Blanchard's transsexualism typology

Blanchard's transsexualism typology is a controversial theory proposed by American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard which classifies transgender women into two groups: "homosexual transsexuals" who are attracted exclusively to men and are feminine in both behavior and appearance, and "autogynephilic transsexuals" who experience sexual arousal at the idea of having a female body (autogynephilia). Blanchard proposed the typology in a series of academic papers through the 1980s and 1990s, building on the work of earlier researchers such as Kurt Freund. Blanchard and his supporters argue that the typology explains differences between the two groups in childhood gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, history of sexual fetishism, and age of transition.

Blanchard's typology has attracted significant controversy, especially following the 2003 publication of J. Michael Bailey's book The Man Who Would Be Queen, which presented the typology to a general audience. Scientific criticisms commonly made against Blanchard's research include that Blanchard's typology is unfalsifiable because supporters dismiss or ignore data that challenges the theory, that it failed to properly control against cisgender women rather than against cisgender men in rating levels of autogynephilia, and that when such studies are done they demonstrate most women, cis or trans, experience some level of autogynephilia. Multiple researchers have argued that the typology provides little clinical value as most relevant outcome variables are not associated with sexual orientation.

The American Psychiatric Association includes with autogynephilia as a specifier to a diagnosis of transvestic disorder in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2013) and in its 2022 text revision (DSM-5-TR); however, neither edition describes or lists it as a paraphilia. This addition to the DSM-5 was objected to by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), who argued that there was a lack of scientific consensus on and empirical evidence for the concept of autogynephilia. The DSM-5 and DSM-5-TR both do not assert that transgender and transsexual women fall under these categories.