Attraction to women with penises: Gynandromorphophilia (GAMP)
Some men are erotically drawn to the idea of a woman with breasts and a penis (a shemale), an attraction known as gynandromorphophilia (GAMP). I summarize what is known about this phenomenon.
➤ Introduction
Some men are sexually interested in shemales: male-to-female transsexuals who feminize their bodies and obtain breasts but retain male genitalia, hence the name. Some of these “pre-operative” transwomen who have gone into pornography have found great success. That trend continues today on adult content subscription platforms where the unique morphology of a feminine body with breasts and a penis attracts a niche market.
While that market has a high demand, the supply is low due to the limited number of individuals in the world with that coveted morphology. In fact, the market is so underserved that some natal women have started falsely advertising themselves as shemales on adult platforms, such as OnlyFans, by tucking objects in their underwear to suggest they have a penis. These pretenders capitalize on their natural advantage over transgender women in femininity—an attribute highly prized by men interested in shemales—and calculate that they are likely to find more success in the underserved market for shemales than in the saturated one for females.
Until recently, not much was known about men who are sexually interested in shemales. Anecdotally, the popularity of shemale pornography among male consumers of adult films was evident for a long time. This popularity means that even though the sexual interest in shemales might be unusual, it is by no means rare.1 It is also known that shemale pornography is marketed primarily toward the straight male consumer segment and that it does not attract gay men.2
In the popular imagination, however, men’s sexual interest in shemales is often conflated with a sexual interest in men, which makes shemale lovers3 reluctant to admit their unusual attraction. When they do, they are often ascribed some form of bisexuality, if not homosexuality, even though most of them have no interest in men. This stigma makes shemale lovers feel shame and embarrassment for their attraction. They watch shemale pornography only to regret indulging in their desires after the fact, in those “post-orgasm clarity” moments. Some also feel confused about what their attraction to shemales means for their sexual orientation.
In this essay, I comprehensively summarize what is known so far about men’s sexual interest in shemales from the academic literature.
📖 Review
💃 Sociological studies
Many sociological studies have been conducted on men who have sex with “pre-op” transgender sex workers.4 It is difficult, however, to study the sexual interest in shemales through these men because this population is not identical to shemale lovers.
First, it is likely that many—probably the majority—of men who are attracted to shemales never pursue sex with transgender prostitutes. Some might want to but never get the opportunity, some might be too ashamed or embarrassed about their attraction to pursue it in real life, some might not find shemale sex workers feminine enough, and some might simply not wish to act on their erotic interest beyond fantasy and pornography.
Second, and more importantly, men who have sex with transgender prostitutes are not necessarily attracted to shemales per se. Indeed, some of these men pursue sex with transgender prostitutes instead of natal females for a sociological motive: the former may be easier to mingle with, more eager for sexual interaction, and better at sexually pleasing the men.
Men who are sociologically motivated tend to pursue limited sexual interactions where they can suspend disbelief that the transgender sex worker is a natal female. For instance, they may be interested in receiving oral sex from the shemale but not in penetrating her. By focusing on the shemale’s high display of femininity and forgetting the penis, these men are effectively using her as a substitute for a natal woman, a mental exercise often aided by inebriation.
🗿 Anthropological studies
Anthropological studies have also shed light on the curious phenomenon of third-gender communities that exist in many countries—communities in which effeminate gay men find an accepted place in society as a third gender. These include the Indian hijras, the Thai kathoey (ladyboys), the Omani khanith, the Samoan faʻafafine, the Mexican muxes, and many others.5
Individuals from these communities are often considered a third gender, but most of them do not feminize their bodies with hormones or breast augmentation or other surgeries. Therefore, they do not approximate the shemale morphology of the feminine woman with breasts and a penis.
Third-gender individuals tend to engage in sex work but their clients are not necessarily men who are attracted to shemales, either. Indeed, the third gender may be used by straight men as a sexual substitute for women. This is likely to happen in places where sex with women is hard to obtain or is proscribed outside of marriage, similar to how straight men have sex with other men in prison without having a homosexual attraction.
The third gender may also be used by gay men as a substitute for men in places where homosexuality is frowned upon, since third-gender individuals often resemble feminine men more than they resemble women with penises.
📝 Money & Lamacz
The earliest publication on men’s attraction to shemales was in 1984 by psychologists John Money and Margaret Lamacz of Johns Hopkins University.6 They reported the case of an androphilic natal male who had a feminized body and lived full time as a woman but retained the penis. Money and Lamacz called this phenomenon gynemimesis—in the sense of miming a woman—and referred to individuals in that position as gynemimetics. Men’s witting attraction to gynemimetics was called gynemimetophilia.
Money and Lamacz included in their case report information on one of the gynemimetic’s boyfriends, a white gynemimetophilic man who had previously been married but was by then exclusively interested in black male-to-female transvestites and transsexuals. He had no interest in men, however, and was only interested in playing “the man’s role” with the individuals he was attracted to.
☎️ Blanchard & Collins
In 1993, a decade later, Ray Blanchard and Peter Collins of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry published the second study on men’s attraction to shemales.7 Their scope was wider, as they studied men’s sexual interest not only in pre-operative transgender women, but also in transvestites—men who temporarily cross-dress and present in a feminine way for erotic purposes.
To describe these erotic targets, Blanchard and Collins borrowed a word from biology: gynandromorph. In sexually dimorphic species that have both males and females, rare genetic aberrations can lead to a chimera: an organism with a phenotype that has both male and female characteristics, sometimes sharply delineated with a demarcation line on the body. Such an organism is a gynandromorph. Blanchard and Collins borrowed that descriptor to refer to all kinds of feminized men, including transvestites and male-to-female transsexuals. They called the sexual interest in gynandromorphs gynandromorphophilia.
In their study, the two researchers analyzed personal advertisements for sexual and romantic encounters on a voice mail system in Toronto, including advertisements from gynandromorphophilic men and from gynandromorphs themselves. The conclusion of the analysis was that gynandromorphophilia constituted a distinct erotic interest.
🔬 Bailey et al.
It was not until 2015, more than two decades after that paper, that systematic studies were conducted on men’s sexual interest in shemales by researchers at Northwestern University, led by J. Michael Bailey. The scope was narrowed: gynandromorphs were redefined as shemales (i.e., feminized natal males with breasts and a penis), and gynandromorphophilia—now abbreviated as GAMP—was redefined as the sexual interest in shemales, thereby excluding transvestites. This narrowing of scope was based on the suspicion that the sexual interest in shemales might be different from the sexual interest in transvestites.
Two studies of shemale lovers
In one study, 23 shemale lovers were recruited to investigate their genital arousal patterns.8 Their penile responses were directly measured by phallometry as they watched erotic stimuli depicting various scenarios involving men, women, and shemales. The subjects were compared to 15 heterosexual and 17 homosexual controls who had no interest in shemales.
The arousal patterns of shemale lovers were found to be similar to those of heterosexual men, as both groups were aroused by the stimuli depicting women, and they were found to be different from homosexual men, as they were not aroused by the stimuli depicting men. In fact, the only difference between shemale lovers and the heterosexual controls was that the former had an additional sexual interest in shemales, and that interest was comparable in intensity to their arousal by women.
The Northwestern researchers also conducted an internet survey with the same aim of studying the arousal patterns of shemale lovers, comparing them this time with heterosexual controls.9 The previous results were confirmed: the more than 300 shemale lovers reported comparable attraction to shemales and women, and only a few of them expressed a preference for the former over the latter. Based on these findings, gynandromorphophilia can hardly be seen as a sexual orientation, the authors argue, and it may be better understood as an unusual variant of heterosexuality.
Those two studies provided empirical evidence for what was already known anecdotally: men’s sexual interest in shemales is a heterosexual phenomenon, and those who have it are neither gay nor bisexual. Nevertheless, many shemale lovers who participated in the studies identified as bisexual, partly due to their sexual interest in shemales, even though they had no interest in men.
The internet survey also found that most shemale lovers discovered this erotic interest in their teenage years, usually through pornography. Their ideal preferences were consistent with the idea of a woman with breasts and a penis, as they highly valued femininity in their erotic targets. In terms of sexual acts, shemale lovers expressed a diversity of interests: some only fantasized about playing the insertive role in oral and anal intercourse with the shemale, others only fantasized about playing the receptive role, and the rest fantasized about both. On average, the size of the shemale’s penis was not important to shemale lovers.
Shemale lovers and autogynephilia
Perhaps the most interesting finding in the Northwestern University studies was an association between men’s sexual interest in shemales and another unusual erotic interest known as autogynephilia—men’s arousal by the idea of being a woman. The shemale lovers showed a high rate of autogynephilia compared with the heterosexual controls: 42% vs. 12% in the phallometry study, and 59% vs. 16% in the internet survey.
The association was also found in another group of 27 men recruited specifically for autogynephilia: 89% of them reported they were shemale lovers, and their phallometrically measured genital arousal patterns were virtually identical to those of the previous group of shemale lovers.10 In other words, both groups responded to erotic stimuli of women and shemales but not to erotic stimuli of men.
The association between autogynephilia and the sexual interest in shemales remains a mystery, but one phenomenon that may explain it in certain cases is internalized attraction.11 Men who experience this phenomenon discover that they are aroused by the idea of being whomever they happen to be externally attracted to.
The most common internalized attraction is found in autogynephilic men: they are attracted to women but also experience arousal by the idea of being a woman. Internalized attraction has been documented in men who have other preferred erotic targets such as amputees, children, anthropomorphic animals, real animals, very obese people, and fantastical giants.
It is conceivable then that some shemale lovers may also experience internalized attraction, becoming aroused by the idea of being a shemale themselves. This phenomenon, properly called autogynandromorphophilia (auto-GAMP), has also been called partial autogynephilia due to its similarities with (complete) autogynephilia. Whereas the erotic self-image of autogynephilic men is a woman with breasts and a vagina, that of auto-GAMP men is a shemale—a woman with breasts and a penis.1213
📌 Conclusion
The exact nature of men’s sexual interest in shemales remains a mystery, but what is known so far is that these men are neither homosexual nor bisexual. Indeed, gynandromorphophilia in men appears to be an exclusively heterosexual phenomenon. Future research will hopefully shed light on the underlying motivations for this erotic interest, its prevalence in the male population, and its potential existence in women.
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For example, the “transgender” category on PornHub, which mostly features shemales, was the seventh most viewed in 2024 according to that year’s annual report, and has consistently been in the top categories over the years.
Escoffier, Jeffrey (2011). Imagining the She/Male: Pornography and the Transsexualization of the Heterosexual Male. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12(4), 268–281.
I use the term “shemale lovers” as shorthand for men who are sexually attracted to shemales. I do not use it in the sense of men who actually have sex with shemales.
See, for example, Weinberg, Martin S. & Williams, Colin J. (2010). Men Sexually Interested in Transwomen (MSTW): Gendered Embodiment and the Construction of Sexual Desire. The Journal of Sex Research, 47(4), 374–383.
Sociological and anthropological studies are reviewed in Petterson, Lanna J., & Vasey, Paul L. (2022). Men’s Sexual Interest in Feminine Trans Individuals across Cultures. The Journal of Sex Research, 59(8), 1015–1033.
Money, John & Lamacz, Margaret (1984). Gynemimesis and Gynemimetophilia: Individual and Cross-Cultural Manifestations of a Gender-Coping Strategy Hitherto Unnamed. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 25(4), 392–403.
Blanchard, Ray & Collins, Peter I. (1993). Men with Sexual Interest in Transvestites, Transsexuals, and She-Males. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 181(9), 570–575.
Hsu, Kevin J., et al. (2016). Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women. Psychological Medicine, 46(4), 819–827.
Rosenthal, Allen M., et al. (2017). Who Are Gynandromorphophilic Men? An Internet Survey of Men with Sexual Interest in Transgender Women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46, 255–264.
Hsu, Kevin J., et al. (2017). Sexual Arousal Patterns of Autogynephilic Male Cross-Dressers. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46, 247–253.
Bailey, J. Michael, Hsu, Kevin J., & Jang, Henry H. (2023). Elaborating and Testing Erotic Target Identity Inversion Theory in Three Paraphilic Samples. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1–19.
Blanchard, Ray. (1993). The She-Male Phenomenon and the Concept of Partial Autogynephilia. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 19(1), 69–76.
Lawrence, Anne A. (2013). Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism. Springer New York, pp. 189–191.