How AGP failed

For a while it sounded plausible. Patients were showing up at the CAMH in Toronto to see Ray Blanchard. Many were married and distressed from years of repression and wanted a resolution to fix their situation. For this was the 1980's and there weren't many options for gender variant people. 

During this era is when Blanchard developed his two type taxonomy of male to female transsexualism which was based on the core idea of sexual dysfunction both for his AGP and HSTS patients only for differing motivations 

But then over time something magical happened and we began to open up society to understanding dysphoria. Suddenly all patients were increasingly presenting to clinics much sooner and the social dynamic changed. Transitions were undertaken earlier in life and distress and trauma dealt with before they could become festering secrets. 

The only thing Blanchard did was rename transvestic fetishism and turn it into the main driver for transitions among heterosexual natal males. It wasn't exactly magic and disregarded gender dysphoria as a cause. Instead the dysphoria was supposedly caused by this sexually fueled mental illness that he proposed for which there was no proof.

Today we have an interesting situation where people show up on podcasts saying they suffer from AGP and want to rid themselves of it. They don't feel female but see it more as a fetish which it could very well be the case. Conversely we have young people transitioning and resolving or at least mitigating dysphoria and becoming happier. This latter group would also have been accused of being AGP by Blanchard. 

Something smells rotten in Denmark because when your hypothesis is good it shouldn't break down like this over time. 

That this topic is exceedingly complex and layered wasn't of much interest to Ray Blanchard who also entirely disregarded gender dysphoria in natal females. It has resulted in his work being completely discredited even if gender criticals still rely on it as ammunition for their disdain.

It should be noted that the DSM talks about the presence of distress as a signifier of dysfunction but if today young transgender people are looking after their situation and improving life quality then what mental illness are we referring to exactly. 

The existence of fetishes is beyond question which is why I always go back to core motivation. But trying to use one catch-all easy fix to explain the complexity of this topic away turned out to be folly and, dare I say, wishful thinking.