Ray Blanchard



I think that a transsexual should be considered as whatever their biological sex is plus the fact that they are transsexuals. That’s how you would do research on them. Ray "Whispers" Blanchard  is a sexologist and adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is best known today for his controversial "typology of transsexualism," in which he divides male-to-female transgender people into the categories of homosexual (attracted to men exclusively) and autogynephile (attracted to the concept of themselves as a woman), first described in 1989.

Much like a Hollywood villain, Blanchard's shadow has loomed large over the transgender community for decades. He was, until 2003 and the backlash to J. Michael Bailey, an honest-to-God member of what later became the the organization that publishes the standards of care for transgender healthcare, and helped write both the DSM-IV and DSM-V, overseeing the insertion of his "autogynephilia" theory into the United States' premier manual of mental health diagnoses.

Relationship with the LGBT community
Until recent years, Blanchard himself was not what one would generally describe as a "transphobe," perhaps a gatekeeper or transmedicalist extraordinaire, but not openly antagonistic to the trans community in his words (though arguably in his deeds). Yet what has been truly insidious about his influence is how his theories have provided the proverbial fuel to the furnace of anti-transgender hate of both the religious and trans-exclusionary feminist variety, who have turned them into the ideal scientific veneer for fear-mongering and concern trolling. He has recently found a great deal of common ground with the TERF machine, participating in mob harassment of figures like Zinnia Jones and endorsing the gender critical-championed concept of "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" on TERF websites like 4thWaveNow. He has also given credence to the extremely serious theory of turning people trans, a fact for which he has been roundly mocked.

It is difficult to get past the impression that Blanchard sees sexual minorities first and foremost not as human beings, but as test subjects. He has not won many friends in the community by saying, for example, "I think that a transsexual should be considered as whatever their biological sex is plus the fact that they are transsexuals. That’s how you would do research on them." His insistence that all non-heterosexual sexual activity is "abnormal" has not helped either, though Blanchard would contend that he simply refuses to be "politically correct."

Autogynephilia
Blanchard believes, as he has steadfastly held since the 1980s, that male-to-female transgender people can be separated into two distinct groups based on sexual orientation: "homosexual" and "autogynephile." The latter is supposedly both a sexual orientation unto itself, constituting a "misdirected" heterosexual attraction to the idea of oneself as a woman, and also the impetus to transition for all trans women not exclusively attracted to men. This theory has never enjoyed widespread acceptance in the scientific community, but has received extensive publicity thanks to figures like J. Michael Bailey and his controversial 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen, and self-appointed poster child of the theory, sexologist

Blanchard made an attempt to include "autoandrophilia," the female-to-male equivalent of autogynephilia, in the DSM, but later said, "I proposed it simply in order not to be accused of sexism… I don’t think the phenomenon even exists."