Some lesbian trans women claim to have been very feminine during their childhood, but AGP theory generally contradicts that claim. How can we know if the theory is right?
One potential approach would be to find some natal male kids who are very feminine and see how many of those who grow up to be trans women also grow up to be gynephilic.
| Study | Androphilic (%) | Bisexual (%) | Gynephilic (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallien (2008) | 83% to 100% | 0% | 0% to 17% |
| Steensma (2013) | 91% to 100% | 0% to 9% | 0% |
| Spack (2012) | 55% to 65% | 20% to 24% | 10% to 11% |
| Devita (2011) | 87% to 93% | 7% | 0% to 7% |
Spack’s study found somewhat higher rates of nonandrophilic orientation than the others, likely because his study did not only include those who had shown signs in childhood, but instead everyone young that he treated (some of whom are AGP).
This suggests that around 90% of trans women with diagnosable childhood GD are attracted to men. Of course, there might be some undiagnosable elements that this misses, such as private ideation, non-expressed dysphoria, secret crossdressing, or similar, but this is not exactly the sort of overt childhood femininity we’re looking for.
Next, how many trans women are there who are attracted to men in the general population? The NTDS found a rate of 23%, and I generally hear numbers in the range of 10% to 30%, so that seems realistic enough; let’s go with that. Conservatively, suppose that all of these trans women were very feminine as kids. This implies that 23%/90%*10%/77%=3.3% of the rest were feminine as kids.
This seems like a lot fewer than what I usually hear if I ask people, and in fact it’s also fewer than various self-report statistics suggest. For this reason, I’m very skeptical when non-androphilic trans women report having been feminine.
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