Kelly’s Typology
CWs: Transphobia; brief references to various maladaptive behaviors; brief, mostly clinical depiction of sex.
Preface: Occasionally people ask me if I’m serious about this. There’s nothing I say here that I don’t believe per se. At the same time, part of the purpose of this post is to lampoon an incredibly stupid idea one cis guy had about trans people, and to subvert his own strange binarist, clinicalized way of looking at us. Make of that what you will.
Blanchard is so obviously wrong, and yet there’s something alluring about his typology. Yes, it ignores the existence of trans men. Yes, it ignores the existence of nonbinary people. Yes, it says that all trans lesbians are autogynephiles. But there’s something lurking beneath it that, for many trans people, on some level clicks.
What clicks? The notion that there are, broadly, two different kinds of transgender. And that they occupy spaces very roughly corresponding to Blanchard’s “homosexual [sic] transsexual” and “autogynephile”. Blanchard’s theory about the nature of those two types makes no sense, but the types nonetheless exist. Let’s drop the inaccurate labeling. Let’s call “homosexual [sic] transsexuals” Type N and “autogynephiles” Type S,1 and let’s forget about what Blanchard says defines them. We, as trans people, know people who clearly fall into Type N or Type S, and we’re aware of the difference, even if we can’t articulate what divides the two types.
Type N transfolk are the “knew it since I was a baby” type. They’re the “Being trans is just a fact about my past” or “I don’t even see myself as trans” type, the type much more likely to want bottom surgery and to be stealth even in trans-friendly environments. They’re almost always binary.
Type S transfolk are the “I feel better this way” type. They’re the “Trans pride flag in every social media profile” type, the type much more likely to feel any bottom dysphoria resolved by calling it the right word and to out themselves as trans because they think it’s something people ought to know about them. Many are nonbinary, and many more are “binary with caveats”.2
To explain what separates these two types of trans person, we have to start with something that all trans people have in common: All trans people are autistic.
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