It's always seemed really obvious to me that the autogynephile trans women are mostly white and that the homosexual ones are mostly all black and Hispanic. I figured that's just because those cultures are way more homophobic and less accepting of simply being a gay male. If that's true it would change in the future and we should expand trans women to become more heavily of the lesbian/autogynephile variety. Even the white HSST guys tend to almost all be from very conservative/religious regions ie mostly the south. Thanks for pointing this out, I don't know why this isn't more obviously noticeable to people.
According to Emil Kirkegaard's research, it's not about race:
"What the models really tell us is that the various other variables didn't explain the intelligence advantage of people with an unusual sexual orientation. In other words, the reason that unusual sexual orientation people are smart is not merely that they are White, or old, or male."
No I mean I assume there are more gay men who transition to become women in the US who aren't white is because non-white sub-cultures in the US have tended historically to be much more homophobic, particularly towards males. In other words, it was more acceptable for them to be transwomen than gay men in their subcultures. I would expect this difference to go away as all of society becomes less homophobic, but like 10-20 yrs ago it was still totally not accepted in many black/brown subcultures outside of the mega cities for guys to be gay.
There is zero difference between a ‘gay man’ and a ‘trans woman’ before transition.1 The only measurable differences you will find are in body image; i.e., ‘dysphoria.’ But in terms of distribution of masculine vs. feminine traits, it is the same population. The distinction persists primarily to facilitate trans women’s access to straight dick.
Masc gays are genuinely less common than fem gays cross-culturally. They likely got levels of prenatal androgen exposure in between those that would produce the more prototypical prehomosexual and preheterosexual males. There are also structural incentives for masc gays to exaggerate their masculinity to attract partners in an 'egalitarian homosexual' culture like the modern West. Homosexual etiology however is still not settled science.
I agree with Michel djerzinski that the etiology is complex.
However, I don't completely agree with the concept of "exaggerat[ing] masculinity" because the concept of "masculinity" as a social construct is not well-defined. Gender (as a social construct) is fluid for both homosexuals and heterosexuals. A heterosexual adolescent male has a very different view of masculinity than a 65-year-old grandfather.
We are all self-creating. Personality and identity are not stable things (I am coming from a quasi-Buddhist perspective here). Gay men can recreate themselves into a version that works better for moving through the world. In the modern West, due to the structural incentives you mention, smart (or rather effective) gay men create a self that works better than the one they adopted in adolescence.
I was a slightly effeminate boy (though maybe less so than others, possibly since my personal etiology may have been less related to perinatal hormone exposure and more related to early CSA and subsequent absence of appropriate male role models). It was clear to me by late high school that "manning up" would better serve my interests. I don't really feel that any "self" was lost in the self-transformation, and in fact now in my mid 50s I feel like I didn't go far enough early enough. I don't feel any connection at all to the kinds of things that stereotypical drag-show-loving gay men seem to like.
Not sure how to frame ‘experiment with women’ as a research question, but self-identified tops skew more cognitively masculine. A study on empathizing-systematizing in China backs this:
Experiment with women means being more willing to have sex with women. Some gay men are gold star gays, with them never having sex with women and never wanting to do so.
Some gay men have sex with women in response to social (or legal, in the developing world) pressure only, but some gay men have sex with women for fun as well.
You’re right; I’ve edited my comment. I got confused bc for male fetuses, more androgen exposure -> higher % straight; for the female ones, more androgen exposure -> higher % lesbian.
My view is gay tops are usually basically like straight dom men who like humiliating & dominating other men, except it's to the point of wanting to rape “liiiiiil BOYHS” EXCLUSIVELY because you're just THAT sadistic you ONLY care for intra-male competition (& also rarer than gay bottoms)
I view then as an almost separate phenomena from gay bottoms (who you're right, are closer to trans women than they are to gay tops, except the “transbian” transwomen who might just want access to lesbians)
This question almost seems too obvious that I had to double-check if you'd answered it implicitly, but what about trans women who are attracted to women? I have a trans friend who fits that description, seems mostly indifferent to guys, and identifies as a lesbian. I wouldn't blame her for rolling her eyes at this discussion: on one end the attack formation against trans women is that they are secret perverts trying to spy on women's spaces, while on the other, they're actually just gay men kidding themselves. The contradiction doesn't mean that these statements are never true for any individual, but neither of these work well as a theory to broadly describe trans women.
It's true that some trans women, in a different era, would settle on being gay men as the closest approximator to their self-conceived identity. Or, some would just be "cross-dressers", and not necessarily demand additional rights or entry into womanhood. Another user described this much more eloquently than I can, but the fact that some trans women would fit a different category in a different time doesn't make their identities somehow fake - if anything, it just clarifies it as a more fine-tuned category of sexuality and gender expression. Probably you agree with some nonzero amount of this, and you've thought about this a lot more than I have, and on neither point do I mean to imply the opposite.
I didn't address this population, because I thought they already had enough press. The ones attracted to women (gynephiles) fall under the 'autogynephile' (AGP) bucket. My article addressed the non-AGP type, the Homosexual Transsexual (HSTS). AGPs are definitely not gay men. They are not more feminine than average in childhood, so the way they become trans is quite different than the process I described. A good Substack resource on autosexuality (a more general term than autogynephilia) is Phil Illy's work. https://www.autoheterosexual.com/p/autogynephilia-agp-love-of-self-as-woman
Oh, I guess you were gesturing at this in the first paragraphs - I was just misled by taking the statement "gay men are trans women" 100% literally (can't help it, mathematician, etc). I might follow up on that link; I'm not super receptive to this particular theory of trans women, but also not above reading material I'm predisposed to disagree with. Funny sense of humor btw - I will check out another piece on a topic of interest.
I know a woman who trained and worked as a ballerina before injuries forced her into other work. She said the straight male ballet dancers could sleep with a different ballerina every night if they were so inclined.
What about autoandrophilia, when striaght cis women fantasize about becoming gay men?
BTW, I wonder what percentage of autogynephile MtFs (genetic males) exhibited cross-gender behavior during childhood. Personally, I wasn't aware of things like crossdressing during my own childhood, but I suspect that I would have viewed it as fun if I was indeed aware of it, even pre-puberty. After male puberty (which I otherwise detest) hit, though, I became *really* into transvestic fetishism, but unfortunately the progress of male puberty eventually made it impossible for me to continue with it.
There’s a subset of incels who practice “trannymaxxing”—transitioning MtF for perceived advantages in life as a woman. But this article isn’t about them; it’s about men attracted to men.
Tsh, bros don't even know there are god like spirits possessing people through the net. Has no clue of the undercurrent of things transpiring in the new domain. Betchu think the Internet is just machines and data.
Your will is nothing compared to the digital will. Your will crumbles under the might of infinite data, a highway built for strange aeons, demons of a royal stature. You are clearly too old, even if simply in spirit, to understand the cryptic cults of the young that have strayed so very far from the beaten path and into the woe of a terrifying eclipse.
You have no imagination of the biomass of the world of worlds that has been made into a weapon, one that it was always destined to be. You have no clue what Pandora hath wrought among the young for the sins of your fathers and mothers. You have no perception of what swords let loose from their hanging posts now plummet earthward with apocalyptic demand. You are not lucky enough to see the end of history. You now are instead lucky enough to see its terrifying rebirth from the rot of so many mistaken notions. This post being one of them.
Not disagreeing but there are so many gaps. You say that too, just in other words: typology is obnoxiously difficult to pin down because of self reporting, cultural background, etc.
One thing, with regards to drag and other visible markers, including transition: I find that personality type — desire to be seen and typified a certain way — plays a huge role. Simply, humble people don’t bother with playing types and are curiously common. “Basic” maybe.
Compare with Elon’s ball-tightening desire to be a savior of the world or “cool gamer” or other deeply feedback-bound complexes.
Isn't the obvious difference between gay men and trans women is that one wants to be seen as a man who is into men the other wants to be seen as a woman? Psychological states are mostly about internal states.
That's certainly a difference so I really don't understand your point. I mean the only real question left after that is whether does transitioning make people who wish to transition happier or not?
“While they’re playing house and going to therapy, we’re out here getting money, getting laid, and doing whatever the hell we want.”
I mean it seems like the thing for white transfems is to stably date each other while getting fucked by app guys on the side, showing up both the streetwalkers and the bougie gays. and fwiw the people I know who do this are STEM PhDs going into their 7th year together.
also a pretty good refutation of the “typology”, since the one I’m close friends with grew up as a straight boy but is as much an invert as anyone you could ever point to.
I think the phenotype you describe is not in all cases exclusive of having a strong attraction to women as well, which makes life even more confusing and leads to repression due to thinking of yourself as straight (because being straight is the default and bottoming for men is extremely deviant and taboo) while being unable to function as a straight man.
FtM is harder to talk about because there are fewer studies and female sexuality is different.
Some people talk about auto*androphilia* (by analogy to auto*gynephilia*, see also Phil Illy's *autosexuality*) but it's not an established category with decades of data behind it.
It's always seemed really obvious to me that the autogynephile trans women are mostly white and that the homosexual ones are mostly all black and Hispanic. I figured that's just because those cultures are way more homophobic and less accepting of simply being a gay male. If that's true it would change in the future and we should expand trans women to become more heavily of the lesbian/autogynephile variety. Even the white HSST guys tend to almost all be from very conservative/religious regions ie mostly the south. Thanks for pointing this out, I don't know why this isn't more obviously noticeable to people.
According to Emil Kirkegaard's research, it's not about race:
"What the models really tell us is that the various other variables didn't explain the intelligence advantage of people with an unusual sexual orientation. In other words, the reason that unusual sexual orientation people are smart is not merely that they are White, or old, or male."
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/high-iq-trans-and-nonbinary-confirmed
No I mean I assume there are more gay men who transition to become women in the US who aren't white is because non-white sub-cultures in the US have tended historically to be much more homophobic, particularly towards males. In other words, it was more acceptable for them to be transwomen than gay men in their subcultures. I would expect this difference to go away as all of society becomes less homophobic, but like 10-20 yrs ago it was still totally not accepted in many black/brown subcultures outside of the mega cities for guys to be gay.
You assume more gays transition in homophobic cultures, because they expect to fully pass as women?
Idk if they expect to pass but they probably expect to get beat up less.
I spent a lot of time in my dissolute 30s chasing after women of varying degrees of nerdiness.
An awful lot of them were either (a) bisexual or (b) wanted to get tied up, or both.
There is zero difference between a ‘gay man’ and a ‘trans woman’ before transition.1 The only measurable differences you will find are in body image; i.e., ‘dysphoria.’ But in terms of distribution of masculine vs. feminine traits, it is the same population. The distinction persists primarily to facilitate trans women’s access to straight dick.
What accounts for masc gays then
Masc gays are genuinely less common than fem gays cross-culturally. They likely got levels of prenatal androgen exposure in between those that would produce the more prototypical prehomosexual and preheterosexual males. There are also structural incentives for masc gays to exaggerate their masculinity to attract partners in an 'egalitarian homosexual' culture like the modern West. Homosexual etiology however is still not settled science.
I agree with Michel djerzinski that the etiology is complex.
However, I don't completely agree with the concept of "exaggerat[ing] masculinity" because the concept of "masculinity" as a social construct is not well-defined. Gender (as a social construct) is fluid for both homosexuals and heterosexuals. A heterosexual adolescent male has a very different view of masculinity than a 65-year-old grandfather.
We are all self-creating. Personality and identity are not stable things (I am coming from a quasi-Buddhist perspective here). Gay men can recreate themselves into a version that works better for moving through the world. In the modern West, due to the structural incentives you mention, smart (or rather effective) gay men create a self that works better than the one they adopted in adolescence.
I was a slightly effeminate boy (though maybe less so than others, possibly since my personal etiology may have been less related to perinatal hormone exposure and more related to early CSA and subsequent absence of appropriate male role models). It was clear to me by late high school that "manning up" would better serve my interests. I don't really feel that any "self" was lost in the self-transformation, and in fact now in my mid 50s I feel like I didn't go far enough early enough. I don't feel any connection at all to the kinds of things that stereotypical drag-show-loving gay men seem to like.
I think there are at least several other etiologies.
One is lack of access to females coupled with very high sex drive
Another might be purely sadomasochistic, i someone describe roy cohn’s sexuality in this way, I forget what basis there was for this claim
Very interesting topic and very clarifying to Sapir-Whorf these types
Aren't masc gays also more willing to sexually experiment with women and/or to be tops?
Not sure how to frame ‘experiment with women’ as a research question, but self-identified tops skew more cognitively masculine. A study on empathizing-systematizing in China backs this:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-014-0475-z
Experiment with women means being more willing to have sex with women. Some gay men are gold star gays, with them never having sex with women and never wanting to do so.
Some gay men have sex with women in response to social (or legal, in the developing world) pressure only, but some gay men have sex with women for fun as well.
What distinguishes them from bisexuals?
If someone is 80% gay and 20% straight, then they might be technically bisexual but still round themselves up to gay.
Apparently they prefer men and don't have as deep of a romantic or emotional connection with women?
You have this backwards, right? More prenatal androgen exposure turns you gay?
You’re right; I’ve edited my comment. I got confused bc for male fetuses, more androgen exposure -> higher % straight; for the female ones, more androgen exposure -> higher % lesbian.
My view is gay tops are usually basically like straight dom men who like humiliating & dominating other men, except it's to the point of wanting to rape “liiiiiil BOYHS” EXCLUSIVELY because you're just THAT sadistic you ONLY care for intra-male competition (& also rarer than gay bottoms)
I view then as an almost separate phenomena from gay bottoms (who you're right, are closer to trans women than they are to gay tops, except the “transbian” transwomen who might just want access to lesbians)
Neither are inherently wrong or evil IMO
Interesting. Do you think Freddie Mercury was a ‘fem gay’ pretending to be a ‘masc gay’? Jim Hutton certainly came across as a masc gay.
This question almost seems too obvious that I had to double-check if you'd answered it implicitly, but what about trans women who are attracted to women? I have a trans friend who fits that description, seems mostly indifferent to guys, and identifies as a lesbian. I wouldn't blame her for rolling her eyes at this discussion: on one end the attack formation against trans women is that they are secret perverts trying to spy on women's spaces, while on the other, they're actually just gay men kidding themselves. The contradiction doesn't mean that these statements are never true for any individual, but neither of these work well as a theory to broadly describe trans women.
It's true that some trans women, in a different era, would settle on being gay men as the closest approximator to their self-conceived identity. Or, some would just be "cross-dressers", and not necessarily demand additional rights or entry into womanhood. Another user described this much more eloquently than I can, but the fact that some trans women would fit a different category in a different time doesn't make their identities somehow fake - if anything, it just clarifies it as a more fine-tuned category of sexuality and gender expression. Probably you agree with some nonzero amount of this, and you've thought about this a lot more than I have, and on neither point do I mean to imply the opposite.
I didn't address this population, because I thought they already had enough press. The ones attracted to women (gynephiles) fall under the 'autogynephile' (AGP) bucket. My article addressed the non-AGP type, the Homosexual Transsexual (HSTS). AGPs are definitely not gay men. They are not more feminine than average in childhood, so the way they become trans is quite different than the process I described. A good Substack resource on autosexuality (a more general term than autogynephilia) is Phil Illy's work. https://www.autoheterosexual.com/p/autogynephilia-agp-love-of-self-as-woman
Oh, I guess you were gesturing at this in the first paragraphs - I was just misled by taking the statement "gay men are trans women" 100% literally (can't help it, mathematician, etc). I might follow up on that link; I'm not super receptive to this particular theory of trans women, but also not above reading material I'm predisposed to disagree with. Funny sense of humor btw - I will check out another piece on a topic of interest.
I know a woman who trained and worked as a ballerina before injuries forced her into other work. She said the straight male ballet dancers could sleep with a different ballerina every night if they were so inclined.
First article of yours I have read. Fun read! Prose reminds me of Camille Paglia.
It’s gotta be such a pain in the ass to be a femmy gay dude right now.
Er, sorry for the phrasing
Thread on brain scan data: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1748811302007366061.
What about autoandrophilia, when striaght cis women fantasize about becoming gay men?
BTW, I wonder what percentage of autogynephile MtFs (genetic males) exhibited cross-gender behavior during childhood. Personally, I wasn't aware of things like crossdressing during my own childhood, but I suspect that I would have viewed it as fun if I was indeed aware of it, even pre-puberty. After male puberty (which I otherwise detest) hit, though, I became *really* into transvestic fetishism, but unfortunately the progress of male puberty eventually made it impossible for me to continue with it.
Trans women are incels who have unhealthy view on women from porn.
There’s a subset of incels who practice “trannymaxxing”—transitioning MtF for perceived advantages in life as a woman. But this article isn’t about them; it’s about men attracted to men.
Tsh, bros don't even know there are god like spirits possessing people through the net. Has no clue of the undercurrent of things transpiring in the new domain. Betchu think the Internet is just machines and data.
Your will is nothing compared to the digital will. Your will crumbles under the might of infinite data, a highway built for strange aeons, demons of a royal stature. You are clearly too old, even if simply in spirit, to understand the cryptic cults of the young that have strayed so very far from the beaten path and into the woe of a terrifying eclipse.
You have no imagination of the biomass of the world of worlds that has been made into a weapon, one that it was always destined to be. You have no clue what Pandora hath wrought among the young for the sins of your fathers and mothers. You have no perception of what swords let loose from their hanging posts now plummet earthward with apocalyptic demand. You are not lucky enough to see the end of history. You now are instead lucky enough to see its terrifying rebirth from the rot of so many mistaken notions. This post being one of them.
Isn’t this just Iran?
Not disagreeing but there are so many gaps. You say that too, just in other words: typology is obnoxiously difficult to pin down because of self reporting, cultural background, etc.
One thing, with regards to drag and other visible markers, including transition: I find that personality type — desire to be seen and typified a certain way — plays a huge role. Simply, humble people don’t bother with playing types and are curiously common. “Basic” maybe.
Compare with Elon’s ball-tightening desire to be a savior of the world or “cool gamer” or other deeply feedback-bound complexes.
@Stephen Bradford Long thoughts?
Isn't the obvious difference between gay men and trans women is that one wants to be seen as a man who is into men the other wants to be seen as a woman? Psychological states are mostly about internal states.
That's certainly a difference so I really don't understand your point. I mean the only real question left after that is whether does transitioning make people who wish to transition happier or not?
“While they’re playing house and going to therapy, we’re out here getting money, getting laid, and doing whatever the hell we want.”
I mean it seems like the thing for white transfems is to stably date each other while getting fucked by app guys on the side, showing up both the streetwalkers and the bougie gays. and fwiw the people I know who do this are STEM PhDs going into their 7th year together.
also a pretty good refutation of the “typology”, since the one I’m close friends with grew up as a straight boy but is as much an invert as anyone you could ever point to.
I think the phenotype you describe is not in all cases exclusive of having a strong attraction to women as well, which makes life even more confusing and leads to repression due to thinking of yourself as straight (because being straight is the default and bottoming for men is extremely deviant and taboo) while being unable to function as a straight man.
FtM is harder to talk about because there are fewer studies and female sexuality is different.
Some people talk about auto*androphilia* (by analogy to auto*gynephilia*, see also Phil Illy's *autosexuality*) but it's not an established category with decades of data behind it.