She talks about the ‘pain, frustration and incomprehension’ autogynephiles feel about not having the bodies they want. Many of their fantasies are clearly sexual, even if unusual – for example, imagining being penetrated in a non-existent vagina while placing something in one’s anus. But almost anything coded female or feminine, she writes, can cause an ‘intense, perplexing, shame-inducing erotic arousal that seems to simultaneously animate and discredit [autogynephiles’] desires to have female bodies’. Her informants recount erotic fantasies of pushing a baby buggy, joining a knitting circle,
...more
