One in Three Bisexual Men May Be Autogynephilic. Understanding Their Experience Matters.
Earlier this year, on HBO’s hit series The White Lotus (2021–), a middle-aged man delivers a startling monologue in a Bangkok bar. Frank (played by Sam Rockwell) confesses to an old friend that after years of womanizing, “maybe what I really want is to be one of these Asian girls.” He describes how he began to cross-dress — lingerie, makeup, wig, and all — and pick up men for sex while imagining himself as one of the women he had been with. For many viewers it was a bewildering moment: was he expressing a fetish, a gender identity crisis, or something else entirely? Frank’s speech thrust into the spotlight one of the most controversial and misunderstood ideas in sexology — that some natal males are sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as women or as having female traits. It’s a well-documented phenomenon known as “autogynephilia” — and in a recent study I conducted with Dr. Kevin Hsu, we found that about one-third of self-identified bisexual cisgender men might be bisexual because of it.
Autogynephilia (often shortened to AGP) is a clinical term to describe a natal male’s sexual arousal to the fantasy of being female. Coined in 1989 by psychologist Ray Blanchard, it combines Greek roots for "self", "woman", and "love" — essentially meaning love of oneself as a woman. Autogynephilia is a twist on the usual male attraction to women (gynephilia). Most straight men are attracted to women in the familiar sense: as other individuals in the external world. Autogynephilic natal males are additionally aroused by the idea of themselves as a woman or female-like. This inwardly directed attraction can coexist with ordinary attraction to women, or, in extreme cases, overshadow it entirely. A diverse range of experiences can elicit autogynephilic feelings, including imagining oneself with a female body, wearing feminine attire, being treated as a woman, moving or comporting oneself in a stereotypically feminine manner, or even having female bodily functions (e.g., lactation). Some autogynephilic natal males experience the full spectrum of autogynephilic interests, whereas others may be attracted to only specific aspects of being female. As this essay is primarily about autogynephilic natal males who identify as bisexual cis men, rather than autogynephilic natal males who identify as trans women or non-binary (and who may have socially and medically transitioned), I will primarily refer to self-identified “men” from here on.
Although autogynephilia is sometimes incorrectly assumed to be an acquired fetish, experts view autogynephilia as a sexual orientation that is essentially inborn and fixed once it emerges, much like homosexuality (or heterosexuality). What’s more, autogynephilia is not uncommon. A large Swedish population study in 2005 found that 2.8% of men reported ever being sexually aroused by cross-dressing (a rough proxy for autogynephilia).
Though the term is relatively new, expressions of autogynephilia have long been recognised. Late-19th- and early-20th-century sexologists like Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Magnus Hirschfeld documented men who cross-dressed for erotic pleasure. Krafft-Ebing thought such men had a fetish for women’s garments. Magnus Hirschfeld (whose institute was looted and its library publicly burned by the Nazis in 1933) coined the term “transvestite” in his groundbreaking 1910 book on the topic, “The Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress.” He argued that erotic cross-dressing in men was neither mere clothing-fetishism nor a form of feminine homosexuality, and observed that cross-dressers were typically female-attracted. Hirschfeld also advocated for cross-dressing to be decriminalised, tolerated as a form of sexual/gender diversity, and not presumed to be a mental disorder. Unfortunately, for much of the 20th century, psychiatry continued to pathologise autogynephilic feelings and behaviors under labels like "transvestic fetishism", classifying it as a psychiatric disorder to be treated.
Magnus Hirschfeld, pictured bottom right, at an Institute for Sexual Research costume party in Berlin. Source: Scientific American.
Fast forward to the 1980s, when Ray Blanchard published a conceptual breakthrough. He realised that for many natal males who experienced what was then called “transvestic fetishism”, the real object of desire wasn’t women’s clothes themselves but the idea of being female — and cross-dressing was just the easiest way to approximate that. Blanchard’s “aha” moment came from the case of “Philip”, a 38-year-old male whose lifelong, primary sexual fantasy was simply having a woman’s body — breasts, vagina, soft skin — with little interest in cross-dressing. When asked the right questions, many cross-dressers openly reveal that they are aroused not merely by silk or lace, but by imagining being a female in every way, including having female anatomy and otherwise resembling or imitating women.
In 2007, the brilliant academic and openly autogynephilic trans woman Dr. Anne Lawrence added that autogynephilia (like all sexual orientations) encompasses both sexual and non-sexual romantic and attachment feelings. For autogynephilic natal males, these non-sexual feelings may be experienced as a deep sense of comfort, well-being, and joy when imagining themselves as female or when presenting as feminine. The feelings have been labelled as “gender euphoria” by some within the community and are a common manifestation of autogynephilia. Lawrence suggested that the rejection of autogynephilia by some transgender women may be due to the popular misconception that autogynephilia is purely a sexual experience.
There are now dozens of published scientific papers on autogynephilia and several academic books. There are also two books by self-described autogynephiles: Anne Lawrence’s magisterial academic work, “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies”, and Phil Ily’s popular book “Autoheterosexual: Attracted to Being the Other Sex.” The existence of autogynephilia as a phenomenon experienced uniquely by a subset of natal males is now beyond reasonable doubt.
I’m a psychologist and researcher whose clinical and research work focuses on matters of gender dysphoria/identity and sexuality. I founded a specialist sexual and gender psychology clinic in Sydney, Australia. A central passion over the past decade has been providing clinical support and research for autogynephilic folks. Since 2021, I’ve been working alongside Kevin Hsu, one of the foremost AGP researchers, to conduct the largest longitudinal study of autogynephilic cis men and trans women ever. We are seeking to answer some big questions, such as why some autogynephilic natal males develop gender dysphoria while others do not, and are seeking to destigmatise autogynephilia while providing scientific understanding of autogynephilia for those who need it.
A pattern I have observed in my clinical work is that many autogynephilic men (and trans women) identify as bisexual or bicurious. Many have never heard of autogynephilia. If they have, they have only heard it used as an insult or slur. For some, discovering that autogynephilia, the “phenomenon”, is an innate sexual orientation, relatively common, and does not mean they are broken or perverted, is therapeutic in and of itself. For some trans women who experience autogynephilia, learning that it’s common among trans women, that it’s a well-established factor in the development of gender dysphoria and transfeminine identities in some, and that gender-affirming medical interventions can be a good way of managing autogynephilic gender dysphoria and living a fulfilling life, can be liberating.
To this day, public awareness of autogynephilia remains low, and a lot of natal males with these feelings have no name for what they experience. Those who are aware of the term may not identify as AGP, even if the experience fits. This is due to a number of factors, including stigma, pathologisation, and culture-war baggage. In everyday talk, AGP is often miscast as a “fetish” or “perversion”, and its link to a diagnosable “sexual disorder” makes disclosure feel risky. The term has also been misrepresented and weaponised by some trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) and social conservatives to attack transgender women as merely “fetishists.” As a result, a popular retort from some LGBT activists is that autogynephilia has been “debunked”, that it is transphobic pseudoscience, or alternatively, that all women, including cis women, experience it.
While I sympathise with the intention, the problem with this retort is twofold. First, it is empirically false — nobody has debunked autogynephilia, and overwhelming scientific data (and common sense) finds that cis women do not experience it. In a paper we published early this year, we likewise found that autogynephilia was only experienced by cross-dressers and a subset of trans women, and neither cis women nor cis men experienced it to a meaningful degree. In addition to this, we have known for a long time that another common group of transgender women, who are extremely gender-nonconforming from childhood and male-attracted, do not experience autogynephilia. This has been known for decades now. Second, this false narrative harms autogynephilic individuals by erasing their existence on the one hand and sending the message that it’s an awful thing to experience, even within the queer community, on the other. Autogynephilic individuals themselves, along with the clinicians who support them and the academics who conduct research on the topic, come under fire from culture warriors on both the ideological left and right. Indeed, if activists on either side of culture wars can agree on one thing, it is that they don’t like autogynephilia.
Unsurprisingly, then, most autogynephilic men still use terms such as “transvestite”, “cross-dresser” (see the Reddit community r/crossdressing (377,000+ members)), “sissy” (r/Sissy (283,000+ members)), or “femboy” (r/femboy (1,300,000+ members)). In the past several years, there has been an increasing number of self-identified “autogynephiles” and a recent rebranding as “autoheterosexuals” on platforms such as Reddit (r/autogynephilia, r/askAGP) and YouTube. These folks (comprising a mix of male cross-dressers and trans women) are attempting to destigmatise and reclaim the term “autogynephilia” (or autoheterosexual) in a similar vein to how LGBT activists successfully reclaimed the once-pejorative term “queer.”
So how does autogynephilia relate to bisexuality? It turns out some autogynephilic men, despite not being generally attracted to male bodies, do fantasise about sex with men — but in a very specific way. They typically don’t enjoy sex with a man while in a male role (your standard "gay" encounter). Instead, sex with a man becomes arousing for them only when it can intensify the feeling of being female. For example, by cross-dressing, dating, and engaging in certain types of sex (e.g., bottoming) with a male partner, an autogynephilic man can experience being treated as a desirable woman and can imagine being vaginally penetrated by the male partner. Testimony of experiences like this can be found online, such as in this entry by a man married to a woman on r/bisexual:
“[I have] always been attracted to women [and] men don’t attract me physically [but] I have lots of fetishes like cross-dressing, sissy porn, and think I would enjoy being penetrated by a man and pleasuring a man. But I don’t think I could be a top to a man, I only want to be a bottom to a man.”
Before our paper, prior work already suggested that autogynephilic men frequently identify as bisexual. In his seminal papers on autogynephilia, Blanchard observed this type of bisexuality in more than 50% of autogynephilic patients. More recent studies also show significant bisexual self-identification within autogynephilic samples, including 14.7% of autogynephilic males in a 2015 study and 30.3% in 2020 research.
Similarly, prior to our study, there was no direct data on “how many bisexual men were autogynephilic”, but it was possible to roughly estimate with existing data. If 2.8% of men report ever being sexually aroused by cross-dressing and about 20% of autogynephilic men identify as bisexual, then 0.56% (0.20 × 2.8%) of all men would be both autogynephilic and bisexual-identified. Going off of the most recent comprehensive data from the UK, about 1.5% of the general male population identifies as bisexual. Therefore, 0.56% / 1.5% ≈ 37% — in other words, about one-third of bi-identified men would be autogynephilic.
Why does this matter? It matters because understanding the actual lived experiences of men who describe themselves as bi is critical for science, informing mental health and sexual health care, and reducing stigma. Bisexual men already face “double stigma” from both heterosexual and gay communities and consistently show some of the poorest mental- and sexual-health outcomes. If a sizable subgroup is bisexual via AGP, then lumping them in with non-AGP bisexual men erases their voices, hides different needs, confounds research findings, and risks one-size-fits-all interventions that miss the mark. It’s incredibly disappointing that of the thousands of academic papers published on bi men’s mental/physical health, almost none have bothered to ask who these men are, and whether it even makes sense to lump them into one group and assume they have common experiences.
So, what unique challenges might autogynephilic bisexual men face? Even before our research was conducted, online forums like Reddit’s r/bisexual, r/sissyology, or r/askAGP gave clues. Many autogynephilic bi men have provided rich descriptions of their experiences in these online communities, reporting confusion about their sexuality, often due to a lack of attraction to the male physique and feelings of attraction to men only when fantasizing about being a woman. For instance, a post in r/AskMenAdvice titled “Straight but Have Submissive Fantasies with Men. Am I Bisexual, bicurious, heteroromantic-heteroflexible, heteroromantic-bisexual?” details such confusion:
“The strange part is that I don’t feel any real-life attraction to men. I don’t look at a guy and think, ‘I want to have sex with him.’ I don’t watch gay porn, and I never imagine myself as a man being dominated in a gay scene. Instead, my fantasies always place me in the role of a woman — whether in vanilla one-on-one or gangbang scenarios, I imagine myself as the woman being dominated.”
As a result of being sexually attracted to men in this more indirect manner, autogynephilic bisexual men may also be less likely than other bisexual men to have actual sexual encounters or romantic relationships with men. Other posts pointed to gender confusion and even gender dysphoria among some autogynephilic bisexual men and a particular interest in BDSM and other kinky sex.
This brings us to my and Kevin’s own research. To study what proportion of bisexual men are autogynephilic, and how they differ from non-autogynephilic bi men, my colleagues and I conducted an internet survey of 254 cisgender men who identified as bisexual. The results, published this year in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, were eye-opening. More than one in three of these bi-identified men — 35% — reported substantial autogynephilia on a widely used measure of autogynephilia. Importantly, men’s responses on this measure were quite “all-or-nothing.” Most bisexual men report zero autogynephilia, but those who did report autogynephilia endorsed most of the items. We also included more than one scientifically validated measure of autogynephilia in the survey and found that the autogynephilic bi men reported AGP consistently across different measures and items.
Our study also found that the autogynephilic bi men had some distinctive characteristics. On the whole, they were more uncertain about their sexual orientation than other bi men. This makes sense given their lack of direct attraction to male bodies. There is a whole literature on how uncertainty and doubt about one’s sexuality make it harder to accept oneself and build community, and this could contribute to isolation for autogynephilic bi men. Autogynephilic bi men also had a greater taste for other atypical sexual fantasies (more “kinks”, so to speak) such as sexual masochism. That autogynephilia co-occurs with other atypical sexual interests has been repeatedly demonstrated, and perhaps contributes to their sexual confusion these men experience.
Compared to non-autogynephilic men, autogynephilic men also reported more gender variance. For example, they recalled more gender-nonconformity in their youth and slightly higher levels of gender dysphoria (discomfort with their biological sex) as adults. In fact, 11.2% of autogynephilic bi men reported having experienced gender dysphoria at some point in their life, and about 5% currently met the clinical cut-off for gender dysphoria. By contrast, lifetime and current gender dysphoria for non-AGP men were 1.2% and ~0%, respectively. Although they were more likely to experience gender dysphoria than other bi people, very few had current gender dysphoria or expressed a desire to transition to live as a woman full-time. In most cases (about 95% of the time), their autogynephilia coexisted with comfort living as a man. (For those seeking a better understanding about the experiences of autogynephilic gender dysphoria and autogynephilic transgender women, please see Anne Lawrence’s important work on the topic — our current study focused only on autogynephilic natal males who identified as cis men.)
In a nutshell, we found that about one-third of bisexual men are autogynephilic. These men’s sexual interest in male partners came from the heightened feeling of being feminine, rather than a straightforward attraction to men. These men sexually fantasise about and have sex and relationships with both men and women — bisexuality by any definition. But their route into bisexual behavior and identity is quite unlike that of other bisexual men. Nevertheless, it is a valid path to bisexuality.
It is possible that some autogynephilic men are bisexual in the conventional sense of being sexually attracted to both cisgender women and men. However, based on the best currently available data, the number of such individuals seems likely to be very low.
Unfortunately, autogynephilia has often been swept under the rug — or worse, met with hostility. Within LGBT groups and activist circles, the topic is seen as contentious, reactionary, and threatening to trans people because of its misuse in the culture wars. This toxic debate has made honest and well-intentioned discussion of autogynephilia difficult.
In popular media, depictions of autogynephilic behavior have been rare and usually unsympathetic. The aforementioned White Lotus scene may be the first time many viewers had even heard of such desires. And while the show presented it in a riveting way, it didn’t exactly invite sympathetic understanding. Rockwell’s character was portrayed as a troubled, addiction-addled man indulging a bizarre fetish to the point of personal ruin. In the end, he talked about abandoning those desires as part of his spiritual recovery, framing them as something unhealthy to be purged. In reality, no one can escape autogynephilia through Buddhism. Sexual orientations cannot be wished away.
Not surprisingly, reactions to that scene were polarised. Some anti-trans commentators crowed that it revealed the “dirty secret” of “trans-identified males,” while some trans advocates blasted it for promoting a discredited “fetish” stereotype. Caught in the crossfire, as always, are actual autogynephilic men (and trans folks) whose voices were not part of the debate. Unfortunately, autogynephilia and the real people who experience it continue to be sidelined. Indeed, in our study, we found that very few autogynephilic bi men had ever even heard the word “autogynephilia” before. I believe it’s time to acknowledge this hidden subgroup of bisexual men so that they’re less likely to feel invisible, mislabeled, or shamed. Practically speaking, that means LGBT activists, allies, clinicians, and researchers should stop denying, against all evidence, the existence of autogynephilia and begin living their values by helping work to destigmatise it. These men aren’t perverted or mentally ill for having autogynephilic fantasies — it’s simply a different way human sexuality can manifest.
The new research on autogynephilic bi men is shining light on a long-obscured corner of human sexuality. It tells us that these men exist in significant numbers and have unique experiences that deserve understanding, not scorn or culture-war weaponisation. Above everything, the growing body of scientific literature challenges therapists and educators to include all forms of sexual diversity in their conversations — including internally directed ones like autogynephilia.
Published Nov 18, 2025
