Autogynephilia

Paraphilia can be described as an experience of recurring or intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, places, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. Paraphilias are contrasted with normal sexual interests, although the definition of what makes a sexual interest normal or atypical remains controversial.

The exact number and taxonomy of paraphilia is under debate. The DSM-5 adds a distinction between paraphilias and "paraphilic disorders", stating that paraphilias do not require or justify psychiatric treatment in themselves, and defining paraphilic disorder as "a paraphilia that is currently causing distress or impairment to the individual or a paraphilia whose satisfaction has entailed personal harm, or risk of harm, to others".

The DSM-5 has specific listings for eight paraphilic disorders: voyeuristic disorder, exhibitionistic disorder, frotteuristic disorder, sexual masochism disorder, sexual sadism disorder, pedophilic disorder, fetishistic disorder, and transvestic disorder. Other paraphilic disorders can be diagnosed under the Other Specified Paraphilic Disorder or Unspecified Paraphilic Disorder listings, if accompanied by distress or impairment.

But there's another type of paraphilia that seems to have been prevented from entering public awareness: Autogynephilia.

Autogynephilia (derived from Greek for 'love of oneself as a woman') is defined as a male's propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. It is the paraphilia that is theorized to underlie transvestism and some forms of male-to-female (MtF) transsexualism. Autogynephilia encompasses sexual arousal with cross-dressing and cross-gender expression that does not involve women's clothing per se[1].

The problem with autogynephilia is that it offers predatory men the possibility to put on a wig and to claim that they 'are women' so they can 'rightfully' enter spaces that would normally be exclusively for women, like toilets, changing rooms, and prisons for females.

Political trans activists and their 'allies' have done everything they could to keep the concept of autogynephilia from public awareness. And yet, with excruciating slowness but apparent inevitability, it is doing just that.

Remember, autogynephilia is a disorder that needs treatment because of the symptoms used to diagnose any paraphilia: .. whose satisfaction has entailed personal harm, or risk of harm, to others.

[1] Anne A Lawrence: Autogynephilia: an underappreciated paraphilia in Advances in Psychosomatic Medicine - 2011