Eli5 please explain what autogynephilia is and what criticism it receives?
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There used to be a widespread view, among both psychologists and the general public, that any and all LGBTQ+ identities are just a form of sexual perversion (well, many psychologists used to view basically *everything* as sexual perversion). Since trans women have tended to be more visible than trans men or nonbinary people, the theory that gained popularity to explain trans people was that some men redirected their sexual interest in women towards their own body, and wanted their own body to be feminine so they could be into themselves. As has often happened in the history of psychology, completely normal thoughts and behaviour were pathologised and got roped in to support the theory. For example, if a trans woman said she liked feeling sexy or liked wearing sexy clothes, that wasn’t seen as a completely normal human experience, it was seen as evidence of autogynephilia. Psychologists were aware of trans people who didn’t identify as women and/or weren’t into women, and came up with slightly different theories to explain them, making a lot of silly “this is the exception that proves the rule”-style arguments. They even found ways to argue that people who weren’t sexual *enough*, like asexual people, were sexually perverted.
While these views have mostly been abandoned by psychologists, in any scientific field you can always find some cranks who cling to rejected theories, and anti-LGBT activists obviously like to amplify those people’s voices, so it still hangs around.
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