https://xcancel.com/DonnaMaeGP/status/2053499128731062472
Something else that I want to emphasize about this exchange is how @WakeTheCisUp uses a reductive definition of AGP as an insult. It's useful to note because it reflects how TRAs and GCs have - wittingly or not - aligned their rhetoric on the subject of AGP.
TRAs have long denied being AGP. Many even deny that it exists at all, but still tacitly acknowledge that there are males who engage in cross-dressing behavior that falls short of full medical transition. But whether they acknowledge that AGP exists or not, they call themselves things like "true trans" or "transsexual separatists," in that they seek to persuade others that there is an innate difference between them and crossies, CDs, transvestites, etc.
A part of their strategy has been to disparage self-acknowledged AGPs as "fetishists" who fap in their sisters' panties. This is a deflection in the basest sense of the term. As I have previously written, the only real difference between an AGP who hasn't transitioned and a transsexual is in the decisions that one or the other makes about how to deal with their AGP. But it's nevertheless comforting rhetoric for TRAs in that it allows them to create a mental wall between themselves and those whom they regard as undeserving of being called "trans" or "transgender".
Simply put, their attitude is: "Don't look at me. I'm a woman. I'm not like that crossie who goes out in a miniskirt and a bad wig." But this deflection obtusely conflates behavior with AGP itself. AGP itself is not behavior but a state of mind, an abstraction. Behavior is downstream from AGP.
GCs fall into the same trap of defining AGP in the same reductive terms, but their reasoning is slightly different. GCs would prefer to think that AGP is something that adult men "catch" from watching porn and/or from objectifying women. Or they hold out AGPs as misguided gay boys who adopted a female identity out of internalized homophobia. They call it "transing the gay away."
By doing so, GCs frame AGP as a morality tale, as one of failed men caught in imitating a patriarchal, reductive version of womanhood because they've consumed too much porn and believe that womanhood can be reduced to clothing and body parts. And young males who transition must be gay because no adolescent boy can ever be AGP (gay being the new wholesome). They can't admit that there might be something going on with how an AGP's brain is wired as doing so would open the door to causes that don't fit within their moral framing.
As a consequence, like the TRAs who use AGPs as a foil to deflect from their own issues, GCs conflate AGP itself with behavior. Like the TRAs, they define AGPs as fetishistic perverts who fap in their sister's lingerie and who predate on women.
Of course, in reaching these conclusions, GCs rely on the word of everyone except self-aware AGPs and they disparage comments from the man who coined the term, @BlanchardPhD. They simply refuse to hear that they might be mistaken.
Many non-medicalized AGPs don't act on their feelings at all, or keep them private. Some present fully dressed and look perfectly fine. Some partially medicalize by taking estrogen but never have any surgeries and never fully transition to a new identity. But whether one acts on their feelings or not, it doesn't change the fact that they are AGP.
I've received comments on a similar post to the effect of, "We don't care what causes your fetish. Just stay out of women's spaces and jerk off in the privacy of your own home." But such comments presuppose the very reductive definition of what AGP is that I have been trying to address while again conflating AGP itself with behavior. It's an endless feedback loop in which no one really wants to have a reasoned discussion and everyone wants to get in his or her drive-by talking points.
I'm at the point of giving up.
