Arguments against autogynephilia – as a cause of transsexualism – aren’t necessary because it is what we call… an unverifiable proposition.
The proposition is that transsexualism is a product of sexuality.
That can not, with our current scientific knowledge, be proven or disproven.
Therefore, it makes no sense to even bother talking about the theory because discourse will never lead to a resoloution.
The mistake is to treat the presence of crossgender arousal in a transsexual as proof that sexuality causess transsexualism.
That is not a proof.
Even if every single transsexual in the world admits cross gender arousal it is not a proof because the cross gender arousal could be caused by the transsexualism. There are also dozens of other possible explanations.
Therefore, trying to prove some transsexuals don’t have cross gender arousal or that women also experience cross gender arousal is not only unnecesary, but also gives some legitimacy to the idea that cross gender arousal might be a cause. Cross gender arousal – either self reported or observed – proves nothing.
Personally, my new policy is the following…
“Felix… do you think autogynephilia is the cause of transsexualism?”
“Autogynephilia is a cause of verbal diahrea. As a proposition that can neither be proven or disproven empirically, it leaves people to decide with their emotions, thus resulting in a flood of words across the blogosphere that has me, as a linguist, looking for a fucking ark to escape on.”
xx
