I Blew Up the Internet by Wearing a Dress to a Gender Conference
Currents
Although I am male, I typically wear dresses in my everyday life. I dress this way because I’m autogynephilic. That is to say, I’m sexually and romantically attracted to being a woman. When I learned about autogynephilia and realized that it described me, it blew my mind that I had an orientation I’d never even heard of. It turns out that autogynephilia is the most common cause of gender dysphoria in males, and it made me mad to learn that the transgender movement’s efforts to erase my sexual orientation have kept others like me in the dark about such an important part of who we are. To help remedy this erasure, I wrote Autoheterosexual: Attracted to Being the Other Sex (2023), a book that explains the science of cross-gender attraction so that people like me can better understand ourselves and be better equipped to give informed consent for gender-affirming medical interventions.
Although autogynephilia is the reason for my gender-nonconforming wardrobe, it’s not as though I feel noticeable erotic effects when I wear feminine clothing. I definitely don’t go through life in a constant state of arousal. I’ve dressed like this for a few years now, and it’s become a normal, everyday part of life to which I don’t give much thought. It’s totally accepted to be a transvestite (AKA a cross-dresser) where I live, so I suspect that other people don’t care much about why I dress the way I do. When others comment on my sartorial choices, it’s usually to compliment me. I don’t really take them at face value because I suspect that more often than not they’re going out of their way to signal trans acceptance, but I appreciate the kindness nonetheless.
In the fall of 2023, I wore my everyday clothes to a gender conference put on by Genspect, an organization highly skeptical about treating gender dysphoria with medical interventions. This conference brought together therapists, detransitioners (those who transition from their birth gender, then transition back), concerned parents, gender-critical feminists, public intellectuals, and others who occupy heterodox positions that hard-left trans activists consider heretical. As an old-school liberal, I appreciate that the gender rebels in this milieu typically support free speech culture and are able to explore controversial ideas in a civil manner. The social scene was energetic and positive, and there seemed to be a collective sense that the gathered people could accomplish important things together. I enjoyed my time there, and I know many others did too. While I was talking with a detransitioner friend on the last night of the conference, Genspect’s social media person asked to take a picture of us. She snapped the photo, wrote a caption that mentioned my book Autoheterosexual, and then posted it to Twitter. We went back to socializing and I didn’t give it much further thought.
Then, a few days later, the photo blew up into a protracted controversy on Twitter. Enraged commenters fumed about my presence at the conference. They despised that I was openly autogynephilic, that I dressed in feminine attire, and that the tweet directly mentioned the book I wrote about autogynephilia and its female counterpart autoandrophilia. They regarded my attendance at the conference as a threat, even though the scientific theory I advocate for has the potential to seriously undermine the illiberal “gender ideology” that conference organizers and attendees were seemingly gathered to push back against.
To folks who aren’t steeped in gender discourse and the surrounding culture wars, it might seem strange that so many people could become upset about a male wearing a dress at a gender conference.
Allow me to explain.
The Genspect conference exists within a broader political ecosystem and social milieu aligned with “gender-critical” ideology, a camp that positions itself in opposition to the “gender identity” ideology favored by the dominant voices in the transgender movement. Whereas mainstream trans activists lean heavily into gender identity and downplay or even stigmatize biological sex (a term itself that sets off some activists), the gender-critical crowd is, as the name suggests, highly critical of gender as a concept distinct from sex. Gender-critical ideology itself has been significantly influenced by strains of radical feminism that often transpose Marxist-style oppressor-oppressed power binaries into the domain of sex/gender. In this radical feminist view, “gender” denotes sex-determined roles and expectations that society imposes on people, and it exists for the ultimate purpose of maintaining patriarchy (a social system that favors the interests of males over females).
Understandably, the existence of trans people complicates the radical feminist analysis of gender and patriarchy. Should trans women, for example, be thought of as oppressors, or as part of the sisterhood? In decades past, disagreement over this question led to a schism between the “trans-inclusive” and “trans-exclusive” camps within radical feminism. This latter group, the “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (TERFs), developed a firm position that only people born female could be women. They were some of the trans movement’s earliest critics and they have been its most consistent opposition. As a result, many ideas originally developed by radical feminists were baked into “gender-critical” ideology. Opposition to “gender identity” ideology has since expanded beyond feminists to include social conservatives and other right-of-center culture warriors, but the founding influence of radical feminism is still apparent.
Phil juggling fire hoops at Burning Man.
Like the infighting between “trans-inclusive” and “trans-exclusive” radical feminists, the Twitter controversy over my dress-wearing boiled down to a battle between different groups of feminists. It began when a prominent feminist initiated a struggle session against Genspect by quote-tweeting their post of me and criticizing them for supposedly promoting my book. This kicked off a conflict between the liberal (“live and let live”) and illiberal (“live as I say”) camps within gender-critical feminism. Many in the illiberal camp argued that my outfit constituted “fetish gear” and that by wearing a dress I was forcibly including strangers in my sexuality. On the other hand, those in the liberal camp such as Helen Pluckrose and Nina Paley rightfully pointed out that accepting gender-nonconforming clothing and free expression have long been core values within gender-critical feminism.
Most Twitter controversies tend to last a few days or so. But this one proved astonishingly persistent. I had the distinction of being the dreaded “person of the day” for the better part of a month. Over that time, an all-too-familiar dynamic played out: the illiberal side became increasingly extreme and dug in while the liberal side remained moderate and even-handed. The purity spiral of the more authoritarian feminists shifted the overall discussion in a less tolerant, less reasonable direction. Notably, after weeks of feminist infighting, the liberal feminists remained where they started: with a live-and-let-live mentality that welcomed a wide range of gender expressions provided no one else’s rights were infringed on in the process. On the other hand, the position at which the illiberal camp had arrived was quite authoritarian: males were only permitted to wear female-typical clothing in public if they were not autogynephilic to any degree. Interestingly, the illiberal feminists were enthusiastic about placing constraints on the clothing males could wear, but they did not call for any corresponding restrictions on clothing for females.
In practice, a rule that selectively prohibits autogynephilic males from wearing feminine clothing would be difficult to enforce. Without the ability to read minds, every male dressed in feminine garb would need to be interviewed about the motivations underlying their fashion choices. Needless to say, this would be intrusive and strange. It also wouldn’t be particularly effective, as many autogynephilic individuals don’t even understand that they’re autogynephilic. And those who do know they’re autogynephilic are unlikely to want to reveal that fact to moralistic, probing strangers. More troubling, any rule specifically barring autogynephilic males from wearing dresses is effectively a rule against thoughtcrime. If the transgression isn’t the wearing of feminine garb itself but is instead the type of thoughts that others fear may accompany such clothing, then the entire project becomes an exercise in thought-policing. This Orwellian effort is also grounded in faulty logic. Such prohibitions would do little to prevent autogynephilic males from having warm fuzzy feelings or scintillating thoughts in response to perceiving themselves as feminine or female. Although clothing is a particularly visible way of attaining cross-gender embodiment, it is merely one way of doing so.
Sex researcher Ray Blanchard (left) and Phil (right) at the Puzzles of Sexual Orientation conference in 2023.
Of course, there’s another good reason why it might not be wise to prohibit males from wearing feminine garb: prescribing which clothing a person may wear based on their sex is obviously sexist. If the intolerant feminists who worked themselves into a lather over my fashion choices want to retain their freedom to wear pants, perhaps they should uphold my freedom to wear dresses.
The original incarnation of the gender-critical movement was, though critical of mainstream trans activism, a staunch defender of individual liberty in how people choose to express themselves. But following the intense purity spiral that took place on Twitter last November, an intolerant subset of gender-critical feminists have revealed the same authoritarian impulses of which they accuse their radical trans activist opponents. To be sure, I felt uncomfortable seeing this Twitter mob heap scorn upon their digital effigy of me. However, I’m far more concerned about the potential impact this demonization-based discourse may have on the broader autoheterosexual population as well as the subset who pursue gender transition. With trans issues so politicized, trans people themselves will find it harder to find neutral, reliable scientific knowledge that helps them navigate being trans and decide, based on empirical data rather than ideology, the best path forward.
Prior to the silly uproar over the fact that I wore a dress to a gender conference, I already had a healthy appreciation of liberal values such as conversation over coercion, freedom of expression, and universal human rights that apply to everyone — equally — regardless of immutable characteristics or background. This whole affair has only strengthened my commitment to these ideals. By allowing people to express themselves and live how they wish as long as it does not cause tangible harm to others, we help ensure that same freedom for ourselves. Freedom may not be free, but if the cost is having to occasionally see outfits you don’t like, or hear opinions you disagree with, that’s such a small price that it may as well be.
Published July 4, 2024
