What’s Going on with the Boys?

A Closer Look at “ROGD Boys”

In recent years there has been a lot of discussion and speculation about what has been causing the massive rise in adolescent females with no prior history of gender distress or even gender non-conformity coming out as trans and seeking gender transition. I myself have been studying the phenomenon for six years and can confirm there are many different cultural, personal, and developmental factors at work within that cohort. Collectively, this phenomenon has been called Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) and is most simply described as a social contagion. A contagion that was able to explode due to social media. 

A similar phenomenon has been observed in adolescent males. Boys who weren’t gender non-conforming, nor outwardly expressed any desire to be girls, until one day taking their parents by complete surprise and announcing they are really girls and need puberty blockers and HRT as quickly as possible. This cohort has naturally been referred to as “ROGD boys.” Can this also be explained as a social contagion? The short answer is no. The long answer is the rest of this post.

The reality is, for the boys, the explanation is much simpler than it is for the girls. And yet even more controversial.  But you didn’t subscribe to LGBT Courage Coalition to be fed the party line. So here we go…

Two vs Three Groups? Past Research and Present Questions

Historically there have been two distinct types of males seeking to transition: 

1. Highly effeminate homosexuals for whom transition solves an external problem

2. Fairly standard heterosexuals for whom transition solves an internal problem

The first group are typically feminine from a very young age. They struggle performing the social role of boy, and later, man. They are also attracted to masculine, straight men. They therefore, rather pragmatically, conclude transition will make their lives more comfortable both socially and romantically. Additionally, if they are from a more conservative culture, transition removes the problem of homophobia. It is very important to note that this type of MtF transitioner typically does not have sex dysmorphia. Meaning, they are not averse to their male anatomy. The source of their gender dysphoria is the culture, not the body, they were born into. This is why I say transition solves an external problem  for them. 

The second group are not particularly feminine, yet their desire to become women is much stronger than in the first group. These are males who are sexually and romantically drawn to the idea of themselves as women. It is essentially inverted heterosexuality. In the past these men typically transitioned in middle-age, seemingly in accordance with the midlife crisis stage of life. Until that point, they had mostly repressed their desire to be women, lived as typical straight men, often getting married and having children, then ultimately giving in to their deep, dark secret and transitioning. You have likely heard of autogynephilia, but it is widely misunderstood. 

Today, most people, especially the parents, observing the boys identifying as girls and seeking transition believe they fall into a new, distinct, third category. Afterall, these so-called ROGD boys follow a pretty consistent template, distinct from either of the above: they aren’t particularly feminine, they’re straight or bisexual, they’re shy, intellectually they’re ahead of their peers but socially they’re behind them, and they usually have an autism diagnosis or at minimum obvious autistic traits. But most strikingly, they aren’t middle-age. So what’s going on? I’ve been studying these boys and young men, as well as listening to the clinicians working with the population, for two years now, and I have not found a third type of male gender dysphoria. Here I will be explaining why the vast majority, in fact, belong to group two. 

Some Definitions

To understand why autogynephilia isn’t simply a middle-age-onset-fetish, it’s important to understand sexuality not just in terms of target, but also in terms of direction. In order to explain that, I need to employ some sexology terminology. Here’s a little directory of the terms to follow:

"Allo" means other, or external. 

"Auto" means self, or internal. 

"Gyno" means female. 

"Andro" means male. 

"Philia" means love (or, less euphemistically, sexual attraction). 

"Meta" means self-referential.

Refer back to these definitions as needed as we go, but before we plow ahead I’ll string a few of these together as examples…

A typical heterosexual male is technically "allogynephilic". But a male who is attracted to the thought or image of himself as female is "autogynephilic.” Make sense? We’ll leave ‘meta’ for now and come back to it after we’ve got the foundation explained.

As I said, to understand this experience, we have to understand sexuality beyond just target: andro or gyno. We must also conceptualize it in terms of direction: allo or auto. And just like how people can experience target sexuality on a spectrum, with andro on one end and gyno on the other, some also experience the direction of their sexuality on a spectrum, with auto on one end and allo on the other. For example, I know a gay man who is strictly androphilic (only attracted to males), but whose direction is torn between attraction to himself (auto) and attraction to other men (allo). 

This is how most autogynephiles experience attraction too. Unfortunately for them it’s a lot more inconvenient since their directional sexuality (auto) conflicts with their desired target sexuality (gyno). That is, they do not possess the physiology they’re attracted to. This conflict is where sex dysmorphia begins. When the body does not match what one’s brain desperately wishes it to be, you get autogynephilic gender dysphoria. An internal problem. 

Even though autogynephilia is an internal problem, that does not mean it is immune from cultural forces. In fact, quite the opposite. The reason we associate autogynephilia with middle-aged men is because that is the age at which they typically had the necessary balance of confidence and desperation to act upon their life-long desire. The reason their numbers exploded in the 1970s and 80s is because that is when the technology to enable their desires became widely accessible. The more accessible the means, the greater the number of people finding those means. The point I cannot emphasize strongly enough is that the onset of autogynephilia did not begin in middle-age. Middle-age is when they stopped, due to personal and cultural reasons, repressing it.

Cultural Forces at Play Today

Fast forward to today. In the progressive West we live in a culture that glorifies being transgender, or “queer,” and asserts there is no greater villain than the straight, white man. Masculinity is ridiculed and gender non-conformity is praised. You see what I’m getting at. There is no incentive to repress anymore. Now the incentive is to embrace and to fuel those autosexual impulses. Even for a young man who may be much closer to allo than auto on the direction spectrum (more attracted to actual women than the self as a woman), but who feels socially awkward and intimidated by girls, may lean into autogynephilic fantasies as an easier solution to meeting his sexual needs. Remember, these boys are typically shy and autistic. 

Unlike in the past, autosexual impulses are no longer an entirely solitary fantasy, but are fueled and embraced by larger cultural forces. Social media and porn are playing a much greater role in enabling and sustaining their self-directed sexuality than would be possible without them. This is not at all a case for the social contagion theory seen in the girls. Because for the boys, social media and porn did not create their autogynephilia, it’s merely another technology that enables and encourages it. It does this in a less obvious way as well–through the state of chronic bodily dissociation of one who spends most of their life online. Not only are these teen boys and young men attached to a fantasy of themselves in their head, but an avatar of themselves they’ve created in the virtual world. Neither of which match their physical reality.

Say it With Me Now: Pseudobisexuality

Hopefully you are with me so far, because now it’s time to move on to a confounding element of the autogynephilic experience. Meta-attraction. Also known as pseudobisexuality. Meta, as listed earlier, means self-referential. A common way an autogynephile will realize their fantasy of being a woman is by having sexual relationships with men. Even though the autogynephile is, in fact, gynephilic (straight), sleeping with and dating men is a way for them to ‘bring to life’ the fantasy of being a woman sexually. They will often report being ‘disgusted’ by the thought of having sex with men as a man. Not because they have internalized homophobia, but because the entire appeal of sexual activity with men is to validate the self as a woman. Absent that result, they often have the same adverse reaction to same sex activity that other straight men do. However, some have internalized their female identity to such a degree that their primary sexuality becomes androphilic, even while not actively presenting as a woman. 

I Am Not That Villian

I now need to situate these young people into the cultural context you and I are coming from. If you’re reading this you are likely opposed to Gender Ideology and may even define yourself as Gender Critical (GC). It is therefore likely that your impression of autogynephilia is the meme-ified caricature of “sex perverts who get off on stomping on women’s, especially lesbians, boundaries.” Those autogynephiles definitely exist. But they are not the inevitable or even logical end of the autogynephilic experience. 

I do think that this framing of autogynephilia has its uses. It’s helped show women they can and should defend their spaces and boundaries from males who seek to violate them. However, it has also convinced the large majority of autogynephiles (and their parents) that they aren’t autogynephilic, because they aren’t that villain. They’re mostly shy, socially anxious, bisexual (at least in behavior and/or self-identification), and deeply dysphoric about their male anatomy. They’re still autogynephilic. 

Today, a lot of autogynephilic transwomen and detrans men have joined the GC side in opposition to the ideology that has harmed or merely deluded them. Here they’re met with the dichotomous narrative of the innocent gay victim of Gender Ideology or the dangerous fetishist. They are forced to choose which of these almost fictitious categories describes them. It’s not surprising they wholly identify with their same sex attraction and therefore get to cast themselves as the innocent victim instead of the dangerous fetishist. I mean, who wouldn’t?  

But the way we clean up this mess Gender Ideology created is through honesty and transparency about the experience of dysphoria. The way we save more boys before they take the path of no return is for them to be able to understand what is motivating them. Right now Gender Ideology tells them their sexual desires are simply proof that they’re women. The Gender Critics are telling them it means they’re irredeemable perverts. Neither of these are true.

TLDR: Toward Greater Understanding and Support

There are important cultural forces at play that motivate a young man to embrace a facet of his sexuality that he would have ignored or repressed in previous circumstances. We are living in an age that tells them to interpret their desire to be women, no matter how slight, as proof that they are women. The people fighting this dangerous ideology believe an autogynephile is someone who hates and wants to abuse women. So when they see an insecure autistic teenager desperate for HRT they think, “it must be something else.” It’s not. The reality is straight men and boys are falling victim to this medical abuse in far greater numbers than gay men and boys. And they deserve just as much of our sympathy and support.