The Bilerico Project has a good post up about autogynephilia and the status of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
The term autogynephilia (literally “loving oneself as a woman”) comes from Dr. Robert Blanchard, who said:
“All gender dysphoric males who are not sexually oriented toward men are instead sexually oriented toward the thought or image of themselves as women.”
Blanchard is on the committee to revise the DSM and will have some say in whether or not GID stays listed as a mental disorder.
I’m particularly interested in following the discussion around autogynephilia as an explanation for trans behaviors because one of its big proponents teaches at the college I attended.
Autogynephilia proponents are pretty ridiculous, as is anyone who says “I know what you’re feeling and why better than you do.”
I’m a ‘bad Jew,’ in that I’m not a Zionist. (Also, I don’t believe in that ‘God’ fellow.) So seeing a prominent Jew not leaping to defend Israel is pretty great:
Today was my first day at work as R and, all in all, the experience was sort of surreal. It didn’t help that I had a bad time getting to sleep last night (though I slept fine once I was asleep) and I had a lot of stuff to get through today (including fighting with the Internet at the office for two hours).
Basically, I think it was the experience of having something that’s been so private and so personal for my entire life suddenly become something that’s not only very public but (fortunately) not really a big deal to the people around me. That is, they’re supportive and they care because it’s important to me, but don’t care because it’s ‘weird’ or anything.
I’m also aware that it wasn’t really suddenly, since I’ve been out to most of these people for months and going by R today was the result of a gradual process and conversation. But still…it felt pretty damn sudden.
I mean, shit…I’m living full time now. I will now be spending more of my time interacting with the world as R than not!
Aaaand now I’ve gotten myself in a panic because I hadn’t thought about things in those terms before. Ah, good…
I should go play some Rock Band 2 that I just bought! Rock on!
I am all over the place in new and exciting ways. Yesterday I was having a really good day until, for reasons not entirely clear in retrospect, I started crying at G. (Prompting her to say, “Oh my god, you’re 13,” which did make me laugh.)
So yeah. I’m going through puberty in a major way. The first time around wasn’t very fun, and this time (even if it’s going in a better direction) still isn’t too fun.
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theory, trans
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autogynephilia, theory, trans 
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