You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 83. Phil Illy.mp3
Phil Illy: It's really bad for people that suffer from gender dysphoria or gender confusion or whatever you want to call it because the therapist doesn't know jack shit a lot of the time. And actually the little they think they know is worse than knowing nothing. Like I said, the doctors don't know. They're prescribing hormones and they don't know why the patients want them. They just know that they do. There's just ignorance all around.
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I am here with Phil Illey. Phil self-identifies as autogynephilic. He wrote a book on autogynephilia and autoandrophilia called Auto-Heterosexual, Attracted to Being the Other Sex, which is for sale on Amazon and I will include in my bookshop. He also has a Substack at phililley.substack.com where he shares bits of his work from the book and other writings on this topic. And he has a presence on X at autogynephilic. Phil has a unique perspective in that he has autogynephilia and has devoted a significant amount of time to understanding the condition and speaking openly with others, including gender critical people such as myself, on this topic, which is very taboo to discuss in the trans-identified community. But he shared with me that Phil is here because he recognizes that there can be a lot of suffering around this condition and is here to help alleviate that suffering. So, Phil, thank you for joining me. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Phil Illy: Yeah, thank you for having me, Stephanie.

Stephanie Winn: All right, so we've used a lot of big words so far. I think a lot of people in my audience are familiar with these, but that is kind of a little niche of, you know, those of us who have even heard of these phrases before. So for the general public who have no idea what we're talking about. What is autogynephilia? And feel free to define autoandrophilia and autoheterosexual as well.

Phil Illy: So autogynephilia is composed of Greek roots, meaning self, woman and love. And it means love of self as woman. It's a sexual attraction of being a woman or a sexual attraction to being female, to embodying femininity, that sort of thing. And autoandrophilia is the counterpart that occurs in some females in which they're sexually attracted to being a man and being masculine. And with both these orientations, since they're sexual orientations, they have the capacity for attachment. And so over time, people tend to get attached to being the other gender and this alters their identity over time and is a large motivator of gender transition. And I use the term auto-heterosexual as an umbrella term to include male autogynephilia and female autoandrophilia under a shared heading that treats them as equals with a simpler term that's easier to say and understand.

Stephanie Winn: And Ray Blanchard originally coined the term autogynephilia as one of two subtypes of male cross-sex identity, the other being the homosexual transsexual. Now you describe this as a sexual orientation. Some people describe it as a fetish. Do you disagree with that?

Phil Illy: Well, I find that using the word fetish or kink, it really fails to capture the depth of the first-hand experience. It really deeply alters how you perceive gender and your place in the world of gender. And it strongly alters your identity over time. And if you just think of it as a simple matter of sexual arousal, you're going to miss the actually impactful part of the orientation. You know, kind of like with heterosexuality, even though it often leads to marriage and kids. You know, it's not a simple matter of arousal. It has a much deeper impact on how someone feels about themselves and how they live their lives.

Stephanie Winn: And perhaps too we can talk about the impact on how a person feels toward others. So what's what's different about what you call auto heterosexuality is that it's a it's a relationship with yourself that you are comparing with types of relationships that are with others. You say that As a sexual orientation, there's a capacity for attachment. But if I'm understanding you correctly, and please feel free to correct me, but you're saying that it's an attachment to a part of yourself. So what is the relationship between having this auto heterosexual sense of yourself and your capacity or desire to connect in a sexual romantic way with other people?

Phil Illy: It can interfere with it, depending on how strong it is. Basically, with sexual orientation, the most common dimension is gender, whether someone is attracted to men or women, respectively. But there's also other dimensions to sexual orientation, such as age and location. And with these auto-sexual orientations, It's basically a difference in that dimension of location and basically how much of your orientation is biased outward versus inward. And so it can interfere with the conventional externally directed pair bonding process if it's particularly strong. But I think most of the people with this orientation still find meaningful relationships outside of themselves. And it just alters how they, what sort of relationships they look for or how they conduct themselves while in those relationships.

Stephanie Winn: Is that a general sense that you've gotten from talking to other people? Or is there any data to suggest that the majority of people who feel this way are in romantic relationships?

Phil Illy: I don't think there's any solid data on it. You know, it's, it's already not, most of the data on it is comes from studies where they'll ask people a variety of single item questions about their sexuality. And one of them will be, you know, whether they've been aroused by fantasizing about being the other gender or whether they've been aroused by cross-dressing, things like that. Um, so it's hard to know. whether the people that have this sexual interest, the proportion of them that are in relationships. Cause I don't think that's been studied yet, but it's, that's just my general sense of interacting with them over the past few years, hearing their stories. Um, most of them do have romantic relationships.

Stephanie Winn: And do you mind talking about yourself? Feel free not to, if anything is too personal, but for you yourself, are you driven to connect and relate with other people? Do you have a partner?

Phil Illy: Yeah, I, I, I do. Um, and I, and I am driven to do that. It's, I don't think it's the same intensity of push that most men experience, you know, where, um, I can just tell that the intensity of the drive to find women is not as powerful, but it nonetheless still happens sometimes. And I've, you know, I've been in quite a few relationships over the years. So yeah, overall, I feel like I'm doing pretty normal in that respect.

Stephanie Winn: Would you mind sharing how your female partners have related to your relationship with your own sexuality? Has that been a challenge for them?

Phil Illy: I didn't even know I had this until like four years ago. And it blew my mind that I had this sexuality that I had never heard of. And so I got really obsessed with learning about it. And that kind of got out of hand and led to me writing a book about it.

Stephanie Winn: A 700 page book, I noticed.

Phil Illy: Yeah. It's, it's, it's comprehensive. It explains all of trans identity, like even beyond gender explains trans race and all that stuff too. Um, so I've only had like one partner in the, in the basically since learning that about myself. So I don't know the overall pattern yet.

Stephanie Winn: So I'm curious, do you think that this is something fixed or fluid or maybe somewhere in between? I noticed the way you describe it, it sounds like a process of self-discovery in a way that someone might discover that they're gay. When you think of auto heterosexuality, do you think that there are let's say habits, behaviors, ways of thinking that can kind of increase or decrease those feelings? Or do you think it's more independent from that and stable in its own way?

Phil Illy: It tends to ebb and flow in intensity over, like a typical person with this orientation, it'll alter in intensity over time where it tends to start out as, um, like maybe more fleeting or more like overtly erotic. And, and then over time it gets more sentimental, you know, as they like form an attachment to that, that cross gender part of themselves. And. So it, yeah, it's, it's a very dynamic process. So it's, it's really kind of hard to put in words what happens, but yeah, the general trend is towards greater attachment with that cross gender part of yourself. And there's also a sort of, um, situation that Blanchard called dynamic competition. When say like you get in a relationship with a woman and you'll have that new relationship energy, um, the honeymoon period for people that aren't versed in polyculture. Um, you have that temporary period of like excitement with that new partner. And then as that wanes, like that sort of like inner woman sort of like asserts herself a little more. And so it creates sort of tension inside of you between the girl within the girl outside. And it can create complications for relationships. Um, but generally like if if the it's often like someone with this orientation they'll date like a bisexual woman and so it won't matter too much whether they're a little gender atypical And, you know, if the women are all right with it and the orientation doesn't detract from the relationship too much, then they can find like a good homeostasis where they're having just like a regular relationship.

Stephanie Winn: Let's talk about needs. So in a relationship, people have various needs, right, and relationships take nurturing. So I'm in a heterosexual relationship. I'm engaged and my fiance and I just celebrated three years of being together with a little retreat getaway and those sorts of things. I think for, you know, for couples who aren't destitute, if you can set aside a little bit of money for a periodic retreat, it's a really healthy thing to do for your relationship to have that quality time together. And, you know, I do couples counseling as well. So I talk with couples about nurturing their relationship. Sometimes I meet couples where it seems like they haven't been nurturing the relationship and it feels kind of anemic. So I work with people on expressing their needs, learning their partner's love language, ways of giving to each other. And when you describe this experience of an auto-heterosexual man feeling torn between the woman he's with and the sense that there's an inner woman I'm having a hard time imagining the way that you're conceiving of needs, because it's easy enough for me to imagine the needs of a real woman in a relationship. Of course, you know, individuals vary, but there are some kind of universal things that most people tend to want in a relationship. So I can imagine the woman's feelings, if feeling like her man is pulling away from her. what's your sense of the competing needs and how do you experience as someone who has the sense that there's this inner woman within, how do you experience that woman pulling on you? What, what are the needs and feelings there?

Phil Illy: Um, I mean, sometimes depending on the situation, there can be like, um, say like whatever will attract most women is generally masculine things. And so if you say like go a little over the top with the femininity and they're not as much into that, then that can detract from their attraction to you. Um, but it's, Yeah, it, it, it can detract from the conventional allosexual pair bonding that most people experience. Um, but also on the other hand, I think it can also kind of help alleviate some of the like wandering eye that men can have in terms of like trying to find new partners. They might feel satisfied because they kind of have already by being with an external woman, they kind of have two outlets for their gynophilia for their level of women. So. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if autogynephilic men are, you know, maybe less likely to be trying to find extra partners.

Stephanie Winn: When you talk about femininity, you said over the top with femininity. So for those who are watching on video, they can see what I'm seeing, which is it appears that you're wearing a dress and some like cool wrist warmer things.

Phil Illy: This is just how I dress every day. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I've seen various photos of you. It seems like you like blue with the arm warmers and it's kind of your style. So visually, I can see that you've embraced certain physically feminine styles of dress. But when you say, for example, that, you know, an autobahn, I feel like male in a relationship with a woman being over the top with femininity. Are you talking about styles of dress? Are you talking about behavior? What does femininity mean to you and how do you explain that inwardly or express it?

Phil Illy: I mean, I was speaking abstractly because there's so many specific ways it could show up. You know, for some person that might mean that they want to cross dress a lot or for another it might mean that the way that they want to have sex with their partner is different, sort of like with gender role reversals. Yeah, or they might just need to, they might find that they need to have a little more alone time to like make sure that they're feeling like they're in touch with themselves enough. Like it really depends on the particular individual.

Stephanie Winn: What about for you? What does femininity mean to you?

Phil Illy: I mean, I don't, I generally define femininity as femaleness, so it's like whatever you associate with femaleness or with females. And I know that often gender critical people use the word stereotypes for that, but I think association is a better, more apt term because everyone has their own individual set of associations with any particular concept. so you know what let's say like one autogynephilic person might like think associate high heels with women another one might like women with flat shoes or whatever, you know, they'll have different ideas of what is womanly or what is attractive and woman. And they'll want to embody that their own particular vision of what they like. And that varies between individuals and doesn't always neatly conform to stereotypes.

Stephanie Winn: Well I'll be honest with you and I'll share what I'm thinking and what I imagine some listeners might think hearing this is that the ways so far that you've defined femininity are all very male ways of defining femininity. They're they're on the surface. They're physical in nature. You know how a woman styles herself. physically, whether it's the clothes, the heels, the makeup, as well as the sexual component, right? We know from research on men and women that men are more visually aroused and have a greater desire for sexual novelty as well as a greater desire for sexual promiscuity than women do. So, I think it's interesting that when you're describing femininity as you perceive it, that you're describing ways that I think it's easy for men to conceive of femininity. And, you know, I think what we're trying to do in our conversation is build bridges of understanding. We're having, you know, a very kind of heterodox conversation here, to use a popular term in use these days. I appreciate that you're giving people an inside view into your psyche because a lot of listeners are concerned about someone they love who might have a trans identity. But I think that's the part that's hard for me to conceptualize in a way that I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt. I'm trying to understand a sense of femininity that you might have that I could relate to as a woman. But the things that you're describing sound so superficial.

Phil Illy: Well, I was describing visually apparent things cause they're easier to see, you know, like if there's autogynophiles that, you know, a lot of them tend, tend to be more like a little like psychologically, a little like less assertive or dominant. Um, and. It's not just the physical things, it's also how you behave. There's various aspects of it. I mentioned the clothing and sex roles, but there's also how people see you. There's also what your body looks like, which you could argue that's a visual thing, but the body is pretty central to what female is. There are also things like, yeah, like transsexualism in a way is like kind of going after the core desire itself, which is to have the body and simply be the thing. So like, yeah, well, I don't expect to dissuade you with perceiving it as stereotypes. I'm pretty familiar with gender critical discourse. But it isn't like, I don't think it's like as superficial as people might make it out to be.

Stephanie Winn: So you said there that some men who feel this way tend to be less dominant or assertive personalities. I want to play devil's advocate and talk about a different dynamic I've observed. Are you familiar with the story of Chris Beck?

Phil Illy: No, you're not talking about Chris-chan, right? That's the only Chris I know in this room. Okay. No, I don't know this. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: He was in the military, and he was one of the first trans people in the military. He's male. And while in the military, transitioned, and he was sort of used by the government to be the poster child of trans people in the military during a lot of changes to how the US government handles those issues. And since then, he has de-transitioned and shared his story in a gender critical way. One of the places he shared it was with Landon and Robbie Starbuck on their podcast, along with Chris's wife. And when I listened to his story, I thought it was fascinating because it seemed almost like the opposite of what you're saying, where he had this extremely male personality. And, you know, he was in the military and he had, it sounded like maybe some veteran PTSD. And it seemed like there was so much pressure on him to fulfill this male role and to be tough that femininity for him was more of an escape. It was more like he had to repress his vulnerability so much to be in this one role that almost like he was swinging the other way, trying to embrace his vulnerability or escape the pressures the immense pressures that he must have felt in his military position by embracing this femaleness and the sort of lack of control and responsibility that he associated with that and the lack of toughness. And I've heard other stories, other instances of men, especially in midlife, who have had a lot of responsibility, a lot of power, status, control. And where it seems like they're trying to maybe escape that by embracing a cross-sex identity. Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you observed that as well? Or do you have a different take?

Phil Illy: Well, there's a sense of escapism to it for some people. Yeah. And, and I've definitely seen plenty of the sort of situations you're describing of someone that starts out unremarkably masculine and then sort of represses the, that feminine side of themselves. And then around midlife, um, they sort of like crack and then that inner, that femininity comes out, you know, their own vision of femininity and, Then, you know, they go really hard at that, you know, cause like I said, there's a honeymoon period, um, with it. So people can go really hard at it for like a year or two. And that can be really destabilizing for their lives to have pent up a desire like that for so long and then suddenly let it out. Um, yeah, that definitely does happen. And, and like, I will say that, like, I think autogynophiles are probably roughly as average as a regular heterosexual man in terms of their innate masculinity, femininity, but the, like the autosexual trans identity, it, it It like leads to a cross gender shifts, not in terms of like their innate gender characteristic, but it's like an aspiration, like a desire to be something or desire to be a particular type of persona. It's almost like a type of like gender variance that's like persona driven rather than just innate mental characteristics.

Stephanie Winn: Say more about what you mean by persona.

Phil Illy: That there's that second self inside of you. you'll want to be that second self and the general trajectory is if someone's autosexuality exceeds the intensity of their allosexuality, their externally directed sexuality, the general tendency is for that cross-gender self to grow in intensity and commitment. over time, and they incorporate that into their personality to increasing degrees. And this can culminate in a wish for gender transition or, you know, medical, social gender transition to live as the other sex.

Stephanie Winn: And I noticed that you don't seem to have pursued that at least not very far. Um, you, you go by he and Phil, um, have you had any medicalization or thought about it?

Phil Illy: Um, no, like rationally, like the risk reward, like I have an excellent male skeleton. Like I'm six foot four. I have broad shoulders. Um, there's, it's very limited what medical transition could accomplish for me versus the potential trade-offs. And it seems like I would overall suffer more if I were to pursue that. So trying, trying to just, um, see if I can minimize suffering via understanding how the orientation works and then Not like building up this like big pressure of like unmet desire that like a lot of the people that were pressed for many years experience. Uh, yeah, basically. Um, like if, if I had a sort of skeleton where I were passing was a possibility, I would be probably trying to do that, but it's just, I'm not trying, I'm not interested in pursuing something that's impossible.

Stephanie Winn: Would you mind me asking about your relationship with your own body? Does your sense of this inner woman inside that you feel a desire to connect with, does it cause you to have feelings of discomfort or hatred towards your body?

Phil Illy: I wouldn't say it's gotten to the point of hatred. It's like in my past I've attained of really excellent male physique. Like four years ago, when I first learned about Oligonophilia and hadn't yet read a book, I was working out all the time. My torso looked fairly similar to like a Greek statue. But it like emotionally didn't matter. you know, like I was that fit, but it, it like, it didn't have any emotional significance in the way that I'm pretty sure if I had feminine traits that it would like tug on my heartstrings a lot and it would feel like it mattered. Um, and I just didn't have that. So yeah, it's just like the orientation, it makes the other genders traits matter and, and you apply significance to it. Just like when you're in a conventional relationship, like, what your partner thinks matters, how they behave matters. Like if you break up, you go through a bunch of really crappy emotions. Like it, and people do, will like move countries and, and really do really wild stuff just to have satisfying sexual relationships. So because it like matters to them and they construct their life around it. So this sort of thing just happens with that, like cross gender self inside of you.

Stephanie Winn: It sounds like your relationship with your body is more one of indifference. And you contrast that with the passion of your auto heterosexuality.

Phil Illy: Yeah, like, just in general with, um, There's various approaches that people with autogyneophilia take. Some of them do the indifference route. Some of them dissociate from their body and just try to not even acknowledge that they have a male body. A lot of these people with autoheterosexuality, the females too, there's The gender dysphoria can manifest as depersonalization and derealization and they can feel separate from themselves and the world around them and they're just like kind of empty husks just going through the motions in life but they feel nothing for it and it doesn't matter to them.

Stephanie Winn: Whether you've been a longtime listener of this podcast or you're new, odds are you know I'm deeply concerned about the gender ideology crisis affecting today's youth. What's often not talked about are the medical practitioners who are pushing this ideology on vulnerable people, or the doctors who are taking a stand against them to protect kids. Which is why I was so excited to find a group that's doing just that. It's called Do No Harm. They're fighting for patients and against identity politics. And they have information for everyone. Whether you're in the medical field, a concerned parent, or just a thinker who wants to learn more. Visit donoharmmedicine.org slash sometherapist to learn more. That's donoharmmedicine.org slash sometherapist. So when you describe the relationship that you have Internally, there's something that I'm trying to understand. So as I was preparing for this interview last night, I was talking with my fiance about it just to wrap our minds around the concept and And he was making the observation that when you use a phrase like attraction to being the other sex, it's what you're talking about as a fantasy, because since one never can become fully the opposite sex, it's a fantasy. And we're talking about, well, how all sexuality exists on a spectrum between fantasy and reality. So in the sense that When we're young, we have crushes on rock stars, pop stars, celebrities, actors, right? You know, some people have those into midlife as well. And people who look at porn There's a fantasy element to that, of course. It's not a real experience that you're having with another person. But most people, whether straight or gay, are interested also in having real relationships with real people. And so I gave an example when he and I were talking last night, I was like, you know, when I was a kid, I had a crush on the actor Elijah Wood. And, you know, there's a difference though between having a crush on an actor and saying I'm an Elijah Wood filiac or an Elijah Wood sexual, right? Because there's sort of the archetypal ideal that you project onto a certain figure, whether again, whether that's a celebrity or someone, a porn actor, whatever it might be, or just a fantasy inside your head. But then on the opposite end of the spectrum, there's a real relationship like the one that I have with my fiance. We could go even further and say that there's always an element of fantasy even in real relationships because there's an idealized version of the other person that lives in your head and heart that you're relating to. There are projections, sure. But so with everything that I would call a normal sexual orientation, straight, gay, and bi, there is that spectrum where you can experience sexual or romantic feelings or longings towards a fantasy, a projection, an image. There's also romance novels. There are some women who have as much of an addiction to reading romance novels as there are men with porn addictions, but then there's also the reality, and then there are things in between, like maybe a crush on a co-worker that you never act on, for example. When you talk about auto-heterosexuality, on the other hand, it seems like it's exclusively in the realm of fantasy. The idea of yourself as the opposite sex, since there's no other real person there, and since you can never fully become that, So that's where I'm having a hard time understanding how to you it's a sexual orientation or, you know, how far you feel like a relationship with yourself in the absence of another real person can truly go.

Phil Illy: Uh, well, I consider sexual orientation to be any, like, enduring, stable sexual preference for any particular type of entity. You know, whether that's, like, an adult of a particular gender, or, you know, people of a particular race, or, say, attraction to the dimension of species. Like, sexual orientation is more than just gender.

Stephanie Winn: Sorry, species?

Phil Illy: Yeah, like people that are like zoophilic, for instance, like when I'm talking about sexual orientation, like I'm talking about what it is not like how we should think of it in terms of ethics or morality. I'm talking about strictly the psychology of it, like what it actually is.

Stephanie Winn: Just to be clear, you would call zoophilia sexual orientation rather than a fetish or

Phil Illy: If someone had a stable and enduring preference for an animal that was their greatest sexual interest, then that arguably is their sexual orientation. They're sexually oriented towards that thing. And we can have value judgments about which types of attraction are ethical to act upon. Obviously, it's not ethical to act upon zoophilia, but like I don't think that changes the fact that the inner psychological Reality of it is that it is for that person their sexual orientation Okay, sure we can we can leave it there because I think you were trying to go somewhere with that and I stopped you Or did was that the rest of your thoughts No, that's basically whatever someone is into the most, that's their sexual orientation.

Stephanie Winn: So your relationship with yourself, is it something that you feel like needs any particular kind of nurturing? What does that relationship consist of?

Phil Illy: I mean, I do various things to like symbolically connect with that cross gender side of myself. Um, I probably don't want to like get too much into specifics or like my personal experience. Cause like, I don't think my personal experience matters in terms of what I have to offer in terms of talking about this. Like I've read all the studies on it and I wrote a book on it. And so.

Stephanie Winn: So then maybe you could answer more broadly. You don't have to use yourself as an example but in the experience of a man with a sense that there is an inner woman and you know because earlier you described for for a heterosexual man like feeling torn between a real woman he might want to be in a relationship with, and a sense that there's an inner self that needs to be nurtured. And so you don't have to use yourself as an example, but what is that relationship? Because, you know, I'm trying to help myself understand as well as other people understand the parallels that you're drawing between this inner relationship with oneself and other people's experience of relationships with others that they care about. So is there anything you could say maybe based on others' experiences to kind of shed light on that?

Phil Illy: It's just that principle of sexual orientation that if you're sexually attracted to something, you're probably going to get attached to it. You're going to want to be in union with it and incorporate and design your life in such a way that you can be with that thing that you love and this will make you feel happier. Yeah. It's just when this happens for like auto androphilic females, like they'll like, maybe they'll take testosterone or get mastectomies, change their pronouns or their name, you know, all the various transition things. And, and then they feel more like present and alive and like their life is more meaningful after doing that. Um, it's yeah, I guess I, I just see it as sexual orientation has a lot of dimensions to it. And so if you have this love for a part of yourself, you just, you build a connection with it, like you would for an external person, but because it's a closed loop, since it's just like between you and yourself, I recognize that it is different. Obviously. Um, and it is a typical. But in terms of like how it feels for the person experiencing it, it's, there's a lot of similarities with just the conventional sexual orientations.

Stephanie Winn: So what would you say to the criticism that this is an expression of narcissism? We do know that there's a high overlap between narcissistic personality disorder and autogynephilia. And when we think about the origins of the word narcissism, the story of Narcissus is the story of a man who fell in love with his own reflection. Do you have any thoughts on the linkage between autogynephilia and narcissism?

Phil Illy: It's not narcissism. Like, sometimes if it can be taken too far in terms of, you know, inhibiting people's ability to connect with other humans, then I can see how that can be seen as narcissistic. But I'm pretty confident it's a different psychological process from what people think of when they usually talk about narcissism. All I do also recognize that there's probably is a higher prevalence of cluster B mental disorders in this population. So I would expect there'd be more, a little more narcissists than average, but it's, I don't think it's the norm.

Stephanie Winn: Is it all right now if I move on to some questions from listeners?

Phil Illy: Sure.

Stephanie Winn: All right. So these next, this whole, I have actually a whole list of questions from a listener who has someone with autogynephilia in their family. So, and this person has read some of your stuff. So number one, Phil has written in the forbidden knowledge of AGP that he believes gender dysphoria is heritable, citing neurological studies. I am not familiar with those studies to question whether they are valid, but would want to understand what he believes are the triggers or causes of AGP. For late-onset gender dysphoria, does it seem that drugs and or porn are always involved?

Phil Illy: No, I don't, I don't think drugs or porn are like necessary for it to arise. I think it's an inborn predisposition that will manifest at a certain point in a person's life. And there can be environmental cues, various stimuli that bring that out, you know, whether it's like being around women and finding them beautiful and feel like wanting to be one or be like them, or it could be porn. Um, you know, like say like sissy hypno or whatever, but it's, it's, it's not these, these outward visible things that you see, they're not causing the AGP. The AGP is a preexisting predisposition and its existence within is being revealed by these external behaviors.

Stephanie Winn: So where this listener mentions that you have cited neurological studies, you wouldn't happen to recall any of those studies or where a person could look for that information?

Phil Illy: I don't think I cited neurological studies on AGP. I don't know that there have been neuro… You're talking about like brain scan stuff?

Stephanie Winn: So I'll just read this part again. Phil has written in the Forbidden Knowledge of AGP that he believes gender dysphoria is heritable, citing neurological studies.

Phil Illy: It is heritable, but the heritability studies, the measures they use, where you can't differentiate between the two types of gender variants. Some studies will measure recalled childhood gender nonconformity, others will measure gender dysphoria. It really depends on the study, and they find wildly different estimates of heritability, understandably. Um, so it's, it's not clear exactly how heritable AGP is because it's not being separated out from homosexual gender variants. So we don't, there's no way of knowing because like, I think homosexuality will have a different degree of heritability. than auto-heterosexuality. And it might even be different between the sexes too. I think scientists would have to sort of like calculate the heritability for the two different types, using proper measures that get at those specific types rather than just broad measures of childhood gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria.

Stephanie Winn: You mentioned sissy hypnoporn. Can you explain what that is for people who aren't familiar?

Phil Illy: It's kind of cringe, but it's, um, it's, it's like, um, there'll be like some narrator and in the video that like tells you to do things that are feminizing either like dressing in particular clothes or like like say like being sexually subservient to men or whatever and there'll be really bad EDM music playing at the same time and then it like rapidly flashes between various clips from other pornographic videos so it's it's just like it's a lot of stimuli like really over the top and for for some autogynophilic men it's it's like It's just, it's like their favorite thing. Um, like I said, I, I, I personally don't really like it. It's kind of off-putting in a lot of ways, but, um, yeah, there's, there's a decent chunk of autogynophiles that like it. And, you know, for instance, like Andrea Long Chu, like she once wrote that like, see porn did make me trans. So I'm pretty sure there's a lot of male to female transsexuals that that was like their way of tapping into that side of themselves. You know, it's, it's like pretty accessible. Whereas like if they were to just be more self-directed with it, instead of just like passively consuming a media, but like more actively choosing what they wanted to do, it, it probably ended up looking a lot more classy than what Sissy Hypno is.

Stephanie Winn: If you're looking for a simple way to take better care of yourself, check out Organifi. I start every day with a glass of their original green juice powder mixed with water. It contains moringa, ashwagandha, chlorella, spirulina, matcha, wheatgrass, beets, turmeric, mint, lemon, and coconut water. 100% organic with no added sugar. It's the best tasting superfood supplement I've ever tried. It's super easy to make, and it makes me feel good. Organifi also makes several other delicious and nutritious superfood blends, such as red juice, immune support, protein powders, a golden milk mix, and even superfood hot cocoa. Check out the collection at organifi.com slash sumtherapist. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash sumtherapist. And use code sumtherapist to take 20% off your order. I notice the way that it's coming across is like, It seems like your frame of reference is that this is something that is simply true about a person and there are things that can emphasize it, but I guess I just have such a different frame of reference thinking about these issues because I see a lot of overlap between the various presentations of gender dysphoria and obsessive compulsive disorder. And when I think about the brain and its capacity for neuroplasticity and the impact of thoughts, feelings, and actions on each other, it seems To me, there are people who might have had the capacity to have relationships with other people and not suffer from gender dysphoria, whether those people are straight or gay. But that exposure to things like sissy hypnoporn, I guess, well, I'll tell you my thoughts on sissy hypnoporn is I'm of the opinion that It seems to make sense that one could easily get there through porn addiction in the sense that when you have an addiction, it takes larger and larger quantities of, let's say, a certain substance to get that same high, right? So a person builds up a tolerance. And when it comes to the kind of behavioral addiction to the type of stimulation provided by something by porn, it's not only The, let's say, amount of time spent watching that increases. It's also the quality in that it has to evoke stronger and stronger emotions in order to have an impact. So I think about how a person who starts off with, let's say, more vanilla porn, but enters an addictive cycle where they're using porn, let's say, to soothe their anxieties or it becomes kind of the automatic kind of go-to response in relation to any of life's ups or downs, which is generally how addiction works. Whatever your substance of choices or behavior of choices, it's like you always go to that substance or behavior to soothe. whatever emotions are coming up. So then that kind of becomes your only coping mechanism. So then there's this addictive cycle. And then in order to get that high, a person needs more and more extreme content if the drug of choice is porn. And so porn that induces emotions like fear, anger, disgust, shame, and things like that. And it would seem to me like there are people who might have had the capacity for a healthy relational life, but who end up kind of through that process, end up going down the sissy hypnoporn rabbit hole, and then building their whole lives around this trans identity, as well as around making other people uncomfortable. Because it's my understanding that some of the sort of homework assignments that they're given in sipsy hypnoporn Basically, has men carry out their fetish in public and do these degrading acts that make other people uncomfortable in public places? That's sort of my understanding of how that evolves. I guess I don't share your frame of reference. Obviously, I haven't done the same research you have, but I'm just not… not fully convinced that I agree that this is something inborn that is just kind of, you know, maybe brought to life a little bit or a person is given a language for it by things like porn.

Phil Illy: Well, this autogynophilia has been described in the sexology literature for over a century at this point. And culture has changed a lot in that time. So I'm pretty confident it's an inborn predisposition. And depending on the culture that every person finds themselves in, it'll find expression in different ways. It's, I think it could be tempting to think that, you know, if only like that autogynephile just didn't look at sissy hypno, they could have had a regular fulfilling sexual relationship. It's like a really tempting story. Also like therapists like to think that they can actually fix whatever it is their clients have. And sometimes like if it's sexual orientation that's causing the problem, it is we don't yet have the technological means of changing sexual orientation. So I just think there's like someone that goes down the sissy rabbit hole and ends up transitioning. They were probably going to have trouble forming the sort of like conventional relationship that you would think of like in the first place.

Stephanie Winn: You don't think that there are potentially in some of these cases, maybe some factors in that person's background, maybe their family, family of origin, like abandonment by their mother or an abusive father or, you know, other kind of factors that could have led to this being developed as a coping mechanism.

Phil Illy: No, that's not where sexual orientation comes from. It doesn't come from how your mom or dad treated you. It's like an inborn predisposition for the most part.

Stephanie Winn: All right, I'm going to move on to the next question from this listener. So number two, typical medical treatment. for gender dysphoria involves hormones and surgery. However, Phil has stated he is no longer on hormone therapy and he has not had the typical trans female surgery. Does he consider himself a trans female or an AGP male? Curious if most accepting AGPs proceed to surgery.

Phil Illy: Well, I don't know about the average of the self-accepting AGP community. We're still pretty small. We're growing, but we're small. I also haven't had any surgeries or done hormones, so whoever has these questions, I'm kind of doubting the reading comprehension.

Stephanie Winn: So you never took hormones. This reader was mistaken.

Phil Illy: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because like I said, the games would be so marginal. It just, it just wouldn't make sense to me. Um, Yeah, I mean, among the self-aware AGP community, there's a whole, they run the whole spectrum of gender transition. Like from full-on transsexuals that have done all the surgeries and bound hormones a long time to people that have the orientation really strongly but like try to repress it really hard. It's, it runs the whole gamut. There's no like typical case. Like it's most common for someone to, just have like a moderate degree of gender issues and like flirt with the idea of transition but maybe not actually do it.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, next question, same listener. Can he comment on the general trend to ignore AGP as it conflicts with the mainstream political narrative about trans females? Also, it seems trans females, by that he means trans identified males or trans women, are vehemently against the AGP label. How do you stay connected to someone who has AGP and wants to be affirmed as a female when it is clear they really are AGP? Has he had much success helping others to realize this may be their situation? If so, how?

Phil Illy: That was like three or four questions. Can we start with one of them?

Stephanie Winn: Let me sort of summarize. So this person is basically saying that part of what makes you unique is that you're talking openly about autogynephilia, whereas, as you've pointed out, there are men with autogynephilia who identify as trans women and are against using this term. So they oppose you, right?

Phil Illy: Yeah, like the transsexuals, they I see it every day on Reddit. There'll be people coming into the trans subreddits saying, I'm having these feelings, like, I can't figure out if I'm trans, what does it mean? And then invariably, most of the comments are coming from transsexuals saying, this means that you're probably trans. And here's some information about trans stuff. They usually link the gender dysphoria Bible. it they kind of the transsexuals have an incentive to advocate for gender transition because they chose it for themselves they want to think it's the right choice the transvestites who don't want to transition they have an incentive to advocate against transition because it's what they decided for themselves and so there's always been this tension in the trans community between those who transition and those who do not, and they've often been socially separate groups because it's hard for them to co-mingle with people that have made the opposite decision. And so, like, in the trans community, they reject the concept of AGP because it's, by and large, autogynephilic transsexuals are, like, at the forefront of the transgender movement. They're the ones making all the headway. And they've been responsible for the bulk of the improvements to society for people that are transgender. And so they have a lot of sway and they really don't like the autogynephilia theory. In fact, of all the different types of trans identity I learned about in the course of writing this, writing my book, I have, I've not found any, like whether someone's like transabled or trans species or what, or trans race, none of them like the theory that says those identity, that identity comes from autosexuality. None of them. So it's like, it's not even specific just to autogynephilia. It's broader with the autosexuality and how it alters your identity, you get attached to seeing yourself that way. And the autosexual theory conflicts with that attachment. And it feels very emotionally uncomfortable for a lot of them. And so, yeah, it's really frowned upon in the trans community to treat autogynophilia as a real thing, because they're trying to protect that part of themselves that they love.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you for that. So just to let listeners know what we've been doing, I have a Locals community that you can join at somekindoftherapist.locals.com where I let people know who my upcoming guests are and that is the place to go if you want an opportunity to pose a question for a future guest. But that being said, we scheduled this meeting at the last minute. I had another guest drop out and I was so grateful that you were able to Take that slot. And so since I pulled it together at the last minute I did throw the door open wide to Twitter also known as X It'll always be Twitter to me So there are also a bunch of questions there and since we have time if it's alright with you I'd like to include some of those questions as well Yeah, sure Okay.

Phil Illy: Yeah, maybe the one from Sammy. I think I saw oh

Stephanie Winn: Sam, you know, Sammy's question is actually the most similar to what you just answered.

Phil Illy: Oh, okay, cool. I just wanted to, I just respect him. I want to be able to answer his question.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, so I'll just recap that and use you had anything more to add. So Sammy, which is at neuro sgs. says please ask Phil what he thinks is the overall view within the transgender community on the concept of AGP. I ask this because we hear many activists deny that AGP exists but yet there seem to be many self-proclaimed AGPs on various online forums such as Phil himself. What does he think causes such a divide? Is there anything else you want to add to that Phil?

Phil Illy: Right. Yeah, I guess I think I pretty adequately explained the psychology behind why they oppose it. And I guess I'll specifically say the way they portray autogynophilia is they treat it as like this invention made by transphobic scientists with the goal of hurting trans people. That's sort of how they describe it even though like he used like Blanchard used like 15 years of his career like devoted to figuring out the the transsexual typology and characterizing autogynephilia so I don't to dedicate that much of your life towards something I don't think it means you hate the people so I I don't think he's transphobic but yeah the trans like the transsexuals they really don't like the theory they describe it as transphobic and basically that it's it's bad to believe that and it's just they treat it as pseudoscience too they're following the lead of julius serrano who has called it pseudoscience Um, but she's not a reliable narrator when it comes to talking about what the research actually says. So like, I would recommend that anyone actually just read Blanchard's studies firsthand. If you've heard things from transsexuals about what they say, do not believe what they're telling you. Just read the studies for yourself and make up your own decision.

Stephanie Winn: Okay. Um, we have a question here from Vera, the producer of our documentary, No Way Back. And so, of course, I want to give her priority. She asks, is there any academic medical study on the overlap between autism and autogynephilia? I know there is a big overlap between cluster B and AGP, but has anyone researched specifically autism and AGP? How about OCD and AGP?

Phil Illy: There's a chapter in my book dedicated just to autism, and it seems that autism seems to be uncommonly prevalent among people with autosexual orientations, and I think this makes intuitive sense. If you have this sexual orientation that's turned inward, you know, that's what the auto means for self. And then you look at the word autism, which again starts with the same root, representing a turn inward in your cognition. It makes sense that if someone has autism and has had various aspects of their psychology turn inward, that they will have a higher proportion of people who have that happen with their sexual orientation as well. It does seem to be more especially prevalent among the trans people who are non-homosexual with respect to the birth sex, which means heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual. And yeah, particularly among like the late onset cohort, so to speak. There's a huge overlap. Trans people are, you know, five to six times as likely to be autistic and autistic people are like five or six times as likely to be trans. Like that overlap goes both ways.

Stephanie Winn: It makes a lot of sense. A previous guest, Cynthia, Cynthia Brehaney and her husband, Zach Elliott, appeared on an episode called A Gender Critical Meet Cute, where we talk about how they met. So she asked, what do you think of men and women's spaces? Now, you already responded to that saying that you focus more on science than policy. So did you want to skip that one or do you have anything to say?

Phil Illy: Yeah, I just don't think like if I weigh in on this, the transsexuals are going to be like that you're talking about something that doesn't impact you. And like, you know, to some extent, they're right. But like, I think arguing over the bathrooms is People getting paranoid about bathrooms is not good, just overall. I think it also harms, like, there's a lot of females that have taken testosterone in the last 10 years, and now, like, if people are paranoid about bathrooms, they're probably more likely to encounter, like, hostile resistance when, like, by all rights, they should have access to female bathrooms. So I just wish people would stop focusing on the bathroom thing.

Stephanie Winn: Well, you say that trans people would say that you're commenting on something that doesn't impact you. But I will speak on behalf of women and say to you as a man that, you know, you don't have the experience of being a woman and being the sex that is smaller and physically weaker and much more frequently physically and sexually attacked by the other sex. So I will push back on it from that angle.

Phil Illy: Well, yeah, I don't, I just, I don't disagree with that at all. Like, and I understand why women worry about males as threats. Like just, I've seen the crime statistics. I'm, I mean, I am a male, like I said, I'm have a very male physique. Women are not, they're just not threats to me. They're not, they're not. And I know it's, it's not the same the other way around. Yeah. Thank you for being honest about that. I don't take a position too strongly on this either way, besides I think it would be better overall if people chilled out about, maybe focus on other aspects of the trans movement instead of the bathroom discussion in particular.

Stephanie Winn: But you understand why it matters to people.

Phil Illy: Yeah, yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Leonard Clinton Williams III has a whole bunch of questions for you.

Phil Illy: That is a name.

Stephanie Winn: I'm just going to read them all and you can pick and choose. What does he say the large number of people who deny that autogynephilia exists? I think you've already talked about that.

Phil Illy: They're lying or they're wrong.

Stephanie Winn: In his estimation, what percentage of contemporary quote unquote trans women are autogynephilics?

Phil Illy: 80% plus, and then I think most female-to-male transsexuals are autoandrophilic. And I want to be clear that the leading sexologists, like, they'll agree with me about the male-to-females being 80% or three quarters or higher of being autogynephilic, but we disagree on the makeup of the female-to-male trans population.

Stephanie Winn: So what, how did you arrive at this position?

Phil Illy: So sexologists agree that there's a homosexual type of trans in each sex. There are masculine lesbians and there are feminine gay men that choose to transition and assimilate into society as socially heterosexual people. This has been known for generations. It's not really contested. So therefore, if someone has a non-homosexual orientation and transitions, a process of elimination, they're not the homosexual type. They're another type, right? And Blanchard figured out that in males, this meant that they were autogynephilic. And But in females, there weren't many females at that time in the gender clinic that reported attraction to men, so he didn't look into it too much just because it was a much different population he was seeing. And there's also sexologists such as like Michael Bailey, for instance, who doubt that females have paraphilias or that if they do, that it's necessarily the same thing as what males experience. So yeah, basically that males and females, the way their sexual orientation manifests tends to be quite different and the way that scientists measure it. it can be measured quite easily in males and it's hard to measure in females so it's harder to know in terms of with scientific objective measures whether they have a sexual orientation and if so what it is. And there's reasonable concern that because of the online stuff and the gender ideology in schools and all that that there's females that are transitioning or developing the rapid onset gender dysphoria and who would not otherwise transition. I think a lot of them are just autoandrophiles and people don't know how to see autoandrophilia yet because most people don't even know it exists and most people don't even understand autogynophilia. There's been very little research on auto-angiophilia, and I thought this was a problem, so I dedicated two chapters in my book to it, and I'm pretty convinced it's a common source of female-to-male transgenderism, because Most female to male trans people right now, they have non-homosexual orientation, so they're not the homosexual type, which means they're another type, which would be either auto-angrophilic or rapid onset gender dysphoria. Those seem to be the other plausible types. When I look at the way that those female and male transsexuals think, either through studies or just seeing them talk on Reddit to each other, there's a lot of overlap in the subjective qualitative experience. There's various things like gender envy. that, you know, autogynophiles experience, autoangrophiles do too. Like there's a lot of female and male transsexuals that talk about gender envy. Like if you search and say like r slash FTM, if you search for the word envy, you'll find tons of accounts of people talking about gender envy. If you search the word phantom, you'll find people reporting phantom anatomy, like experience phantom dick. Um, and there's one study on, phantom anatomy and transsexuals that found of the female to male spectrum people, 40% of them reported having ever experienced a phantom penis, which is a pretty sizable proportion. And that's actually a higher proportion than the males reported. And there's also other things like, let's see, there's gender euphoria. That's a particularly, like when, when you hear about gender euphoria and you hear, you hear trans women describe gender euphoria, like a lot of people assume, Oh, that, that's autogynephilic trans woman. And they're describing like sexual arousal or something, but. Gender euphoria is, even though it can be accompanied by arousal, it can also exist independently of it as well. Just like when you're in a relationship with someone, you get the warm, fuzzy feelings by spending time with them. And it's not necessarily arousal, it's like this deeper emotional satisfaction. And this can happen with auto-heterosexuality as well. And so, yeah, there's this other qualitative overlap that a lot of female to male transsexuals report experiencing gender euphoria. And, you know, say like even in like Elliot Page's autobiography that came out in the last year, he reported experiencing gender euphoria and being surprised by it. Like during the COVID pandemic, he saw himself in a window, saw his reflection and saw a boy looking back at him. And then there was like this intense rush that went through his body and it really caught him by surprise. You know, he didn't talk about it as a sexual thing. It was just this like physical, like excitement. And it caught, like, since it caught him by surprise, like it doesn't sound like a, a socially contagious thing. Like he picked up that idea from other people. He's like, what the hell is this basically? And I see that sort of thing. So yeah, just to recap the sort of subjective experiences I'm describing, there's this phantom anatomy. There's, there's like gender envy, gender euphoria. those seem to be shared in common between both sexes of transsexuals. Like a lot of them report these things. And since most male to female transsexuals are autogynephilic, and if both sexes are reporting the same type of kind of strange subjective experiences, it makes me think that the simplest explanation for that is that the females are experiencing autoandrophilia and It just hasn't really been looked into much yet. I know there's a couple other signifiers I'm forgetting, but yeah, there's a lot of overlap with how it subjectively feels, the ways of thinking between the two sexes of transsexuals. And so I think the most parsimonious explanation for what's happening is that females can have autoandrophilia, and it can give them gender dysphoria, and they can decide that transitioning will make them happier and feel more authentic than they would other then they'd be able to experience otherwise, and so they're choosing to transition.

Stephanie Winn: So with regard to this hypothesis, You earlier said that you believe that auto-heterosexuality is an innate sexual orientation. And yet, with this cohort of young women, we've seen a 4,000% increase or so over the last decade. There's a- Yeah, it's suspiciously high. So how do you square your sense that this is an innate sexual orientation that some people just have with the fact that there are so many more of these young females today than there ever were before?

Phil Illy: I do leave open the possibility that some of them are rapid onset gender dysphoria and neither of the two sexual orientation based types. But I'm pretty sure that a lot of them have autoangrophilia and you know, it might not be, it might just be an aspect of their sexuality that it won't It might, like, it might not be their, like, favorite things, actually. So they'll be able to substitute other more normal things, for instance, like conventional relationships and find enough satisfaction that way. Um, I think time will tell whether all these transitioners are happy about it. I'm, I'm understandably worried about the rapid rise in females transitioning. Um, I, but I, I'm pretty confident that they are a decent chunk of them are autoangrophilic and they just don't know what they're experiencing. Cause people don't really know about this.

Stephanie Winn: Part of me wants to continue on this topic. Um, cause I have more to say on it, but I also want to move on to some other questions. I guess I'll just say briefly that. I spent a lot of time talking to detransitioners and hearing their stories. And there are female detransitioners who have, you know, while they were trans identified, probably said some things really similar to the things that you are saying people say, gender euphoria, phantom body parts, things like this. And I guess my, my psychological lens on things is, is that I think about the social contagion aspect. And I think about how as humans, we're always trying to make meaning of our experience. You know, for example, when I talk to parents of ROGD youth, one of the topics we sometimes discuss is how it's fun to learn systems of personality organization. You know, that's the appeal of whether it be the Myers-Briggs or astrology or the Enneagram or personality quizzes. I remember when I was a teenage girl, we had magazines where there were personality quizzes. And now there's things like that on the internet. And so, and I've witnessed when I've been a therapist to teen girls that As these parts of their brain that are picking up on social and emotional information are so rapidly transforming that there there can be a huge draw depending on the temperament of the individual of course I'm a psychologically minded person so I was more drawn than Maybe some other peers but they're in general can be a huge draw especially towards girls for systems of understanding personality and relationships and emotions and things like that. And when this idea comes in through the culture through your peers and media that says. that gender is the lens through which you can think about this and it gives people a vocabulary and phrases and terms and, you know, I think that that shapes people's thought process. But I don't necessarily know that I would agree that there's something intrinsic. I think there's something intrinsic in them that they're trying to get at through that language and those tools. But I don't know that This idea of autoandrophilia, as you describe it, can really be separated from some of the other reasons that I've seen teen girls adopt a trans identity, you know, escaping the pressures of what they associate with femininity. Just like earlier, I was sharing, like, Chris Beck was escaping the pressures of masculinity as he experienced it in the military.

Phil Illy: Right. And that's his story of what he was doing. Right. But, like, people can be wrong about themselves. You know, like, they'll have this narrative like, oh, I was just trying to do this for this reason. But like, our brains are just really good at rationalizing whatever it is and turning it into a story.

Stephanie Winn: See, I think it's interesting that you're saying that to me now, because that's how, because that's sort of the same type of skepticism that I feel towards some of the things that you're saying, right? Like, we can, we come up with these sort of tentative working models for understanding ourselves and our experiences and what they mean. And, and, and that's Chris Beck's story filtered through me as well, right? Like, I definitely encourage anyone to listen to his story directly for themselves. But, you know, my experience of talking to these girls who have de-transitioned and talking to parents of girls with ROGD. is that, um, you know, and it's very relatable for me as a female, like, seeing the pressures that these girls are subjected to with what it means to be a woman in the culture and the desire to escape that. And I've seen it both ways with both sexes, where when I listen to what ROGD parents have to say about how their kids seem to be thinking about these issues, it sometimes seems like, for girls, it's not so much about being a man as it is about not being a woman, as it is about kind of escaping the pressure of being that, almost as if man is the default or the greener grass. And I see the same thing for parents of boys where it's not so much about being a woman in some cases as much as it's about not having to be a man, not having to succumb to the pressure of what that role means to them.

Phil Illy: Yeah and when boys say that like a decent chunk of them are autogynephilic and like it might not seem like immediately apparent why but like an autogynephilic male like I've seen plenty of them say that like I know I can't be a woman, but I just don't want to be a man, you know? And it's because the orientation can create sort of like this internal repulsion to your natal sex characteristics. And so it might not be as obvious that they're, they're seeking to be the other gender. It might just look like they're trying to get away from their natal gender, but I think it can ultimately be driven by the auto sexuality itself.

Stephanie Winn: So I guess my next question for you here, and I'll get to a few more questions from listeners if we have time, but is what do you think is right for these people? And do you think that it's possible, whether through therapy or natural maturation or whatever it might be, do you think that people who feel this way can can heal, can integrate into society, can have normal relationships. Is it your opinion that medical transition is right for some people? And if so, what would be the defining threshold? What criteria should someone meet for that to be the right choice for them?

Phil Illy: I think that adults should be able to do that sort of stuff just from a freedom perspective. I do worry though that they don't that they're not understanding why they want it in the first place. Like if, if you transition because you get taught in school that the gender ideology stuff and you transition on false pretenses, I think that's really bad. And that's some suffering that could have been avoided. Um, I, I would like it to be taught in sex ed that there are two known types of transgenderism. and or rather like there's these two types of gender-based sexual orientation that can lead to gender issues and it doesn't mean you have to transition. It also doesn't mean you don't have to transition. It doesn't just like being gay doesn't mean you have to be a particular way like being autogynephilic or autoandrophilic doesn't mean you have to be a particular way. That's something you have to decide for yourself based on your own feelings and it's highly individual. There's a lot of factors that go into the transition decision. And so I do think transition, medical transition is right for some people. Um, and I'd feel more confident that it was more right for them if the sexological theory of where the desire to transition comes from, if more of them understood it so that they could actually be informed about why they want it.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you for that. I'm just going to skim the remaining questions. So according to what you've seen in your life, Phil, how hard is it or would it be for an autogynephile to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis under the current criteria and the current process?

Phil Illy: I would imagine some of it comes down to where you live. Where I live in Portland is very easy. I have a transsexualism diagnosis. Um, and the DSM actually makes it pretty easy to, you can get it, you can get the transvestic disorder diagnosis and then turn that into a gender dysphoria diagnosis, um, in, in later doctor visits. Cause the D the DSM says that one often progresses into the next, um, So it's, yeah, I would say like in a, it really depends on the particular clinic. Like in Portland, it's probably super, super easy to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis. And when I remember when I first mentioned to a doctor that I was autogynophilic, Actually, none of the clinicians I talked to had heard of this until I had mentioned it. So the clinicians literally do not understand the most common cause of gender dysphoria. So they're flying blind, as are the patients.

Stephanie Winn: It seems like part of that is our responsibility as a field, and part of it is due to some of those social dynamics that you mentioned earlier about the trans community wanting to silence this information.

Phil Illy: Yeah, exactly. There's the cover up from that end. And there's also people get uncomfortable talking about matters of sexuality. So it takes a certain personality type to be comfortable talking about this sort of thing.

Stephanie Winn: Therapists, on the other hand, I feel like it is part of the job description to that you have to be willing to get comfortable being uncomfortable, you know, whether that's talking about sex or trauma or, you know, taboo stuff. So I do hold my colleagues responsible for any willful ignorance on taboo subjects that do need to be understood.

Phil Illy: Yeah. And they're not being taught in school though. Like, it's not like they went out of their way to not learn it. It's, it's been expunged from the curriculum. And like, I remember once I had a therapist who had just graduated from, you know, PSU, Portland State University, which means she went through intense indoctrination into critical theory and she had never heard of autogynephilia. And then the next second appointment, she didn't like the idea because trans women said it was invalidating. And I'm just like, So what? I'm your client. Like who cares what they think? Um, so there's a lot of ideologically driven therapists that think they're helping trans people by just affirming gender, no matter what.

Stephanie Winn: I wish I could say that I was surprised, but I'm not at this point. The amount of stories I've heard of, you know, whether it's from people I talk to in situations like this or from patients who've seen past therapists, where it really seemed like the therapist was actually prioritizing being politically correct over understanding their own patient. Basically telling the patient I can't listen to you and your experience Because this is what I was taught good people believe and your experience doesn't fit with that That's that's very good summary of the dynamic that's happening.

Phil Illy: Yeah, and it's it's really bad for people that suffer from gender dysphoria or gender confusion or whatever you want to call it because The therapist doesn't know jack shit a lot of the times and actually the little they think they know is worse than knowing nothing and Like I said, the doctors don't know they're prescribing hormones and they don't know why the patients want them. They just know that they do. And there's just ignorance all around.

Stephanie Winn: I'm going to just check one more time to see if any last questions came in through locals. I'm going to skip the rest of the questions from Twitter, but it seems that there is a new question for you that just popped up in local, so I'm glad I looked. All right, so 40-something asks, While they say, appreciate Phil Illey's candor and work on this topic, does Phil identify as a member of the LGBTQ plus community? What does he think the benefits of doing so are? In what ways does including AGPs in the community harm or detract from that movement?

Phil Illy: They already are part of the community, whether or not anyone likes it. Same with the auto androphiles. I explain this in my book that basically, you know, there's the LGB part of it, which is based on same-sex attraction. And then there's the T, which is, there's two types. There's same-sex attracted, the homosexual ones, and then there's the auto-heterosexual ones. And then the Q, if you just restrict it to gender and not all the other things the Q can be, that's still just either same-sex attraction or like a gender minority, like someone that's attracted to being the other sex. and so basically the whole alphabet soup is really there's just two sexual predispositions here there's same-sex attraction or cross-gender attraction which is the thing i'm talking about and it's It doesn't matter how many letters you add to this acronym, there's still, for the most part, just these two types of gender-based sexuality that comprise all those letters. For instance, a lot of bisexuality comes from meta-attraction, from auto-heterosexuality, where you can be attracted to playing a cross-gender sex role with someone of the same sex. like an autogynephile can want to be a woman with a man, an autoangephile can want to be a man with a woman, and this can motivate bisexual behavior, bisexual relationships, and so the B in LGB, it cannot be cleanly cleaved off as like this is just same-sex attraction because a lot of the people that in the B are attracted to being the other sex. So while I understand some of the frustration from people, particularly the L and the G part of the acronym, um, you, you can't cleanly separate these two groups because that you just can't, like, there's some people that are attracted to being the other sex that have same sex behavior as a result of that. And, Um… that's, you know, there's clearly been frustration politically in the last 10 years as what was before seen as like a same-sex attraction movement, you know, as it's tried to incorporate this other sexual minority that doesn't want to be named, but it's like the auto-heterosexuals, the autosexuals, they've been being incorporated into this movement and there's a clashing between the two groups because sometimes the things they want clash with each other. and this this is inevitable and i would like it to get more reasonable so i think it would be good if the autosexuals would be more aware of their motivations and realize when they're overstepping their bounds you know like I say in my book that sexual preferences aren't transphobic and that, say, if a gay man is not interested in trans men, then that's fine. That's his sexual orientation. He gets to choose who he wants to be with. That's how consent works. You can't force people to be into other people if they're not. And likewise, if lesbians don't want to be with autogynephilic males, that is their right to put up that boundary. And so if we want to honor the spirit of consent, we have to you know, basically say that like sexual preferences are not transphobic and we have to let people be able to say no to, to various sexual partners that they're not interested in without worrying that they're going to be like socially canceled or like feeling coerced or like they're going to be categorized as a bad person for it when it's, they didn't choose to be same sex attracted. They just are. And so it'd be wrong. to forcibly mix the two groups when sometimes they will want to be separate.

Stephanie Winn: You can now watch No Way Back, the reality of gender-affirming care. This medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation, is the definitive film on detransition. Stream the film now or purchase a DVD. Visit nowaybackfilm.com and use promo code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on Twitter at 2022affirmation or on Instagram at Affirmation Generation. I have another question for you that just came to mind. This is my own question. I'm curious about your relationships with both men and women, not of a sexual nature. Earlier we talked about romantic relationships and how auto-heterosexuality can impact that, but I'll just let you in on my thought process and then you can respond however you like, but I'm thinking about covetousness, not anything I've heard you say, but from the little bit that I've gone down the rabbit hole of trying to understand AGP, it seems like an element of it is coveting things that women have. Yeah, yeah, envy. So I'm curious, and again, you can, you can answer this on a personal level, but I know earlier you pushed back and wanted to answer more generally. So you can also talk about other people's experiences if you prefer that. But do you find that covetousness or envy of women, whether of you know, intrinsic aspects of our femaleness physically or psychologically or, you know, the fact that we are seen as female or whatever it is. Has that impacted your ability to just relate with women in a friendly way or in a professional way in various contexts? And also, how do you find that you get along with men? Do you get along with men or women better or differently?

Phil Illy: Um, I get along with them differently, but, um, and I haven't had envy or covetousness interfere with my relations with women. And I think my relations with women are better than they would have been if I was a conventional heterosexual male. Um, like I. I can remember when I was younger, I used to be really into video games and stuff, very male-dominated environments. And I made a cautious choice to quit that nerd shit so that I could have female friends. And unsurprisingly, it worked pretty quickly. And I could tell in hindsight that that decision was probably motivated by autogynephilia. It's not like I'm getting aroused from it or anything like that, but just the deeper way that it shapes how you think about gender and what matters. Um, it's, I have, I think I have more female friends and better female friends than I would have otherwise. And so I don't think it is inner Ben negative in that respect. And as for like the broader like auto heterosexual population, I think If, if they can like get past the feelings of envy or work through it and stop feeling that and actually just connect with the very real people in front of them, that they'll have no trouble connecting with those people. Cause like personally, like I'm happy that women exist. Like I don't let the fact that I wish I was one, but cannot be one. detract from me just being thankful that they exist at all. And I, I think it would be cool if more people thought that way, but I mean, people tend to think whatever way they think is the best way of thinking. So I'm probably biased in that respect, but yeah, I think if my kind, if they can get past the feelings of envy and understand importantly, if you understand where that feeling comes from, then it can be like, oh, that's… I don't have to listen to that signal from my brain when that happens. I can recognize that it's kind of a faulty signal and not let it interfere with actually connecting with the real people in front of me.

Stephanie Winn: I really like that. I don't know that anyone who needs to hear that will listen to my podcast, but if even one person who needs that message hears it, I'm really glad that you shared it. And, you know, it makes me think of how can we heal this divide in society that has been caused over trans issues? Because I really do think that it is very divisive. It splits people into good and bad, pits family members against each other. I think that something you just said is like an element of that, right? Which is, and I'm struggling to find my words, so bear with me here, but I guess what's coming to mind is a man I knew and had a brief relationship with in my early 20s who had a feminine side, I'll just put it that way. He didn't cross-dress. He didn't identify as anything. I'm just thinking he was very introverted. He was a cat person and a tea drinker and liked to have long, deep conversations and make music. He was artistic. He was just that kind of guy. and how that sort of thing is not threatening to women, right? And it's not at odds with anyone's needs or anyone's rights.

Phil Illy: It's a tasteful expression of it.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, I don't know if, if he would at all relate to the concept of autogynephilia whatsoever, or if he's just a man with a well-integrated feminine side. And, you know, I consider myself a woman with a pretty well-integrated masculine side. Like I can be fierce when I need to. If you consider that a masculine trait, I can be a little bit more disagreeable than your average woman. You know, whatever someone like that needs to do in the privacy of their own home to get in touch with their innermost self, to feel like they're in touch with their soul or in touch with their sense of meaning, purpose, beauty, whatever it is, you know, nurturing that is not something that I would ever judge anyone for. You know, I like to nurture all kinds of weird parts of me in the privacy of my own home. You know, I like to dance and play in various ways. And I think that you just said something really key to our ability to integrate and understand, right, that if there is this feminine side, however you conceive it, that some men have. And, you know, we talked about the ways that that can be defined superficially. But also that, you know, for you, it's something deeper than that. That if, if men who are longing to get in touch with that part of themselves can get over their envy toward women, or anything that might get in the way of having just positive relationships with people, that that's a big step, really. And that it's the envy, it's the covetousness, it's the, it's not fair that you get to be female because I don't get to be female. Like that attitude that we've seen in the trans community is part of what's so divisive. But I think, yeah, I just, I love that shift.

Phil Illy: Yeah. Envy is a poisonous emotion. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, you can honor yourself and you don't need me to do anything. I'm sitting here with you and we have many differences, right? But I don't hear you telling me that your ability to survive and thrive and feel like you have a meaningful and authentic life depends on me sacrificing any of my own authenticity, like there's appropriate boundaries here. So we get to just coexist as different people and we don't have to like or agree with everything about ourselves. And I think that's really, that's all that a lot of us want, really. And we kind of live in this like culture right now of forced compliance where, and I mean, this might not sound terribly related, but I've heard stories of You know, the school environment kind of teaching that everyone has to be friends with everyone and we all have to include, you know, to the point of overriding just natural preferences that you know that you're gonna want to hang out with some people more than others. And I think if we could just kind of release that a little bit and give everyone a little bit more room to be human. whatever that means for them and kind of find the people that are their cup of tea without pressure to necessarily agree with everything everyone says. I think that could go a long way towards, you know, softening some of the divide that we're experiencing right now. And of course we still have major issues around trans stuff, medical ethics issues that are, um, you know, clearly obviously a big focus of my work, but I appreciate you having this conversation with me today. So thank you for that.

Phil Illy: Yeah. And likewise, like I would like for the, this culture war over trans issues to kind of like peter out so we can talk about more important things as a society and Um, I'm hoping that if, if it becomes more widely understood where the desire to be the other sex comes from, that we can start having a more reasonable conversation because right now people are being taught gender ideology and it's just not true. And there's a lot of morality tied up with the beliefs and gender ideology and people get really mad at each other for disagreeing. And I think that the only way to replace that gender religion would be with gender science, just as like creationism has receded from public life since the theory of evolution has been adopted by the wider population. And so I'm hoping that if people can understand this two-type theory of transsexualism, that they'll be able to understand why people want to be the other sex and why it's probably socially appropriate in various contexts to treat trans people as the gender they aspire to. Not necessarily in all contexts, but in some. There's things like sports where it's like, duh, that's bad. But there's other situations where it's easier to argue for it. Um, but yeah, I hope that, um, if people understand the science of transgenderism, we can make it less of a culture war thing and make it something that scientists figure out through research and clinicians figure out through clinical experience and, you know, pulling upon a drawing upon the scientific research so that People who do go through this gender distress can understand why they feel the way they do and not feel demonized or bad for being that way and feel understood by the people they love as they truly are.

Stephanie Winn: Well, I agree with about half that. You know, we don't see eye to eye on everything. I think we do have, you know, some common interests and motivations here. And you talk about where the desire to be the other sex comes from. I think, you know, we've explored some of our similarities and differences in that today. You brought your perspective on the sexual component, the auto-sexual component. I still think that, you know, with regard to the types of families that I work with, it's really important to explore. what being the opposite sex means to someone, what that represents, you know, and what parts of themselves they're trying to get in touch with or escape from or, you know, things like that.

Phil Illy: Do you ask them questions to see if they do have, like, do you ask them, like, whether they've ever been aroused by cross-dressing or whether they've ever fantasized sexually about being the other gender?

Stephanie Winn: So I don't work with gender questioning young people. I work with their parents.

Phil Illy: Right, so that'd be harder to ask them that thing, so they might not even know.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah well and but it has come up with parents so and a lot of parents don't know about this. They don't know about hypnosis-y porn and they don't know what their kids are reading online and they you know it's most most parents don't want to think about their kids sexuality just like most kids don't want to think about their parents sexuality. It's just kind of a thing that grosses people out. But at the same time, it's important to understand, yes, as you were saying, where that's coming from, whether it be sexual or an attempt to escape sexuality, which I think it is for a lot of females, an attempt to escape being overly sexualized. Because we're talking about girls that have been exposed to violent porn at a young age or have been sexually assaulted or objectified or groped before they have a solid enough sense of self to even defend themselves. So I think there are a lot of contributing factors, but I appreciate you shining light on on this angle of things because it's not an issue that I've covered yet and especially not in this way. So I think we talked about this at the beginning, but you can go ahead and remind people where they can find you.

Phil Illy: Okay, I'm on Twitter. My handle's at autogynephilic. I am on Substack, phililly.substack.com. I posted quite a few chapters of my book there so far. There's a few other articles. So far, a lot of it, I'm just posting my book chapters there because I wrote it so that people would read it. You can find my book on Amazon and Another way to get to my sub stack is by going to autoheterosexual.com, it'll redirect you. Yeah, I just want to close by saying that if my perception of transgenderism is accurate, then auto-heterosexuality is the most common cause of transgenderism. And so if you or someone you love is experiencing gender issues and they have not always been strictly homosexual in their partner preferences, if they've ever been attracted to the other sex, then this is probably the first place to check, to check for autosexuality as the culprit in their gender issues.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, thank you for that, Phil. It's been a pleasure. Take care. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit SomeTherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at SomeTherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.