The Butch Lesbian to Gay Man Pipeline

Transparency

No guest this week. Instead Aaron T makes the case for why he believes so many butch lesbians become gay transmen after taking testosterone. This is a phenomena widely observed within FtM communities, but neither the people experiencing this sexuality change, nor the clinicians prescribing the hormones, seem to understand why it is happening.

A lot of sexological terms are thrown around in this episode and not defined. Here are some terms that might be useful to know:

"Allo" means other, or external.

"Auto" means self, or internal.

"Gyno" means female.

"Andro" means male.

"Philia" means love (or, less euphemistically, sexual attraction).

"Meta" means self-referential

The vast majority of people are, in sexologic terms, alloheterosexual. A typical heterosexual male is technically "allogynephilic". But a male who is attracted to the thought or image of himself as female is "autogynephilic", while a female who is attracted to herself as male is "autoandrophilic". Both can collectively be referred to as "autoheterosexual". The final term above, meta, is used in this context to describe the type of external sexual behaviors of autoheterosexuals, who often experience (and act upon) homosexual desires as a means of validating their self-perception as the opposite sex. For example, an autogynephilic male is not attracted to other males (not alloandrophilic), but sexual behavior with males serves as a validation of the self as female. That is metaandrophilia.

Aaron T mentions a recent episode of the 'A Special Place in Hell' podcast: https://youtu.be/PoJnbL9QMq8