A E David

E Clarke Ae

Jaimie F Veale

Terri C Lomax

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Reply to Lawrence and Bailey (2008)
Jaimie F. Veale Æ David E. Clarke Æ Terri C. Lomax
 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008
Lawrence and Bailey (2008) were critical of our inclusion of
scales that were said to be ‘‘unrelated to autogynephilia’’ in
our cluster analysis to classify transsexual participants into
two groups. These scales, Attraction to Transgender Fiction
and Attraction to Feminine Males, were included because in
the taxometric analysis performed by Veale, Lomax, and
Clarke (2007) these scales were able to differentiate between
latent taxa (two fundamentally distinct categories) greater
than the level of d = 1.25 recommended by Ruscio, Haslam,
and Ruscio (2006) if these taxa do exist. That is, if there do
exist two distinct categories of male-to-female transsexuals
in this sample, then the Attraction to Transgender Fiction
scale would be able to distinguish between these groups at
d = 2.06 and the Attraction to Feminine Males scale at
d = 1.90. The corresponding d scores for the Core Autogy-
nephilia and Autogynephilic Interpersonal Fantasy scales
were 2.15 and 1.47, respectively, and none of the other sex-
uality related scales in the Veale, Clarke, and Lomax (2008)
study reached the d = 1.25 threshold. Although the sample
size was smaller than what is recommended for a taxometric
analysis, generally a sample size of 169 should be considered
sufficient for calculating Cohen’s d scores for the difference
between two groups.
Lawrence and Bailey claim that neither the Attraction to
Feminine Males nor the Attraction to Transgender Fiction
‘‘scale bears any theoretical or intuitive relationship to the
concept of autogynephilia.’’ Admittedly, the Attraction to
Feminine Males scale would not have been our initial choice
of a scale to differentiate between transsexual subtypes—this
is probably a correlate rather than a core component of auto-
gynephilic sexual attraction—nevertheless, our reasons for
including this variable were based on methodological rea-
sons outlined above. On the other hand, we believe that the
Attraction to Transgender Fiction scale is measuring a core
component of autogynephilic sexual attraction—in its man-
ifestation in erotic narratives. As evidence for this was the
notable correlation coefficient between Core Autogynephilia
and Attraction to Transgender Fiction of q = .52 reported in
Veale et al. (2008). In the original study, which used a Likert
response scale for the Core Autogynephilia scale, this cor-
relation coefficient was r = .67 (Veale, 2005).
Lawrence and Bailey also suggest that ‘‘this might have
been the only way they could create two groups out of what is
actually one relatively homogenous, autogynephilic group.’’
However, as we will describe below, finding a way to create
two groups was not the difficulty—a conclusion of whether
splitting the sample into two groups is valid or not was more
difficult.
Lawrence and Bailey were critical of our labeling the
transsexual group that scored lowest on the four variables as
‘‘non-autogynephilic.’’ Indeed, as they point out, this group
scored comparably to Blanchard’s (1989) ‘‘nonhomosexual’’
(autogynephilic group) on the Core Autogynephilia scale
and, as they don’t point out, this group scored significantly
higher then the biological female group on this scale on the
ANCOVA in our study, suggesting that they were not actu-
ally ‘‘non-autogynephilic’’ at all.
We would like to give an explanation of the history of our
use of these labels. The origin of this grouping of transsexuals
into ‘‘autogynephilic’’ and ‘‘non-autogynephilic’’ came from
the master’s thesis this Journal article originated from (Veale,
J. F. Veale (&)  D. E. Clarke
School of Psychology, Massey University, Albany Campus,
Private Bag 102-904, North Shore Mail Centre, Auckland,
New Zealand
e-mail: J.F.Veale@massey.ac.nz
T. C. Lomax
School of Computer and Information Science, Auckland
University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
123
Arch Sex Behav
DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9433-y
2005). In this thesis, transsexuals were classified in Group 1 if
they self-identified that they believed Blanchard’s theory
applied to them and Group 2 if they did not believe this after
being given a brief description of his theory. Using this
method, 89 out of 169 transsexuals were classified in Group 2.
Working on the assumption that biological females do not
experience autogynephilia (cf. Blanchard, 2005), it was
decided that the labels ‘‘autogynephilic’’ and ‘‘non-autogy-
nephilic’’ were appropriate because Group 2 did not differ
significantly from the biological females on Core Autogy-
nephilia and Autogynephilic Interpersonal Fantasy and
Group 1 scored significantly higher on these variables.
After our first submission of Veale et al. (2008) to this
Journal, it was correctly pointed out to us by a peer reviewer
that ‘‘homosexual’’ transsexuals (as categorized using Blan-
chard’s typology) would also recognize that Blanchard’s
theory applies to them and might also be classified as auto-
gynephilic on this basis (if Lawrence and Bailey’s claim that
this sample does not contain many of these persons is true,
then this criticism of the original findings would have mini-
mal relevance). Following this comment, we decided to
change the way we classified the transsexual groups, and for
the second submission of this article we performed a hierar-
chical cluster analysis using squared Euclidian distance on
the Core Autogynephilia scale only. This procedure assigned
two clusters, and 59 out of 212 transsexuals were classified as
non-autogynephilic as they scored lower on the scale. On the
ANCOVAs, this subgroup scored significantly lower than
biological females on the Core Autogynephilia, Autogyne-
philic Interpersonal Fantasy, and Attraction to Feminine
Males scales and did not differ significantly from biological
females on Attraction to Transgender Fiction. The autogy-
nephilic subgroup scored significantly higher than the other
two groups on all four of these scales.
It was the advent of the first author learning of the taxo-
metric method and finding that the four scales differentiated
these groups sufficiently that led us to alter the cluster anal-
ysis to operate using the four scales instead of one for our final
submission of this article.
Although we know some participants who completed the
questionnaire would fit Blanchard’s definition of homosex-
ual (non-autogynephilic), Lawrence and Bailey’s claim that
the vast majority of participants who completed our ques-
tionnaire fit Blanchard’s nonhomosexual (autogynephilic)
category is entirely plausible based on (1) our own experi-
ences of the demographic background of transsexuals who
frequent online social and support groups and (2) the amount
that our findings differed from Blanchard’s (1989) on the
sexual orientation of participants. However, if this is the case,
then this raises the interesting question of why about half of
these transsexuals scored comparably to the biological fe-
male group on the wide range of sexuality-related variables
we measured. Three possibilities come to mind here:
1. These participants were consciously or unconsciously
distorting their responses to appear more socially desir-
able (a possibility we discussed in our original article).
2. These participants scored lower on these scales because
of lower testosterone levels due to hormones or surgery
(although the Core Autogynephilia and Autogynephilic
Interpersonal Fantasy scales asked if participants had
ever had these sexual attractions).
3. These transsexuals genuinely experience a sexuality that
is typical of biological females.
Obviously, it is entirely possible that more than one of
these is at play here. Further research is clearly required.
We were well aware of the fact that Blanchard never
measured the relationship between recalled feminine gender
identity and autogynephilia; however, we stand by our expec-
tation to find a relationship between these two variables. The
Recalled Gender Identity/Gender Role questionnaire is a
valid measure; in our own study, we found adequate internal
consistency, and Zucker et al. (2006) provided further reli-
ability and validity data.
We suggest that the observed phenomenon for ‘‘non-
homosexual’’ transsexuals to be intensely interested in com-
puters and the internet stems from the ability to socialize
anonymously, obtain information, and help with social
identity issues early in transition. We have a wide range of
acquaintances in the transsexual community in New Zealand
who are employed in a wide array of professions––most of
these are not prostitutes or in computer-focused professions,
as seems to be suggested would be so by Lawrence and Bailey.
References
Blanchard, R. (1989). The concept of autogynephilia and the typology of
male gender dysphoria. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,
177, 616–623.
Blanchard, R. (2005). Early history of the concept of autogynephilia.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34, 439–446.
Lawrence, A. A., & Bailey, J. M. (2008). Transsexual groups in Veale
et al. (2008) are ‘‘autogynephilic’’ and ‘‘even more autogynephil-
ic’’ [Letter to the editor]. Archives of Sexual Behavior. doi:
10.1007/s10508-008-9431-0.
Ruscio, J., Haslam, N., & Ruscio, A. M. (2006). Introduction to the
taxometric method: A practical guide. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Veale, J. F. (2005). Love of oneself as a woman: An investigation into the
sexuality of transsexual and other women. Unpublished master’s
thesis, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand.
Veale, J. F., Clarke, D. E., & Lomax, T. C. (2008). Sexuality of male-to-
female transsexuals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 586–597.
Veale, J. F., Lomax, T. C., & Clarke, D. E. (2007). A taxometric analysis
of the sexuality of male-to-female transsexuals. Unpublished
manuscript.
Zucker, K. J., Mitchell, J. N., Bradley, S. J., Tkachuk, J., Cantor, J. M., &
Allin, S. (2006). The Recalled Childhood Gender Identity/Gender
Rolequestionnaire:Psychometricproperties.SexRoles,54, 469–483.
Arch Sex Behav
123


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