Erotic target identity inversion theory and arousal patterns in macrophilia (Part 3)
A systematic study of macrophilia in a large internet sample of 998 adult macrophiles, investigating arousal patterns and testing erotic target identity inversion theory.
⬅️ Previous part
In the previous part, I analyze the patterns of external and internalized attraction in macrophilia.
📊 Results, continued
If automacrophilia—arousal by the idea of being giant—is indeed an internalized form of attraction to giants, then we can test three predictions from ETII theory to see if its validity is supported in macrophilia.
🙃 Erotic target identity inversion
❓First prediction: In natal males who experience automacrophilia, there will be a subset who reports an ETII: a wish to imitate giants, a desire to be more similar to giants, or an identification with being giant.
Participants were asked six yes–no questions that aimed to evaluate imitation of, desire to be, and identification with being a giant beyond erotic fantasy:
Have you ever pretended to be much bigger than your normal size?
Have you ever felt you were meant to be much bigger than normal people?
Have you ever wished you could become a giant person?
Would you feel more complete or satisfied if you were much bigger than your size?
Have you ever felt sad, frustrated, or unhappy because you are not a giant person?
If you could permanently become a giant person, would you do it?
Answers were coded as 0 (no) and 1 (yes). The covariance matrix had a dominant eigenvalue that explained 58% of the total variance in the answers, suggesting the unidimensionality of the scale. Furthermore, Exploratory Factor Analysis showed that all six items loaded strongly and consistently in the same direction on a single factor (loading magnitude range: 0.59–0.81). The items also showed very good internal consistency (McDonald’s ωₜ = 0.87). These results suggest that the six items measured the same latent variable, presumed to be the ETII specific to automacrophilia.
Answers were summed to yield an aggregate ETII score that varied between 0 (no endorsement of any item) and 6 (endorsement of all items). In the 684 natal males who reported experiencing automacrophilia at least rarely, a subset of them had elevated ETII scores, with 18.1% [15.4%–21.2%] scoring 4 or higher, for example. In contrast, the ETII scores of the 250 natal males who reported never experiencing automacrophilia were heavily skewed toward zero, with only 1.2% [0%–3.5%] scoring 4 or higher. This supports the first prediction from ETII theory. ✅
🔗 Automacrophilia vs. ETII
❓Second prediction: The degree of automacrophilia in natal males will be positively associated with the degree of the corresponding ETII.
The heatmap shown below plots the frequency of automacrophilia vs. the ETII score of natal males. The color codes the relative proportion of the respondents within each row (i.e. the distribution of ETII scores for a given frequency of automacrophilia). The raw numbers are indicated in each cell.
As can be visually grasped from the relative greenness of the upper triangular half of the map, and the relative blackness of the other triangular half, more respondents tended to have a higher ETII score with more frequent automacrophilia.
Mean ETII score in natal males per frequency level of automacrophilia (plotted below with the CIs):
Never: 0.19 [0.10–0.28];
Rarely: 0.61 [0.47–0.75];
Occasionally: 1.12 [0.94–1.31];
Frequently: 2.39 [2.10–2.69];
Very frequently: 3.41 [3.04–3.78].
The positive monotonic relationship between ETII scores and the frequency of automacrophilia (Spearman’s ρ = 0.63, p < 2e-105) suggests that stronger internalized attraction tends to correlate with stronger feelings of identification with the erotic target, beyond erotic fantasy, in a subset of natal males. This supports the second prediction from ETII theory. ✅
⚖️ Automacrophilia vs. autogynephilia
❓Third prediction: Since paraphilias have a tendency to co-occur, there will be a positive correlation between automacrophilia and autogynephilia, in line with observations in other paraphilias with unusual erotic targets.
The questionnaire did not evaluate autogynephilia, so this prediction cannot be tested directly. Nevertheless, Blanchard’s typology of male-to-female (MtF) transsexuality predicts that nonhomosexual MtFs are autogynephilic.1 Therefore, if there is a positive correlation between automacrophilia and autogynephilia in natal male macrophiles, we should expect nonhomosexual MtF macrophiles to have a significantly higher frequency of automacrophilia compared with nonhomosexual cismale macrophiles. I will test this more restricted prediction, which is indirectly indicative of a correlation between autogynephilia and automacrophilia.
There were 70 natal males who reported a female gender identity, 68 of whom were nonhomosexual relative to natal sex.2 All 68 nonhomosexual MtFs reported external attraction to female giants and all but 2 (97.1% [89.9%–99.2%]) experienced automacrophilia at least rarely. When the frequency scale is coded evenly between 0 (= never) and 1 (= very frequently), there was a highly significant difference in the mean frequency of automacrophilia between the two groups (Mann–Whitney U test: U = 36924.5, p < 2e-8):
Nonhomosexual MtFs (N = 68): 0.64 [0.57–0.71] (slightly less than frequently);
Nonhomosexual cismales (N = 775): 0.40 [0.37–0.42] (slightly less than occasionally).
Roughly speaking, nonhomosexual natal males who experienced automacrophilia at any given minimal frequency, compared with those who never experienced it, were 13 to 18 times more likely to be MtF than cismale in terms of relative risk. These approximate numbers should be interpreted cautiously, however, as the number of MtFs was small to begin with.
More rigorously, an ordinal logistic regression under the proportional odds assumption (untested) found that nonhomosexual MtFs had significantly higher odds of reporting a greater frequency of automacrophilia compared with nonhomosexual cismales (OR = 3.27 [2.13–5.01], p < 6e-8).
These results indirectly support the third prediction from ETII theory that automacrophilia is positively correlated with autogynephilia in natal male macrophiles. ✅
📌 Conclusion
💡 Fourth finding:
Observations on automacrophilia are consistent with the predictions from ETII theory, which adds support for the theory’s validity.
👍 Leave a like on this post and tell me your thoughts about it in the comments.
➡️ Final part
Stay tuned for the next and final part where I discuss the results.
Blanchard, Ray (1989). The Concept of Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male Gender Dysphoria. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177(10), 616–623.
For the sake of consistency with research in this area, I use the label “nonhomosexual” relative to natal sex in this section.