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31 October 2017

Birth Order in Androphilic Trans Women

In addition to his proposal that late-transition gynephilic trans women be regarded as “autogynephiles`”, Ray Blanchard proposes the Fraternal Birth Order Effect.

Here is Kay Brown`s summary of Blanchard’s position:

The Fraternal Birth Order Effect is the now well established fact that androphilic males (both gay and transsexual) have more older brothers than sisters.  That is to say, that the odds that a given male baby will be androphilic increases with each male child that their mother had carried previously.  This is a cumulative effect.

Recently Kay Brown endorsed a study that found that “when blood from a previously pregnant woman is transfused in men, their subsequent mortality is increased compared to women who are transfused. Blood from women who had never been pregnant did not increase men’s mortality”. She uses this in support of Blanchard`s Fraternal Birth Order Effect.

Kay has, of course, made her peace with the usage of describing heterosexual trans women as “androphilic males”. Blanchard describes such as “homosexual males”.

I personally am a first born. I have a younger sister and a younger brother, both quite straight. As such I am very sceptical of the Fraternal Birth Order Effect.

Out of curiosity: what is Kay`s birth order? In the short autobiography that she wrote for the TS Roadmap in 2008, when she was starting to claim to be a “homosexual transsexual” as per Blanchard, she avoids stating her birth order. However, earlier, in 1998, for her Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History site (now no longer available) she wrote of herself:

“Growing up as the first of four children, Kay took on childcare responsibilities early”.

A test of the hypothesis


What neither Blanchard nor Brown has done is to test the hypothesis against the biographies of known androphilic trans women who mention their birth order (most do not). Here is a first cut at doing so. For each of the women below, we have enough information about their birth order, and also the fact that – one way or another – they are best described as androphilic (Kinsey 5 or 6 relative to birth gender). Some of these persons were early transitioners like Kay who never went through a phase as a gay man but later married a man; others went through homosexuality on the way to womanhood.

Only Child, Eldest, only AMAB (assigned male at birth) with sisters


According to Blanchard and Brown, this should be unusual. However it seems to be common.

Nadia Almada - eldest with five younger brothers
Manabi Bannerjee – only AMAB with two sisters
Sally Barry - only child
Aaïcha Bergamin – only AMAB with three sisters
Georgina Beyer – elder of two
Kay Brown – eldest of four
Bobbi Cameron – three older sisters
Candis Cayne – twin boys
Dorian Corey – elder of two
Candy Darling – only child
Jamie Lee Hamilton – only child
Yasmene Jabar – only child
Norma Jackson – only child
Christine Jorgensen – second child
Jill Monroe – only child
Patricia Morgan – only child
Sylvia Rivera – elder child, younger sister
Shonna – eldest, two younger sisters
Dawn Langley Simmons – only child
Hedy Jo Star – eldest of seven
Joe Tish – eldest of seven
Laxmi Tripathi – eldest of seven
Diane Wells – eldest of three
Zagria – eldest of three


Younger children

These conform to Blanchard’s model in having older brothers.
Agnes – youngest of four
April Ashley – two elder brothers, one elder sister
Sharon Cohen - youngest of three
Asha Devi – three elder brothers and three elder sisters
Nicky Kiranant – seventh child
Greer Lankton – third child
Marie-Marcelle Godbout – youngest of seven
Naomi – fourth of eight children
Carmen Rupe – youngest AMAB of 13 children
Angel dela Vega – seventh of eight children
Jackie McAuliffe – third of four AMAB
Angie Xtravaganza – one of thirteen children

Conclusion

Not proven. Androphilic trans women come from all positions in birth order. The Fraternal Birth Order Effect would predict that most be the second category. In fact there are fewer in the second category.

4 comments:

  1. Zagria you and I both know that Blanchard's work is complete hogwash starting with the accusations of lying to the testimonies from woman loving transsexuals regarding prepubescent gender dysphoric feelings. Next downplaying or even denying the existence of female to male transsexuals in order to fit his two typology model.

    The more one digs the more it all turns sour for Blanchard who put all his eggs in one basket with Freund's aberrant sex model of transsexualism. As time passes it will go the way of nymphomania as wishful pseudoscience where the cart is put before the horse to try and prove the unprovable.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Saying something is "hogwash" does not make it so... and complaining that a psychology study invokes the well documented (in many other studies) the VERY well documented "social desirablity bias" effect to explain the 18% of gynephilic transwomen that deny experiencing any autogynephilia is further evidence that one does not understand how psychology studies work. Far from going away, the evidence for the two type taxonomy has not only been replicated but predictions based upon it have also proven correct.

    As to the Fraternal Birth Order Effect... it is now very well documented and reproduced in gay men. It has been calculated that perhaps 15% of gay men owe their sexuality to this effect. It is NOT an all or nothing thing among gay men (or androphilic transwomen). The data shows that statistically speaking, both androphilic transwomen and gay men have more older brothers than straight men... and more older brothers than sisters... AS A POPULATION Any one individual may not fit that profile and yet may still have been androphilic and even have be androphilic. But the data does show that androphilic transwomen also have an even stronger FBOE than gay men (as a population). Further, as one of my latest essays shows... this effect is also found to be stronger in "bottoms"... gay men who prefer anal receptive sex to other sex acts...

    Zagria... you can NOT trust anything that Andrea James has written about me as she has a long history of writing lies and innuendo about anyone who supports the two type taxonomy research. Had I rejected the two types, she would (and did before I began my writing on the subject) lionized me and not dissed me for my decades of (real) transactivism starting with the fact that I was a founding member of the ACLU Transsexual Rights Committee in 1980 (back when being such an activist was NOT popular).


    I am a first born child, first of four childen, two brothers and a youngest sister. I also have an exclusively gay uncle... Instead of referencing the rather shoddy and incomplete (and very twisted) bio from James, you should reference my rather full bio at my blog:

    https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/about/

    Zagria... I don't go dissing you or linking to bogus biographies... please return the courtesy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kay,

    Are you saying that the autobiography signed by you on TS Roadmap was altered after you wrote it? Or did you not write it? Either way, I took no facts from TS Roadmap. I referred to the autobiography that you wrote for your own Trans History in 1998. You wrote of yourself "Growing up as the first of four children, Kay took on childcare responsibilities early". And you have again confirmed that. Why does Andrea James even come into this?

    If the Fraternal Birth Order Effect does have any basis in reality, why have not you or anyone else been able to demonstrate it in published (auto)biographies. These facts are in the public domain that can be checked by any researcher. The 'psychological' studies that you endorse are occult in that neither you nor me nor anyone else can check the sexual orientation nor the birth order of the participants.

    Even if 15% or more of heterosexual trans woman are so because of this Fraternal Birth Order Effect, both you and I, we being first-borns, are not a result of that process. You would seem to be proposing that we can identify at least two quite different kinds of heterosexual trans women. This a proposal that nobody has researched. In what other way are these two types different?

    'bogus biographies' - is that what you think of my encyclopedia. My model when I started was your very own Trans History site - which I still refer to now and then.

    Incidentally you saying that something is "very well documented" does not make it so. The points remain contentious are certainly not demonstrated such that they convince those of us who think for ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
  4. the only person suffering from wishful thinking is Kay Brown I'm afraid. If she knew anything about science she would know that autogynephilia is not a thing it is naming an observed phenomena (namely cross gender arousal) and trying to assign that as the cause of transition. Good luck proving it because you cant. No one denies that cross gender arousal exists we just know that it is part of a much broader and much more complex picture. When you finish your proof Kay send it over to me and I will look at it...

    ReplyDelete

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