Misconceptions

Myth: Autogynephilia is caused by porn addiction.

Other than a handful of anecdotes on the internet, there is no evidence that porn causes autogynephilia. While there exists pornography with autogynephilic themes, it makes more sense that people use this because they are autogynephilic, rather than that they have become autogynephilic because of this. Informal surveys have shown that most autogynephiles do not relate to the porn addiction narrative, often having had autogynephilic fantasies from the beginning of their sexuality.

Myth: Autogynephilia is a form of narcissism.

There's no evidence relating autogynephilia to narcissism. This myth seems to have been started by people taking the behavior of two or three political activists, and generalizing it to autogynephiles in more broadly. In informal studies we have done, we found that autogynephiles were no more and no less narcissitic than the general population.

Myth: Autogynephilia is normal female sexuality.

There are some studies, such as Moser (2009) and Veale (2008) which claim to have found autogynephilia in cisgender women. However, it is unclear that they were understood to mean the same as how it is understood in trans women and cis men. In addition, Moser did not have a transgender comparison group, while Veale's scale yields the same degree of "autogynephilia" in cis women regardless of their sexual orientation. Since the rate of autogynephilia varies in trans women depending on sexual orientation, it is questionable that Veale measured the same construct.

Myth: There is a group of "true transsexuals" that can be distinguished from autogynephiles.

There are other groups of trans women than autogynephilic trans women, and the group that most think about when they think about "true transsexuals" is the confusingly-named group known as homosexual transsexuals. This group is feminine from birth and exclusively attracted to men, which to many comes off as being "true transsexuals". However, distinguishing this group as being "true" implies that autogynephiles can't benefit from transition, or that the gender issues of homosexual transsexuals are inevitable. (They are not; many kids who are on the way to becoming homosexual transsexuals instead learn to fit in as feminine gay men.) The label "autogynephilia" was invented as part of a model which specifically did away with notions of true and false transsexuals.

Myth: Autogynephiles usually have many paraphilias.

There is good evidence that autogynephiles are somewhat more likely to be masochistic than the general population, though it is far from universal. Autogynephiles, particularly transvestic autogynephiles, may be somewhat more likely to have fetishes related to women's clothing. In addition, autogynephiles tend to be more attracted to androgynous people, perhaps especially to trans women. However, some claim that autogynephilia is linked to many other paraphilias too, such as pedophilia; this is not the case.