Struggling with autogynephilia or transvestic fetishism can take different forms. It does not always involve real women’s clothing. Sometimes,  perhaps most of the time, it is actually an issue of our heads and our hearts. The most common way of acting on our cross-gender desires and longings is to engage in fantasy offline or online. This can be done through daydreaming, writing stories, altering photos, or engaging in all manner of online content such as transgender fiction sites, TG photo captions, AI stories or chatbots, YouTube videos of crossdressing, photos of crossdressers, or sissy hypnosis videos. Just as pornography is ridiculously and terribly too easy to access, all of these kinds of online content related to autogynephilia are extremely easy to access. And in a way, the online content appears safer than crossdressing. It is far less likely that you will caught masturbating while looking at crossdressing images on the computer, compared to spending hours trying to perfectly makeup yourself to look like a woman which may take a whole hour to undo and hide the evidence. Frankly, even for those who are not afraid of others seeing them crossdressing may find it a whole lot easier to simply engage in online content instead because it takes less work.

But this safety is an illusion. Just as our bodies and brains are not set up to handle pornography and the addiction that ensues, so our bodies and brains are not set up to handle the sexual addiction that forms to these kinds of online crossdressing content. The constant dopamine hits and repeated cycles of sexual pleasure actually changes our brain chemistry and makes us hooked. There are real life consequences to sexual addiction like this. One is how it absorbs our time and how we end up needing more and more time to get the same sexual high and endorphin rush. We literally have our lives sucked away by the addiction without time left for our jobs, exercise, church, and our children. The addiction can even make us neglect or forget our need to drink water or eat food. Worse, our brains change to the point where we stop having normal dopamine and pleasure from everyday things like relationships with people we love, watching a sunset, or intimacy with our spouse. The result is depression and further felt need for the addictive content. See some further information on the brain and the hope for how it can be rewired again through the following links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Let me tell a bit of my story of sexual addiction in this area. In the past, when I was addicted to crossdressing, it might be more accurate to say I was addicted to reading crossdressing fiction. Throughout my life, I must have spent 10 times as many hours reading transgender fiction compared to actually crossdressing. I would read stories about people being forced to crossdress by other people or needing to crossdress in unlikely situations. Or stories about men transitioning and trying to live as women. It sucked away so much of my time, and was usually accompanied by masturbation. Afterwards I would feel guilt and shame for what I did. I believe that engaging in such content is both sinful and unhealthy. Whether it’s in the mind or being acted out, it’s still wrong before God (see these posts – here and here). But in addition to feeling guilt because engaging the content is sinful, I would feel guilt and shame because of all the time I wasted. And I felt guilt and shame because sometimes the stories led me into more offensive and perverse content that made me feel dirty.
 
 
Why was I so drawn to online content versus actually crossdressing?
1. Reading stories about crossdressing was very sexually pleasurable for me. It also was emotionally pleasurable, emotionally a stress relief and escape from life pressures (only for a moment), and an escape from reality. All at the click of a button. It was so easy compared to crossdressing.

2. I was much less likely to be caught reading something on my computer than if I was physically crossdressing and someone saw me. Further it is very easy to erase internet history, but much harder to hide stashed clothing.

3. I sometimes rationalized that reading fiction about crossdressing was less bad than actually crossdressing. I knew that Jesus taught that thinking about sinful desires in our hearts and fantasizing about it is also sinful, but it was easier to ignore that truth. It felt less bad if I only read about other people crossdressing without doing it myself. And I felt less bad yet if the character was forced to crossdress because of a crazy situation beyond his control, rather than if he chose to crossdress. This helped to partially assuage my feeling of guilt. It felt like if the main character was only crossdressing because he lost his luggage, then he wasn’t doing anything wrong. And if he wasn’t doing anything wrong, then I wasn’t either by reading about it. But of course I was still reading such stories for sexual pleasure. What stupid lies we tell ourselves to rationalize our behavior! I was fooling myself. This is part of the trap of addiction – self-deception.

4. Reading crossdressing fiction was more pleasurable and enticing than actually crossdressing. Over the years, the more I realized how sinful and messed up and distorted crossdressing is, the less I desired to do actual crossdressing. Actual crossdressing became too hard. I could look at myself and realize how ridiculous I looked. It was too obvious how deceptive and foolish the activity was. It was frustrating and even not pleasurable at times. On the other hand, it was much easier to simply get engaged in a story and escape from reality. And I could do things by proxy in a story that I could never do in real life. Since the time many years ago that I obtained significant freedom from crossdressing and autogynephilia, cross-gender longings and sexual temptations have greatly diminished. When temptations do rarely come and I feel an urge to do something, almost always the urge is to read something online, not to crossdress. Crossdressing seems ridiculous. Conversely, reading crossdressing fiction is an old ingrained habit that provides immediate sexual gratification. The stories are told in such a way that they are pleasurable because in the stories there aren’t horrible consequences for crossdressing; people always feel good afterward, they look beautiful, and others encourage them and also say that they are beautiful. Sometimes our imagination is much more powerful and pleasurable than the reality. Crossdressing always sounds fun and exciting in the stories, but in real life it’s not all its cracked up to be. Thankfully temptations to read online are rare now and with the help of accountability partners and recovery groups, I can overcome them.
 
 
Further Damage from Reading Transgender Fiction
I’d like to talk more about some of the harmful consequences of this activity. When I was reading these stories or searching for these stories I was always looking for the “harmless” ones that didn’t include pedophilia, incest, sadism, masochism, diapers, erotica, brutal forced crossdressing, domination, manipulation, rape, sissification, women being portrayed as bimbos, homosexuality, abuse, bestiality, and all sorts of other kinds of sexual immorality and paraphilias. What is disturbing and maybe surprising for some of you is that the vast MAJORITY of these stories include some of these things. I remember it was hard to find what you might call “tame” or “vanilla” crossdressing stories. I have since read a number of books about autogynephilia that mention studies which show that men with one paraphilia often have an additional paraphilia. It seems those who have one paraphilia are prone to having or developing additional ones. When I talk about “tame” crossdressing stories, I don’t mean to imply that autogynephilia is a less perverse paraphilia compared to these other paraphilias. But it felt “tamer” to me because it was my own paraphilia.

I often would spend hours searching on search engines like google to find more tame stories. I wasted so much time. Unfortunately the end result was that I would end up reading or skimming the stories with those kinds of additional perverse content in them. Being a Christian, I always found those parts of the stories disgusting and detestable and they made me feel dirty, so I tried to skip over those parts. But I was so stuck in my addiction to crossdressing fiction that I read the stories anyway. But like with everything else in life, what we do with our time, what we fill our minds with, has an affect on us. The deeper I got into my addiction, the deeper I went into my depravity. Stories that originally I would have immediately stopped reading started to become stories I would tolerate. Stories that I would tolerate, I eventually even became sexually turned on by. This seems a lot like the men I talk to regularly who started out with heterosexual vanilla porn and eventually became hooked on trans porn.

I think this illustrates that our sexuality is more changeable than we realize and can be adapted and twisted the more we give in to sin. I find it highly unlikely that I could begin being utterly turned off and detesting things like homosexuality or domination or incest in stories and then eventually being turned on by those same elements in certain stories. You might say that I was just ignoring buried sexual tendencies within myself and repressing them. But with crossdressing desires, I was ashamed of those desires and did not choose to have them. I detested them, yet I did not bury them or initially resist them. I don’t think it’s the case that I always was turned on by these other perverse things in the stories. We are all born sinful and messed up with a fallen sinful nature. Maybe we all have the capacity to learn to desire any type of evil or distortion, especially sexual distortion. The more I exposed myself to such stories the more I tolerated certain things I thought were gross, and the more I tolerated them the more they started to turn me on slightly.  My body and mind were learning new sexual desires and responses. Sin is damaging and has real life consequences.

Reading about pornography addiction, I know that it is much the same. Pornography rewires the brain, and any other type of sexual addiction does the same thing. Porn addicts need more and more stimuli: new images, more images, more images at a faster rate, more shocking images, etc. Eventually it even becomes difficult for a porn addict to have sex with his wife because he needs more and more and newer and newer forms of pleasure. And some porn addicts find themselves shocked to be looking at homosexual porn or videos of rape and other more horrific material. As a porn addict may develop into a trans porn addict, so also we may start by engaging crossdressing content online, only to find ourselves engaging in other new paraphilic content.

I think this also illustrates well the slippery slope of sin. You give into a little bit of sin and rationalize it, and you start rationalizing even more and giving into more sin and other types of sin. We eventually can even warp our consciences, so that things that used to make us feel guilty (things that should make us feel guilty!) stop making us feel guilty. The more we allow sin to have free reign into our lives the easier it is to fool ourselves and ignore the Holy Spirit. I think of the men who are now in our recovery groups who started out in their past doing what seemed harmless even if a little bit rebellious. Engaging in a little sissy hypnosis here, dabbling in a little transgender fiction there. Only to find out that their sin kept drawing them further into darker and darker places over time. They became enslaved to their addictions to online content. The online content turned into fantasies of acting out in real life. Finally one day they wake up and wonder how they got themselves into a position of giving oral sex to a man they don’t know in some dingy hotel room, worrying for their personal safety and health, and then afterwards feeling utterly devastated and suicidal afterwards. I’m sorry to be so graphic, but these are common stories. This is where addiction can lead.

Another damaging effect that I received from reading so much crossdressing and TG fiction was that I started to become more and more confused about my true identity. Reading the stories was not simply sexual. It also scratched the itch of the more holistic desires of autogynephilia – the emotional euphoria of feeling like a woman, the love of self as woman, and the connection to the feminine. There were so many times where I craved being a real woman after reading those stories. The stories exacerbated gender dysphoria rather than easing it. And they brought confusion. Sometimes I wrestled with what I was feeling: do I feel feminine? Do I feel like I am a woman in my mind and personality? Immersing yourself in fantasy and combining it with sexual pleasure is a recipe for identity confusion and discontentment.

Crossdressing fiction was a bane on my life and I’m so glad to be rid of it. In the past I wished I could press a “delete” button and get those stories out of my memory. Thankfully after many years, most of the stories have drifted out of my memory. I am thankful for that. I have been intentional over the years to fill my mind with truth. So I spent a lot of time reading wonderful Christian books and reading God’s Word. The more I read of godly truth, the less the distorted lies in those stories of the past have any effect on me. On unusual rainy days I can still get a random temptation to read something online, but thankfully those temptations are few.

Let me end with a word of hope. Sexual addictions like this can be overcome! I and so many other men have already gone before you in experiencing change. Change is possible! There is freedom and healing around the corner! Sometimes it takes a long time, but our desires can change. And even if our desires do not change, we can learn how to live free instead of being a slave to our desires. You do not have to indulge your AGP, you do not have to indulge your crossdressing desires. It is possible to say “NO” to them and live free of all of this. Get an internet filter. Join a recovery group. Find an accountability partner. And above all, put your hope in Christ and cling to him. For more ideas on how to get started in your recovery, see this post.

Having trouble believing that change is possible? Read the testimonies on our site, or the list of testimonies from the links page here.