October 14 – Through Male Eyes

An Apology
Some of you may notice a change made to this posting. My original writing, made reference to a
name and a blog that I used as a means of expounding upon a thought I had with regards to
males relating to the emotional aspects of females. In doing so, the writer of the blog in question
has taken exception to my using his name, his quotes as well as my interpretation of them. I have
as a result,  acknowledged my mistake, sent him a full apology as well as informing him of my
intention to revise this posting to reflect this error of judgment .

A Male Illusion?

Can a male relate to the world as a woman? In viewing a recent blog in which this thought was
expressed, it has occurred to me that this outlook, though conceivably a valid emotional
understanding by some, is perhaps I would argue a mistaken sense of reality.

I feel for those men who may confuse desire with reality as these are emotions that I have felt at
one time or another. Though I have found many of the reasons for my dyslexic
emotions stemmed from childhood and I have been able to come to terms with them, they remain
with me none the less as an aspect of my personality. I know that though I will never transition
(for many reasons,) the thoughts of being a woman, or possessing the physical attributes of the
same, remain with me and no doubt will remain with me forever.

That being said however, I also wonder how it is that transvestic behaviour as expressed by
many in cyber-space can develop to the point whereby one begins to consider that one is female.
This manner of thinking could, if one thought on it in an absurd way, be equated to one wearing
a superman costume and then believing he can fly.  I intend at some point in the future to foster a
discussion on this thought of uncomplicated transvestism versus using this application to become
female, but will leave it for now.

Many men in wrestling with their lives as heterosexual males, purport to relate to the world as a
woman; my thoughts tell me however that though we as males say we relate to the world as

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women, it poses the question; can we? Can we actually understand what that entails when
viewing the world as undeniably and categorically male? Of course if one looks as females in the
manner of gender-feminist theory that would have us believe there is no differences between the
sexes save for reproduction, a hypothesis I have trouble with, perhaps one would.

However I find myself continually asking the question; how is it possible that one can relate to
the world as female having acknowledged the fact they live their life as males? Surly this is the
ultimate emotional incongruity. For how can a heterosexual male (assuming he is not transsexual
and struggling with both sexualities) relate with a psychological identity that is not one’s own?

I Experience You, and You Experience Me

R.D. Laing, the Scottish Psychiatrist in his book The Politics of Experience made an interesting
comment regarding the experiences we believe we know of others lives which I think has a
practical application on the topic at hand when he stated:

“I see you, and you see me. I experience you, and you experience me. I see your behaviour. You
see my behaviour. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me, just as
you cannot "see" my experience of you. My experience of you is not "inside" me. It is simply you,
as I experience you. And I do not experience you as “inside” me. Similarly, I take it that you do
not experience me as inside you.” (Quotation marks mine)

My experience of you is not "inside" me. This is the heart of my analysis and has, as I have come
to understand, sums up the plight of many engaged in the so called autogynephilic world, a world
I put to you, if not found to be a medical condition is a world of self conception and illusory.

I should state here, that my use of the word autogynephilic is perhaps misplaced, as my
understanding of this phrase has yet to settle unreservedly in my mind. None the less I will use it
as a metaphor in my writing for the condition of heterosexual males who desire to become
women, or desire to append their physical male bodies with the attributes of a female. In any
case I believe there is a flaw in this autogynephilic thinking as I try and reason my way through
the labyrinth of facts and fiction regarding this phenomenon.

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As seen by my reference to R.D. Laing; being male limits our view of the world and predicates
immensely on our desires for a physiological female identity. Again if I may paraphrase Laing,
“the autogynephilic’s experience of women is not "inside" him.” Males are not females no matter
how much their logic believes this to be true and therefore, due to his set of biological and
hormonal criteria which, coupled with the set of instructions in which they have been given and
codified by society and culture on the meaning of their masculinity, will always shade and
disfigure their perspective of how they view or imagines womanhood to be.

Focusing on ones female aspirations to see oneself as a woman is somewhat distorted because
the paradigm itself is a result of a preconceived “male” perception of womanhood as seen only
through male eyes and therefore, something we have no real awareness of, or affinity to.

It is I should think, an idea of womanhood that will always be confined to his response to a
visual/sexual image of women; something R. D. Laing said which again I paraphrase; “I as a
male cannot and never have and never will see as women’s experience.”

By our conception as males in the womb of our mothers, it will never allow us to truly relate to
the womanhood of our imagination and therefore fails in many ways to offer a valid
understanding of womanhood other than that of a “reflection” (as seen in the header of this blog)
of what we identify or believe womanhood to be. This pattern of thinking becomes a form of
self-deception in many respects and much along the line of the philosophy of Franz Brentano’s
“Intentionalism” being simply defined says – “The things we think about may or may not exit,
however in thinking about them they become real to us whether they are true or not.”

In my own struggle with is phenomenon, I came to some realization that my desire for a female
body was nothing more than one of irrational idealism and impracticality; an escape as it were
from the adult world in which I was living. Coming to this conclusion does not dismiss the desire
at all as it is something that is part of my psychological personality. However it was I believe, in
part due to its use as an escape mechanism which comes about as a result of never having come
to terms with my past (facing my shadow in Jungian terms) and therefore remained a source of
fear and angst well into my adult years.

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If those who do not wish to change their sexuality, (i.e. transition) yet at the same time thirst to
attain something other than who they are, than these aspirations for the inaccessible become an
endless source of self-induced mental masochism, in as much as ones hunger to possess an
image of “physical femininity” i.e. vagina, breast, hair and shape, will always remain an
unattainable dream and totally unrelated to the hormonal female of reality. One’s desire for a
physical female body is simply a desire to capture an essence of womanhood as seen through
male eyes and thus in many respects, discounts the realism of a menstrual cycle, or pregnancy, or
birthing or menopause or any other physical or mental aspect of the female reality of life and
dare I say, becomes an Imitation of Reality.

These feelings are no doubt very real to many as they remain to a certain extent with me;
however I see the autogynephilic’s desires as an attempt to emulate a physical image of the
female rather than a psychological one, even though his preconceived idea of womanhood
appears to be real. However I don’t feel, while being confined within our own physiological
make-up as males we can come anywhere close to understanding what real womanhood is as we
cannot experience it within ourselves. We may try to replicate it by wrapping ourselves in all the
trappings of femininity to ease our yearnings for this image, but in possessing little “real”
knowledge of what it is to be female, it becomes much like fulfilling sexual loneliness by making
love to a plastic blow-up doll. It fulfills our needs at the time but never comes close to the real
thing.