**\*\*Note:\*\* This post was translated from Japanese into English using a translation tool.**
I’d like to know the degree of gender dysphoria among AGP individuals in the AGP community on Reddit.
If you’re not AGP, please vote for “I’m not AGP.”
**Note:** This post was translated from Japanese into English using a translation tool.
Recently, I came across a post on this subreddit criticizing users who label AGP or transgender people as autistic based on only a few superficial traits. I'd like to share my thoughts on that trend.
The post in question is here.
[Jesus knock it off, AdvancedGuiProfile］
https://www.reddit.com/r/askAGP/s/DrQkugudQB
First, Ray Blanchard, who proposed the concept of AGP, described it as "something like a sexual orientation." If that is the case, then it is reasonable to view AGP as something that cannot be fundamentally cured.
The same applies to gender dysphoria. In the past, conversion therapy was attempted as a treatment. However, it failed to produce reliable evidence that gender dysphoria could be eliminated, and as a result, that approach has largely been abandoned.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is also currently understood to have no treatment that fundamentally eliminates the condition.
For that reason, I don't see much point in labeling AGP or transgender people as autistic.
All of these are generally understood to be innate traits or predispositions, and none currently have a treatment that fundamentally removes them. Whether someone chooses to transition or not, I think it is more constructive to focus on how to live with these characteristics rather than expecting them to disappear.
In fact, one of those users also suggested that I was autistic. My reaction was simply, "Yes, I am. So what?"
I was formally diagnosed with autism in elementary school. It is officially recognized by the government in my country, and I also hold a government-issued disability certificate.
From the perspective of someone who has actually been officially diagnosed, I find it rather careless when people declare that someone is autistic based on only a handful of traits.
Autism is a condition that should be diagnosed through a professional clinical evaluation. It is not something that can be determined by noticing a few characteristics. That's why I feel uncomfortable when people casually label others as autistic.
**Note:** This post was translated from Japanese into English using a translation tool.
I’ve always been curious where people in the TransRepressors community are from.
Reddit polls only allow 6 options, so I had to group some regions together.
I’m from Japan, so I’ll be voting East Asia.
\*\*Note:\*\* This post was originally written in Japanese and translated into English using a translation tool.
I'm a 25-year-old AGP AMAB, and I've been on HRT for five months.
No matter how many times I think about it, I can't find a convincing reason to stop HRT or rule out future castration.
I've never been romantically or sexually attracted to either women or men. The only sexuality I've ever experienced is AGP. Even before I knew what AGP was, I had been telling my parents since my late teens that I never wanted to get married or have children.
I didn't even masturbate until I was 22, so losing sexual function would simply mean going back to how I used to live.
I told my mother that I was on HRT, and she didn't reject me. I also told a few close friends that I've only ever been aroused by the fantasy of becoming a woman. They found it unusual, but they accepted it, and our friendships haven't changed at all.
As for work, I don't think HRT alone will cause major problems as long as I don't socially transition. Japan is still not very accepting of transgender people, but androgynous men aren't particularly unusual, and plenty of cis men get facial hair removal.
On the other hand, I have clear reasons to continue HRT.
I want to reduce my AGP-driven libido as much as possible. I also want to prevent further masculinization and reduce the distress caused by my gender dysphoria.
So far, I haven't experienced any significant side effects from HRT. The only thing I've noticed is that I feel a little sleepy after my injections, and I haven't experienced any noticeable changes in my mood or mental state.
The main downsides are the cost, the inconvenience, and the health risks.
But because my gender dysphoria makes it difficult to even enjoy my hobbies, I can accept the cost and inconvenience as long as they don't threaten my financial stability. As for the health risks, they don't feel like a major deterrent to me because I don't want to spend decades growing old as a man anyway.
Given all of that, continuing HRT simply seems like the more rational choice.
The irony is that I already went through male puberty. My face and body are unmistakably masculine, and I don't realistically believe I'll ever pass as a woman.
Mentally, aside from my sexuality, I'm not much different from a typical cis man. Most of my friends are men, my hobbies are stereotypically masculine, and I've never felt that I have a female identity.
And yet, I still feel compelled to continue HRT.
That's what makes this feel like hell.
If there had been even one convincing reason for me to stop, I never would have started HRT in the first place.
That's the part that hurts the most.
**Note:** This post was translated from Japanese into English using a translation tool.
I’m curious about the demographics of this community. Please choose the option that best describes you.
**Note:** This post was translated from Japanese into English using a translation tool.
I am a 25-year-old AGP AMAB, and I have been on HRT for five months.
Because of AGP, I feel despair whenever I imagine having to live for several more decades.
Throughout my life, I have never been attracted to either men or women. The only thing that has ever sexually aroused me is the thought of becoming female.
I first began wanting to become female when I was around ten years old. That was the beginning of my AGP.
By the time I reached high school, I had developed a profound sense of emptiness about life. Back then, I often thought, "If I were to die suddenly tomorrow, I wouldn't have any regrets." I believed the reason I felt that way was because I had no friends.
After I started working, those feelings developed into suicidal ideation. At the time, I believed the main causes were my low IQ, ASD, relative poverty, and my father's alcoholism.
Back then, I also believed that my desire to become female was simply the result of low self-esteem. I thought that if I could improve my self-esteem, the desire would disappear and I would become a heterosexual man.
So I worked on everything I could improve. I made an effort to start conversations with people and made more friends. I learned about investing and Japan's social welfare system, and I even managed to build some savings.
As a result, my self-esteem improved significantly. My suicidal thoughts disappeared, and I recovered to the point where I could honestly think, "If I died suddenly tomorrow, I wouldn't have any regrets."
However, my desire to become female never went away. Nor did I become heterosexual. I was deeply confused.
A year or two later, at the age of 24, I happened to discover Blanchard's typology.
According to Blanchard, AGP is one of the motivations for male-to-female transition. I also read several books about AGP. The experiences described by the people in those books were almost identical to my own.
Once I began associating my desire to become female with the experiences of MtF individuals, I also started experiencing physical gender dysphoria, something I had previously felt very little of.
That was when I experienced the strongest suicidal thoughts of my life.
Unfortunately, I had already gone through male puberty, so the options left to me are limited.
As I see it, I have only two possible paths forward. One is to continue my transition, live as a non-passing trans woman while remaining socially male. The other is to detransition, suppress these feelings, and eventually suffer a mental breakdown around the age of 50, like "John 50," the case described in Anne Vitale's paper.
The second option feels unbearable to me.
Japan is still not very accepting of transgender people. Fortunately, however, there is also a cultural preference for youthful, androgynous-looking men. Facial hair is often considered unclean, and even many cisgender men are expected by their employers to shave. In fact, I have been undergoing laser hair removal, and I noticed that many of the other clients were cisgender men as well.
Because of that, I believe that as long as I can hide my breasts, continuing HRT is unlikely to cause serious problems with my job.
So I will probably remain on HRT for the rest of my life.
Even so, when I think about carrying this burden for decades to come, it feels almost impossible to endure.
Note: This post was translated from Japanese into English using ChatGPT.
To be honest, I don't really care whether the claim that "cis women also have AGP" is true or false.
In fact, if ordinary cis women really do have AGP, that wouldn't be comforting to me—it would be hell.
Because to me, it would mean that cis women are born with the very feelings I've desperately longed for over the past fifteen years.
In MtF communities, people often try to reassure me by saying things like, "Cis women have AGP too, so you don't need to worry," or "You're a woman too." But those words don't comfort me at all. If anything, they only intensify my gender dysphoria and my envy toward cis women.
That's why, for me, hearing "You're a woman" is far less comforting than hearing, "You're a man with AGP—a male with a paraphilia." As harsh as that sounds, it's much easier for me to live with because it matches how I understand my own reality.
And this is simply a personal wish, but I don't want ordinary cis women to have AGP.
I want ordinary cis women to be fundamentally different from me. I want their romantic and sexual desires to be directed toward other people, not toward themselves or their own femininity in the way AGP describes.
Of course, whatever future research ultimately concludes is a separate issue. But for the sake of my own mental well-being, it is far easier for me to believe that AGP is something found in trans women and only a very small number of exceptional cis women—not in ordinary cis women as a whole.
By “fundamental solution,” I mean something that resolves or substantially reduces the distress in the long term, rather than simply helping someone cope with it.
Note: This post was translated from Japanese into English using ChatGPT.
About three months ago, I told my mother that I have AGP (autogynephilia).
At that time, I explained that I do not identify as female, that being treated as male is not distressing to me, and that I have had this pattern since around the age of 10.
(Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/askAGP/s/99uSlJ9kZs)
Since then, we've continued talking about it little by little. I gave her a Japanese translation of Anne Lawrence's book, explained the distinction between AGP and HSTS, and also told her that many AGP individuals medically transition later in life after finding themselves unable to tolerate male aging and the worsening gender dysphoria that often accompanies it.
Today, I finally told her that I had actually already started HRT.
I did not explain it as "I want to become a woman."
Instead, I told her that my reasons were:
• To reduce the distress caused by AGP.
• To reduce the possibility that my distress would become even worse as my body continues to masculinize with age.
I also told her that, in my own experience, HRT has noticeably reduced the intensity of my AGP itself.
She was surprised at first, but then she simply said,
"So that's why."
Apparently she had noticed changes in my chest before, and after hearing this, everything finally made sense to her.
The thing that struck me most was that I felt she finally understood how serious this has been for me.
She had never rejected me before.
Her attitude had always been something like,
"As long as you're able to live happily, that's all that matters."
But I also felt that she regarded it as something closer to an unusual fetish than a lifelong problem.
After learning that I had actually started HRT, however, I felt she finally understood that this was something I had struggled with for many years.
There was one thing I intentionally did.
I actually do experience body-related gender dysphoria.
However, I barely mentioned it during this conversation.
In Japan, if you simply say "gender dysphoria," most people immediately assume the typical HSTS / gender identity disorder narrative.
Because of that, instead of explaining HRT as "I want to become a woman," I framed it as using HRT to lower my sex drive, weaken AGP, and reduce the distress caused by it.
At the end of the conversation, my mother said,
"We should sit down and talk about this again sometime."
I don't think she understands everything yet.
But at least now, I feel like we're finally discussing the same problem from the same starting point.
Note: This post was translated from Japanese into English using ChatGPT.
Recently, while browsing r/MtF, I happened to come across this post:
> My Mom is trying to say I have Autogynephilia, and I'm scared what if it's true
Post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/s/chWnGuCUS8
---
Reading it reminded me of something I posted on r/askAGP some time ago:
> "But discovering the AGP framework was actually the first thing that made me recognize myself as potentially trans at all...
> So in my case, AGP theory didn't discourage transition—it made transition psychologically understandable to me for the first time."
My post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askAGP/s/Y3CaWWjDzC
---
Comparing these two experiences, there is something I genuinely cannot understand.
In the comments on r/MtF, I saw statements such as:
> "Autogynephilia is fake and most likely made up by a TERF/transphobe that wanted people to detransition."
> "Worse, from what I've seen, it was made up by a creepy clinician to convince trans women that sleeping with men (him) would make them feel better."
> "Considering he IS confirmed to have repeatedly slept with his so-called patients..."
> "He arbitrarily decided people were lying and changed their survey responses."
> "A semi-famous person has said Blanchard convinced them they were AGP and sexually harassed them as a teenager."
There were also many highly upvoted comments such as:
> "Fake disorder made up by a fake scientist."
> "He's always been a quack."
> "He was completely a chaser."
The overall impression was that the following were being treated as established facts:
- AGP was created to discourage transition or promote detransition.
- The AGP concept itself is inherently transphobic.
- Ray Blanchard had sexual relationships with patients.
- He sexually harassed patients.
- He manipulated research data.
Honestly, I was pretty shocked.
Afterward, I used multiple AI systems to fact-check these claims based on primary sources.
As a result, I understand that AGP theory has received extensive academic criticism.
However, regarding the serious allegations against Blanchard himself, I could not find reliable evidence such as court records, disciplinary actions, or official investigations supporting those claims.
If I've overlooked something, I'd genuinely appreciate being corrected.
But as things currently stand, it appears that claims without publicly verifiable evidence are being shared with thousands of people as though they were **confirmed facts**.
This is the part I find hardest to understand.
Criticizing a scientific theory is one thing.
Spreading serious accusations about a person as factual without sufficient evidence is something entirely different.
If evidence actually exists, I would genuinely like to see it.
But if it does not, then isn't that no longer academic criticism, but simply defamation?
---
There is another thing I don't understand.
Before learning about AGP, I never considered myself trans.
I wanted a female body, but I never felt that I "was a woman," that I had "always been a girl," or that I was psychologically female. Because of that, I couldn't relate to mainstream trans narratives at all.
Learning about AGP was the first time I thought:
> "So there are MtFs who transition for reasons like mine."
For the first time, my own desire to transition made psychological sense.
To me, AGP was **not** a theory that discouraged transition.
It was a framework that finally explained **why I wanted to transition in the first place.**
That's why I genuinely don't understand why AGP has become widely understood as:
- an ideology opposed to transition,
- a theory created to promote detransition,
- or simply transphobia itself.
Having read the original works by Blanchard and Anne Lawrence, that simply wasn't the impression I came away with.
---
So my questions are:
I'm **not** trying to argue that AGP theory is correct.
What I genuinely want to understand is **why there is such a large gap between the original literature and the way AGP is understood in today's online trans communities.**
先週、r/jaで年齢層の投票をしましたので
こちらのサブレの年齢層も気になりアンケートをしてみようと思い立ちました。
私は現在25歳で、小学4年生頃から一貫してTSF（女体化、性転換）でしか性的興奮を得られません。
作品を見ている時は、いつも男から女になった登場人物に感情移入して興奮しています。
なので、男性として女性と性行為をしたいという気持ちも、男性として男性と性行為をしたいという気持ちも全く無く、他人に性指向が向かない実質アセクシャルのような状態です。
自慰行為の際も、自分が女性になる想像をしないと射精に至れません。
同じような体験をしてる方がいるのか気になり投稿しました。
もし同じ体験をしている方がいましたら、コメ欄かDMでお話ししたいです。
Note: This post was translated from Japanese into English using ChatGPT.
For a long time, I never really understood what romantic feelings were.
I've never had much desire to have sex with either men or women, and I never truly understood why people wanted romantic relationships in the first place. Years ago, I genuinely asked a friend, "Is there any reason to get a girlfriend other than social expectations?" At the time, I didn't even realize that this wasn't a normal question.
Later, I learned about Autogynephilia (AGP) and came to believe that I most closely fit the profile of an Analloerotic AGP. My sexual arousal is centered on the idea of myself as female rather than on other people. Even when another person appears in my fantasies, they function more as a prop that completes the scenario of me being female than as someone I am genuinely sexually attracted to.
I discussed this with Grok, and it concluded that my experience is consistent with someone who has very little alloerotic attraction, with most of my sexual drive being directed toward AGP-related self-feminization. That explanation felt remarkably accurate.
However, I wasn't convinced that AGP alone could explain why I also couldn't understand romantic love. So I continued the discussion with Claude.
Together, we examined the characteristics that are commonly said to distinguish romantic love from friendship:
• Seeing someone as uniquely special.
• Wanting to spend time with them.
• Feeling jealousy or possessiveness.
• Caring deeply about their well-being.
• Feeling devastated by the loss of the relationship.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that all of these can also exist in very close friendships.
The only characteristic that seemed uniquely associated with romance was the desire for romantic or sexual physical intimacy:
• Wanting to kiss them.
• Wanting to hug or cuddle them.
• Wanting to have sex with them.
I hardly experience those feelings at all.
That means the very thing that most clearly separates romance from friendship is largely absent in my own experience.
Because of that, I've come to think that my inability to understand romantic love isn't because I'm overlooking something. Instead, it may simply be that I've never experienced the defining component that distinguishes romance from deep friendship.
Of course, romance is not simply "wanting to have sex." Friendship and romance share an enormous amount in common. Caring deeply about someone, not wanting to lose them, feeling jealous, or wanting to be important in their life can all exist within friendship as well.
For me, the clearest distinction between friendship and romance seems to be whether I desire romantic or sexual physical intimacy with that specific person.
As someone who appears to fit the profile of an Analloerotic AGP, I experience very little attraction toward other people, while most of my sexual energy is directed inward toward the idea of myself as female. If that's true, then it would naturally follow that I lack the primary psychological marker that distinguishes romance from friendship.
After all this analysis, one question still remains.
What does romantic love actually feel like?
It's something that most people seem to experience so naturally that they rarely question it. Yet I've never truly experienced it myself. The more I try to understand it intellectually, the more I wonder whether it may simply be a kind of feeling that doesn't exist within my own psychological makeup.
Perhaps, in this lifetime, I'll never find the answer.
Note: This post was translated from Japanese into English using ChatGPT.
25-year-old biological male. On HRT for 5 months. I believe I have autogynephilic (AGP) tendencies.
I believe that, in Japan, the idea of "learning to love your male body" is much harder to apply than it may be in Western countries.
In detrans communities, I often see advice such as "learn to accept your male body" or "learn to love your body." I'm sure this advice genuinely helps some people.
However, I feel that this advice is rooted in a Western cultural context, and I'm not sure it translates well to Japan.
For example, in Japan, facial hair and thick body hair are generally not considered attractive masculine traits. Instead, they're often seen as something that should be removed for the sake of cleanliness. Even many cisgender men undergo laser hair removal, and the men's beauty industry largely promotes removing facial and body hair rather than embracing it.
The same applies to facial appearance. If you look at male actors and idols who are considered attractive in Japan or South Korea, many of them are slim, have clear skin, little or no facial hair, and relatively androgynous facial features. Height is still considered attractive, but facial masculinity itself is often less emphasized than youthfulness and a clean appearance.
I once saw a comment on the Japanese forum 5channel saying, "Only handsome guys can pull off crossdressing." That comment stuck with me because it reflects how androgynous-looking men are often considered attractive in Japan.
In contrast, many Western beauty standards celebrate square jaws, wide cheekbones, thick beards, and rugged facial structures.
I recently watched a video about people undergoing maxillary expansion—not for orthodontic or breathing problems, but to intentionally widen their face and create a more masculine appearance. The Japanese comments on that video were overwhelmingly things like:
- "I don't understand why anyone would want that face."
- "He looks worse."
- "That's disgusting."
To me, that really highlighted how different the ideal image of masculinity is between Japan and the West.
Because of this, advice like "learn to love your male body" feels much harder to relate to in Japan. Many physical traits associated with traditional masculinity are not particularly celebrated here. Instead, society often encourages men to minimize them.
This difference has also influenced how I think about my own transition.
Even if I were to undergo facial feminization surgery (FFS) but ultimately fail to transition socially and continue living as a man while staying on HRT, I don't think the outcome would necessarily be as negative in Japan as it might be elsewhere.
Changes from HRT and FFS—such as smoother skin, reduced facial hair, and softer facial features—could simply make me appear as a more attractive, cleaner, or more androgynous-looking man according to Japanese beauty standards.
Of course, HRT has real drawbacks, including infertility, changes in sexual function, and lifelong medical treatment.
However, I have never wanted children. I have also never had any interest in having sex with other people and consider myself asexual.
For me personally, the biggest concern with HRT is breast development. But if my chest remained small enough to conceal, I don't feel that the other changes from HRT would negatively affect my life in Japan. In fact, I feel they could even make me more attractive according to Japanese standards of male beauty.
Given this cultural environment, I honestly can't imagine ever learning to love my male body—or naturally aging as a biological man.
This is why I wanted to ask biological male detransitioners:
How did you actually come to love and accept your body?
If you experienced strong physical dysphoria before detransitioning, what changed?
I'd also be especially interested in hearing from people who grew up in East Asia.
Do you think advice like "learn to love your male body" (or female body) is harder to relate to because our cultures tend to value more androgynous male beauty than traditionally masculine features?
ふと気になったのでアンケートをしてみました。
Which do you think better explains AGP?
Personally, I believe AGP is innate. Many people here seem to have experienced AGP before puberty or during its early stages. In my case, it appeared around age 10.
Back then, my family didn’t even have internet access, so I had no exposure to online pornography. Because of that, I find it difficult to see AGP as something that was learned. To me, it seems more likely that it emerged naturally from an inborn predisposition.
*Note: This post was translated from Japanese into English using ChatGPT.*
I spend a lot of time reading 5channel, Japan's largest anonymous forum.
Recently, I noticed something interesting.
Many threads are started by lonely, frustrated heterosexual men. Some are probably incels, some are simply chronically single men. They complain about never having a girlfriend, never having sex, never getting married, growing old alone, or feeling that life has somehow passed them by.
What surprised me was how familiar many of these complaints felt.
Through the lens of Erotic Target Location Error (ETLE), I found that simply replacing the object of desire often transforms these statements into descriptions of my own experience as an AGP.
The details are different, but the emotional structure often feels remarkably similar.
## Examples
Why am I alive if nobody loves me?
↕︎
Why am I alive if I can never become a woman?
---
I think I'm going to die without ever having a girlfriend, sex, or marriage.
↕︎
I think I'm going to die without ever becoming a woman, starting HRT, or transitioning.
---
I'm 38 years old and sometimes I wake up at night thinking: Is this really all my life is going to be?
↕︎
I'm 38 years old and sometimes I wake up at night thinking: Am I really going to spend the rest of my life as a man?
---
I think about sex all day. Maybe if I could finally have sex, my life would change.
↕︎
I think about becoming a woman all day. Maybe if I could finally transition, my life would change.
---
A 14-year-old is already having sex, while I'm 42 and I've never even kissed anyone.
↕︎
Some people transitioned as teenagers, while I'm 42 and still living as a man.
---
Maybe I'm going to grow old and die without ever having a girlfriend.
↕︎
Maybe I'm going to grow old and die without ever becoming the woman I've wanted to be.
---
Men become creepy old men as they age. If they don't have a wife or children, that's a miserable future.
↕︎
As I age, my body becomes more and more masculine. If I never transition, that's a miserable future.
---
You should get married while you're young. You don't want to be an old guy getting called creepy while desperately trying to find a wife.
↕︎
You should transition while you're young. You don't want to be an old man desperately trying to feminize decades of masculinization.
---
I spend every day fantasizing about girls. Without those fantasies, I might have killed myself.
↕︎
I spend every day fantasizing about being a girl. Without those fantasies, I might have killed myself.
---
What if this is it? What if I never get a wife, children, or a family?
↕︎
What if this is it? What if I never get to live as a woman?
---
Why weren't women assigned to us? At this rate we'll become sad monsters.
↕︎
Why can't we become women? At this rate we'll become sad monsters.
## What I Realized
The heterosexual man suffers because he cannot obtain the woman he desires.
The AGP suffers because the desired woman has been internalized into the self.
In both cases there is often a feeling that something important is missing, that time is running out, that other people have moved on to the next stage of life, and that the future is becoming increasingly closed off.
This observation has made me wonder whether AGP is sometimes easier to understand through comparison with heterosexual men than through comparison with women.
Many discussions compare AGPs to women, but I often find more similarities with lonely heterosexual men.
The object of desire is different, but the longing, frustration, obsession, regret, and fear of aging can look surprisingly similar.
## Personal Conclusion
For me personally, this is even more obvious because I am an Analloerotic AGP.
My AGP has largely replaced ordinary heterosexual motivation.
As a result, the resources that a typical heterosexual man might spend on women will instead be spent on AGP.
If I were a typical heterosexual man, I would probably spend money and effort on:
- Dating
- Sex
- Self-improvement aimed at attracting women
- Marriage
- Raising children
Instead, those same resources are being directed toward:
- HRT
- Feminization
- Transition-related goals
- Making my internal female image more real
I do not see this as a fundamentally different process.
A heterosexual man invests his resources into obtaining the woman he desires.
I invest those same resources into becoming the woman I desire.
That is why I increasingly believe that the suffering of AGPs is often better understood through comparison with heterosexual men than through comparison with women.
The direction of desire is different, but the structure is remarkably similar.
The more incel and lonely male posts I read, the more convinced I become that many AGP struggles are not alien to male sexuality at all. They are what male desire can look like when its target is redirected inward.
Therefore, I intend to devote as many of my resources as possible to transition. If a heterosexual man can devote his life to pursuing the woman he desires, then I see no reason not to devote mine to becoming the woman I desire.
Note: This post was translated from Japanese into English using ChatGPT.
I've been thinking about something lately and I'm curious what other AGPs think.
A lot of AGP transitioners who transitioned in their 40s, 50s, or later say things like:
"If I had been born 20 years later, things would have been different."
The argument is usually that they grew up in a different era:
- Very little information about gender dysphoria, or transition.
- Strong social pressure to marry and have children.
- Less acceptance of remaining single.
- Few visible transition role models.
On the surface, that seems reasonable.
However, I wonder whether the situation is really that simple.
One thing I've noticed is that many AGPs do not necessarily start with severe gender dysphoria.
Some start with little or no dysphoria at all.
Others begin with mild dysphoria or only occasional cross-gender fantasies.
Yet in many cases, the feelings seem to intensify over time. What may begin as a fantasy, fetish, curiosity, or manageable desire in youth can gradually become a much more persistent and emotionally significant issue later in life.
By middle age, some AGPs report dysphoria becoming intense enough that they feel unable to continue living as they had before.
This raises an interesting question:
Even if someone has access to all the information in the world at age 20, would they necessarily make different choices?
Speaking personally, before I learned about AGP, I assumed these feelings would eventually disappear.
I thought they were something that would fade with age, maturity, relationships, or simply the passage of time.
Looking back, I suspect many people may think the same way:
- "This is probably temporary."
- "I'll grow out of it."
- "Maybe a relationship will fix it."
- "Maybe marriage will fix it."
- "I'll deal with it later."
In previous generations, that "later" may have involved marriage and children.
But younger generations live in a different social environment.
Today:
- Information about transition is widely available.
- Remaining single is increasingly accepted.
- Childlessness is increasingly accepted.
- There is less pressure to follow a traditional life path.
Because of this, I sometimes wonder whether the pattern will actually disappear.
Perhaps instead of seeing married AGPs transition in midlife, we will simply see more single AGPs reaching their 40s or 50s and then deciding to transition.
In other words, maybe the life story changes, but the basic phenomenon remains.
So my question is:
Do you think middle-aged AGP transitioners will become significantly less common in the future?
Or do you think they will continue to exist in substantial numbers, even in an era with greater information and social acceptance?
If you think they will decline, why?
If you think they will continue, what do you think is driving the phenomenon?
I’ve always been curious about where people in the AGP community are from.
Since Reddit polls only allow 6 options, I had to group some regions together.
I’m from Japan myself, so I’ll be voting East Asia.