“Autogynephilia” is one of many diseases created by psychologists to describe traits and behaviors that annoy or offend others.
It is a disease created in 1989 by Ray Blanchard that he says only affects some transgender women, or as he calls them, “autogynephilic transsexual males.”
Parallels with other discredited illnesses
For transfeminine people, âparaphiliaâ may be the diagnostic equivalent of historic attempts to pathologize non-trans women’s sexual behavior that fell outside of heteronormative expectations. In the way that these made-up diseases like “hysteria” and “nymphomania” were seen to emanate from the sex organs, Blanchard and colleagues spend a great deal of time creating transgender thoughtcrimes that can be proven by our genitalia.
It is interesting to note that in Blanchard’s world, the heteronormative transwomen need to be separated from those whose erotic interests do not fit the “natural” model of sexual selection.
“Nymphomania“
As with âautogynephiliaâ and similar bogus sexual pathologies and diagnoses, ânymphomaniaâ was created by a clinician. Carol Groneman, author of Nymphomania: A History (2000) reports that the concept of ânymphomaniaâ was first laid out by the French physician J.D.T. de Bienville in his 1771 treatise, Nymphomania, or a Dissertation Concerning the Furor Uterinus. Gronemanâs book is an excellent overview of how medical ideas about sexuality can affect the general population and professionals in other fields
Psychologists like Sigmund Freud added more crackpot theorizing that remained widely held beliefs until Alfred Kinseyâs report on female sexuality in 1953 showed that ânymphomaniaâ and âhypersexualityâ had no scientific basis.
Evolving views of nymphomania were reflected in the successive editions of the American Psychiatric Associationâs official guide to madness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Nymphomania was listed as a âsexual deviationâ in the first DSM, published in 1951; by DSM-III (1980) it had become a âpsychosexual disorder,â albeit a vaguely defined one. Sensing the winds of change, or maybe just having watched a few talk shows, the editors of DSM-III-R (revised third edition, 1987) dropped nymphomania and its equally quaint male counterpart, Don Juanism, and replaced them with âdistress about a pattern of repeated sexual conquests or other forms of nonparaphilic [nondeviant] sexual addiction.â In DSM-IV (1994) even sexual addiction was abandoned, perhaps because the non-gender-specific nature of the term laid bare the speciousness of the whole project.
âHysteriaâ
Like ânymphomania,â the word âhysteriaâ is an imprecise term which is used both clinically and in everyday language. It is applied in various situations with different meanings. Similar to vague diagnoses like âautogynephilia,â hysteria may describe a lack of self control over acts and emotions. It may describe morbid self-consciousness, anxiety, or extravagant behavior. It also suggests the simulation of various disorders. This nebulous description allows nearly any behavior to be describes as âhysterical,â as J. Michael Bailey has described transsexual women criticizing his book and his connections to neo-eugenicists.
Acute hysteria â subsumed in DSM IV as conversion (primarily physical) and dissociative (primarily mental) disorders â is the relatively abrupt appearance of an artifactual set of signs and symptoms that call attention to themselves.
Chronic hysteria â the form subsumed in DSM IV as somatization disorder or Briquetâs syndrome â are characterized by habitual complaints of symptoms such as pains, faintness, abdominal cramping, nausea, coughing, shortness of breath that turn out to be groundless and artifactual.
This is a typical comment from someone who believes in the validity of an out of fashion diagnosis: âHysteria is not disappearing but has taken on less conspicuous guises as people learn what can pass as disease today.â One can expect that proponents of âautogynephiliaâ will see similar drift and attempt to shoehorn an ever-widening array of phenomena into an already nebulous diagnosis (using terms like âpartial autogynephiliaâ etc.).
Hysteria has its roots in sexism, being derived etymologically from the Greek word for uterus. The uterus was also seen as the cause of ânymphomaniaâ as well.
âHystero-epilepsyâ
A disease made up by neurologist Jean Marie Charcot. A skeptical student, Joseph Babinski, decided that Charcot had invented rather than discovered hystero-epilepsy. Their patients had come to the hospital with vague complaints of distress and demoralization. Charcot had persuaded them that they were victims of hystero-epilepsy and should join the others under his care. Charcotâs interest in their problems, the encouragement of attendants, and the example of others on the same ward prompted patients to accept Charcotâs view of them and eventually to display the expected symptoms. These symptoms resembled epilepsy, Babinski believed, because of a municipal decision to house epileptic and “hysterical” patients together (both having âepisodicâ conditions). The “hysterical” patients, already vulnerable to suggestion and persuasion, were continually subjected to life on the ward and to Charcotâs neuropsychiatric examinations. They began to imitate the epileptic attacks they repeatedly witnessed. Anti-trans psychiatrist Paul McHugh used this disease to suggest contemporary “epidemics” like reports of Catholic clergy sex abuse are examples of mass hysteria.
“Ego-dystonic homosexuality”
The DSM-III committee and subcommittee charged with drafting the new manual (1976-78) settled on the diagnosis of ego-dystonic homosexuality , which, according to Dr. Jon Meyer, ââŠrepresented a compromise between those individuals whose clinical experience, interpretation of the data, and, perhaps, biases, led them to the conviction that homosexuality was a normal variant of sexual expressionâŠâ By the time DSM-III-R (revised version of DSM-III) came out in 1987, the tide had shifted again. The category of ego-dystonic homosexuality was eliminated. As DSM-III-R itself stated, ââŠthe diagnosisâŠhas rarely been used clinically, and there have been only a few articles in the scientific literature that use the conceptâŠâ
However, one could use the category of sexual disorder not otherwise specified to include cases that previously would have been called ego-dystonic homosexuality . Our present DSM-IV does not include homosexuality per se as a disorder, but still permits the diagnosis of âSexual Disorder Not Otherwise Specifiedâ for someone with ââŠpersistent and marked distress about sexual orientationâ.
Note that like âego-dystonic homosexuality,â the diagnosis of âautogynephiliaâ is rarely used clinically, and there have only been a few articles in the scientific literature that use the concept.
“Partial autogynephilia”
One of the most laughable examples of the unscientific nature of this diagnosis is Ray Blanchardâs claims that cases of âpartial autogynephiliaâ exist in order to explain phenomena that need to be shoehorned into the theory. This is about as valid as diagnosing someone with âpartial cancerâ or âpartial paraphilia.â The fact that this term was even introduced into the published literature suggests the general lack of rigor in journals devoted to sexual science.