The Truth About My AGP Normalization Agenda

I’ve been accused of wanting to "normalize" autogynephilia (AGP) more times than I can count since I began talking and writing about the subject. The implication seems to be that I am encouraging its existence merely by talking about it without using pejorative or demonizing language. And it's not that I disagree with the accusation, it's that it completely misses what I’m actually doing. I will admit, I do have an agenda. That part of that title wasn’t pure clickbait. Before I get to that agenda, I’ll explain what I’m up against.

My first response to the normalization accusation is that AGP has already been normalized. And not just normalized, but glorified. In Gender Ideology (GI), which has swept through the mainstream consciousness and all our institutions, AGP is understood as proof of having a ‘female brain’. The fetishistic behaviors common to AGP are interpreted to be the logical result of a ‘woman’ who has had to live in the closet until recently. The sentiment goes like this… 

“If you had to repress your true self all your life, you’d be going a bit overboard making up for lost time too! It’s beautiful she now feels free enough to express her womanly sexuality.” 

This is where we are today. AGP is not just normalized. It’s not just enabled. It is liberated and glorified, all under the guise of gender identity.  This is how the mainstream understands the experience. This is what myself and others are seeking to undo by understanding the experience, absent ideology. But we are met by resistance from every side. 

There are three groups or types of people who try to silence and malign anyone who speaks objectively about this topic:

1. GI true believers

2. AGPs with internalized shame, be they trans or detrains

3. Gender Critical Feminists (GCFs) and their allies

The second group overlaps with both groups at different stages, but I’ll explain each in turn.

1

People who transition due to AGP are usually among the ‘true believers’ of GI, because it gives them what they want (to be women) and removes the shame they’ve always felt. According to popular ideology, they’re aroused by the idea of being women because they ARE women. “Cis women would feel the same if they had the misfortune of being born in a male body too. It’s a medical condition that is out of their control and society must accommodate them like any other women. Anything less is bigotry and discrimination.” It should be obvious why GI appeals so strongly to an AGP. 

“AGP” is understood in this group simultaneously as 1) a transphobic concept created to demonize “trans lesbians” and 2) a real phenomenon of “fetishistic cis men” who get off on appropriating the experiences of “real trans women”. Its very existence was denied (and still is by some) until just the last couple of years or so. Today the examples are too numerous to ignore. This dilemma was solved by the invention of the aforementioned ‘appropriating cis man’ character.  

2

Not all AGPs believe in GI. Especially not those who detransitioned and came to reject it. But absent that purifying narrative of ‘woman brain’, how do they conceptualize their sexual experience? They don’t. Instead, they paint AGPs as a distinct class of dangerous perverted criminals (DPC). This way they, by virtue of not being a DPC, are not AGP. The DPC is much like the character the MtF community created, except it applies to virtually all actively trans males.

When AGP is presented clinically it runs the risk of accurately describing their own experience, and they cannot have that. So anyone who tries must be silenced by whatever means necessary. One tactic I’ve encountered a few times is the accusation of pedophilic intent (due to pointing out AGP exists in teens). If I’m a pedophile you definitely don’t need to listen to what I have to say and everything you’ve read thus far can be safely discarded. Whew, that was close, huh?

3

The third group are the ones who propagate the DPC AGP described above. They did this strategically: to wake people up to the dangers of GI. It’s a good strategy and it’s worked in a lot of ways. It was easy to do as well; because there is no shortage of those men. They’re the ones masturbating in women’s bathrooms and the rapists being (and I can’t believe I am actually typing this) transferred into women’s prisons. A light needs to be shone on these men and the abuse they’re able to perpetrate against actual vulnerable people. 

However, an unfortunate consequence of highlighting this behavior is it has become synonymous with autogynephilia. Much like how prior to the 1990s many viewed gay men as perverts who preyed on men and boys in public parks and bathrooms. Did those boogeymen exist? Yes. Were they the majority of gay men? Not by a mile. (Right here is where I usually get in trouble with the Normalization Inquisition. By comparing AGP to homosexuality.) The most important thing to understand is group 3 views AGP in terms of negative behaviors, not internal drivers. More on that in a bit.

At this point, all three groups believe strictly in the DPC AGP boogeyman. The first two cling to it as a totem of what they are not. The third as a dire warning. So when people try to explain the internal experience of AGP and why it doesn’t necessarily equal predation, we are accused of ‘normalizing’ AGP or, worse, endorsing the predatory behaviors it can manifest in. 

All three of these groups are unwittingly working together to ensure the reality of AGP is kept in the dark. All three are working to attack people like myself who are trying to turn on the light. And it’s important to note, both groups 2 and 3 believe in the purifying power of detransition. It's certainly an ironic myth, given nothing reduces AGP impulses like HRT; but group 3 needs to save people from GI and group 2 is glad to have their redemption. Anything I have to say on the matter can be dismissed by either’s reference to the fact that I have not undergone the same purification process.  

In order to understand why group 3 believes AGP can be magically removed (and group 2 is happy to play along), we have to understand where they’re coming from. See group 3 is dominated by an ideology of their own: Radical Feminism (RF). This ideology is certainly more grounded in reality than group 1’s ideology, but it’s still far from an accurate representation of present circumstances, nor is it a useful mechanism for undoing it. 

RF states AGP is a manifestation of patriarchy. A fetish for misogyny and female objectification via ‘womanface’. They believe GI is a men’s rights movement that strives to maintain the patriarchy by colonizing womanhood, just as women had finally been liberated. That is why anyone not engaging in behaviors they deem offensive or threatening to women's private spaces is not AGP (remember, in their view AGP is a set of behaviors, not a sexuality that exists independent of those behaviors). And it is also why they are hostile to an accurate representation AGP. Because understanding the phenomenon from a clinical perspective threatens this ideology much like it threatens GI. 

At this point it probably sounds like I am whining about mistreatment by these groups. And okay, I am. A bit. But that’s not the point. The point is my rejection of the normalization accusation. So I’ll get back to it. I am not concerned with what is ‘normal’. I am concerned with what IS. AGP is. It exists. Regardless of how any of us feel about that. 

I have spoken to and read anonymous accounts from countless boys and men with this experience. Some are full of self-loathing and desperate for a cure. Others are ecstatic about ‘finally being the girl of [their] dreams’. Others feel incredible shame and remorse for tearing their families apart over a delusion. It often goes in that order as well. 

But there isn't a ‘cure’ for AGP. There are only current narratives (outlined above), all of which are more or less based in lies, propaganda, and wishful thinking. I want boys and men with this experience to know what it actually is. To be able to accept the fact they will never be women. To be able to manage it in a sane, healthy way, that does not infringe on girls and women.

The GCFs seem to think I am “dick-pandering” for caring so much about AGPs. That maybe I even have a fetish for them and that is why I defend them and talk about this issue so much. Many of my friends in this fight too can’t understand why I’m so fixated on AGP. The truth is, I don’t particularly care about AGPs. At least not more than anyone else. In fact, I’m far more worried about the females than I am the males caught up in this. They are losing so much more. But I see AGP as the foundation upon which the entire GI house of cards was slowly, crudely, and coercively built. When people see AGP for what it truly is, the house falls. So I will keep talking about it until that happens. 

If you’re reading this you know AGP is not a manifestation of ‘girl brain’ that will drive the host to suicide if not indulged. But it’s also not a dangerous perversion that leads to sexual abuse if ever fully acknowledged (at least not in anyone with self-control). And it’s not a cabal of sex-perverts laughing as they force governments to bend to their fetish of abusing and erasing women. As long as these competing myths duke it out, the house of cards stands. The normies and newscasters and bureaucrats are hopelessly confused by all these myths and just go with the one most palatable and popular. And Gender Ideology continues to dominate and recruit anyone and everyone vulnerable to it. 

But the truth is so much simpler. It’s an inconvenient, self-referential sexuality. It’s essentially heterosexuality backfiring. It does not have to be enabled, or glorified, or feared or vilified. Is it ‘normal’? No. It’s by definition abnormal. But I’m simply not interested in semantics. I’m interested in understanding the phenomenon. People who fear the phenomenon hone in on the semantics. (“It’s not a sexuality!” “Don’t normalize it!” etc) But I will use whatever words clarify the experience. I will employ whatever language helps to educate people about it. AGP is not dangerous, but the ideology it seeks cover within is incredibly dangerous. And, as the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. To borrow another quote, this one from Alice Dreger, AGP is “the love that would really rather we didn’t speak its name.” But I’m going to keep speaking its name until it is understood and the myths that disguise it are unraveled.