The man who fantasizes about being a giant woman: Case report of automacrophilia
Case report of internalized sexual attraction in a male macrophile who is attracted to fantastical giant women and is aroused by the idea of being one himself, a case of automacrophilia.
➤ Introduction
There are men who are sexually aroused by the idea of being women. It has been suggested that this phenomenon—autogynephilia—is an internalization of sexual attraction to women that occurs in a small minority of men. These men, in addition to their external sexual attraction to women, also experience sexual arousal by the idea of being women themselves—an internalized attraction.1
This internalized sexual attraction, also called erotic target identity inversion, is an exciting area of research in human sexual psychology in which much interesting work has been done in recent years. Phenomena analogous to autogynephilia have been observed in men who are sexually attracted to amputees,2 children,3 anthropomorphic animals,4 real animals, and obese people.5
In every set of men attracted to one of these classes of erotic targets, it was found that a subset of men experiences internalized sexual attraction specific to their preferred erotic target: they become aroused by the idea of being a member of their preferred class of erotic targets. Thus, some men who are attracted to amputees are also aroused by the idea of being amputees themselves, some men who are attracted to children are also aroused by the idea of being children, and so on and so forth for anthropomorphic animals, real animals, and obese people as erotic targets.
Even some gay men experience internalized sexual attraction, becoming aroused by the idea of being the men they are attracted to, who are usually muscular, manly men—a subtle but real phenomenon.6 There is also speculation that some necrophilic men—sexually attracted to corpses—also experience an internalized attraction, becoming aroused by the idea of being a corpse.7
It has been proposed that this internalization of sexual attraction forms an independent paraphilic dimension.8 Whereas most people appear to have a fully externalized sexual attraction—directed at “external” targets distinct from themselves—some also have an internalized sexual attraction centered around their being the objects of their desire.
Furthermore, it appears that people who have an internalized sexual attraction vary in the degree in which it coexists with external attraction. It has even been proposed that the internalized attraction competes with the external attraction in a zero-sum game.9 If this is true, it would mean that the external sexual attraction can become completely internalized in some men, causing them to become asexual—that is to say, lacking sexual attraction to others—but still capable of experiencing arousal by the internalized sexual attraction—the fantasy of being the original external erotic target.
Empirical observations have led to the formulation of a hypothesis regarding internalized sexual attraction: for each class of erotic targets that men are attracted to, there will be a subset of men who experience internalized sexual attraction, becoming aroused by the fantasy of being a member of that class. This hypothesis has been confirmed for the aforementioned classes of erotic targets. This case report is a contribution to that effort, describing for the first time internalized sexual attraction in macrophilia.
Macrophilia is a paraphilia that seems most bizarre to the uninitiated. Most men who have it experience sexual arousal by the idea of a great size difference between them and their erotic targets. Some macrophilic men imagine it is they who are tiny compared to regular-sized women; others imagine they are regular in size, interacting with gigantic women.
In their fantasies, macrophilic men are usually very specific in the height they attribute to themselves—which can be as small as a few inches—and the height they attribute to women—which is only limited by the imagination. Because the difference in size is always extraordinary, the erotic world of macrophiles is surreal.
This case report describes a male macrophile who is attracted to fantastical, feminine, giant beings and experiences arousal by the idea of being one himself. In keeping with the collection of new words that have recently been coined to refer to internalized sexual attractions, I propose to call it automacrophilia in the case of macrophiles. The existence of automacrophilia adds to the evidence that internalized sexual attraction constitutes an independent paraphilic dimension.
It should be kept in mind that the terminology of “external” and “internal” attraction distinguishes whether the erotic target is perceived as distinct from or identical to the self—even if that erotic target is imaginary. This nuance is especially important in the case of macrophilia because the erotic targets of macrophiles are typically fantastical, giant women.
📝 Case report
Roberto (fictitious name) is a 25-year-old Brazilian man. He is pardo, an ethnic category in Brazil for people of mixed race. He describes himself as asexual, meaning he lacks sexual attraction to others. He never really experienced the desire to have sex. He believes he has been asexual his whole life, but he has only come to this realization in the year prior to this account.
Roberto also describes himself as panromantic with feminine preferences. When he was a teenager, he felt attracted to his feminine peers, but he describes that attraction as an aesthetic matter of admiring girls’ body parts. He experiences this aesthetic attraction to persons who have a feminine appearance, including women and very feminine boys—or femboys, as they are called on the internet.
Since early puberty, when Roberto was 13 or 14 years old, he discovered he had macrophilia. He remembers that his first erotic fantasies were about imagining women or girls of gigantic size destroying cities as they walked over them. He also started watching videos that catered to macrophilia by simulating these scenes. Roberto also watched conventional pornographic videos in which women pleasured themselves, but he watched them in slow motion to create the illusion that the women were gigantic in size.
Roberto likes to imagine that these giantesses are immortal, ageless, and highly intelligent beings. His arousal is enhanced when he fixates on their beauty, power, and invincibility. Roberto is not only aroused by imagining himself as a distant, normal-sized observer of a colossal or cosmic woman who destroys a city, but he is also aroused by imagining that he is such a giantess. Roberto also finds it arousing to fantasize about being a giant femboy, but the fantasy of being a giant woman is more arousing to him. When he has these fantasies of being a giantess, his erotic stimulation stems from two distinct coalescing elements: first, his imagined gigantic size and invulnerability, and second, his imagined femininity.
In fact, Roberto sometimes simply fantasizes about being a woman of normal size. Since his attraction extends to very feminine boys, he is also aroused by the idea of being a femboy. This happens on occasions when he sees a “very beautiful femboy”. Thus, beyond his automacrophilia, Roberto also has autogynephilia—or, to be more specific, he has the superordinate form of autogynephilia that encompasses attraction to femininity in general rather than just to women.
To aid his autogynephilic fantasy, Roberto sometimes rolls up his underwear or shorts while masturbating to give himself the sensation that he is wearing more feminine clothes. There is nothing that he can similarly do to aid his automacrophilic fantasy, so he has to rely solely on his imagination. He mentions that he sometimes pictures himself as a colossal feminine being sitting on a city or a populated zone.
It is worth noting that Roberto’s fantasy is not about being a feminine observer of a giantess, in which case it would simply be an autogynephilic fantasy in the context of macrophilia. Nor is his fantasy about being a giant male who interacts with giant women in the context of a romantic or sexual relationship. Rather, Roberto’s fantasy is about being the giantess that he is attracted to, which is why his case is an instance of automacrophilia.
Roberto does not have sexual fantasies other than those already mentioned. He is not often sexually aroused—only one to four times a month, per his estimate. His autogynephilia and automacrophilia are purely erotic phenomena for him. Beyond the erotic nature of the fantasies, Roberto has a “curiosity” about being feminine, but he does not have gender dysphoria. He describes himself as “gender-apathetic”, which means he does not care whether he was born male or female. Roberto has a similar curiosity about being a giantess, but he does not have any dysphoric feelings regarding his actual physical size, either.
Concerning Roberto’s medical history, he has been diagnosed with ADHD: he has difficulty focusing for extended periods of time and has trouble with his memory. He was also diagnosed with schizophrenia: he hears voices that attack him, shame him for his identity and intentions, and accuse him of being gay, among other things. Homosexuality is frowned upon where Roberto lives, so the accusation of being gay is experienced as morally abhorrent. Although Roberto describes his schizophrenia as “very bad”, he says his “conscience is still intact”, by which he probably means he is aware that the voices he hears are not real.
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➡️ Further reading
You might also be interested in reading another case report of automacrophilia with an erotic target identity inversion.
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.
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.
Hsu, Kevin J., & Bailey, J. Michael. (2017). Autopedophilia: Erotic-Target Identity Inversions in Men Sexually Attracted to Children. Psychological Science, 28(1), 115–123.
Hsu, Kevin J., & Bailey, J. Michael. (2019). The “Furry” Phenomenon: Characterizing Sexual Orientation, Sexual Motivation, and Erotic Target Identity Inversions in Male Furries. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48, 1349–1369.
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.
Lawrence, Anne A. (2009). Anatomic Autoandrophilia in an Adult Male. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, 1050–1056.
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.
Lawrence, Anne A. (2009). Erotic Target Location Errors: An Underappreciated Paraphilic Dimension. Journal of Sex Research, 46(2-3), 194–215.
Blanchard, Ray (1992). Nonmonotonic Relation of Autogynephilia and Heterosexual Attraction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 101(2), 271–276.
Love the case study approach!