Internalized sexual attraction: The new dimension of sexuality
Some people are sexually aroused by the thought of being what they're attracted to. This internalized attraction manifests in many different forms, all belonging to a natural kind of sexual phenomena.
🪞 Internalized sexual attraction
This article summarizes everything that is currently known about the phenomenon of internalized sexual attraction. This is an exciting area of psychological research and several empirical studies have been conducted in recent years. I will regularly update this article as new academic research appears in this area and as I explore it further in my own independent research.
💡 Definition
Most people experience sexual attraction as feelings directed at an “external” erotic target—in the sense that the target is perceived as distinct from the self, even if it be in the imagination. Some individuals, however, have the capacity to become sexually aroused by the thought of being their preferred erotic targets, rather than by the thought of being with them. This peculiar phenomenon is called internalized sexual attraction.1
🎭 Forms
The most well-known form of internalized sexual attraction occurs in a small minority of natal males2 attracted to women. These individuals experience sexual arousal by the thought of being a woman—a phenomenon called autogynephilia, where auto is the Greek prefix for “self” and gynephilia denotes sexual attraction to women. Autogynephilia is therefore when an individual’s attraction to women is directed inward, confounding the erotic target with the self, and resulting in the attraction to self in the image of a woman.3
Internalized forms of attraction also occur in paraphilic interests in “unusual” erotic targets. Perhaps the second most well-known form of internalized sexual attraction occurs in males who are attracted to amputees. Some of these males also become sexually aroused by the thought of being an amputee themselves. This is the same pattern as autogynephilia, except that the erotic target is different—amputees instead of women.4 Analogous patterns have been found in the sexual attraction to many other “unusual” targets, including children, men, anthropomorphic animals, real animals, obese people, corpses, and fantastical giants.5
🌌 Dimension
The observation of the same pattern in various attractions has led researchers to posit that internalized sexual attraction amounts to an independent dimension of sexuality. This dimension is characterized by sexual arousal at the thought of being one’s preferred erotic targets, no matter what those targets may be.6
Furthermore, internalized sexual attraction tends to span all of an individual’s sexual attractions. In other words, if a natal male is attracted to more than one class of erotic targets and he experiences internalized attraction to one of those targets, chances are high that he experiences the internalized forms of the other attractions as well.
For instance, if a natal male is attracted to women and to amputees, and he is aroused by the fantasy of being an amputee, chances are high that he is also aroused by the fantasy of being a woman. This explains the high correlation between autogynephilia and most other forms of internalized attraction, as observed in empirical studies.7
🌱 Natural kind
Despite their rich diversity of form, internalized sexual attractions appear to be merely different expressions of the same underlying phenomenon, a core mechanism characterized by sexual arousal by the thought of being one’s preferred erotic targets. In consequence, the varied forms of internalized sexual attraction can all be said to belong to a natural kind.8 In the quest to understand the nature of paraphilias, this is a major breakthrough.
It should be kept in mind that there are some erotic phenomena that only superficially resemble internalized sexual attractions but are better accounted for by other explanations. This occurs, for instance, when the idea of embodying a given entity is sexually arousing in the absence of plausible sexual attraction to that class of entities.9
📊 Prevalence
People who have the capacity to experience internalized attractions appear to be overwhelmingly natal males. Because males and females undergo a markedly different sexual development, it means that internalized attraction is very likely linked to male sexuality. Nevertheless, some natal females are reported to experience it as well.10
Autogynephilia, the most basic internalized form of attraction, is not common in the male population, as its prevalence is somewhere between 3% and 10%, roughly speaking. Natal males who experience autogynephilia as a frequent feature of their sexuality are probably closer to the lower bound of that estimate, as they appear to be a minority within a minority.11
In contrast, surveys of natal males who are attracted to “unusual” erotic targets find that a much greater proportion of those males experience the internalized forms of those attractions. Roughly speaking, perhaps 20% of them frequently experience internalized attractions, and perhaps up to 50% or more have experienced them at least once.12 One corollary of this is that autogynephilia is significantly more prevalent in heterosexual males with “unusual” attractions.
⚖️ Spectrum
Males who experience internalized attraction appear to differ in the extent to which this erotic interest coexists with externally directed attraction. Some only occasionally engage in the fantasy of being their preferred erotic targets, and they are otherwise perfectly capable of becoming aroused by the idea of intimacy with their external targets as well. Others, however, can only become aroused by the internalized fantasy.
This appears to be related to a more general phenomenon, common across many paraphilic interests, where some people experience their paraphilia alongside “normal” sexuality, while others feel as though the paraphilia completely overshadows “normal” sexuality in them.
🧭 Orientation
Natal males who experience internalized sexual attractions usually discover this during adolescence, although signs can also be present before puberty.13 Internalized attractions appear to be a stable feature of sexuality throughout the lives of most individuals who frequently experience them. As such, they can be thought of as variants of a sexual orientation directed inward at the self.14 Some people use the term autosexuality to refer to this internally directed sexual orientation.15
🏷️ Labels
Internalized sexual attractions plausibly drive some natal males to adopt alternative labels to describe their sexual orientation identity. For instance, autogynephilic males who can only become aroused by the fantasy of being a woman may feel as though they lack sexual attraction to others, which may lead them to identify as asexual.16 Another example is autogynephilic males who are really heterosexual but fantasize about sexually interacting with men as a potent expression of the fantasy of being a woman. Their secondary erotic interest in men, which develops out of autogynephilia, may lead them to adopt a bisexual orientation identity.17
🦠 Etiology
Nothing is known about the etiology of internalized sexual attraction, as there has been almost no research on this question.
In 1991, Blanchard speculated that it reflects an “error” of psychosexual development—perhaps the failure to develop some mechanism that biases sexual attraction externally.18 Different degrees of failure in such a mechanism during psychosexual development could determine a certain trade-off between external and internalized attraction, amounting to a developmental competition between the two.19
The fact that internalized attractions are much more prevalent for “unusual” erotic targets points to the likelihood of shared causes between the two kinds of phenomena. In other words, whatever makes a person susceptible to developing an attraction to an “unusual” class of erotic targets must also make that person more susceptible to internalizing that attraction.
🩺 Complication
Some natal males who experience internalized sexual attraction go on to develop feelings of identification with their erotic self-image beyond temporary sexual fantasy. These feelings can become so strong that a severe dissatisfaction with the body can ensue. Such individuals may wish to change their bodies to make them more closely resemble the internalized erotic image. This phenomenon is called erotic target identity inversion. I will write about it in a future article.
👍 Leave a like on this post and tell me your thoughts about it in the comments.
➡️ Further reading
Read more about the phenomenon of erotic target identity inversion.
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, 54, 2805–2823.
I use the terms “natal male” and “natal females”—or “males” and “females” for short—to refer to natal sex. This is not meant to be derogatory to people who have variant gender identities; these are merely academic terms.
Lawrence, Anne A. (2013). Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism. Springer New York.
Lawrence, Anne A. (2006). Clinical and Theoretical Parallels Between Desire for Limb Amputation and Gender Identity Disorder. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35(3), 263–278.
See also Lawrence, Anne A. (2009). Parallels between Gender Identity Disorder and Body Integrity Identity Disorder: A Review and Update. In A. Stim, A. Thiel & S. Oddo (Eds.), Body Integrity Identity Disorder: Psychological, Neurobiological, Ethical and Legal Aspects (pp. 154–172), Pabst.
In a future article, I will produce a masterlist of these attractions with references to all relevant work.
This was first posited in Freund, Kurt, & Blanchard, Ray. (1993). Erotic Target Location Errors in Male Gender Dysphorics, Paedophiles, and Fetishists. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 162(4), 558–563.
See Bailey et al. (2023) for example.
See “Natural Kinds” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
An example of a paraphilic interest that does not appear to be an internalized attraction is the erotic fantasy of being a baby, found in the so-called ABDL community. See Hsu, Kevin J., & Bailey, J. Michael. (2023). Sexual Orientation, Sexual Motivation, and Erotic Target Identity Inversions in Male Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(6), 2385–2401.
Hsu, Kevin J., & Bailey, J. Michael. (2022). Erotic Target Identity Inversions. In D. P. VanderLaan & W. I. Wong (Eds.), Gender and Sexuality Development: Contemporary Theory and Research (pp. 589–612), Springer.
For a summary of prevalence estimates up to 2005, see Lawrence, Anne A. (2009). Erotic Target Location Errors: An Underappreciated Paraphilic Dimension. Journal of Sex Research, 46(2-3), 194–215.
Recent representative population studies are more informative. See, for instance, Bártová, Klára, et al. (2021). The Prevalence of Paraphilic Interests in the Czech Population: Preference, Arousal, the Use of Pornography, Fantasy, and Behavior. The Journal of Sex Research, 58(1), 86–96.
See Bailey et al. (2023) for example.
This is well known for autogynephilia. In “unusual” attractions, Bailey et al. (2023) found that the age of onset of three internalized forms varied between 13 and 15.
This conceptualization was first made for autogynephilia. See Blanchard, Ray. (1993). Partial versus Complete Autogynephilia and Gender Dysphoria. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 19(4), 301–307.
Illy, Phil. (2023). Autoheterosexual: Attracted to Being the Other Sex. Houndstooth Press.
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.
Morandini, James S., Hsu, Kevin J., & Rudd, S. (2025). Autogynephilia in Some Bisexual Cisgender Men. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 54, 2991–3004.
Blanchard, Ray. (1991). Clinical Observations and Systematic Studies of Autogynephilia. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 17(4), 235–251.
Blanchard, Ray (1992). Nonmonotonic Relation of Autogynephilia and Heterosexual Attraction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 101(2), 271–276.