@Sasha #132026
Hmm, I think I saw that claim mentioned somewhere, that transvestitism is the most common paraphilia among sex offenders. I went to look for it, and ended up finding a very interesting old study from 1988, conducted in the USA.
Keep in mind that this was the late 80s, a very different time for trans people. So, long before any “institutional capture” or “societal glorification of transness” that TERFs might allege. I was, in fact, dismayed to find e.g. ‘homosexuality’ and ‘transsexualism’ listed among the paraphilias in the data tables, though the study does give an explanation of that:
Three nonparaphilic {emphasis mine} categories of sexual behavior (rape of adult women, transsexualism, and ego-dystonic homosexuality) were included in the sample to investigate whether these categories of sexual behavior correlated with any traditional paraphilic behavior. By including these three nonparaphilic categories, it was hoped that further scientific data could be gathered to substantiate or refute the inclusion of these three categories of behavior in the paraphilia category.
So yeah, this was the late eighties, when the medical community was still debating things like “is being gay or trans bad?”. A study of its time.
But… the results are quite interesting, as you will see.
The sample was gathered via confidential interviews with ‘561 nonincarcerated paraphiliacs’ from 1977 to 1985, and based on their self-reporting. Quoting from the study:
The best source of accurate information about participation in deviant sexual behaviors is the paraphiliacs bthemselves. However, a major factor inhibiting the collection of accurate information from paraphiliacs is the fear of negative social and legal repercussions because of the lack of assured confidentiality. The paraphiliac believes that valid reporting of his deviant behavior is likely to increase the probability of arrest for crimes unknown to others, to prolong his incarceration, or to jeopardize his probation status. Furthermore, most states have laws that require the reporting of some sex crimes (e.g., child molestation) to law enforcement authorities. Therefore, paraphiliacs are reluctant to discuss the true scope of their deviant behavior with others. The key issue, then, to obtaining valid and reliable information from paraphiliacs in order to facilitate assessment and treatment is an assurance of confidentiality.
Information currently available concerning paraphiliacs has come generally from incarcerated offenders who are also unlikely to report accurately their various deviant sexual interests and behaviors. It is well known among incarcerated paraphiliacs that if the nature of
their crimes becomes known to fellow inmates, the risk of violent reprisal will be substantially increased. Consequently, what we know about sex offenders as a population has been limited.
[…]
Subjects The study population included 561 men seeking voluntary evaluation and/or treatment for possible paraphilia at the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences, Memphis, Tennessee, or at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City. At the former site, all categories of paraphilia were evaluated; at the latter, subjects with a diagnosis of rape and/or child molestation, because of preselection, constituted the largest segment of the subject population. Approximately one third of the subjects were referred through mental health routes, one third from legal or forensic sources, and one third from other sources.
[…]
All paraphilic diagnoses were classified by each of these subcategories and the frequency of occurrence of each subcategory was determined. It
should be noted that, in order to be included in a diagnostic category, a subject must have reported an overt act in that category; deviant arousal alone was not sufficient.
Gender of Target
In our total population of 561 subjects, we observed that 377 (67.2%) targeted only females and 67 (11.9%) targeted only males. Five
subjects participated in deviant behavior that was not classifiable in this subcategory, e.g., fetishism. A total of 112 (20%) subjects offended against both male and female targets, indicating that this subgroup of the study population participated in deviant behavior irrespective of gender of target.
[…]
End of quote.
Now, let’s see how ‘transsexuals’ (as in, trans women who were classified as ‘men’ back then) fit in here. First, here are two tables about the number of paraphilias all the sex offender categories have:
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Interesting. It turned out that trans women had by far the lowest reported average number of paraphilias among all of those polled, with none of them having more than four. And one of those “paraphilias” is… transvestitism.
That’s right: a whopping 51,7% have only one paraphilia, which can be just plain transvestitism. Hmmm.
And now, the final Big Table of the study. Oh, I love this one. (Note: ‘frottage’ back then apparently meant non-consensually rubbing one’s penis over things)
I marked transsexualism, as well as transvestitism on the other axis in order to highlight their overlap.
image
Well, will you look at that?
29 sex-offender trans women.
9 of them are “transvestites” (presumably with an erotic component to it), which means 31% of them.
7 of them, 24%, were “homosexual”, which presumably actually meant straight trans women. So, 3/4 of the trans women polled were what the TERFs would call ‘autogynephiles’.
And their brutal sex offenses? One. One was an incestuous pedophile (which is 4% of the trans women polled, though percentages don’t mean much in such a small sample size).
NONE of them said they raped adult women. Not a one. In a sample where 10% of respondents did.
In regards to paraphilias other than transvestitism (which might not even deserve to be called one, especially when trans women have it) and “ego-dystonic homosexuality” (which indeed isn’t considered a paraphilia anymore), there was only this: one of these trans women was an exhibitionist.
The rest? Zero paraphilias. Nothing, nada, zip.
And this was among people classed as sex offenders. (One wonders on what basis they even classified these trans women as sex offenders…)
In a sample of men and ‘men’ full of some pretty vile stuff, it’s the trans women who came off as by far the least objectionable group. Nearly all of them, including the so-called “autogynephiles” TERFs so fear and loathe, seem to have been squeaky clean when it comes to serious paraphilias.
But wait!, the TERFs might say. This was a study based on self-reporting, which is by its nature unreliable. Also, the sample size for individual groups and paraphilias was small.
Which is, undoubtedly, true — and indeed casts doubt on the usefulness of a study like this.
You could assume that the trans women lied here, perhaps even to themselves. Nevertheless, I think it’s telling that the interviewed people were quite willing to open up about their paraphilias. They outright admitted things which could land them in prison for a very long time (thus being a better incentive for lying than anything the trans women did, with the sole exception of that one incestuous pedophile).
Thus, it does seem like they trusted the interviewers’ promise of confidentiality. So perhaps the results here aren’t too far from the truth when it comes to the paraphilias and self-identifications of the interviewees.
And in this study, it’s the trans women that passed with flying colors, on average looking like a far safer and saner demographic than the cisgender men.