If you follow the trajectory of type theory over the years, you’ll see an interesting shift: from the prototypical AGP being a hypermasculine athlete toward being a delicate nerd. The concept gets refined in real time to “explain” available public images of trans women.
i was a transitional model (lean nerd jock)
There's also the simpler trajectory: it was gross and bullshit then, it's gross and bullshit now, if this guy fell down the well Lassie would start filling it in with rocks.
The root dichotomy of HSTS vs AGP is that it’s a fancy of way for cis straight men to say “trans women i want to fuck.” and “trans women I don’t want to fuck.” That’s why the rhetorical definition of AGP is constantly shifting, because its definition is “tranny I don’t like.”
absolutely, that def hits the nail on the head! there is no other way of neatly delineating a broad spectrum of traits that exist in differing quantities across the trans fem population than 'are they hot enough i wouldnt feel gay being attracted to them'
100% this, all the way, always and forever
Why would it matter? The only people I can see it mattering to is those who embrace bigotry and sex based biases with their whole being. The cool part of the story is 17 year old solves complex math problem adults could not. Simple as that - no need for bias. (not saying you are promoting any.)
"The only people I can see it mattering to is those who embrace bigotry and sex based biases with their whole being." That would be the entire trump regime. :( They are in control now.
Very true.
I thought you were about to discuss her result and that it’s in type theory. (Which sounded off to me, but I still need to read the article.)
> If you follow the trajectory of type theory over the years, you'll see an interesting shift Ooh, is this gonna be some, like, different fields of academia or industry being differently enamored or something? Or just a shitpost about monads? > from the prototypical AGP oh. ohhhh. 😭
Womp womp
The types’ psychological features also rhetorically evolve to encompass trans lexicon. E.g. there are a number of people today who argue that the very concept of gender dysphoria is an AGP marker because “HSTSs don’t really have sex dysphoria,” despite this going against the research itself.
Sexist stereotypes tend to pervade this discourse. Consider these assertions: AGPs have an average 20 points higher IQ than HSTSs, AGPs are more STEM oriented, HSTSs are less assertive and political, etc.
You actually at times see themes of admiration for the hypothetical AGP, especially if she can “accept her condition.” I find some discourse that describes AGPs as much more positive about women, for example, in contrast to HSTSs who tend to be as casually misogynist as any gay man.
Yeah I've noticed this is usually the line that GC grifters who are repper/detrans 'men' take. "I've accepted I'm just a normal crossdressing guy" kinda thing
Proponents will argue that trans women ourselves “are constantly bumping into the reality of the two types and then pretending it doesn’t exist.”
This can work as a tempting oversimplification because there are subcultural and behavioral differences that do really show up between sapphic and hetero trans women, on average.
Sapphic trans women do seem to lean toward the “nerdy coder girl” parts of the spectrum, with subcultures in-jokes about Monster energy drinks and Fallout and gaming setups, etc.
I'm learning new stereotypes for my group. I thought all the nerdy trans women were bisexual kinksters.
“Bisexual kinkster” would very much be considered straightforward AGP by autogynephilia theorists. It really doesn’t translate directly to “trans lesbian”
That's what surprises me. Because most of the women who fit that stereotype that I know are just as attracted to men as women. So trying to fit "AGP" to it is laughable.
I think you’re clocking the general sweatiness of the whole concept, haha. They explain this with “pseudo-bisexuality,” which is that AGP can express itself via desire to be with men “as a woman.” It relies on the equally sweaty idea that truly bisexual men don’t exist.
And straight trans women do seem to lean toward the “faggy + conventional femininity” parts, e.g. more interest in drag, makeup lines, art and culture associated with straight women, less high-achieving in academia or tech.
In my case it has always been:
Also in I was really athletic but also loved Jane Austen and girly fantasy novels 🤷♀️ ALSO this was a highschool crush of mine:
But even setting aside exceptions to that pattern, the standout thing about the typology is the way it’s offered as the only viable explanation for these differences. As if any observable distinctions between trans women based on sexuality MUST be proof of the typology exactly as written.
This flows into my personal take, which is that the typology is based on patterns we can actually observe about sexual cohorts of trans women, and uses that basis to appeal to casual intuition as an obvious explanation.
yeah. there's a pattern there, but it doesn't match onto the typology cleanly, nor does the typology explanation itself hold water.
Good example being that age of transition was once considered a key marker of the AGP/HSTS difference, but once sapphic trans women began transitioning much younger, became no longer considered a useful distinction.
And then, of course, there are bi trans women like me, who can use some magic from each school, as well as wear light armor and wield swords. (Plus we get the best hats)
Ahh the best of both worlds
Bi women don’t fit well into Blanchard’s model, and he basically waves the bisexuality away, saying that it’s basically AGP because these trans women aren’t really attracted to men but to the thought of being a woman that sex with men offers them.
Yeah, male or female, bi people tend not to fit into people's taxonomies 🤣
(Trans lesbians mistakenly thinking they’re attracted to men because cis male attraction is seen as validation of womanhood is a thing that happens, but that’s called comphet, not being ‘pseudobisexual’, and it doesn’t mean that bi trans women don’t exist)
This is so funny to me because im basically both (very high femme and very into conventional femininity/beauty/etc, but also a tech nerd who recently made good money in tech who likes nerd culture and plays a lot of games)
curious if 1) anyone besides Lawrence or Bailey are spending any time thinking about, let alone researching, the Blanchard typology, and 2) if these sorts of assertions actually show up in peer-reviewed literature or just the spitballings of gender essentialist cranks
Was about to say, the shift from (trans)misogyny centred on excluding women from sports and physical ability to (trans)misogyny centred on exclusing women from STEM and "nerd culture" is just these people lagging ~20 years behind mainstream gender conservatism.
I guess J Michael Bailey has finally found out what Big Bang Theory is and started frantically incorporating this cutting edge academic theory into his tweets.
This is a really brilliant thread
Thanks!
can't believe we're forcefemming the concept of autogynephilia, smh my head
He sure has shifted the threshold for "late onset" over the years. I can remember when he meant "about 40" by it.
it's been said before but honestly you can boil the HSTS vs AGP dichotomy down to whether or not the person doing the categorizing would want to fuck them.
Once told an AGP weirdo that I was asexual and he just said that being trans broke my sexuality because asexuality wasn't natural They will warp and contort themselves in any way to justify their bigotry
i'm more fixated that she learned calculus by 11!!! 😵💫 i'm struggling with that at 42! that's cool as hell!