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The ‘Kathoey’ or Ladyboy designation is a more honest way of categorizing both very effeminate / camp gay men and most ‘straight’, feminine transwomen (HSTS in Blanchardian typology).
Transwomen of a kind are obviously very common. I understand there is still some social discrimination, but probably 70% of Sephora sales assistants in Thailand are ladyboys/transwomen/kathoey/your preferred term here. This is even more common than in Seattle, which I wrote about previously. In my local Sephoras (London Westfield - Shepherd’s Bush NOT Stratford, please - and Soho on Broadway I guess) there are some transwomen and a large number of very feminine, makeup wearing gay men, but something about the experience in Thailand just underscored to me how similar the two are.
It reminded me of a pioneering British local TV documentary I’d written about before, produced in the 1980s about gay life in London in the 1930s. One of the things the men make very clear is that the gay community, such as it was at the time, consisted entirely of camp, effeminate men who were to the man, in terms of sexual role, bottoms. Often they described each other, semi-ironically, with female pronouns or roles (queen etc) which are still used by many camp gay men today. The tops they had sex with were not considered part of this community. In a very real sense, they were not considered gay at all, even and perhaps most clearly by the men they were having sex with.
This wasn’t a legal distinction - a ‘top’ was still committing a crime at the time under British law in having sex with another man, and would flee the night club in the event of a police raid all the same - but it was a clear social one. The femme men themselves didn’t have sex with each other (this is, at least, implied in the documentary), only with the ‘straight’ or ‘topping’ men whom they solicited in clubs, parks, outside barracks and so on. More broadly, the sexual and communal landscape the men discuss seems to be by far the most common way in which human societies have historically understood effeminate or camp males who are primarily sexually attracted to other men. The ladyboys don’t have sex with each other for the same reason that the gay ‘queens’ of 1930 London didn’t. And then men who have sex with ladyboys - or who had sex with those men in the thirties - aren’t or weren’t gay in the same way that they were. That isn’t to say they’re straight, or not bisexual, or not anything else, but it’s clearly not the same thing. The modern Western gay identity, in which tops and bottoms (and indeed lesbians and gay men) are grouped together is essentially a consequence of the civil rights movement and AIDS crisis; it is ahistorical and unusual compared to all historical treatment of non-mainstream forms of gender and sexual identity.
Blanchard’s key contribution to the understanding of transsexualism was that he acknowledged - based on his own practice - that homosexual transsexuals or HSTS and autogynephilic transsexuals or AGP constituted two clearly defined, vastly different populations of males who identified with womanhood or female-ness. HSTS fundamentally existed along the spectrum of camp male femininity, expressed both sexually and generally. As I understand it, the gay man at Sephora who wears a skirt, a full face of makeup and speaks in a camp, exaggerated feminine voice is - even if he is not on hormones - considered a kathoey in Thailand. And this makes sense - camp femme gay men who are sexually submissive, may wear drag etc and HSTS transwomen are often divided solely by the extent to which they are committed to presenting as female (that commitment ultimately expressed in medical intervention), and nothing else in terms of dress, presentation, sexual preference, interests and so on.
The reason why Blanchard is controversial is not his categorisation of HSTS, of course, but its inverse. The non-HSTS, the top-who-transitions, the man (often in Blanchard’s own experience) who decides after 30+ years of normal heterosexual life, marriage, children, relationships with only women etc, that he is actually a woman, is not part of this long continuity of effeminate homosexual males. He is something different, something new, something comparatively unusual. He is a product, it seems to me at least, of modernity. In naming the autogynephilic transsexual man, Blanchard acknowledged a sexual identity largely divorced from sexuality (consider that many if not most AGP are attracted to women at least before heroic doses of female hormones, meaning their sexual identity is not a key part of their transition). The AGP male is closer to the archetypal modern fetishist (I won’t name examples because inevitably that will devolve into a pointless argument), except that the object of his attraction is inverted. His motivations for womanhood are completely different to those of the HSTS, but our understanding of trans identity doesn’t allow us to acknowledge this essential difference.
If an argument one occasionally hears about clearly differentiating HSTS and AGP is that it is impossible to tell the difference, I think the Thai example is a good counterargument. Perhaps someone else can correct me if I’m wrong, but I find it hard to believe that these transwomen are particularly interested in lesbian relationships with ciswomen. They are, of course, interested in relationships with men, with males, because they are gay males, but that is about it. They have their own bathrooms (at least in some Thai malls and bars I saw clear male, female and other (with the gender icons overlapping) bathrooms, which seemed - above all else - reasonable.
I'm not sure I completely understand, but it sounds like your point is that your typical trans-identifying-man is insincere.
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The complexity of inter-homo-binary-transitional relationship terminology makes it difficult both to track and to discuss [the man-who-liked-men-before-becoming-a-woman-who-likes-men, vs the 2/5/17 other combinations]. Maybe German style additive word construction would be better than the standard Greek derived combinations.
The major difference of AGP would appear to be the A. Auto.
The weird bit is firstly that, while I can't speak for them, it's a fairly uncontroversial idea that heterosexual women can be as aroused by being an object of desire as they are by direct observation of what they desire. Apparently this is a very common theme in popular women's erotica.
Secondly there's the complication of what gay men want versus what they can offer. Like your example of the camp, openly gay queens who don't have sex with each other. Why not? Because they don't want a faggy queen, they want the kind of highly masculine man who... has gay sex with faggy queens. I believe the phenomenon persists in the preponderance of bottoms vs tops, and their ideal fantasy partner being a straight man. If masculinity is what gay men are attracted to then logically they should masc-maxx, but if femininity is what masculine men want then it would make more sense to trans-max, so that they can "go straight" to fulfill their gay fantasy of straight sex. I've never looked at gay porn but I have a hunch it focuses a lot more on blue collar bodybuilder types than on lisping waifs with frilly cuffs.
And then we have the AGP, who fetishises women to such an extent (a very male hetero mindset) that they become maximally feminine (a homosexual characteristic in men) so that they can embody themselves as their own object of desire (a female hetero mindset, maybe?) in their own eyes, the eyes of a heterosexual man. It's a muddle.
This is where grouping all men who have sex with men as a single “gay” monolith goes wrong.
This kind of man exists in very high numbers, they just aren’t open about it. Go on Grindr and you’ll find that there’s no shortage of “discrete” tops who love twinks and femboys, and not enough supply to meet the demand.
Today a large number of gay men do actually masc-maxx, but just because you can look masculine doesn’t mean you can act masculine. Even if you convincingly manage to imitate masculinity, it’s still just a façade. Two partners pretending to be something they’re not in order to stay attracted to each other is just sad.
But again, there’s multiple kinds of gay men. The very feminine “faggy queens” are highly likely to transition today, not because they want a masculine man, but because they want a man who’s attracted to them as a woman, which they’ll never get if they masc-maxx. It’s not just about how you see your partner, but also about how your partner sees you.
But the vast majority of gay men today are absolutely fine with their partner seeing them as a man. I’ve seen quite a few gay couples where it’s just two regular looking guys, generally a bit fruity sure, but not excessively so and not enough to turn each other off.
Yeah, there is that whole category of "men who have sex with men" but don't consider themselves gay. I suppose it's the very old distinction of "if you're doing the penetrating/getting your cock sucked, you're a man but if you're getting penetrated/sucking the cock you're female-coded".
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As opposed to continuous tops, also known as homeosexuals
Well, I laughed!
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Attraction to someone in particular being attracted to you and being attracted to a fantasy of yourself as a woman are two quite different things, in my opinion.
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I agree with the distinction, I disagree that it's new, but the expression technologically is.
Human sexuality is pretty broad and subject to a lot of social context. In many societies today, homosexual contact isn't considered gay for the top. This is historically the case, from ancient persia and greece on to modern afghanistan. There is a typology of feminine gay men, but there is also a typology of hyper-masculine bisexual men. The modern agp phenomenon is just the latter run through modern technology, legal codes, academic cant and social hysteria. Several thousand years ago, olympic athletes and professional soldiers who liked a bit of dude wouldn't pretend to be chicks, they'd just join the Sacred Band or whatever. Le Monsieur had special armor made so he could assault cities in a dress.
The only thing that's new is the religious and legal aspects of the metaphysical claims made by these dudes.
? My understanding is that the lumberjack-type gay men, while outnumbered, are not the same thing as AGP transgenders.
There's several takes on what exactly AGP are, but the lumberjack-type bearded gays are not one of them. I'm personally partial to the idea that they're mostly newish, a product of endocrine disruptors, and historical examples of AGP like Elegabalus are severe mental illness, with things like the hijras and other third genders being something totally different. But there's another school of thought which merges the phenomena.
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The bisexual top phenomenon is real and distinct, but it’s not the same as AGP even if it overlaps with it. If you want to be a hyper masculine gay man who fucks men, this is after all a desirable gay niche today, at least as far as I understand it. Certainly there is no incentive to transition.
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Historically, it would also come with significant changes in one's legal status to pretend to be chicks and be taken seriously as such.
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Blanchard’s theory is true in the sense that AGP and HSTS populations exist, but it’s overly reductive in the sense that they’re not the only categories of trans people out there. Of course, it was more accurate than the previous view at the time which would lump them all together in a single one.
I don’t think AGP males are a product of modernity - the only thing that’s new is ability to transition using hormones and surgery, and to do it openly without it being instant social and professional suicide (not that there are no social costs now, but it’s completely different to say, the 1950s).
Men who are sexually into wearing female clothing and find the idea of being a woman erotic have probably been around since the earliest proto civilisations (see François-Timoléon de Choisy, who probably lied about seeing the royal family dressed as a woman, but not about being aroused by wearing a corset).
A trans identity that’s truly the product of modernity would be the autistic, nerdy, often terminally online kind (both trans masculine and trans feminine). A 50 year old masculine married man with children who transitions after years of hiding his crossdressing habit from his wife, is not the same as teen for whom transitioning is an escape from the social and physiological pressures of their biological sex. Body dysmorphia, sensory issues, discomfort with heterosexual norms, etc. would be the primary motivations - maybe those individuals would have been celibate monks or nuns in the past, when monastery life and asceticism was a viable alternative to the normal life script.
It’s very clear when you look at a significant proportion of trans masculine individuals, their goal seems to be more to “not be a woman” rather than to be a man. The same exists for males too - see this post by Duncan Fabien which made the concept click for me.
I agree that the "autistic, nerdy, often terminally online kind" of trans person is in a category of its own compared to homosexual males or archetypal AGPs. I also think the etiology behind trans-identification in females is completely different from that behind trans identification in males. "Gender dysphoria" isn't a condition like "lung cancer" or "depression" which affects males and females in the same way, and diagnosing males and females with the same condition hides more than it illuminates.
I've been thinking about this a lot. As much as people criticise Catholic institutions, they were a very effective Chesterton's fence for a particular kind of person who felt uncomfortable in their own skin and wasn't terribly interested in forming romantic relationships. It makes me sad thinking about all the young women who've gotten double mastectomies they'll likely regret, who would've been perfectly happy as nuns if they'd been born a couple of generations earlier.
Of course, there were sects of nuns that got double mastectomies anyway. But maybe not all of the trans-adjacent women would join those.
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Reading that essay, it appears that Duncan's primary error is that he over-values the 10-year-old-self. Liking transformer robots and looking like Jimmy Neutron is no more optimal than liking the process of sex just because liking the process of sex comes later.
It’s not about either preference being more optimal, or consciously valuing the 10 year old self more than the present self. It’s about sexuality being this uncontrollable compulsion that’s suddenly injected in your brain, and in people like Duncan (and I, before I transitioned), it doesn’t feel like it’s “you” that likes or wants sex.
Like I’m absolutely fine with my preferences shifting across time, discovering new hobbies, becoming a mature adult with a mortgage and a pension fund. But in my case, a preference for sex didn’t feel like I tried something new, liked it, and consciously decided to keep doing it. It felt like there was an alien invader in my brain that I had to pacify so I could get back to doing the things I actually liked. I didn’t actually want sex in the way that my biology was pushing me to want it. It felt like losing control over who I was, in the same way someone might suffer from binge eating when stressed - a completely different experience from being a foodie who occasionally overeats when they go to a very good restaurant.
Most people don’t seem to have trouble integrating their sexuality into their selves. They see their sexual preferences as “theirs”. Maybe something about being autistic can lead to your sense of self crystallise too early and prevents you from tolerating changes, or maybe it causes a mental separation between the self and “base” desires, I don’t know.
But at the end of the day, my happiness and quality of life is enhanced when I take medication that lets me feel like my sexuality is on my own terms.
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Yeah, but crossdressing/transvestism was not considered the same as transsexuality until we got the idea that it was all transgenderism and that was an entire separate identity of its own. The modern notion of "identities" and especially what I'm seeing online with trans issues that if you are not 100% X then of course you must be Y is what is unique, and what is driving all this.
Before, if someone was crossdressing for whatever reasons (and they're not always erotic/fetish ones), you are correct - it was something to be hidden, something considered shameful. Now, it's a protected identity that you can be proud of, now you can crossdress 100% of the time! And all you have to do is say that really you are a woman. Maybe you go on hormones, maybe you don't. You can still be sexually attracted to women, just say you're a lesbian.
Indeed, again from what I'm picking up at second- and third-hand, the push is on to shove people into adopting it as an identity: you don't just feel better psychologically when dressed and behaving as your feminine anima, it's an identity and you are trans.
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What occasioned this reflection?
For what it's worth for me, I'm not wholly convinced of the Blanchard typology, if presented as something like a law of nature, but just extensionally I find it has the ring of truth. The two basic categories he lays out - I think of them, perhaps a bit crassly, as the more-gay-than-gay camp, and the heterosexual camp, that is, the one so obsessed with/attracted to women that they want to become one - can be roughly applied to trans women that I've known. It may not be wholly perfect, but it feels close enough that I hear Blanchard's descriptions and think, "Yeah, I've seen people like that" and "Oh, just like this other person I know".
I agree that it has the ring of truth. Where I think it collapses some is that:
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I suppose that I think the TERF treatment of HSTS is unnecessarily harsh, but that such a judgment requires a clearer categorization.
How so? In my experience, most TERFs are far more sympathetic to homosexual trans-identified men than they are to AGPs.
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