Erotic Target Identity Inversion

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

History & origins

Coinage

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 research 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.

Lawrence's elaboration

The framework was substantially developed by Anne Lawrence, whose 2009 article in the Journal of Sex Research (46(2–3):194–215) catalogued the inward-facing variants and linked them explicitly to identity: arguing that wishing to embody a desired target can reshape a person's sense of self, not merely their arousal. Lawrence also extended the model to plush- and costume-related variants such as autoplushophilia and fursuiting.

ETII theory and testing

In the 2010s and 2020s Kevin Hsu and J. Michael Bailey formalised ETII theory, which makes 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 for attraction to children 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 (≈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: a natal male aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman; in the literature the most common internalized attraction in men.
• Autoandrophilia: the natal-female (or natal-male attracted-to-men) counterpart.
• Autozoophilia: arousal at the idea of being an animal, overlapping with some fursuit and therian experiences.
• Autonepiophilia (paraphilic infantilism): arousal at being 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

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. Reliable population figures do not exist, so any estimate carries low confidence. The theory is also contested: critics dispute aspects of the underlying autogynephilia research and the typological claims built on it, so ETII 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 and is documented here strictly for clinical completeness. Responsible handling of the concept is descriptive, never instructional.