The term "erotic target location error" (ETLE) is used to describe a sexual interest that is something other than your sexual partner. This can take the place of an object, like a shoe, or can be an attraction to yourself in some capacity. An attraction towards yourself can be more specifically described as an "erotic target identity inversion" (ETII). Autogynephilia (AGP) is described as an ETII, where a person is sexually aroused by the idea of themself as a woman. Some psychologists believe ETII may by the causal mechanism for AGP, and that some mechanism might be causing an arousal directed at the self rather than another person.
The author of Survey Anon's Gender Blog and I conducted a survey that included various sexual interests. Several of these items were paraphilic interests paired with arousal to the idea of being that paraphilic interest (an ETII). An example of this would be: aroused by dogs / aroused by the idea of being a dog. Respondents were recruited on Reddit's r/samplesize subreddit. In total, there were 1241 respondents. 589 of the respondents identified as male, 558 identified as female, and 94 responded as having various other gender identities. When looking at rates of ETII in various paraphilic interests in males and females, I excluded respondents who identified as transgender or a variant of transgender that the respondent used to describe themselves. Using a scale of 0-4, respondents were asked how sexually arousing they would find something - this could include a sexual act or sex with a particular type of person or thing. A score of 0 meant "not arousing at all" and a score of 4 meant "very arousing." For this analysis, a score of 2 or more was used to indicate a respondent was sexually aroused by the item. Below is the result. The number of respondents for each sexual interest by gender will be mentioned at the end of this blog post.
The results indicate that within many paraphilic sexual interests, a certain amount of people will also be aroused by the idea of being that paraphilic interest themself. Often this number exceeds half of the respondents. ETII appears to be a common feature in paraphilic sexual interests, and is far from unique to AGP. While the rate of ETII varies between men and women within specific overall paraphilic interests, there does not appear to be a major difference in the overall rate of ETII in men and women.
Various ETII Sexual Interests and AGP
It may be incorrect to think of AGP as a singular paraphilic interest. Rather, it might be better thought of as a cluster of paraphilic interests with the common feature of arousal to the idea of being some type of woman. Examples of types of women include: being a pregnant woman (nearly a third of men aroused by pregnant women were aroused by the idea of being a pregnant woman in a separate survey that I conducted), a gigantic woman, a female child, a woman wearing a diaper, or a transgender woman.
What About AGPs Who Just Want to Be Women?
Can AGP exist without another associated paraphilic interest, like arousal towards transgender women, for example? I think this question is worth investigating further. It would be interesting to see what percentage of autogynephiles could be considered as having a form of paraphilic interest directed towards other people that is related to their autogynephilic interest. Working backwards on the arousal to GAMs question, 88% of men who are aroused by the idea of being GAMs are aroused by the idea of having sex with a GAM (n=94). This might indicate that for these men, AGP is not an ETII towards attraction to women, but an ETII relating a transgender paraphilic interest.
Since ETII appears to be common in paraphilic interests, differences those with and without ETII variants of paraphilic interests should be examined.
The Male N's (n=* for the Above Graph)
No comments:
Post a Comment