#crossdreaming

An issue that often comes up in regards to masochistic emasculation fetishists (aka “autogynephiliacs”), is that most unknowingly do not understand what they mean for something to be masochistic.

For example, the masochist will point to a specific fantasy theme and state, “Look I am not being laughed at in this theme, therefore it is not humiliating!”

So then, what makes a humiliating situation humiliating? Or rather, what makes “being laughed at” masochistic? Nothing necessarily. And to go even further, why should we even recognise it as being masochistic? Simply because it is a situation we would be used to associating as being socially distressing.

In the masochistic fetish, it is the object of anxiety/trauma which has itself become sexualized, where “being laughed at” will simply be a situation whereby the object of anxiety is presented as being of anxiety.

In other words, sexual arousal by being associated to symbols of emasculation is itself masochistic, regardless of the situation which is thematized in the fantasy. Whether one is “being laughed at”, is a matter of the individual’s preference for fantasy themes. 

A serious question is implied in these dynamics, in whether there has ever been a “feminization fetish” per se beyond MEF (masochistic emasculation fetishism)?

blue-author:

I did just glance at his blog to see if it would alter my suspicions. It’s dominated by graphic sexual images. The post he wanted me to look at so badly that would supposedly explain his theory to me seemed like 90% porn with fetish-specific captions. If it gets wordier towards the bottom, it’s still impossible to get to the heart of the post without the porn, porn which would not even be obviously tied to the ostensible subject matter if not contextualized by the captions.

I guess the appropriate thing to say to your reaction, is to welcome you to the fetishism which autogynephilia theory failed to articulate and extrapolated into a crude transsexual typology. I should provide more context. I read your post and you showed to understand little about that which you are criticizing.

“Autogynephilia” was centrally an attempt to address the overlap of dysphoric identified persons within a fetish (traditionally referred to as “transvestic fetishism” among other terms). It was wrong with the proposal of two types of dysphoric individuals, the crudely essentialist archetypes of either the gynephiliac (denoting an erotic target location error on part of a male), or the archetype of the androphilic person (denoting authentic female psyche). Blanchard, the creator of AGP identifies with his own theory, that he is sexually aroused by what he crudely misrepresented as “The idea of being a woman”. His goal was never to attack the transsexual community, but to articulate the logic behind the phenomenon he was a part of.

An image from Carole Jean’s history of transvestic fetishism (referred to as “petticoat punishment”). 

“Crossdreaming” is a discourse created by those who identified as being sexually aroused by AGP’s phenomenology in “the idea of being a woman” (tranvestic fetishism) and additionally identified as gender dysphoric. “Crossdreaming” is an ideological will to exclusively reduce (conflate) the sexual fetishism to a psychosexual expression of repressed transsexualism. A discourse which can not accept that any gender issues are adjunct in relation to the fetishism, in other words it can not accept an individual as simply a fetishist, for the sake of the political primacy of transsexual affirmation, the fetishist must necessarily be transsexual, repressed or not.

The creator of the crossdreamers discourse Jack Molay, “I have gender dysphoric feelings and I do not like the idea that these feelings derive from my sexual interests, therefore my sexual interests must derive from my repressed gender identity….. lets just ignore the fact that a small minority of fetishists develop dysphoric feelings, in fact, lets pretend that these fetishists don’t exist!” ….And here is his fetish blog.

A fetishist model, made by a subject of the fetishism in question. (Masochistic Emasculation Fetishism).

My model is based fundamentally in the analysis of the fantasies themselves (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) andwhat they disclose, in other words what must happen within experience in order to produce sexual stimulation. I reject “autogynephilia’s” notion of “erotic target location error”, and reject gender-dysphoric “crossdreamers” ideological desire to conflate the experience with presumed archetypal female sexuality, or to reduce the experience to transsexual repression. Using Jasper Gregory’s insights, his tools of semiotic analysis, and the psychiatric understanding of the underlying psychology constituting the inherent masochistic themes (1,2,3,4), parallels in other fetishes (1,2,3,4,5), PTSD (1,2,3,4), and sexual imprinting (1,2,3), I produced probably the first somewhat thorough deconstruction of this fetish.

As always, I am obliged to reiterate that the psychology of identification as a gender & dysphoria has nothing inherently to do with this fetish. That the fetish doesn’t constitute transgenderism in general, but rather that a dysphoric psychology on part of masochistic emasculation fetishist will routinely be derived from their fetishism. It will provide the psychological conditions for internalized affiliations. Also it can not be more emphasized, that it isn’t that the masochism is in one’s association to symbols of femininity (implying misogyny), but rather emasculation (man up you fucking wimp!), for which feminine and androphilic symbolism function generally as the supreme symbolic representations of emasculation. 

Final judgement on the model is as always a question of, does it represent the fantasies which it sets out to do?

The sexual fantasy is manifestly determined as the anxiety of one’s association to symbols of emasculation. The “humiliation” fantasy scenarios are merely scenarios where that very anxiety is displayed in explicitly recognisable terms.

The sexualization of anxiety itself.

It has become clear that the fantasies of autogynephiliacs are constituted in the anxiety of one’s association to emasculating femininity, which also discloses it’s etiology in the anxieties (or trauma) regarding how one perceives one’s masculine identity (or lack thereof) is perceived.

A mirror equivalent of this in autoandrophilia would require an etiology of the anxieties (or trauma) regarding how one felt one’s feminine identity (or lack thereof) was perceived. Whether one happened to feel anxiety in being thought of as a “tomboy”, or even whether one felt pressure to live up to particular feminine stereotypes.

Does this true equivalent exist? I expect so. Though I expect it must be less common, due to the fact that in our culture, the failure for a young boy to live up to masculine ideals (sissy) is much more socially stigmatizing, than for the equivalent in a girl (tomboy).