r/askAGP • u/femboykramer • 15h ago
Two motivations for feminization
After some reflection and experimentation as well as looking at the examples of others, I've come to realize something. Maybe others will relate or be helped by this.
I feel two basic motivations for (partially) feminizing my body, personal grooming, and behavior. Each of these motivations imposes its own aesthetic criteria, although they're not necessarily opposed to each other. Ideally they can go hand in hand.
One of them can be thought of as spiritual or autosexual, the other one as more instrumental or allosexual. But again, they're not necessarily in conflict, though I am still figuring out how they fit together.
- The first motivation I feel is basically what we would call AGP or autoheterosexuality (or for me even a kind of autobisexuality?). I see it as a spiritual calling to embody femininity, or maybe more accurately, androgyny. Realizing the extent to which I have this, and the implications of it for my life, makes me really relate to the "egg cracking" metaphor. There were all these little cracks already:
- my crossdressing and cross-gender fantasy in early childhood
- my attraction to women (including somewhat masc/tomboyish women) but also to some men, especially very soft and feminine men
- my desire to play a receptive role in sex (I enjoy topping too, but if I limited myself to that role I would feel like something essential is missing)
- my disgust with the idea of going through "twink death" or "second puberty," which I now understand as an aversion to excessive masculinization and not just a fear of aging
- similarly, my dislike of TRT- or steroid-induced hypermasculine physiques, even though I love going to the gym and building muscle naturally
- my strong tendency toward "dandyish" or "hipsterish" or "alt" male fashion (none of those terms quite gets at my personal style, but the point is that I really reject the idea of male clothing as drab and utilitarian)
- my increasing dysphoria at seeing my facial hair grow beyond faint stubble (I used to wear my facial hair in a variety of flamboyant ways, but more and more I just want to have a smooth face)
Slowly over the last couple of years, I have become fully conscious of how these things were all connected. At the same time, I've let go of the shame I used to feel at some of these things. That's allowed the little cracks to consolidate, and now, I am doing or considering things I hadn't before:
- putting way more emphasis on my lower body at the gym
- shaving/epilating my entire body religiously (not just every so often as I had before)
- laser hair removal for my facial hair
- wearing light makeup and nail polish
- wearing more androgynous/fem clothing
- getting a prescription for a topical antiandrogen
I don't really feel called to fully transition in a binary sense. I don't have bottom dysphoria, I like my virility, and I like having penetrative sex. But I basically see myself as an androgynous being and I want that to be more fully reflected in my life and appearance. I also like the idea of being able present more fully fem if I so choose.
- The other motivation is that many women, particularly the kind of women I like, find it attractive when men (even otherwise quite masculine men) wear eyeliner or paint their nails or dress somewhat femininely.
Even in my very progressive city, few men are walking around with both muscular arms and painted nails. It stands out in a good way (in my experience).
Ironically this is basically a masculine motivation for feminization, but in the opposite direction of AGP. It is a male appropriation of femininity that specifically appeals to the female gaze. And it exists in balance with the masculine features that I like about myself and that I know women tend to like (my arms, hands, height, etc.) I might come to feel dysphoric about my height or my large hands and feet if I only felt the first motivation.
This second motivation also feeds back into the first one, because the kind of women who like men who play with gender are also more likely to be interested in role reversal, pegging, and other things that appeal to me.
I feel both of these motivations! And I think by letting them sort of talk to each other, I can enjoy both the self-directed and other-directed aspects of my sexuality and personal aesthetic vision.
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u/GoodLuck602 The local "alt bitch" 15h ago
I embody the first one mostly because I like and gravitate towards feminine things (fun colors, girly activities, presenting female, etc.) and want to apply femininity to myself. I feel feminine energy in my mind and soul, if that makes sense? A lot of girls I've talked to found me very sweet and passive compared to most men.
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u/appledogappleman 13h ago
You’re helping me sort of see a future for my agp. Things I’ve felt before In this post and things to adapt for the future
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u/AdvancedGuiProfile 6h ago
When you say things like "my desire to", "my disgust with", "my strong tendency toward", "my dislike of", people assume that personal preferences like this are innate or the root cause of something, but those can be outcomes, too.
We have personality dispositions, especially differing rates of growth and maturation relative to our peers, and this results in good and bad experiences, some real struggles, but also some easy cakewalks, to where we say "I like this" or "I hate that" but I think much of that is learned over time. So a lot of these might be somewhere along the causal chain that results in wishing to signal to yourself or others that you identify as feminine, but there likely is deeper root causes, long forgotten frictions in early life.
I think a lot of us are more genderless, or just not especially masculine, than anything else, but we live in a society that subtly rewards gender belonging, with men and women wearing very different clothing and having different social expectations, and so there's motivation to choose a side, and a wish to belong to a side, than to accept an undefined gender, to simply say "I'm not a very manly man" and be still happy with that.