Erotic Target Identity Inversion

Erotic target identity inversion (ETII) is a sexological concept describing arousal turned inward: instead of desiring an external partner who has a particular feature, a person is aroused by the fantasy of being that feature, embodying the very kind of being they are attracted to. Anne Lawrence memorably glossed it as the wish to "become what we love." ETII is the inward-facing form of the broader erotic target location error (ETLE), the proposed family of conditions in which sexual interest is mislocated: shifted onto a peripheral part of a partner (the basis some theorists give for fetishism) or turned inward onto one's own body and identity, which is the inversion. This article covers the theory's lineage, its component inversions, the evidence base, and why it remains both actively researched and genuinely contested.

Definition & scope

ETLE, as summarised on Wikipedia, names a strong sexual interest in features located somewhere other than on a sexual partner. ETII is the specific case where the interest is relocated onto the self: arousal based on imagining oneself in another physical form, such as a woman, an animal, an infant, or an amputee. The key claim is that the outward attraction and the inward inversion are two expressions of one underlying interest, not separate conditions. ETII is a theoretical dimension, not a diagnosis, and it is distinct from gender identity: the model addresses patterns of arousal, and applying it to lived identity is exactly where much of the controversy sits.

Examples

What the term covers. ETII names a claimed structure rather than a behaviour: in every proposed case an outward attraction is paired with an inward wish to embody the same target, and the theory's whole content is the assertion that these are one interest and not two. Its documented instances are catalogued below under In practice, and each is a research claim about self-reported arousal, not a category of person.

What it does not cover. It is not a gender identity. Being a trans woman or a trans man is a statement about who someone is; ETII is a proposed description of a pattern of arousal, and treating one as an account of the other is the specific move most of the dispute concerns. It is not fetishism, which the parent model casts as the outward-facing error, displaced onto a peripheral part of a partner. It is not transformation fetish or gender swap fetish, fantasy genres about a body changing that make no claim about where an erotic target sits. It is not therianthropy or otherkin identity, which those communities describe as non-sexual. And body integrity dysphoria, an ICD-11-coded condition about limb ownership, is a live point of disagreement rather than a settled member of the family.

How the word is used. Purely academic. ETII and ETLE live in sexology journals and in the arguments about them; neither appears in the DSM-5-TR or the ICD-11, and vanishingly few people use either term to describe themselves. When the words surface outside the literature it is almost always inside a dispute about the underlying typology rather than as neutral description.

History & origins

Clinical lineage

The paired terms entered the literature in 1993, when sexologists Kurt Freund and Ray Blanchard published "Erotic target location errors in male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists" in The British Journal of Psychiatry (162:558–563). The paper grew out of Blanchard's earlier work on autogynephilia and proposed that certain paraphilias arise from anomalies in how an erotic target is "located": sometimes shifted onto the wrong part of a partner, sometimes turned inward onto the self.

The framework was substantially developed by Anne Lawrence in her 2009 article "Erotic Target Location Errors: An Underappreciated Paraphilic Dimension" in the Journal of Sex Research (46(2–3):194–215). Lawrence catalogued the inward-facing variants and tied them explicitly to identity, arguing that wishing to embody a desired target can reshape a person's sense of self rather than merely their arousal. She also extended the model to plush- and costume-related variants such as autoplushophilia and fursuiting.

Testing the theory

In the 2010s and 2020s Kevin Hsu and J. Michael Bailey formalised ETII theory into a falsifiable prediction: for every external erotic target to which people are attracted, a subset will develop a corresponding internalized attraction and matching identity inversion. Hsu and Bailey first demonstrated the pattern in "Autopedophilia: Erotic-Target Identity Inversions in Men Sexually Attracted to Children" (Psychological Science, 2017). The team then tested the general prediction across three internet samples in Bailey, Hsu & Jang (2023), Archives of Sexual Behavior 54(8):2805–2823: men attracted to amputees (322), to animals (1,501), and to severely obese persons (402). Each sample contained a substantial minority reporting the matching inversion, and the strength of internalized attraction correlated almost perfectly (near 1.0 after correction for attenuation) with the strength of the identity inversion, which the authors read as strong support for a shared mechanism.

In practice

ETII is expressed mainly through fantasy and self-identification rather than any single behaviour. Documented forms each pair an outward attraction with an inward inversion:

• Autogynephilia: arousal at the thought or image of oneself as a woman, in a person assigned male at birth; the most-discussed internalized attraction in this literature, and the most disputed.
• Autoandrophilia: the counterpart in which arousal attaches to the thought of oneself as a man; far less studied than its opposite number.
• Autozoophilia: arousal at the idea of being an animal, which the theory places alongside some fursuiting and therian experiences — an overlap those communities largely reject, since both are usually described as non-sexual identity or performance.
• Autonepiophilia (paraphilic infantilism): arousal at occupying the role or self-image of an infant, conceptually distinct from any attraction to children.
• The amputation-focused inversion, the inward counterpart of attraction to amputees, linked to apotemnophilia.

Psychology

The theory proposes that an external attraction can become "internalized," so that the self is recruited as the erotic object. Lawrence connected this to identity formation, while Hsu and Bailey emphasise the tight statistical coupling between an attraction and its inversion as evidence of a single underlying process. The mechanism remains a hypothesis: it is inferred from self-report questionnaires in self-selected internet samples, not from biological markers, and the direction of causation is not established.

Prevalence & culture

How common is it?

Reliable population figures do not exist, so any estimate carries low confidence. As a named concept ETII is rare and lives mostly in academic sexology rather than mainstream kink culture, although its component interests vary widely in visibility. The Brown, Barker & Rahman (2020) internet study reported that mild inversion-related arousal is fairly common while strong forms are rarer, and rarer still in women.

Is the theory accepted?

No, not uniformly. ETII is contested. Critics dispute aspects of the underlying autogynephilia research and the typological claims built on it, particularly where the model is applied to transgender identity. It is best treated as an actively studied hypothesis rather than settled fact.

Safety, consent & law

As an abstract concept ETII describes private fantasy and identity and is neither illegal nor inherently harmful. Risk lies only within specific component interests: the amputation-focused inversion can involve self-harm urges that warrant clinical support, while any interest whose conduct would involve children or animals is criminal and harmful in practice, documented here strictly for clinical completeness. Responsible handling of the concept is descriptive, never instructional.