An Androphilic Transsexual's Views on Androphilic and Autogynephilic Transsexuals

By Kate Cartmell

Dear Dr. Lawrence,

I discovered a discussion on autogynephilic and androphilic transsexuals listening to past programming on Gender Talk, where the essays at your website were offered as links. I have been reading articles about this topic with great interest, because they have helped shape my understanding of differences I've perceived between transsexuals whom I can now identify as autogynephilic and androphilic transsexuals like me.

I categorize myself as androphilic, having lived as a very effeminate child and teenager and then a proudly out gay man up until my mid-30s. I never had much angst about who I was or my feminine nature. The stress I felt presenting as an effeminate man stemmed mainly from a deep anger that I could not simply be accepted for who I was, as I was. I experienced the usual discrimination, harassment, censure, and exclusion, but managed to keep dancing to the beat of my own drum.

I had not cross-dressed since I was a child playing with my Mom's wigs and party dresses and playing dress-up with my little girl playmates. I've known since age 5 that my name was Katherine -- Kate. The name, as my family told it, had been reserved for the birth of a girl, had I been she. I wore blush or bronzer, concealer, haircolor and often clear nail polish through my teens and adult years as part of my grooming. I had a boyfriend in high school. We were vaguely closeted but in love and accepted as "best friends." I felt pretty and slim in my stylish clothes and shoes. In business, co-workers sometimes slipped and referred to me as "she" or responded, "yes, ma'am." I was fairly free.

I struggled for a couple of years just before my transition as I recognized and tried to understand why I didn't feel that I fit with the Gay community as others seemed to. They were "home" and I wasn't yet. I grew to feel outside my life and myself. My relationship with my partner suffered horribly as my dissatisfaction grew. I felt great sadness that I might go to my grave (and I was tired and ready) with no one knowing that I had been here. I also was beginning to age and to look less androgynous. My self-image as a handsome woman/pretty boy was threatened.

My struggle ended abruptly when I came to the realization that I -- Kate -- could live in the world at this point in history. So, I sought counseling and hormone therapy and transitioned about five years ago. Within about fourteen months of my initial realization, I was living full time.

I was shocked to begin losing everything, considering what I thought was a short step from effeminacy to actually presenting as female. I suffered through a sudden avalanche of loss -- my lover, job, finances, home, friends and social contacts -- and learned to let go of all of it. I was free falling.

I eventually landed. Now I work in fashion retail management and live with my boyfriend of more than three years. I live and work in entirely different circles than before. I've adjusted, and I'm happy and in love. I do not plan to have SRS. Through hormone therapy, my body is curvy and my body and face conform to exactly who I expected to be at this point in my life: an attractive, young- middle-aged woman.

I tell this brief history to attempt to prompt recognition in transsexual women whose paths were autogynephilic that our experiences as androphilic transsexuals are, in fact, profoundly different.

Living every single day of your life from your earliest childhood as an identifiable object of real or perceived hatred, shame, discrimination and potential violence can kill your dreams, your spirit or even your beating heart. Watching scores of men you know and love -- and with whom you shared sexual intimacy -- die young leaves you shell-shocked. Marching in Washington, New York and Philadelphia in celebration and rage with a hundred thousand gay men and women helps you stand up again and keep going.

It frustrates me that now my experience as a transsexual woman is being broadly sketched by older, predominately white heterosexual men who also happened to choose to live as women for their own reasons. Turn on Discovery Health, Dateline, and every other program on the issue of male-to- female transsexuals and you see the same story played out, invariably culminating in SRS.

It's always the story of an autogynephilic transsexual. These women invariably assert that they had been women trapped in men's bodies. As men, these women were married for years, often with children. They lived, played and worked in classically male environments, just like millions of other American men. There is rarely, if ever, any outward signal of a feminine inner life other than cross-dressing. This leads to shock and disbelief from families and friends that Mr. Spouse/Dad/Community Pillar harbored so formidable a secret.

I respect their journeys, but they don't represent me. Having a vagina and breasts were neither dreams nor goals of mine. Surgically altering my genitals will not "complete" me (I'm not even sure what that means). I am complete, shaped by 41 years of being, for all to see, female gendered.

The transsexual women I've known perceived -- and seemed to resent -- that I walked into my life as a woman with an uncanny, "real" femininity. They didn't understand that I simply changed clothes one day.

I didn't need a paradigm shift to experience men as radically other. I grew up with and now live daily with that human tension between me and male human beings, who are fundamentally different from me. When autogynephilic transsexual women ask me what it's like to be with a man as a woman, I'm perplexed, because the way I experience knowing and loving a man has been a constant in my life. The question makes no sense to me.

I've never met another androphilic transsexual woman. I never knew that my soul longed for just such a friend until recently. Perhaps only another androphilic woman could understand my path, and I her's. I like to think we would talk about all those experiences we've shared as life-long females, however we've presented our femininity through our lives. We would talk about the men we've known, loved, made homes with, and lost. Perhaps we would just talk about the same things I talk about with other women.

I've never had those conversations with the autogynephilic transsexual women I know, who are at various stages in transition, including post-op. I've entered into group or one-to-one conversations with a desire to connect and form friendships. The conversations always tended to be body-focused and dwelled on presentation and "passing." Then conversation would shift to pieces and parts -- graphic discussion about breasts, vaginas and the next feminizing surgery that would finally make them whole. "Show and tell" invited me to see new vaginas or to witness dilations. I withdrew, stunned. I perceived they were in a state of perpetual transition. The conversation seemed irrelevant to living as women in the wider world.

Perhaps this sounds like a tirade. Perhaps I'm trying on new ideas and they just don't fit well. They may need alterations. I didn't know I was angry until I began to think about and write this.

Your analysis raises important issues that can ultimately help build our community. I see no shame in being an autogynephilic transsexual woman. In interpreting and expanding upon Blanchard's thesis, you've given sound psychological and exciting spiritual depth to the autogynephilic experience. These perspectives give women so much to be proud of as they live truly creative, self-actualized lives.

I would like to see a recognition that the androphilic experience is profoundly different and equally valid.

Thank you,

Kate Cartmell, Harrisburg, PA

(the author's name and city of residence are provided with her permission - AAL)

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