I would disagree with the behavioristic explanation,
*Fenichel summarizes in classical language: “The pervert is a person whose sexual pleasure is blocked by the idea of castration. Through the perversion he tries to prove that there is no castration. In so far as this proof is believed, sexual pleasure and orgasm become possible again'' (18, p. 327).
however, that the perverse act is only fortuitously linked —conditioned—to the daydream or the enactment of the daydream (in the transvestite, for instance, when he puts on women’s clothes for the first time). The behavioristic explanation attempts to remove one’s childhood and psychodynamics; it seems to say that any object or event occurring at the first time of maximum pleasure would be the beginning of that form of sexual excitement. Analysts, on the contrary, believe that that is an end point and that the agent of the excitement, for example, women's clothes, was not fortuitous but suitable, anticipated, and even chosen. Taking a careful history will confirm this analytic position.
To return to our case, the patient was able to maintain a sense of maleness and masculinity over the years despite the threat produced by his tormentors. Transvestites are long since known—as was this man—to be masculine-appearing men except when sexually excited. They are not, as are effeminate homosexuals, habitually caricaturing women. Almost always, they are overtly heterosexual, usually married and with children, and able to carry themselves in a masculine way without effort.
But where, in our patient, are the hostility, revenge, and triumph anticipated in my earlier remarks? If the thesis is correct, they will appear in the transvestite’s sexual fantasy. We assume that, when forced into an unmasculine role by being cross-dressed, the boy felt threatened to his depths, and we expect him to have tried to protect himself as all children do, by creating a comforting daydream. We know of that daydream, because transvestites tell it, react to it when it is told to them in their pornography, and act it out when dressed up. Let us study it again.
Each historical event now to be recounted appears in the pornography.
History. From birth to age three, the boy developed in a masculine manner.
Pornography. The story starts with a masculine heterosexual man, who has shown no fetishistic interest before in women’s clothes or any feminine or effeminate mannerisms.
History. When the boy was three, his mother left the family and his “mothering” was turned over to an aunt and older cousin, both of whom despised males.
Pornography. The man is trapped by a group of females, who make fun of his maleness and immediately overpower him.
History. His father was almost never home day or night, for years, and in effect abandoned the boy to the women.
Pornography. There is no other man in the story.
History. These two women designed and fashioned new clothes, ruffled and effeminate-looking, for the little boy. Later they dressed him, not just effeminately, but in girls’ clothes “as a joke.”
Pornography. The dangerous women force the man, who is filled with shame and humiliation, to put on women’s clothes. Yet they are portrayed as joking and laughing.
History. The women, being older and bigger, were psychologically immensely powerful and physically overpowered him without a struggle.
Pornography. The man does not have the strength to struggle, much less escape.
History. Nevertheless, the little boy needed and wanted, even loved, these women. What choice did he have at three, or four, or five years? They served not only as models for identification but as desired heterosexual objects, for they were now his “mother.”
Pornography. The women are drawn as phallic and dangerous but also beautiful and feminine.
History. Despite dressing him on occasion in girls’ clothes, these women always left him the knowledge he was male and had masculinity. Except for the rare occasions when he was cross-dressed, he wore masculine clothes. His games and hobbies have always been masculine. He is now a leader of men in a masculine business. To make their own satisfaction exquisite, they had to prove that masculinity was worthless, far beneath their desire. To accomplish this, they had to be sure not to destroy it, only make it foolish. So he was not feminized to the degree that he wished his body changed to a female one or lost the pleasure of his penis.
Pornography. The man is clearly identified as a male; this is never denied. His name is strongly masculine and is not changed by the women during the story. The women express recognition that he is masculine. The attack is specifically aimed, not at damaging his maleness, but at his identity, his masculine attributes, of which the most visible are clothes. In transvestite pornography a male is not turned into a female.
History. The disaster became a triumph. By age six, he was sexually excited putting on a woman's garment.
Pornography. After the trauma, the man senses in himself an intense, growing sensualness for the women’s clothes that had at first been forced on him.
History. His fetishistic cross-dressing gradually increased in frequency and completeness to dressing quite like a woman, so that added to it was a nongenitally exciting pleasure in being fully dressed as a woman.
Pornography. The man, near the end of the story, is dressed completely as a woman.
History. He found an apparently benign, gentle woman, who married him although knowing of (in fact, I learned after a few years, because of) his transvestism. She enjoyed helping him buy women’s clothes and wigs and taught him to dress stylishly, apply make-up properly, and carry himself like a woman. (This type of woman and her relationship to transvestism is discussed elsewhere [137].)
Pornography. The harpies are now gentle, friendly, and accepting, fully feminine, and rather girlish.
History. He presently goes into the world, passing intermittently as a woman.
Pornography. All leave together, the man looking like a normal woman; he is promised that they will all do it again soon, next time as friends.
All that is missing in the pornography, but which occurs in transvestites, is a latency period after the trauma, a matter of months or years during which there is no evidence of overt transvestism, following which the first surface manifestation of the perversion appears (that is, sexual excitement produced by women’s clothes). This latency period, being silent, has never been studied. One can therefore only surmise that during it the boy is developing a system of fantasies to preserve his masculinity against the onslaught upon his identity by the hating female who, in reality, jeopardized his sense of maleness and masculinity.
It is not coincidental that he creates his success exactly at the point of disaster. That is, he uses agents of the trauma—women’s clothes and the appearance of femininity—to preserve his masculinity and potency. This is not to say that this is all that is needed to create the perversion, for, while the fear of being unmanned is crucial, so also is the (defensive) construction that the powerful women have penises and the power of supermen (18, 32, 35). As noted, this too is indicated in the pornography.