Theology in the Raw - Understanding Cross Dressing and Autogynephilia Part 2: A Christian Perspective with Barnabas

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Barnabas is the owner of Healing from Crossdressing - https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/ He has struggled with crossdressing and autogynephilia for most of his life, but through Christ's work in his life he feels free from the hold that autogynephilia used to have over him. He is a pastor but in his free time he feels called to his online ministry of caring for men struggling with autogynephilia, crossdressing, or trans porn, as well as the wives of husbands who struggle with crossdressing. Register for the Austin conference on sexualtiy (Sept 17-18) here: https://www.centerforfaith.com/programs/leadership-forums/faith-sexuality-and-gender-conference-live-in-austin-or-stream-online Register for the Exiles 2 day conference in Denver (Oct 4-5) here: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles-denver/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. The Exiles of Babylon Conference in Denver is right around the corner, October 4th to 5th. All the information is at theologyintheraw.com. We would really encourage you to check it out. Either attend live at Denver or virtually from wherever you are. Okay. This is part two of a conversation about autogynephilia. The first part was with Phil Ily where he talked about autogynophilia and cross-dressing from a non-religious perspective. Today's podcast is with Barnabas, who's going to talk about autogynophilia from a Christian perspective. Barnabas is the owner of Healing from Cross-Dressing. And the link is in the show notes where you can find his ministry online. He has struggled

with cross-dressing and autogynophilia for most of his life, but through Christ's work in his life, he feels free from the hold that autogonophilia used to have over him. Barnabas is a pastor, but it is free time. He feels called to his online ministry of caring for men that struggle with autogonophilia, cross-dressing, trans porn, as well as caring for the wives of husbands who struggle with these things as well. We've altered the voice of Barnabas. Barnabas is a pseudonym by the way, because he's not totally public with his story. So I'm just so thankful that Barnabas was willing to come on the podcast with the altered voice and share very vulnerably the things he struggles with. So yeah, I'm

really excited for you to learn from Barnabas in this really engaging and honest conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only pastor Barnabas. Hello Barnabas. Thanks for coming on the all draw. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. Yeah. Thank you so much. Love your podcast. I'm grateful to be on it. Thank you. Why don't we start with, let's just start with a basic definition. What is AGP or autogynephilia? And then I would love for you to talk about your story and how this became part of your story. Yeah. Let's call it AGP for short, since autogynephilia is a mouthful. Yes, basically a sexual arousal or attraction to being like a woman or wanting to be a woman.

And it's not something that I really understood when I was younger. It took me a lot of experience and research later in life to figure out that it was autogranophilia. I can start out by saying that a little bit of my story. When I was young, I never talked to anybody about this and it was never like the biggest thing in my life, but I would be quite uncomfortable around boys. I enjoyed being with my friends and so forth, but I would be quite uncomfortable around boys. Like I enjoyed being with my friends and so forth, but I was felt like insecure in my masculinity. And I remember the daydreams that I would have each night

were about being dressed as a girl or other people dressing me as a girl. And so there was like some kind of feeling of wanting to be a girl, but I'll just say that there's a common kind of trans story where people say they felt like a girl, like they thought I am a girl. I never had that. It was more of wanting to become that, not feeling like I was that, if that makes sense.

So that's a fine distinction. Can you, can you unpack that just a little bit more? Cause I, well, yeah, yeah. It's like the, the common kind of saying is I, I feel like a woman in a man's body. feel like a woman in a man's body. That's what a lot of people say about trans way of thinking. But for those of AGP, it's actually not that at all. It's more that we know we are not women. We don't actually feel like women, but we want to be women. We long to be women.

And we're sexually aroused at the thought of being women. So, um, and that, that sexual arousal piece, that would be a key distinction, right? Between the more commonly known trans experience versus AGP. Yeah. So that's what came later. And that came, um, well, you know, I, I was really confused in, uh, middle school.-dressing every day at one point, and I didn't really understand why I was doing it. And looking back now, I can say that there was sexual arousal, but it wasn't with masturbation

yet. I think it was just, you know, that feeling of sexual pleasure, euphoria, without any kind of release, without really understanding what was going on at the time. I didn't even know what masturbation was. And that continued and it was like, I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing. I just knew that it felt good. And I wanted to do it every day as soon as I got home from school. I just want to be thinking about during class at school. And I knew it was something I felt shame about and I didn't want people to know at all costs

because I knew it was not normal. I had friends who were talking about how much they were attracted to girls at school. And for me, I wasn't feeling that. I saw girls that were, I thought pretty but I was thinking more about what they're wearing, you know, like seeing girls at school with their fingernails polished and just desperately wanting to go home and do that, that kind of thing. So that continued. At one point, I because of my Christian faith, I felt bad about what I was doing, and I stopped

for quite a long period. And then at some point, it began again. And kind of like with men who struggle with pornography, that's kind of how my experience was with not wanting to do it, but then doing it. And at that point, sometime in high school, you know, masturbation became a part of it. And it was like not wanting to do it, but then failing, giving in, and then, you know, just continually repenting and trying again, but still not really understanding why I was doing what I was doing. But just knowing that that was what I desired to do.

You know, I never, never desired to look at porn. It was always either cross-dressing or reading stories of cross-dressing online. There's a lot of websites out there that are all just fiction stories of, about people cross dressing and sometimes they're mixed with a lot of other really nasty topics thrown in with them but you know those are extremely addicting spend hours and hours and hours with just sitting on there on the computer reading is that a common is that a common thing for people who experience AGP?

There's a number of different ways that can manifest. So people can get arousal from the cross-dressing, they can get arousal from reading the fiction or writing the fiction, then get arousal from what's called captions, like pictures with captions that are about cross-dressing, like pictures with captions that are about cross-dressing, YouTube videos, this is a big topic we don't need to divert to right now, but there's an aspect of autogynephilia where most of the men with AGP are also turned on by watching other men cross-dressing. So it's kind of confusing whether that's actual attraction

to those men or it's just arousal at the site and thought of them crossdressing. So a lot of people masturbate to watching YouTube videos or looking at photos of crossdressers. And then there's also variations that are there like sissy, being forced to be a sissy or sissy hypnosis is a big thing right now, or trans porn. There's a lot of different kind of variations, not all things that I've done some I've never had any experience with, but it seems to manifest in different ways to different guys who are

struggling. Lots of things to could share, but at one point I decided to become more serious about researching this, by the way, I'm a pastor. And really that was part of it. You know, as a pastor, I shouldn't be struggling with this so much, even though I wasn't like purposefully getting in. It was like, I shouldn't be purposefully getting in. It was like,

I shouldn't be even failing once in a while, you know, I should overcome this. And that led me to really do more research. And that's when I started reading more books about transgender and cross-dressing and autogranophilia. And I started finding some websites of guys who were trying to quit their cross dressing and overcome AGP. And so I started a website and just dialoguing with lots of different people, including people who are not Christians and people who, some who are not trying to give up cross dressing and some that were. Anyway, I started to believe that I could really overcome this for good and that was a real big turning point for me as well as really understanding myself better. That website quickly turned into something where because I was doing really well myself, I started to try to help others. And for those listening, that website has gone through different variations, but

currently it's healing from crossdressing.org. And I am the owner, main author of that website. And just over the years, I started that website in 2011. Over the years, it's become a big part of my life. You know, my day job is still as a pastor, but I, they spend a lifetime trying to help other men online. Let me just say a quick word about some of the stuff that are at our site. And I say our, because there's a whole community of men that are there with me now.

It's not just me doing everything. So we have different, we have lots of posts and articles for people to read to understand AGP, especially from a Christian perspective. But we also have a recovery group for Christian men with AGP. But we include people in there struggling with trans-porn or Cissi-hypnosis or these other things that some people say are different from AGPs. Some people say they're the same, but anyway, welcome all those people. People with transvestic fetishism, which again, some people say it's the same thing as AGPs, some people say it's different. But all those men are welcome to the group. That's quite

a big group of guys. And more recently, we started a non-religious recovery group where people from lots of different faiths or atheists who were there trying to get help. Someone from our group started a phone-based recovery group and so small number of people that's going well. And then the last group is for wives of, especially the Christian wives of men who are struggling with AGP. And they're an overlooked group of people that go through tremendous pain and they feel shame and embarrassment to reach out to others for help. So I started this group for them to support and help one another.

And so they're trying their best to do so, but some of them have very difficult lives with husbands who don't want to stop what they're doing. So that's a quick overview of our website and invite the listeners to check it out. And if you're listening and you need help, we're there to help you. You don't have to feel alone again. We welcome you to our groups so that we can care for you

and in turn you care for us. When did you first tell your wife and how did that go? And I guess another, like for wives out there listening who maybe walked in on their husband cross-dressing or found some lingerie in the back of the car or something. I'm sure there's at least some people listening who are like, oh my gosh, this, yeah. Can you talk to the wives and share your own experience with your own wife with this? They, many of the wives are just

like, I wish my husband struggled at porn. Like I could understand that, but this is just a whole other thing that is beyond my understanding and it's just disturbing. And yeah, that's really tougher than for me. I wish that I had told my wife before we got married, just because I think that's the right thing to do. I don't think it's good going into marriage with such a big thing like this that's unknown, especially with its potential for great hardship. And, you know, not every man is like me who's tried to overcome it. Anyway, it's just something I think it's right to share beforehand, but I shared after we got married within the first year of our marriage. And maybe my wife is unique, I don't know, but she responded very well to me and full of grace and compassion. But I think part of the reason it was easier

for her was that, you know, she didn't catch me in the act. And I told her and I said, never ever let me do this, even if I try to convince you later, that's that it's good or whatever. Never ever let me do it. And so anyway, she, she accepted that she showed a lot of compassion. She went and studied the issue to try to understand it better. And it's never been a big thing in our marriage. I'm thankful for that. And she knows all about the website, the ministry, and we have lots of conversations about it. She encourages me and prays through me about it. So what's, what's the number one thing you would want to tell wives listening who might

be in the situation? Like what are they, what's the fundamental thing they need to know about AGP that might help them move forward in a healthy marriage? Yeah, that's a number of things. One, most of wives think their husbands are gay. And their husbands are gay and that's not the case even though AGP can manifest in same-sex sex because men are aroused at the thought of being a woman and the ultimate fantasy of being a woman is being a woman with a man. So that can happen but they have to understand that you know in attraction they're not attracted to men, they're attracted to women. Men of AJP are heterosexual. So that's one misconception that they often have.

A second is shock and maybe taking it too hardly, thinking that it's the end of the world and that their husband will never be able to have a healthy marriage with them. I don't think that's the case. I think that men can overcome this, they can live healthy lives without indulging their AGP, even if they can't cure it, but they can live healthy lives without indulging it all the time and have healthy marriages. The biggest difficulty in my experience talking to these wives is the broken trust. How could you have dealt with this for 30 years of our marriage and you never told me?

That's the, that ends up being the biggest issue. Or if the husband's refuse to quit cross dressing and they kind of force it on their wives, that obviously ends up being another issue. And I guess I'm a little sympathetic with the guy who has struggled with this for 30 years and doesn't want to tell his wife. I mean, can you imagine, especially if they're, I I've talked to guys that don't even know that this, there's a thing, there's a name for this. They just thought there's some, I mean, I'll say the phrase that sometimes like I'm some kind of anomaly freak of nature, whatever. And so there's so much, I mean, I'll say the phrase that sometimes like I'm a, some kind of anomaly

freak of nature, whatever. And so there's so much, I mean, there's shame around having same-sex attraction, especially in the religious sphere. You know, can you imagine having this struggle, especially if you don't even know there's a name for it? Like, I could, I mean, so I don't know. I would, I would be sympathetic with the guy who was, I'm not going to tell my like, this would be disastrous. Yeah. But I, I think that's still wrong. Not to share that part of yourself. And also you want to be loved and known, you know, you want to be known for who you really

are and still loved. So anyway, I encourage men to tell their wives, but, but yeah, a lot of these men don't understand AGP and that makes it really scary and confusing. And some of them think of it as, you know, just sexual arousal and may not realize all the gender dysphoria that is involved in it. And so they're wondering why do I have gender dysphoria as well if it's a, you know, the sexual arousal pattern. Yes, it's just really confusing. They, they, they look at other people who are similar, who are transitioning and they're like, you know, am I going to do that too? There's a lot of fear and just, you know, so there's a lot of guys who don't understand it well. And so they feel like, how can I tell my wife when I don't understand

it myself? How, how do we know how common it is? I mean, in the previous podcast with Phil, well, I think he said 80% in his, in his researched opinion, I think 80%, uh, I think he said trans women. So biological male who identifies women he says would be AG experience AGP, but that that's within the trend, the 80% high, but, but of the population. Yeah. I appreciate Phil and his research. You know, I haven't done research much myself. Um, so I would, I would be, I would tend to agree with him. I don't know if that 70 or 80% includes the people that are, you know,

completely secret about it, but, uh, as far as I know, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, I tend to agree with him. I don't know if that 70 or 80% includes the people that are, you know, completely secret about it. But as Phil probably talked to you about, AGP is really contested in the secular world as well. People debate about it a lot on whether it's a real thing or not. And, you know, it's not very attractive or palatable to friends and family if you say, I'm transitioning to live as a woman because I'm sexually aroused and euphoric when I do so. And I'm in love with myself. Instead of a love with a real woman,

I'm in love with myself as a woman. Most people are not gonna be like, oh, that's great. You should transition. And so that causes a lot of people, even who agree with AGP as a theory, to be quiet about it. And then some people, I think, are also in denial about it to themselves because they don't want that as the narrative of their life. That's why I really appreciate people like Phil, who although he's not a Christian, he's willing to be honest about AGP and he's trying to make the world more accepting of people who have AGP as a respectable sexual orientation. So I think they'll become more and more accepted as time goes on because I think the research

just is very clear that AGP is a thing, thing but yeah it's still really contested right now. Hey friends, I am so excited to let you know that the Upside Down Kingdom Study Bible releases on September 10th and I had the absolute pleasure of serving as the general editor for the study notes for the Study Bible. We enlisted a fantastic team of scholars, writers, and thinkers, people like Francis Chan, John and Lisa Bevere, Michael Byrd, Eugene Cho, Derwin Gray, Michelle Knight, Rebecca McLaughlin, and the list goes on and on and on. The Study Notes address topics like creation care, divorce, festivals, food and drink, science, sexuality, gender, Satan, demons, angels, and giants, politics, race and ethnicity,

and many, many other relevant cultural, political, and social topics. So please check it out. The upside down kingdom study Bible, wherever books and Bibles are sold. The two arguments I'd love to hear from you, if there's more than this, well, if I guess maybe three arguments I hear against the existence of AGP is number one, well, that's junk science, pseudo science, which isn't an argument. It's just a slur. So we can toss that out. Like, okay. Number two, well, that's stigmatizing. I'm like, okay, that very much could be weaponized to be stigmatizing. But again, that's not an argument against its existence.

It's simply an argument against the potential impact that talking about it could have. The third argument I've heard isn't again, so much against the existence of AGP. It is the strict categorization that the original researcher Ray Blanchard, who kind of, well, he coined the term AGP and he did a lot of early research on it. He had kind of these two airtight categories of, you know, autogonophilia and then the other, you know, like, well, heterosexual and same-sex kinds of trans experiences.uzziness on these edges, which I think is a fair critique. Cause I've talked to people that have a certain kind of HEP, but it's not, it doesn't fit

in the kind of like, sort of, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, a certain kind of HEP, but it's not, it doesn't fit in the kind of like strict categorization. So anyway, is it my any thoughts on that? And is there any other kind of scientific argument against this as a site, as a category? No, I haven't seen anything that's been convincing to me, but I am sympathetic to those ideas of about it being too strict of categories. I think that it explains, you know, 95% of men who are fitting into those two categories

of different kinds of trends. But you know, life is complex and there's so many different factors to think about. And I think there are certain people who maybe don't fit a mold exactly just because of this stuff is really complicated and you start digging even the causes some people are saying like it's a biological thing other people can they really think they can trace it back to trauma in their childhood or abuse so these things are really complex and then even agP is kind of on a spectrum where you have some people who have severe gender dysphoria with it. And then you have other people who it's almost exclusively sexual arousal without wanting to actually have that longing to live as a woman. And then you have the other categories which are

hard to pin down. Like I said, transvestite fetishism isn't just like a fetish to the women's clothing that's turning you on, but you don't actually have any desire to be like a woman. Is it a coping mechanism where putting on this female underwear or a dress makes you feel calm and soothed and gentle and it's like it takes away your stress but you don't have a desire to live as women and you're as a woman and you don't have sexual arousal. And then the other categories I told you about like the people who are addicted to sissy hypnosis who also cross-dress is it partly AGP or is it a different thing? Like there's so many different kind of related issues that are going on that that's where I would think maybe the categories are a little bit

too strict where not everyone fits exactly into it. But I do think overall those categories are really solid. Most of the people I've talked to clearly fit into one or the other, uh, heterosexual type or homosexual type of biological man who wants to, to live as a woman. Do you, do you have any thoughts on the cause? Biological or something? I mean, this is typical nature nurture with, is it similar to like the same sector traction debate where it's like, you know what, it's kind of a complex blend of both.

Maybe just can't really grab it or is there something different? I think Blanchard said that there's some kind of biological cause that environment can stimulate. Yeah. But I'm not, I would have to go back and look, I'm not well versed on exactly how he put it. But, but for me, I've thought about it so much. And I think that really it's still a bit of a mystery. And some guys get kind of caught up on trying

to figure out the, the exact origin and cause. And they think that somehow knowing that will help them to overcome it. And I think it can be valuable to, to And they think that somehow knowing that will help them to overcome it. And I think it can be valuable to try to think that through. But ultimately, just because you have an understanding of how it came about doesn't necessarily tell you how to deal with it now. And so some men could just kind of get lost and try to figure that out. And it's not always, you know, super valuable to spend all of your time. Yeah. If, if it was due in part to some trauma, sexual abuse, et cetera, I can see a case

that, uh, dealing with that and healing, trying to heal from that could have, have a more And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing.

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of things yet. You, you, you mentioned in passing kind of the different shades of experience and not every one was, would be strictly sexual. I think that's an important piece to, to tease out as well. Like I've got a friend when you mentioned like some people, just the thought of like women's specific clothing, especially like undergarments is more of a, it's a coping I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, So is that, so, so we shouldn't interpret every desire.

That's kind of an outflow of AGP to be necessarily a kind of a sexual turn on or a fetish or something like that. Yeah, there's a few things to go here. Let me come back to the people who use cross dressing as a coping mechanism and first talk about AGP a little deeper. AGP is not just about sexual arousal. Think of it as a full mechanism and first talk about AGP a little deeper. AGP is not just

about sexual arousal. Think of it as a full or sexual orientation. So someone who is heterosexual is not constantly just sexually lusting after women. They want to like, you want to spend time with your wife, you want to be a companion to your wife, you want to look at her and see her beauty, you want to talk to her, you want to spend time with her, you want to be a companion to your wife, you want to look at her and see her beauty, you want to talk to her, you want to spend time with her, you want to enjoy her femininity in her presence. You see how the romantic emotional element of there. So what happens with AGP is you are sexually attracted to yourself as a woman, but you also have those other elements of the sexual orientation, you want to be with yourself as a woman, but you'll also have those other elements of the sexual orientation. You want to be with yourself as the woman romantically. You want to be with yourself as the woman to enjoy the femininity of that person. So it's all the aspects you

would... A healthy person, in my view, as a Christian, a healthy person would look for those things in another person because their sexuality is supposed to be outward focused, supposed to be union with another person. It's not supposed to be that I'm attracted to myself. So I think it's unhealthy. So the person with the man with AGP is fighting all of those other desires in himself as the false woman. So that's one thing I wanted to make clear. And that's why gender dysphoria becomes so strong.

Because the more you live as that alter ego, the more you want to remain in that alter ego, because you're in love with that person, you're in love with that person, and you don't want to leave them. And you stay, the longer you do that, the more concrete the alter ego becomes and the more you're attached to it. And that's why people finally transition so they can live with that woman full-time for the rest of their life. And so that's where the gender dysphoria comes in, is it's not a gender dysphoria of necessarily saying, I feel like a woman in a man's body. It's a gender dysphoria that comes in

because you want to be that woman and you feel depressed when you're yourself as a man. And so it's the distress that comes in, the longing that comes in, the frustration that you want to be something that you're not. That's where the, it is for you comes in. Yeah, that's really, that's super helpful. And I remember probably the most helpful book I read on it was Ann Lawrence, men trapped in men's bodies. Even the title is provocative, but she surveyed and Ann Lawrence is an agent. And she's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very Ann Lawrence, um, men trapped in men's bodies. Even the title is provocative.

Uh, but she surveyed and Ann Lawrence is an AGP trans woman researcher. And I think she surveyed over 200 people at AGP and just, she, she, she did a good job, like, um, talking about the various shades of it, you know, everything you're saying is, I thought it's really helpful. Um, Yeah. Do you want to go back to the coping mechanism or, oh yes, everything you're saying is, I thought it was really helpful. Um, I was going to ask you, Do you want to go back to the coping mechanism? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Please do. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot. So there's an overlap too. So there's a lot of guys in our recovery groups

who do have sexual pleasure to, uh, to cross dressing, but also have the emotional coping mechanism. And then there's some who are just doing it for, I mean, they think at least they're doing it just for emotional reasons. But as a Christian point, viewpoint, again, I don't think that's a healthy way to deal with our stress. It's kind of, it shows that the person also is operating from some very unhealthy gender stereotypes. To think that, to feel calm and comforted, I need the feminine, rather than I can't be myself, I can't feel gentle, I can't feel calm unless I put on a dress. That's reinforcing bad views of gender and reinforcing disintegration in a person's personality rather

than helping to resolve those stresses and wanting to feel how you want to feel in a healthy way. Another thing I should mention is that going back to the kind of the path that AGP takes is sometimes it starts out sexual, but the sexual part kind of drifts away over time. And it becomes more about the just a good feeling of being a woman and the sexual pleasures more kind of subdued. And that's where this gets controversial as well, when people are debating AGP, because they'll say things like, well, I was sexually aroused by when I was in high school or college,

but now the sexual arousal is not there. So therefore I'm not AGP. And I don't think that's the case. I just think that's the path that it takes, um, where it becomes more about my identity and less about the sexual pleasure. But the identity piece came about because of all the time spent getting the sexual arousal through the, try to live as an alter ego. Is that why the researchers I've read have said most people, AGP transition later in life. Oftentimes they're already married to a woman. They're, you know, have a family and then usually it's later in life, forties, sometimes fifties is when they might transition. And I often wondered if it's just sexual, if it's just sexual, that that's a,

that's a pretty permanent decision to make. If it's just kind of a thing, that's just a sexual, you know what I mean? Like that's where I didn't understand it. So this actually makes sense that while early on, cause I would imagine if you're 24 and it is primarily a sexual turn on, it's like, well, I'm not going to make all these permanent bodily changes to satisfy a sexual desire. But if that sexual desire turns into more of a holistic kind of identity, then it would make more sense that people transition later in life. Am I tracking that? Yeah. I think it's helpful to compare to a heterosexual relationship. Like most of us, when you fall in love with a girlfriend or someone who becomes your wife, you long to be with

them. The relationship with them, the general relationship with them is more important than the sex. I hope that's the case for most of us. So the same thing I think happens with AGP, that the feeling of being with that woman and enjoying the feminine energy and the womanhood and the feeling that you are that woman is more important than the sexual arousal. And so what a lot of guys at AGP do is they actually try to resist masturbating for as long as possible so that they can just enjoy that feeling of being a woman, that identity part, that, you know, the emotional part, the romantic part, they can enjoy that longer because for most of us, after masturbating, you feel guilty and you feel regret and so

you stop and all the good feelings just kind of end with a sexual release until you're ready to start the process again. And so people will try to resist masturbating for days or even weeks to keep giving into the cross dressing to enjoy that euphoria, to enjoy the emotional romantic aspects of it. And so in a way they can also condition themselves to just enjoy those aspects without as much the sexual arousal. That's another reason the sexual arousal starts to get less. This is fascinating. I mean, I think it's a good thing that we're talking about to just enjoy those aspects without as much the sexual arousal.

That's another reason the sexual arousal starts to get less. This is fascinating. I mean, it's you've really diagnosed this in really clear and helpful ways as, as yeah, I could imagine why, but, um, do you, do you find, would you talk to other guys with a GP? Do you find a lot of them are not wanting to say, you kind of mentioned the past and already, but like not wanting to admit that they do. Like, do you find people that say, Oh no, this isn't my experience. I'm, I'm just trans or whatever,

or only, and how do you handle that? You can't say, no, you're lying to yourself. I mean, most of the guys that find me, um, are very ready to admit it. I think the people that are not interested in my, my website, I don't always talk about auto granofilia, or from the beginning, like even my website titles just about cross dressing. Because, you know, it's a little deeper understanding is to get into HEP. But most people, most of the guys who are looking for help, again, don't know about HEP. And they're just knowing that I have this desire to cross-dress and I can't stop.

Chris Boundsell Cross-dressing is like the symptom, symptom, right? And so they might say, well, that's me. They don't know the underline. Okay. Dr. Michael Hickman Yeah, they don't understand themselves even to know why, why do I desire to do this? Yeah, I think just to go back to those different aspects of the sexual and the other aspects, for anyone caring for someone else who has AGP, it's important to remember it's not just like the commonly talked about type of trans and gender dysphoria. The gender dysphoria is part of it, but it's not all of it. And it's not just like a sexual addiction like pornography addiction. That's part of it. With AGP, you have both. You have

the gender dysphoria, and you also have sexual addiction. At least in my, a lot of people would take issue with calling it addiction. But in my mind, I look at it kind of like a sexual addiction. As a Christian, I don't think we should be doing this, but it's very hard to stop. And so it's, it's like a sexual addiction. It seems to be just as hard to stop or more difficult to stop than a porn addiction. So anyway, so we have to care for people on both those aspects. They have gender dysphoria because of the AGP. They also have this feeling of sexual addiction because of the AGP. of the AGP. Do you have a clear distinction in your, for yourself? What is a temptation that you resist and is not sin?

You don't need to confess, repent. It's just you feel it, you notice it, but you're like, okay, I'm faithfully walking with this versus when you kind of cross over and say, you know what, I committed a sin here that I need to repent from. This comes up often in the same sex debates, you know, same sex attraction is a sin. Is it not sin? Is it temptation? Is it, you know, I imagine you kind of wrestle with a similar category.

I feel kind of similar to, yeah, those debates about same sex attraction where, you know, when you decide, when you desire something that is evil, there's something evil about having the evil desire. You know, if we said we were, if I desire to hurt people, I would repent of that desire to hurt people, not just if I acted on it. So I do feel bad about having the desires that I feel like I shouldn't have, but at the same time, practically speaking, I don't feel so guilty about them. Because I didn't choose consciously to have these feelings. It comes from my sinful nature, but I never wanted to feel this way. So I tend not to feel guilty about being different or, you know, some of the confusions I have

on a daily basis about like, how should I do whatever because of my gender issues. I feel guilty when I give in, like, if I'm bored and I give into reading some fiction story. And I'll just say that just part of my testimony is that I feel absolutely fully free and healed of genderless for you. And identity confusion, which I used to, you know, have more of, I have no desire at all to want to be a woman. I am very happy and content as a man, which a lot of guys at AGP are still struggling with. What I still have, which I don't think I'll be cured from,

barring a miracle, is that my body still is aroused from the same patterns. So whereas another man might still have a pattern of knowing that he could go look at porn and be aroused, I know that if I have a moment of weakness, it would be that I would go online and read a story. So that pattern of arousal still there is to be vigilant to resist when those temptations come. I'm just trying to think of an analogy, like a heterosexual or any man, the thought of looking at porn is like, yeah, that would be very enjoyable. I would be, I would, I would satisfy desires. So, so that, I guess that temptation is always there. It's not like, it's like, no, I wouldn't.

But if he hasn't looked at porn for 20 years, I think he's going to be like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don satisfy desires. So, so that, I guess that temptation is always there. It's not like it's like, no, I wouldn't. But if he hasn't looked at porn for 20 years, you know, we would say great job. You know, like we wouldn't make him feel guilty for having the, the, that temptation, going back to the sinfulness of, you know, I, I, um, analogies are always inaccurate. There's no one-to-one correlation between this experience and that experience. But like, you know, I think of like a, like an alcoholic and again, never comparing one to the other, but like an alcoholic, you know, if you, if you ask

them, do you desire a drink right now? It's like, yeah, it's our 10 drinks right now, but I haven't had a drink in 20 years. We would say, we wouldn't say, well, you need to not, you know, like we would say that we wouldn't say, well, you need to not, you know, like we would say that's a success dude. Like I wake up every day and yes, I do desire this, but because of, you know, Jesus or just how, you know, I've said no. Interestingly myself and a lot of the guys in her group, we don't desire it every day though. Like, you know, I can go for very many months without a single AGP thought or AGP desire to the point where it's hard to be vigilant because it can sneak up on me

when the desire does come. And I think a lot of the guys in our group are similar that part of it is maybe because we're still heterosexual so we can get satisfaction from our marriage. So it's kind of trying to feed the heterosexual desire and starve the AGP desire. And so if you've focused enough on your wife and loving her, serving her and enjoying her, that the AGP can really just kind of drift into the background. Can you give us some practical steps?

Because you said you are healed, freed, whatever language you want to use. I mean, you don't experience gender dysphoria more. There are probably people listening, like, how do I get there? So how do I get there? I'm not perfect. Like I said, I still have the sexual arousal temptation

to fantasize. But overall, I feel just really free. I feel like God has transformed my life. And, you know, one of the most basic things is to just, you have to be abstinent from it. You know, you have to keep saying no, and over time, you'll experience change. But at the beginning, it can be really hard to, you feel frustrated because you're having desperate desires for it every day, and you're, it can be really hard to feel frustrated because you're having desperate desires for it every day, and it's really hard to say no. But over time, it becomes easier and easier to stop giving in.

And then a big part of my approach has been to think about integrating the parts of my personality that may have been divided between my male self and my cross-dressed self and realize that they're all just good personality traits that can be me. I don't need to put on a dress to feel a certain way. If there's a certain part of my personality that I want to let out, I can experience that as a man and doesn't matter if I'm different from the typical men as long as I'm myself. It's about accepting yourself as you are rather than trying to become something different. So that's more for on the dysphoria side of accepting yourself and your personality in full, rather than having it be divided into male and female self.

And then, yeah, and then the other parts of it would be very similar to how we would deal with the porn addiction. Getting an accountability partner, recovery group, meditating on scripture, trusting in Christ, and asking for the help of the Holy Spirit. Scripture, trusting in Christ and asking for the help of the Holy Spirit. You're getting an internet filter to block out stuff about cross-dressing and those fiction sites, purging any female clothes that you have stashed away at home.

One of the things I talk about though those different strategies of kind of changing the way you even look at female clothing, because unlike with a porn addiction where you can kind of get away from temptation, we can't. Every time we see a woman, even if it's an old lady or a child or any woman wearing any female clothing, it can be a huge trigger. Watching a television show, seeing a billboard looking in magazine, looking at your closet and seeing the wife's clothes up there. I sometimes I think of it as like, if you have a closet of female clothes in your home from a sister or

mother or wife or anyone, it's like having a harem in the closet to do your bidding. It's just like you can do whatever you want. But I never thought about that component. Do you, the guys like lock up their wives clothes or is it behind a safe? I don't know. I mean, I don't want to, I just think about that component. One of the reasons why wives kind of can feel like they're going crazy because they feel like they're constantly triggering their husbands to temptation. Some of them want to stop wearing more feminine clothing and you know they can run in circles

in their minds. But so I try to help guys instead of running away from all temptation, how can you review these feminine objects that we've grown up looking at? We've grown up looking at, let me just use an example, lipstick or eye heels as like magical objects of like touching it, holding it, using it. It's just like this powerful fetish object that can transform us. How can we relook at it and look at those things as these are just objects and these objects belong to women? How can I look at these things that they're making my wife look beautiful rather than looking at them as objects that I want? But just these ways of trying to

reframe how we look at certain things. That's helped me a lot. And I try to help other guys do the same. You mentioned in passing, I'd love to come back to it. Just the, the aspect of gender stereotypes, is it, as I observe the research, people with agp, people who I think probably have agp, but don't say they have agp, there, there is some almost like stereotypical stereotypes around what it means to be a woman that builds into this. Like the desire, I mean the desire to wear like red lipstick and high heels or something like no, my, my women, women don't actually

like to, you know, like it's like they don't baggy sweats and a baseball hat. That's not, doesn't satisfy your desire, but I mean, that's kind of what most women would actually probably want to wear. You know? So let me paint a picture for you from, from the, the CD fiction. It's, it's like you slowly are transformed into a woman. And that means you're also fully cross-dressed in the story, doing the household chores and the vacuuming and the cooking and cleaning. And you're completely submissive. And sometimes the stories get really toxic and sexist where the women are like bimbos or slaves or, you know, really demeaning views of women. But those are the views of women that are turned on.

And so you imagine yourself being like that. But what I found is that then guys like me, who are Christians, we're not attract such stories, which is good. But we're attracted to stories where like, you're forced to dress as a woman out of some kind of necessity. That's, you know, that's the so it's less of the toxic stuff, including like rape and all that other stuff in those stories. But it's still like the same kind of intoxicating arousal from the thought of being transformed into into. So yeah, there's a lot of sex stereotypes. Some of the worst stuff is the sissy hypno stuff where it's clearly you view being a woman as demeaning.

And so your turn on is thinking about being forced to be a sissy who is like a humiliated. And so you're being turned on by the humiliation and by the feminization. So there's yes, a lot of bad views of women get mixed up in this and unrealistic views of women. And he said, these things we're talking about, these aspects are not uncommon within the AGP experiences. Yeah. Again, it's just people are different, but yeah, those are very common things.

I think I asked Phil this question. I'm curious your opinion. Like when you see drag queens, do you see, oh, this is AGP or not necessarily? No, totally different. That's totally different. Yeah. Yeah. With, with drag queens, you know, it's almost always gay men and most people with

most men with AGP find drag completely ugly and offensive. Uh, okay. Because you know, drag is kind of a mockery or a making light of femininity. And we are more attracted to what looks authentically like a beautiful woman, not the kind of extreme makeup. Cause yeah, drag is like almost like clownish, like big hair and like, okay. Huh? Big hair. I don't know why it is sometimes sometimes like, Oh, that's not too much. Yeah. As far as even though I said, you know, there's this sometimes very harmful views of women. I also go back in that little bit and say, at the same time,

the sort of HOP is sort of a worship of women. It's like we worship women so much that we want to become them. And so it's like an idol, really. We worship women and femininity. We love everything about women and we want to become authentically women. And so that like drag is kind of a mockery of that. Oh, wow. Okay. Any advice for pastors who don't experience AGP, but like are like hearing this and like, Oh my gosh, so wait, I might have people in my congregation who are wrestling with this. Like if you could, if, if a pastor or a Christian leader is asking

is like, Hey, okay. So I don't want to be, I don't want to pretend like this doesn't exist. I want to help people walk through this. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that have so much shame built up that they don't, they need to talk about it. They need a community to work through this, but they're, they don't know how to seek that. How would a pastor go about even creating opportunities for people experiencing this to get help? You know, our culture right now is rough with all the gender ideology wars going on where one of the most important things you can do is show love and compassion through your preaching,

because people are…the Christian guys at the HOP that I talked to fear telling people because of all the kind of hatred against trans stuff on the side of the church right now, which I understand why people are so frustrated by things going on in our culture. I'm frustrated too, but it can give the picture that the church wants nothing to do with people who are struggling with this. And, you know, what's going on in the culture is a lot of experimentation and identity issues. It's maybe different than what people like me are struggling with with HAP. Um, and the HAP is more hidden and not, not what's in your face most of the time.

And so each church needs to show that they are a safe place for people who are. Of course, struggling and that you can share, like we were talking about earlier, share that I have these desires, but that I don't want to give into them. And that should be, you know, that people come alongside me and help me in that without shaming me. But a lot of people are afraid to speak up and get help because it just seems like such a like it's harder now maybe than it was 10 years ago because of all the gender war stuff in our culture.

But a lot of pastors might not be so equipped to handle counseling guys like this. I would send them to our website. Though I do have some posts to help pastors or people who are counselors who are caring for guys with the AGP, so you could read those. And then I'd say that since sexual addiction is a big part of it, you could do a lot of counseling since a lot of pastors understand that. You could do a lot of counseling to the guy who struggles with the AGP in your church from the sexual addiction angle. Help him get an accountability partner,

help him learn how to fight sin, memorize scripture, help him to understand the gospel, to take away his shame, to know the grace that we have in Christ. All those things are things that a pastor can do, even if HOP is kind of a mystery to the pastor, he can still help on those areas, pointing people to Christ, helping them not feel like it's the end of the world when they've had a relapse,

but trusting in, in God's grace. And the couple of minutes we have left, can you talk about the ministry, the support groups? If people want help and they say, dude, I want to, I want to keep talking to Barnabas. I want to hang out with them. I'm going to get in group or whatever. Like, obviously they can go to the website, the link I'll put the, all the links in the show notes, but what does a support group look like? Are they going to be outed? I would imagine it's confidential. We, we do it all anonymously. So we have an anonymous group for wives. So wives who have men who are giving in to their age of or wives who have husbands who are trying to

overcome it either way of a group that they can join to get support. And then the recovery groups are basically email based and again anonymous and you get what you put into it. Some people are more quiet listeners. Some people are very active, but you can get the support that you need. Most of the guys in the group say this completely changed their life being in the group. You know, they used to feel so alone and confused and now they have what they need from the other guys

to resist and recover and learn how to enjoy being men and overcome their dysphoria. And a lot of really great success stories from those guys. We do have a discord server as well. If people want to do it that way, but most of our, um, most of our groups are, are email based and, uh, and anonymous. And people have seen, you've seen other people experience the same, same or similar kind of freedom and success as you have by being in the group.

You know, we definitely have people in the group who are still kind of daily struggling. So I don't want to take too rosy a picture on it. Everyone's story is a bit different, but there's a lot of guys who go years in between, let's say episodes of cross dressing, and they may like have a relapse one day and do something or like they might go online or go to the store and buy some article of clothing and have a 30 minute relapse and then get rid of it again. But overall, you know that day, they're living in freedom. And after the relapse, they get back to living in freedom again. Yeah. So no one, including me, is cured, not advocating some kind of conversion therapy. We're not saying that the AGP is completely

gone, but we're living in wh and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you, you have your own ministry to worry about. And then now you're taking on this whole other extracurricular ministry. And that's, that's, that's amazing, man. I don't, I don't know anybody, honestly, I don't know anybody else doing what you do in this area. So thank you for what you do. And thanks for being a guest on the Algera. Any, any last words you want to say to our audience? What I'm doing is a joy and a privilege. And you know, these guys that I'm trying to care for, they care for me too. And I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, want to say to our audience? What I'm doing is a joy and a privilege.

And you know, these guys that I'm trying to care for, they care for me too. And some of us are in this group together for, for life. Uh, thank you for bringing some light to AGP. Uh, you know, this podcast hopefully will give hope to those who are struggling to, to better understand themselves, but also to know that there are ways that they can get help and overcome this. They don't have to be fatalistic about it, that there's no hope for change. You know that every other website online will say you can't actually quit cross-dressing, you can't overcome AGP, just give in. But there is hope, you can live a different way.

You don't have to give in to this. There's freedom to be head. That's awesome. That's awesome, Ed. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.