Autogynephilia or crossdreaming?

Which is the better term?

As with like many people, it made a big difference to my life when I saw my own sexuality described by a definition of autogynephilia. The existence of the category was what was crucial. The details of Blanchard's theory were less crucial: most autogynephiliacs don't study Blanchard in any depth. The theory can be developed away from Blanchard's particular ideas.

Undoubtedly crossdreaming sounds nicer (actually I think it's a lovely word) , and it was coined by Jack Molay, a champion of crossdreaming (in fact the champion of crossdreaming), whereas autogynephilia was coined by Ray Blanchard, an unsympathetic psychologist. Jack coined the term largely because she wanted to distance herself from Blanchard's theories.

This is fair enough, but by confirming the identification of 'autogynephilia' with Blanchard, Jack establishes a precedent by which 'crossdreaming' is identified with her own ideas.

As the acknowledged online champion of crossdreamers, Jack has a very difficult role in which her sense of responsibility for the community as a whole, as well as her admirable sense of liberal debate, potentially  conflicts with the public development and promotion of her own individual beliefs. In the past year Jack has become a confirmed believer in there being a biological cause for crossdreaming: she has studied much evidence. A danger, though, is that as this belief is in harmony with what most trans people would like to believe about themselves, it is a short step to condemnation of subscribers to alternative explanations as transphobic oppressors.

More pertinently, though, Jack is dysphoric, and is understandably especially keen to support dysphoric crossdreamers. Here I think there can be a problem with the definition: a slippage of definition between  autogynephilia - sexual stimulation - and dysphoria - anguished yearning. The subtitle of Jack's Crossdreamers blog is 'On men and women who dream about being the other sex ...'. At first I assumed that 'dream' here was a euphemism for 'sexual fantasy', but now I am less sure. Is 'non-sexual crossdreaming' an oxymoron? Is 'sexual crossdreaming' a tautology?

I would like to say 'yes', because that gives the term a sharper and very valuable definition. Otherwise how is it distinct from 'transgender'?  But I can understand that Jack likes to use her own term for her own subject-matter, that a dysphoric crossdreamer is naturally concerned with both crossdreaming and dysphoria, and that  Jack would not want to say to a 'non-sexual crossdreamer'  turning to her for help, 'sorry, you're not one of us, go elsewhere'.

But the conflation of dysphoria and autogynephilia takes the focus away from crossdreaming as a sexuality, from crossdreamers as a sexual community, and it can lead dysphorics to say 'compared to the agony of my dysphoria, autogynephila is trivial'. How can I, Deborah, respect the suffering of dysphorics while insisting that a sexuality is not at all trivial, it is deep and very important?

With this doubt about 'crossdreaming', perhaps there there does need to be a different term for trans sexuality. If so, then rather than invent another one, I suggest 'autogynephilia'. If Blanchard is as bad as he is frequently painted in trans circles, then we can take his term away from him. But we must not let our sexual identity (uniting dysphorics and non-dysphorics in this important area) slide away from us.

Retreat into potency

I have just been out into the 'real world', to do some shopping. Brrr! Shudder! It was horrible, quite horrible.

Here I am back again in this place where I feel so much more comfortable. Well, I do and I don't. It's protected but it's scarily pertinent. Also isolated, which is both safe and dangerous.

Here I combine some of favourite pleasures: creative writing, exploratory abstract thought, and expressing my feminine inner identity. The latter is sexually stimulating, yet there's more to it than just providing thoughts that lead to masturbation and release. What exactly that more is is hard to say (or do I hear Deborah screaming 'it's me, Mirror Brother! Finally being given an occasional chance to express myself, a brief reprieve from lifelong confinement'?).

But let the sexual stimulation flow, say I. Sex flows from and into vitality. Sex is potent. This is more potent than going shopping.

Yet the world is reduced to a flat computer screen.

And having an audience feels important, yet the interactivity is weak (just comments).

Perhaps the reduction is an appropriate response to an unsatisfactory 'real world'. The world can appear so beautiful when one just looks at rural landscapes, but life is mostly not about gazing at beautiful scenery. Life is not just 'what you make it'; I'm certain of that.

So here is an entrapped but authentic potency. I've exchanged a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage.

Soft feelings, hard problems

When I feel low, can I write myself better? By acknowledging, accessing, becoming, expressing  Deborah, I feel tender and supportive towards myself.

I, Deborah,  reach through the mirror and hug Deborah on to my shoulder, where she gently sobs her unhappiness away.

The two girls hold hand and walk out together into the garden of soft feelings. In the garden problems turn into feelings. Feelings are a stream, forever flowing and changing.

Outside of the garden, problems are rocks. Hard tools are needed to deal with them.

Mirror Brother, forever alone, has a hard day ahead of him.

Struggles and sizzles

I see a young woman. She is a human being, a complex, so complex, being, negotiating this difficult, so difficult world. She is made from  molecules of humanity.

Yet she is wearing boots and stockings. These are made from molecules of pure sex.

These molecules of pure sex sizzle, as my eye molecules sizzle in contact with them.

As with the young woman, so with me. Molecules of struggling humanity, molecules of sizzling sex.

Deborah up her own again

Self-reflexive bit here (feel free to skip, jump, hop):

Hello Deborah, how are you today?

I enjoy writing you into active existence.

I enjoy you writing me into active existence.

I enjoy me writing me into active existence

Will readers enjoy reading me writing me into active existence, oh so self-reflexively?  (Yes, here comes yet another post that reads like a self-justifying introduction.) Quite likely they'll get fed up with it. I keep wanting to reaffirm that this is my introspective blog; I take no responsibility for entertaining readers. Maybe there'll get a voyeuristic thrill out of reading something so private. Probably not, though.

Even the continued existence of this blog would seem messy from the outside, I think. So let me state here that while I am proud that I ended Mirror Sister neatly and firmly, Deborah Descends may well stop and start without explanation or justification. I deny responsibility to continue with it, or to declare and explain ceasing or taking long breaks.

But of course I like the idea of there being readers really.

I am fascinated by the potential of an online life with an online identity: all that that frees me from, far more than just gender. Maybe it's somewhat like writing a story but actually being the character in the story, not just imagining that you are.

Also there's a kind of political refusal, a turning of my back on the potential of 'real life', on account of objection to all the bad that's evident in real life. Life is what you make it? Bollocks. An online identity is what you make it? Yes, surely it is?

The penalty for this refusal will be the effects of devoting time and energy to online life which could have been spent on improving offline life. Am I neglecting a harder, but fuller and ultimately 'realer' world in favour of a somewhat delusional world, easy but facile, reduced in its dimensions?

I do find the idea that are am giving up on the steep, righteous climb and surrendering into naughty 'descent' rather thrilling.  But there is meaning, thee is genuine life in the dark depths, there are parts of the self there to be actualised.

I could do all this without the trans. It would prevent disappointing readers who are hoping for trans content, and it would prevent sexual motivations from influencing content. But I am a crossdreamer: exploring and expressing my crossdreaming identity feels important to me (and sexy). So it would be stupid or cowardly or just boring not to include the crossdreaming aspect.

Contemplating the nature of crossdreaming bit here:

In previous posts I have probably already contradicted myself about whether the crossdreaming of Deborah Descends is all about sexuality or not. I intend to continue to contradict myself, as befits an introspective diary. You, readers, may have your theories about the source of my sexual trans feelings lying in a non-sexual realm beneath the sexual, or vice versa. You are welcome to your theories; I don't need to know them. I do think that to explore self-expression from the perspective of a posited inner woman can be an interesting exercise in creative expression and in developing self-awareness.

The questions are 'will Deborah's online existence ever feature much more than writing this introspective diary', and 'will this introspective diary get to reflect on much more than the act of writing this intropsective diary'?

Happy New Year Deborah!

Happy New Year readers! xxx

Deborah encollared

Come out of the mirror, dark girl. 

Sex walks behind you

Cast aside all the people seeking to direct and exploit your sexuality. And then admit, sex is really there. It's such a vital feeling within you, so much more vital than most of your other feelings.

It doesn't fit with the rest of you. It is impishly independent, defiant, mischievous. It is powerful. much more powerful than you are generally. It can damage so much.  I doubt its menace can be truly contained by a healthy, liberal politics of sexual acceptance. Sex by its nature does not concur with the healthy and liberal.

There is an ethics of sexual activity. You have a responsibility there. But sexual feelings leap free of any net of  responsibility in which you try to contain them.

I see sex itself as my seducer. He creeps up on me, grabs me by the waste, consumes me.

My legs thrash in helpless abandonment.

'I am Debbie. I am a slutty submissive nymph.'

I become my appetite. I am hungry. This bitch is on heat. This nymph is on fire.