap is a terrible way to try to manage autogynephilia

* The importance of treating the prospect of transition differently between FTMs and MTFs rather than treating "trans" as one thing

* Removing mysticism from the subject of gender identity

Watch on YouTube

Are you autoheterosexual? Want to add your story to the collection?

Reach out and let me know (email: autoheterosexual at gmail, Reddit: u/gockstar, Twitter: @autogynephil)

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Aaron Terrell is a FTM transsexual who is an outspoken proponent of understanding transgender etiologies. He previously interviewed me for the Transparency Podcast  @TransparencyPodcast1  that he co-hosted for several years. In this conversation, we talked about some of his experience with autoandrophilia, why sexologists back in the day may not have noticed AAP in FTM patients, and the lesbian to gay trans man pipeline. We also discussed the blue dress controversy and the gender critical movement's inability to speak straightforwardly about transgender etiologies.  

@elegationvain 

𝕏: https://x.com/elegationvain

The Man in Me https://aaronterrell.substack.com/p/the-man-in-me

How Early Psychologists Got Female Gender Dysphoria Wrong https://aaronterrell.substack.com/p/how-early-psychologists-got-female

What’s Going on with the Boys? https://aaronterrell.substack.com/p/whats-going-on-with-the-boys-ac6

The Navel Gays (new podcast where Aaron and his friend Tali talk about autosexuality)

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An Aussie named Ashley spoke with me about her experience with autoandrophilia. She spoke about homoerotic media (yaoi), meta-attraction, mental shifts, transvestism, gender dysphoria/euphoria, gender envy. We also discussed the importance of autoheterosexuals knowing about their orientation so that transitioning isn't the only option they're aware of, the cyclical nature of the wish to transition, and accepting that you can't control how other people see you. There were many good nuggets in this 2-hour conversation.

Watch on YouTube

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Reach out and let me know (email: autoheterosexual at gmail, Reddit: u/gockstar, Twitter: @autogynephil)

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Ray Williams (@RayAlexWilliams) is an autogynephilic MTFTM detransitioner who was socially and medically transitioned for 8 years. After reading my book, he decided to detransition and seek other ways of managing his autogynephilia. He quickly become a prolific contributor to transgender discourse by publishing several videos every week. Although some detail his personal experience, he typically focuses on the philosophical, political, and ethical aspects of transgenderism — a pattern which recurred in this conversation.

Watch on YouTube

Are you autoheterosexual? Want to add your story to the collection?

Reach out and let me know (email: autoheterosexual at gmail, Reddit: u/gockstar, Twitter: @autogynephil)

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I sat down with Laura Reynolds to talk about her experience with autoandrophilia. She was the first autoandrophilic female I had a conversation with, and this ultimately led me down the path to including autoandrophilia in my book as the female equivalent of male autogynephilia. Laura has been through a lot because of autoandrophilia. She crossed America to pursue FTM transition long before it was trendy, and then detransitioned after a surgeon botched her mastectomy. After years of confusion over her sexuality, she realized she was autoandrophilic and finally understood what drove her to transition. Partly motivated by a desire to alleviate pain a connective tissue disorder, she went back on testosterone in recent years, so in a hormonal sense, she is FTMTFTM. We had much less time to record than it would take to fully cover her lengthy story, so hopefully I'll get her back on the channel in the future.

A couple of Laura's prior interviews:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DOUcpFxKKw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtYqh_zPr-Y

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There aren't many videos out there in which autoheterosexuals discuss their experiences in terms of autoandrophilia or autogynephilia. To increase our visibility, I wanted to start recording some conversations with autoheterosexuals so that others out there can relate and feel less alone in their experience of gender and sexuality.

The first video in this series is with Fell, an autoandrophilic female. She has a lifetime of experience with autoandrophilia and is uncommonly open and unashamed when talking about it. We talked about her childhood experiences of dressing like masculine role models, how her autoandrophilia ramped up in adolescence, how it manifests in sexual fantasies, and other experiences related to autoandrophilia. I applaud Fell for embodying the masculine virtue of courage by being willing to speak openly about her experiences. As more autoheterosexuals come out, it'll take less courage—but until then, at least we have people like Fell to show the way.

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