I ended up rabbitholing again, this time into Blanchardianism and followup studies, with the relevant tangential direction being trans demographics. I have the skeleton of an idea and I want to put it down into words.

In a number of historical and cultural contexts – here considered: travestis of South America, hijras of India/Pakistan, kathoey of Thailand, t-girls of Russia, ballroom culture of the US inner cities – the typical trans woman is heterosexual and transitions at a young age into a subculture of other trans women, many of whom are sex workers, and for whom it is expected finding men for sex partners will not be a problem. There is another group visible somewhat more recently – older, white, frequently sapphic trans women, often with a history of crossdressing and fetishism. It is from this that Blanchardianism conclude the former group transitions for reasons of facilitating their wrongly-termed “homosexuality”, the latter, as an expression of their “autogynophilia”. Lots of issues with this which have been raised, Julia Serano wrote well about it.

What I want to consider is the intersection between privilege, orientation and transition. Reported populations studied have not been uniformly sampled. They sample the people who, in a certain context, have come to live as trans. The hypothesis coming to me now is that perhaps the human need for love is frequently strong enough to outweigh dysphoria. I postulate that an individual is more likely to come out as trans, all things considered, if they believe there is still the chance someone will love them.

Where does this hypothesis lead? First, androphilic trans women anywhere are more likely to come out and transition young, in homophobic societies (which are all our societies). If the only people you are attracted to are men, then staying lifelong in the closet regarding that attraction is a much worse prospect than if you have some bisexual leanings also. And once you are out as gay, you are exposed anyway. The additional loss of security and status and anchoring from also transitioning into womanhood, while not negligible, is less than you already dealt with. If additionally there are subcultures that can welcome you like those aforementioned, chances are this is a path you will take. This predicts a population of younger straight trans women who do not spend many years closeted, especially in cultures where something like a “third gender” subculture is established (that it is not among US or American white people may predict fewer straight trans women in these cultures coming out young).

Second, gynophilic trans women. In conservative societies – including the ones I list above and most of the world generally, except in last decades growing privileged liberal segments I will get to – there will not exist a large visible demographic of sapphic women wanting to date trans women. If the prospect of being unloved and alone shapes what we explore and consider much, as I hypothesize, then many fewer of these will come out. Moreover, if indeed there is an overrepresentation of older, more privileged white people of the global north among sapphic trans women, then this may reflect this also – the more secure one is, the more willing might one be, after enough time has passed, to risk transitioning anyway. This predicts (unstudied but consistent with data) fewer out sapphic trans women in demographics other than the affluent white global north and from working class contexts as those women may stay repressed and live the lives of straight men, whereas from the most privileged demographic more will transition, but often older, and the more time spent in the closet, the more likely they are to have spent time within crossdressing and fetishism.

Third, evolution across history. What changed in the last 50 years was the rise of visible white gay and lesbian subculture in the global north. I postulate that this – the relative normalization of nonheterosexual relationships – also opened up the conceptual space of being lovable by one’s transition target sex, slowly but gradually. This would reduce – especially in demographics with access to white mainstream culture – the perceived cost of loss of love in new generations of sapphic trans women growing up, meaning fewer would stay closeted for very long, and more would eventually come out. As a result, experiences within crossdresser and fetishist/transvestite subcultures (and to this I also count e.g. sissy porn etc.) would become less common in this group.

I am getting tired as I type, and need to come to some conclusion why this matters. Basically, I predict historically vast invisible groups: trans men being basically held back by patriarchy throughout history until now (hence fewer such cases of traditional trans subcultures though they do exist also), sapphic trans women staying closeted throughout their lifetime (typically married to cis women) with some fraction coming out often later in life, with an overrepresentation of both privilege (as a causal factor) and fetishism (as an effect); thus making out sapphic trans women less common in communities and cultures that are granted less privilege. A concrete influence of the existence of any kind of visible trans community (usually implying a subculture within which one has dating projects) making any trans demographic more likely to come out, and this being a main mechanism behind how gender variant people vary historically and world-wide (this more than ideas of gender themselves being different, necessarily). Interactivity between LGB and T such that with LGB visibility increasing, more nonstraight trans people come out and do so at an earlier age, and less likely from a direction of fetishism.

I think this model is able to explain essentially all the data that Blanchardians like to evoke, and it has testable predictions. First, in principle one could look for the “invisible” group of closeted sapphic trans women in underprivileged demographics. If they exists, they would be deeply closeted. Many might be dead. Age of transition and extent of fetishist history would lower among sapphic trans women the more LB people are visible in a society. This would also reduce any kind of statistical differences seen between sapphic and straight trans woman cohort, more the younger they are, as well as statistical differences between trans and cis women. We would also see more trans men. In principle I think this is observable.

If valid, model can be summarized as saying, love prospects are among the strongest determinants of people’s life choices and not even dysphoria can always outweigh it.

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Other factors coming in too, after a night’s sleep. Compulsive heterosexuality not least. If our choice to come out as our gender is influenced by whether or not we believe we can be loved, then so can our effective orientation be. Considering the historical relative fluidity of this (men of ancient Greece and today’s social media being fine with fucking boys who look like girls if it is socially accepted, prison girlfriends growing out long hair…) then we must also consider: if a subculture like the kathoey or hijra or ballroom scene exists, then perhaps a young girl knowing she can be a woman there will also come to expect that as she grows up, she will be with men, and she will be more likely to live as a straight woman. Much like straight women in mainstream society; surely the heteroflexible segment has gone from invisible repression to greater expression as norms changed too? This also may underlie why young transitioners in these groups so often report heterosexuality. Perhaps our best bet for an actual real distribution of what to expect would be to look at what trans children come to grow up to be interested in, the future will tell.

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All in all, what these rabbit warrens drive home is, we are diverse. From some underlying factor of our gender identity, contingencies of culture seem to have vast impact on who comes out, when, and as what. Socially constructed frameworks around us catalyze what we make of our inner selves. They may not be strictly necessary, and many of us transition without them, but the likelihood of that potential realizing increases and is guided down a most expedient path. And of course, for many of us there is that phenomenon where a vague and nebulous dysphoria through a kaleidoscopic lens comes into focus and becomes sharp and stinging once we begin to resolve contrasts between what is, and what the framework we explore lets us understand can be. In the absence of any understanding of trans identities, that state which conservatives want to keep us in, fewer would transition, their transitions would look more individual, and many more would stay in varying stages of baseline dysphoric unhappiness, whether they find a way to cope or not. Building and nurturing these frameworks lets us make the most of what we are, and in how that has looked throughout time and space tells us things of those times and places.