Self-As-Male Arousal

Autoandrophilia is a proposed paraphilic pattern in which a person assigned female experiences sexual arousal at the idea or image of being, or becoming, a man. It is framed as the conceptual counterpart to autogynephilia, and both are placed within a theoretical model of an "erotic target location error": desire that would ordinarily be directed outward toward a partner is theorised to have "located" instead onto the self embodying a desired trait. The construct is sparsely studied and actively contested; unusually, the man most associated with it later said in print that he doubted the phenomenon exists. This article traces that thin and self-questioning lineage, and underscores that the term should not be read as an account of, or commentary on, transgender identity.

Examples

What the term covers. The construct names a proposed pattern of arousal and nothing else — not a practice, not a community, not a category of people. The content described in the small comparative literature is almost entirely mental: arousal reported at the thought of having a male body, at imagined masculinisation, or at masculine-coded self-presentation. Its footing in the diagnostic canon is not narrow but absent: the specifier "with autoandrophilia" was drafted for DSM-5 in 2010 and dropped before publication.

What the term does not cover. It is not a synonym for being transgender, a trans man or transmasculine. Health bodies treat gender as a matter of identity, ICD-11 moved gender incongruence out of the mental-disorders chapter entirely, and nothing about any person's gender can be inferred from a research construct. It is not cross-dressing, which is frequently non-erotic, nor the diagnosis transvestic disorder, which requires distress or impairment. It is not the fiction convention of gender-swap fantasy, which stands entirely on its own. It is not autosexuality, an orientation describing attraction to oneself as one already is, and it is not attraction to trans men, which points outward at a partner. Its proposed mirror image is autogynephilia, and the wider theoretical family it was slotted into is erotic target identity inversion.

How the word is used. Narrowly academic, and used mostly in the negative: it appears in the literature chiefly as the missing counterpart in arguments about whether the underlying typology is symmetrical or merely male-focused, rather than as a description of anybody — a use consistent with the published doubts of its own sponsor, recorded below. Outside academia it surfaces in online arguments about gender, deployed as an accusation no published research supports. Using it accurately means naming it as a disputed and largely unevidenced hypothesis.

History & origins

A label built by symmetry

The term belongs to a family of "auto-" paraphilia labels built from Greek roots (autos, "self"; anēr/andros, "man"; -philia, "love" or "attraction"). Unlike its counterpart, it does not trace to a single landmark study describing observed cases; it was coined chiefly to mirror an existing male-directed concept.

• 1989: Ray Blanchard articulated autogynephilia, "love of oneself as a woman", in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, anchoring his two-type transsexualism typology.
• 1993: Blanchard and Kurt Freund formalised the erotic-target-location-error mechanism in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the umbrella under which a female-bodied analogue would later be slotted.
• The female-directed term autoandrophilia entered the literature when other writers extended Blanchard's framework to people assigned female; the precise first use is not well documented.

The DSM-5 episode

The sharpest documented moment in the term's history is also the most revealing about its empirical standing.

• October 2010: The DSM-5 paraphilias working group, chaired by Blanchard, floated both "with autogynephilia" and "with autoandrophilia" as draft specifiers for transvestic disorder. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health opposed the specifiers, citing a lack of empirical evidence and consensus.
• 2013: In the published DSM-5, the "with autogynephilia" specifier survived but "with autoandrophilia" was removed. Blanchard later explained that he had proposed it "simply in order not to be accused of sexism… I don't think the phenomenon even exists", an extraordinary disavowal by the concept's own sponsor.
• Neither the DSM-5-TR (2022) nor the ICD-11 lists autoandrophilia, and ICD-11 moved gender incongruence out of the mental-disorders chapter entirely.

In practice

Reported expression is largely internal and imaginative: mental imagery of having a male body, fantasies of masculinisation, or arousal tied to masculine-coded self-presentation. That description should be read with its provenance in mind, since it is extrapolated from the better-documented self-as-female counterpart rather than drawn from any body of observed cases. It overlaps in the literature with cross-dressing and gender-swap fantasy, and it appears chiefly in comparative academic writing rather than within any large or self-identified community.

Psychology

Within the erotic-target-location-error framework, the appeal is theorised as an attraction that has "located" onto the self as the embodiment of a desired category rather than onto an external partner. Because the evidence base is exceptionally thin, and because the model's own architect questioned the phenomenon's existence, these accounts remain speculative.

Is autoandrophilia the same as being transgender?

No. Autoandrophilia describes a proposed pattern of sexual arousal, whereas being transgender is a matter of gender identity: a person's own sense of their gender. Mainstream health bodies are careful to keep the two separate, and the ICD-11 reclassified gender incongruence out of the mental-disorders chapter precisely to avoid pathologising identity. Treating an identity as a paraphilia is a category error, and the term should not be read as an account of transgender experience.

Prevalence & culture

Prevalence is unknown; the figure recorded here is provisional and proxy-based, treating the pattern as rarer and far less documented than autogynephilia. Surveys of unusual fantasy such as Joyal, Cossette & Lapierre (2015) place niche embodiment interests at the uncommon-to-rare end of the spectrum. Cultural visibility and dedicated community size are both very low, and the limited attention the topic receives is almost entirely scholarly.

Safety, consent & law

The interest concerns one's own self-image and is not in itself harmful or illegal. It is clinically relevant only where it causes the individual distress or functional impairment, and any discussion warrants the same care owed to sensitive questions of gender identity.