I'm an ex-autogynephiliac, and a much better person now. This is why.

This is a throwaway account, because I don't want any friends of mine to see this.

Okay, so this isn't going to be female-pov porn, obviously. I certainly don't want to offend anyone by putting this post here, but I think this is the best place for it. It's the story of how I completely got over this fetish (!?), and my thoughts on how that happened.

A little background info first. I'm a teenage male, I get really good grades in school, I'm very athletic, and I'm comfortable with my body. I'm sexually inactive, which could be important, but since I go to a tiny, mostly hick school there's not much I can do about that - I have basically no possibility of having sex.

Okay, now we get to the good part. I have wondered about being female since about age six. (That's a little early to be looking at material like what's posted on this subreddit, obviously.) I never thought much of it. I've always sexually preferred women over men, and at such an early age it seemed natural to wonder why I preferred them. I wondered what made women so special. I'm pretty sure most guys go through that, though.

Then it got better. I decided that I should experience being a girl myself. I wanted to have breasts, wide hips, long hair, and a vagina. This was a while after I started being curious. I found some websites meant exclusively for women, and as one thing led to another, I started getting really into lesbian porn and then, female pov porn.

I became a regular autogynephiliac, except one thing. I wasn't feminine, and I had no desire to become so. Cross-dressing seemed gross to me (Not to judge crossdressers ಠ_ಠ) , and I didn't want to do things in a girly way. I'm also not attracted to men. This felt wrong, as you can probably imagine. I felt off-balance. I went on to try and fix these things, to align my head, more or less. I used feminizing hypnosis (I haven't seen a link to it, you should be able to find what I'm talking about easily), Subviewer presets, and all that good stuff. None of it increased my desire to be feminine, but I still loved female-pov material. I couldn't figure out why, and was on the verge of depression because I couldn't figure out my own sexuality.

Then yesterday, something happened that cleared my head. It started with listening to "Real Porn," a hypnosis file on the site I linked to earlier. It's designed to make you, when you watch porn, feel things from the point of view of whoever you choose within it. Great, I thought. Maybe this would settle things once and for all, and I'd accept autogynephilia.

But then I came over to this subreddit, like I always do, and looked at a TG fiction thread. I decided to read For a Girl, which got to me more than erotic fiction usually does, after that hypnosis session. It goes in-depth into the psychological changes that becoming female would bring.

As I read on and on, I realized that I didn't want to sexually pleasure myself - I was being soothed in a very nonsexual way by the story. It seemed weird, but by the time I finished, I felt the most relieved I've felt in my whole life. From reading a TG story. Of course I wanted to know why.

I thought long and hard, and today I've been thinking all day. I just came to the conclusion that's made me realize that I don't belong here at all.

I didn't want to be a woman, I wanted to know what being a woman was like.

First clue: I'm not sexually active, I've never even kissed a girl in real life. Obviously, I'm curious about them.

Second clue: I don't like not knowing things. Like I said, I get great grades, and I'm comfortable with myself. I even take unnecessary risks to try and experience new things, therefore eliminating any unknowns. (I'm also scared of the dark =P)

Third clue: I'm only attracted to women. I would love to experience lesbian sex firsthand, but even thinking about sex with men just makes me shiver. (Not to offend any gays / whatevers we have out there!)

Fourth clue: Although I was a fan of this material, I never wanted to be a feminine male. I just wanted to be female, but I don't think I wanted to live as a female. I just wanted to know what things were like for them. I knew it would be different, and I'm still curious.

But as vivid as the story I mentioned above was to me, I think I fully sated my curiosity about being female. I feel like I just get it now. And I also feel ready to emerge into the dating world with much more experience.

Elaborating on that last bit: I know I was never really a girl, but I feel like I understand their perspective a lot better after having gone through autogynephilia! It's like it was a tunnel that led me to a better place. And now that I do understand women better, I'm ready to go out and get some for myself! Thanks, r/autogynephilia. You've helped me become a better person, and I think I'll have a lot less trouble with women than I might've otherways. Understanding them will be wonderful, hopefully.

So there you have it. TL;DR: I realized that MY autogynephilia didn't come from a desire to be female, but from a desire to be knowledgeable. Reading "For a Girl" after listening to "Real Porn" managed to fulfill that desire, and now I'm not even turned on by this stuff anymore, but I feel much better around women than before!