TRANSVESTITIC  FETISHISTS

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Speaking of science fiction, Ray Blanchard of the U. of Toronto coined the term “autogynephilia” back in the 1980s to provide a scientific word for the heterosexual narcissistic fetish of a man who is sexually excited over the thought of himself as a beautiful woman. Autogynephilics hate the term because it tends to make the rest of the world laugh too hard to agree to be drafted into validating their sex fantasy. And thus the ex-men have turned their peculiarly male ferocity on those who mention that they probably aren’t really girls on the inside.

What’s striking is how much success the ex-men have had in convincing the mainstream media to not Follow The Science. For example, the Washington Post hasn’t dared use the word in a half dozen years. From the Opinion section of the Washington Post in 2016, here’s the last time “autogynephilia” or “autogynephilic” has been mentioned in the Washington Post:

The Wachowskis and the evolving media coverage of transgender people
By Alyssa Rosenberg
Columnist
March 17, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. EDT

In 2012, the movie director Lana Wachowski publicly came out as transgender during the press tour for “Cloud Atlas” and in a speech accepting the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award. And last week, her sibling, Lilly Wachowski, also came out as transgender to preempt inquiries from the Daily Mail, which was pursuing the story that Lilly, who had formerly gone by the name Andy, had also transitioned.

It’s notable that both of the Wachowskis are transgender, and that their transitions immediately make them two of the most high-profile [fake] female directors in Hollywood. And Lilly’s coming-out also provides an opportune moment to look at how media coverage of transgender people has changed over the past decade.

Lana’s announcement comes shortly after the ten-year anniversary of a piece in Rolling Stone that provides a horrifying benchmark for just how far the mainstream media has evolved in its practices. Titled “The Mystery of Larry Wachowski” — the name Lana was known by publicly prior to her coming-out — the piece suggested that Lana’s transition was a form of sexual fetishism; the opening scene in the piece involves Lana visiting a Los Angeles sex club where “friends say, he liked engaging in his pastime while dressed like a woman.” It also implies that Lana’s sex life and gender identity contributed to “one of the most widely derided sequences in recent movie history,” the rave sequence from “The Matrix Reloaded.”

“Psychiatrists disagree about what forces are at work in men who cross-dress and take the ultimate step of having gender-reassignment surgery,” the piece continued. “One camp considers men of this type to have a ‘gender-identity disorder,’ to be ‘women trapped in men’s bodies.’ In recent years, another group of doctors labeled some men who demonstrate these tendencies to be autogynephiles — straight men who are essentially sexual fetishists, aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women.”

Notably, the author goes on to discuss and diagnose Lana Wachowski as the latter without providing any more context about gender dysmorphia. And in a uniquely gratuitous thread, the piece quotes a number of unflattering comments sources made about Lana’s physical appearance and gender presentation. The tone of the piece is consistent throughout: whatever is going on with Wachowski, and whatever prompted her withdrawal from public life, the reader is meant to think it’s weird and transgressive.

The journalist punched down at the poor oppressed Wachowski Siblings. How dare anyone wonder if their fetishes have contributed to their remarkable string of lousy movies that has made them 0-for the-21st Century. They are transgender and therefore they cannot be questioned.

“The Mystery of Larry Wachowski” is the sort of piece that would be greeted with outrage today, and in fact, it is no longer available on Rolling Stone’s website, though it lives on in various Internet forums (thus the reason I am not linking to it). … And just because media coverage of transgender people has improved — from reality programming like “I Am Jazz” to Caitlyn Jenner’s carefully-choreographed Vanity Fair cover

Improved, I tell you, improved.

— doesn’t mean that the material realities many transgender people face have improved in a comparable way.

For example, the Wachowski Sisters are being paid only 7 digits to direct their movies while the Wachowski Brothers got 8 digits. (source)

[...] The racial/ethnic distribution of youth and adults who identify as transgender appears generally similar to the U.S. population, though our estimates mirror prior research that found transgender youth and adults are more likely to report being Latinx and less likely to report being White compared to the U.S. population