A quick introduction about Ray Blanchard. Blanchard studies sexual fetishes (paraphilias). He was mentored by Kurt Freund, who studied the psychosexual disorders of sex offenders. Blanchard decided to take the same lens used to study sex offenders and turn it on people on the transgender spectrum. He used some questionable research to conclude that most cross-dressers cross-dress for sexual reasons, and created a two-type theory of male-to-female transsexuality. The first type he calls homosexual transsexuals, actually straight trans women, and he theorizes the root cause of their transsexuality is that they were/are feminine gay men who want to have relationships with straight men. The other type he terms non-homosexual transsexuals, actually homosexual or bisexual trans women. He thinks these trans women have autogynephila, what he terms an “erotic target location error,” where instead of being attracted to women they are attracted to the idea of themselves as woman. The theory is bullshit and here is a critique of his theory and research by a psychologist. The interview:

“How the Psychiatrist Who Co-Wrote the Manual on Sex Talks About Sex”

Before I get to my analysis of the interview, a quote from Julia Serano’s book, Whipping Girl.

It seems to me that the entire debate in academia over whether transsexuals are radical or conservative with regards to gender is founded on cissexual privilege. Because these scholars have not had to live with the reality of gender dissonance, they are afforded the luxury of rationalizing away subconscious sex, thus allowing them to project their own interests or biases onto trans people. Not surprisingly, the researchers’ academic backgrounds seem to be the primary determinant as to what explanations for transsexuality they will posit. (p. 155)

Is it any surprise that Blanchard, a researcher in sexology, would create a theory that transsexuality is caused by disorders of sexuality?

The interview: “How the Psychiatrist Who Co-Wrote the Manual on Sex Talks About Sex”

First of all, about the introduction.

Dr. Ray Blanchard knows sex. He is handy with a penile plethysmograph, which he uses to measure a guy’s penis to see if he’s turned on.

The plethysmograph has only ever been validated as a measure of actual sexual attraction for pedophilia. I can find no reference to a study that shows the results of the plesthysmograph to be an accurate measure of sexual arousal in other contexts. It is capable of measuring very small partial erections, and I suspect that towards the lower limit of its range there is no strong correlation with significant sexual preferences. Kurt Freund invented it as a test for homosexuality for the Czechoslovakia army to prevent homosexuals from joining the army. This device has a problematic history, and its utility is based on distrust of the research participants. I think the confrontational nature of the test should give psychologists pause in using it as a research tool. Does any psychological research use a lie detector?

The criteria arrived at by Blanchard and the rest of the APA’s task force of shrinks could determine whether an eight-year-old girl who pees standing up is labeled with gender dysphoria and given hormones[.]

This shows a complete lack of understanding of how gender transition works for children. No one is giving hormones to 8-year-old kids. No one is giving hormones to 12-year-old kids either. Lupron, a puberty-blocker, is used for several years for children who may be trans to allow them to mature enough to make the decision of whether to medically transition. That the interviewer doesn’t understand this is not a good sign for the interview.

Motherboard: When does a paraphilia become a disorder? Blanchard: There are two ways by which a paraphilia could be converted into a paraphilic disorder: the individual is distressed by their desires, or they are acting in a way that is noxious to people.[…] So if someone cross dresses and they are cool with it, then they don’t have a disorder, correct? Yes, under my proposal you can now be a happy transvestite, or you can have a transvestic disorder.

I’m not going to get too much into the specifics of what is wrong with his stance on paraphilias, but see this article for how this resembles the hold-over homosexuality diagnosis in the DSM-III, where you could be a happy homosexual, or an unhappy homosexual suffering from ego-dystonic homosexuality.

Some trans activists object to the inclusion of transvestic disorder in the DSM because they feel it pathologizes gender non-conformity. How do you respond to these criticisms? To say that transvestic disorder pathologizes all trans people is rhetoric with no logic behind it whatsoever. If you actually open the DSM-4, it’s very explicit that it applies to people who get sexually excited by dressing in women’s clothes. […]

This is just eliding the truth. The DSM-4 criterion A for diagnosing transvestitic fethisism:

Over a period of at least 6 months, in a heterosexual male, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving cross-dressing.

The text is grammatically ambiguous on whether the behaviors have to be sexually arousing (sexually arousing sexual urges doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.), and notice the promotion of gender conformity that only straight men can be diagnosed. However, the DSM-5 puts the insanity of the transvestic disorder right out there by eliminating all categories of sexual orientation and gender, so anyone wearing clothes not stereotyped as being for their gender can potentially be diagnosed with transvestic disorder.

Is the objection based on the idea that it fetishizes gender non-conformity? Some activists are trying to sell the public on the idea, “We really are women where it matters–in our brains–and women don’t get sexually excited when they put on their bras and panties, so we don’t either.” And for a lot of them that’s just a lie.

And here he conflates transsexual women with cross-dressers because:

So you don’t see a male-to-female transsexual as being female? I think that a transsexual should be considered as whatever their biological sex is plus the fact that they are transsexuals. That’s how you would do research on them. There’s no other way to do it. If you’re interested in whether the brains of transsexuals are different in some way, you’re interested in seeing if they differ from other individuals with the same biological sex.

Holy cissexism batman. All he cares about is how trans women, who he sees as men with transsexuality, are different from men without transsexuality. He doesn’t actually care about us as anything but a deviation. And he doesn’t separate his scientific perspective on us from how he sees us as people. This is what is wrong with Blanchard, he doesn’t see people, he sees specimens he can dissect. Notice how he said brains, not minds. He is a psychiatrist, not a neuroscientist. By saying he studies the brain implies that he is engaged in research with a physical object that can be objectively observed and analyzed. This viewpoint is directly used to justify doing none of his research with cis female control groups. (If he had, he would have found that a lot of cis women would meet the survey criteria for autogynephilia he used (Moser, 2009).)

Also, autogynephilia has never been shown to be a cause of transsexuality. Blanchard’s own research found that 15% of his “homosexual transsexual” group had autogynephilia.

So in a way psychiatric research is inherently gender normative? I would say medical research is inherently gender normative.

What does this even mean?

Do you think that classifying transgender people as having a disorder does contribute to stigma against the trans community? No. I mean how many people who make a joke about trannies consult the DSM first?

Liar! The U.S. military bans trans people from military service on the basis that they are labeled as having a mental disorder and the GID diagnosis has been used as an argument in court cases such as child custody.

Do you think that transgender identity might get to the point where homosexuality is now, where it is considered offensive and inaccurate to call it a disorder? I think there are some glaring differences between acceptance of transsexualism and acceptance of homosexuality. Let’s say that a friend comes to you and says she’s a lesbian, you aren’t seeing your friend performing cunnilingus on her girlfriend. All this requires is acceptance of what you don’t have to see. With transsexualism, if a friend comes to you and says I feel like I’m actually a woman, and starting tomorrow I’m going to be showing up wearing dresses, this is not happening offstage, you are now part of their movie.

About homosexuality, he is ignoring that to be accepting of it means being accepting that their significant other is the same-sex and not doing things like banning a lesbian couple from the prom, or banning out homosexual people from the military, or denying them the right to marry and the benefits of marriage. How different is it if a male friend introduces you to a man and tells you that he is his husband, and they are going to be showing up at social events together, and people need to accept that they are a married couple. Blanchard is in effect saying that he is okay with homosexual people as long as they don’t flaunt it.

Also, great job artificializing our lives as a movie. Because portraying transsexuals as artificial is not at all uncommon as an element of transphobia.

So why do you keep using [the word “normal”]? I guess because I think it’s a perfectly good concept. I don’t aggravate people if I don’t have to, but I’m not going to say that there is no gold standard of what sexual behavior’s purpose is. And what is that? I would say if one could start from scratch, ignore all the history of removing homosexuality from the DSM, normal sexuality is whatever is related to reproduction. Now you have everything else. I would distinguish between behaviors which are anomalous and benign vs. those that are malignant. So homosexuality would be not normal but benign. Whereas something like serious dangerous sadism would be a malignant variation.

As I was saying about seeing people as specimens. Also, the argument about normal sexuality being related to procreation is exactly the same argument made by opponents of same-sex marriage.

So, in your point of view, science rules. Scientific inquiry is the first priority, whatever it might mean for social justice? If you put it in abstract terms, it makes me sound vaguely lunatic.

Yes, because he is obsessed with reducing people to objects of study, and all he sees is an abnormality to understand. His refusal to recognize his research participants as whole human beings is what makes his science bad. The negative response to his work because it is not politically incorrect but just incorrect is viewed as self-affirmation that he is doing objective science, when he has actually done very little in the way of good science.