# Autogynephilia discourse is so absurdly bad on all sides

In [Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RxxqPH3WffQv6ESxj/blanchard-s-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid), Zack criticizes the rationalist community and the trans community for various things, including denial of autogynephilia as a cause of transness:

> I could go on ... but do I need to? After having seen enough of these laughable denials of autogynephilia, the main question in my mind has become less, "Is the two-type androphilic/autogynephilic taxonomy of MtF transsexuality approximately true?" (answer: yes, obviously) and more, "How dumb do you (proponents of gender-identity theories) think we (the general public) are?" (answer: very, but correctly).

In some ways this is not a completely unreasonable critique, but I think it has a lot less bite once one realizes just how dysfunctional the discourse on this subject is, even among the ideology that Zack endorses as a replacement.

A microcosm of the dysfunction can be seen in Michael Bailey and Kevin Hsu's study, [How Autogynephilic Are Natal Females?](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361576790_How_Autogynephilic_Are_Natal_Females) ([pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qiujtvo24caokft/Bailey-Hsu2022_Article_HowAutogynephilicAreNatalFemal.pdf?dl=0)).[^twdt3hztwfe] They are responding to a debate where [Charles Moser](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26660017_Autogynephilia_in_Women), [Scott Alexander](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/), [Julia Serano](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038026120934690), and [Jaimie Veale](https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/3683) argue that cis women are often autogynephilic too, and that this suggests that autogynephilia in trans women is not so significant.

In response, Michael Bailey ([the effective leader of autogynephilia theory](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mvQjpu7iFnqQ47Lbp/autogynephilia-discourse-is-so-absurdly-bad-on-all-sides?commentId=G6F8gLdmHBMvwjAgo)) recruited samples of highly active members of online erotic AGP communities, and found that these samples are on average much more AGP than cis women, and therefore conclude that AGP in cis women is dubious.

Substituting a sample of highly active members of online erotic AGP communities for trans women is an insanely biased methodology! And [when called out on it](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363429868_A_Response_to_Bailey_and_Hsu_2022_It_Helps_If_You_Stop_Confusing_Gender_Dysphoria_and_Transvestism) ([pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6m8g0hrwahgvtyaysag8g/MOSER.ASB.2022.pdf?rlkey=mj0pnumxb5uqzqye9kdrxadbh&dl=0)), Michael Bailey essentially goes "[well the debate isn't about trans women, it's about AGPs, so it's totally appropriate](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365808935_Autogynephilia_and_Science_A_Response_to_Moser_2022_and_Serano_and_Veale_2022)" ([pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/s/jevqusbua7h2fim/Response%20to%20Moser%20et%20al.pdf?dl=0)), which again is just an insane response when very obviously the debate is about trans women! All the people Bailey is responding to were clearly talking about trans women in their texts!

One would think that people would point out these problems so the study would be appropriately rejected. I have tried to do so, and some trans activists have tried to do so, but people on the Blanchardian side have generally accepted Bailey's study and rejected making critiques.

Now here's a thought experiment for you: If people cannot converge to the truth on *objectively observable facts about who has said what* that can be seen by reading the debates, how can they *ever* be expected to converge to the truth about complex psychological causal and distributional inference questions? Especially when the objectively observable facts concern what psychological causal and distributional inference questions are under dispute?

Even if the specific point of AGP in cis women doesn't move you much (I don't think it should[^ifb3ztizi7]), this dysfunctional discourse might make you tempted to infer that Blanchardians do a lot of other shenanigans to make their theories look better than they really are. And I think you would be right to make that inference, because I have a lot of points of critique on my gender blog that go unaddressed.[^0gbvgm3s8x7] But my critiques aren't the core point I'm raising here, rather I'm pointing out that people have good reasons to be exhausted with autogynephilia theorists.

[^twdt3hztwfe]: See Transvestism vs gender dysphoria vs … and Michael Bailey doubles down on his lies 🤣 for in-depth analysis. The latter post has direct quotes. 

[^ifb3ztizi7]: I am so confused about AGP in cis women that I am essentially agnostic on the question. I think it is a question that is relatively independent of other questions of interest, and I don't think we have any satisfactory measurements of the rate of AGP in cis women. My best guess is that a large fraction of cis women (maybe 80%) have something that superficially looks like AGP but isn't, and that a substantial fraction of cis women (maybe 15%) are truly AGP in some meaningful sense. (Not necessarily super strongly, but also, a lot of the evidence for the existence of AGP in trans women doesn't show trans women to be super strongly AGP.) 

[^0gbvgm3s8x7]: The mathematical consequences of a toy model of gender transition, Meta-attraction cannot account for all autogynephiles’ interest in men, Contra James Cantor on desistance, Autogynephilia and masochism: A tale of two assessment biases, Book Review: Autoheterosexuality, Autogynephilia vs pseudoautogynephilia?, Why most studies on autogynephilia and sexual orientation are of no evidentiary value for ETLE, also some general mentions of autoandrophilia that I don't think I've written up well anywhere