“Call Me Sam” is a YouTuber from the United Kingdom. Sam is known for posting thoughtful videos about transition regret and “detransition” shot in scenic local settings.
Background
Sam was born around 1970 and transitioned around the turn of the 21st century. Sam briefly got involved in online activity in 2018, registering several domains, then created a YouTube channel in 2019. Sam was largely dormant under these identities until 2020, then began publishing videos and blog posts about making additional changes in identity and expression, including social and medical steps.
Sam describes the channel thus:
After transitioning a long time ago and spending ten years revelling in that experience, I’ve spent the last ten years on a revealing journey back to the truth of what and who I am. Now, in my middle years, growing past the confines of transition and surgery, I find a deepening, more honest connection with life. Here on this channel I do my best to share what insights I have gained on that journey out of illusion and back to reality.
Sam’s video style is quiet and thoughtful, often shot in serene or spare locations. In many, Sam is essentially thinking out loud and refining thoughts as they are uttered. For this reason, Sam has removed many videos and posts after publication.
Sam’s views often skew toward conservative 20th-century views of sex and gender. Prior to “detransition” Sam preferred the deprecated term transsexual as an identity and has come out against minors transitioning. In a 2024 video, Sam stated that transition as well as later changes in identity and expression were connected to Sam’s experiences of childhood sexual trauma.
I asked Sam to expand on posted views about sexuality, specifically the “autogynephilia” (AGP) and “homosexual transsexual” (HSTS) terminology that “autogynephilia” critics have attempted to reconceptualize. Sam said in 2021, “In some of my early videos I use quite indelicate language. I no longer consider my “neo vagina” a wound. And, no longer believe that the idea of AGP/HSTS adequately describes trans people.”
Evolving views on “autogynephilia”
In November 2020, Sam posted a video under a former name and identity titled “Living with intergenerational autogynephilia.” The video was quickly promoted by “autogynephilia” activists and gender critical commentators. “JL” wrote on entertainer Graham Linehan’s Substack:
Transwoman, Maya Kaye, talks about the trauma of growing up with an autogynephile father in a very honest and moving YouTube video.
“Trans people’s unwillingness to look at autogynephilia creates this normalisation of something that can be extremely dysfunctional.”
Maya discusses how the umbrella term ‘transgender’ now gives autogynephilic men the perfect way to cover up what is a sexual paraphilia, not dysphoria. He goes on to describe that some autogynephilic men are pushing children into transition to divert attention away from the sexual aspect of their proclivities.
“Those kids are born into a narrative, they are supported by a medical industry – mark that word, ‘industry’ – and they become income streams and are enabled in this course of action by people who should know better”.
Sam later took down the video. In 2021, Sam contacted this site to request some changes and an updated statement:
My opinion of the AGP/HSTS has changed. Though I do believe that the typology can describe some trans people at the extremes, within those extremes there is an ever expanding area of complexity, nuance and individuality.
The humanity and uniqueness of we who find ourselves there, is completely lost as we are swept up into a nice neat division of understanding.
AGP is used as a slur, a derogatory term that diminishes and reduces those trans women that do not pass seamlessly. It is cruel. HSTS then seems the acceptable, harmless version of trans women.My own journey of self acceptance has taken many, many years. Partly due to internalising an apology for who I am.
Looking back on the time when I made the video about my father, it was a time of examining the pain I carried and a time of trying to escape who I am. Essentially, in that video, I was apologising and still not accepting of myself. Identity is not a series of pathologies and “disorders.” Whether trans or not, this thinking helps no-one. It is reductionist and dehumanising.
The typology of AGP/HSTS creates division, shame, and guilt.
[Call Me Sam], personal correspondence August 12, 2021
References
JL (November 16, 2020). A Week in the War on Women: Monday 9th November – Sunday 15th November. The Glinner Update https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/a-week-in-the-war-on-women-monday-af5
Resources
Sam Kaye (sam-kaye.com)
mayakaye.org (parked 2018) [archive]
beingbeyondgender.com (parked 2018)
mayakaye.net (parked 2018, active 2020) [archive]
Bitchute (bitchute.com)
- maya_kaye (deleted) [archive]
YouTube (youtube.com)
- @Call-Me-Sam
- UCDKjeEfLkyjFPXyWDznz6VQ
- “Living with intergenerational autogynephilia” [later removed]
- youtube.com/watch?v=fgdZbqaKffA