Archives of Sexual Behavior The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-015-0579-0 Letter to the Editor Correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada; email: jaimie@jaimieveale.com The Scales and Sample Were Adequate for the Purpose: Reply to Lawrence’s (2014) Critique of My Taxometric Analysis of the Sexuality of Transsexual Women Jaimie F. Veale Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, School of Nursing, Faculty of Applied Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Blanchard (1989b) proposed that there are two categorically- distinct types of transsexual women (male-to-female transsexuals) and this typology is based on one of these types having sexual attraction to oneself as a woman. He labeled this type of sexual attraction autogynephilia. Blanchard proposed that those who do not experience autogynephilia are sexually attracted only to men (androphilic) and those who experience autogynephilia are sexually attracted to women only, both men and women, and neither men or women (non-androphilic). I conducted a taxometric analysis (Ruscio, Haslam, & Ruscio, 2006) to assess whether the sexuality of transsexual women more was consistent with a dimensional or two taxa (category) structure (Veale, 2014). In opposition to Blanchard’s theory, the study’s findings were more consistent with a dimensional structure. Lawrence (2014) critiqued my study, suggesting that the scales I used were not appropriate for the task and that the sample I used lacked sufficient numbers of androphilic transsexual women. In this letter, I respond to Lawrence’s criticisms. Suitability of the Scales Used Response Options for the Scales Lawrence (2014) noted that some of the measures used in the study—notably adaptations of Blanchard’s Core Autogynephilia Scale and Autogynephilic Interpersonal Fantasy scale and scales measuring androphilia and gynephilia—asked participants to respond with the amount of time that they are sexually attracted to these things. While I had noted that this is a limitation because it is “not consistent with standard definitions of sexual attraction” (Veale, 2014, p. 1184), Lawrence pointed out that this underestimated these sexual attractions because she believed that participants are unlikely to endorse one of the response options that they experience these sexual attractions “all the time.” This underestimation would be a problem if I had been trying to estimate the overall prevalence and intensity of these sexual attractions in the sample. Having a potentially lower mean score generally would not affect the results of taxometric analysis as long as this effect could not be expected to impact either of the types differently, if any taxa do exist. There would only be a problem if the response options resulted in a restriction of range of the scores. However, there was no evidence of this, as illustrated in Figure 1 in the article (Veale, 2014) and reproduced as Figure 1 here, which shows scores for two of these scales that span the breadth of possible range, from 0 to 20. Figure 1. The results of the K-means cluster analysis of scores of sexual orientation in the sample From “Evidence Against a Typology: A Taxometric Analysis of the Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals,” by J. F. Veale, 2014, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43, p. 1180. Copyright 2014 by Springer. Reprinted with permission. Content Validity of the Scales Lawrence (2014) believed the study was invalid because three out of the four scales that were used in the taxometric analysis “lacked content validity with respect to the fundamental typology that Blanchard (1989) described” (p. 2). By this, she means that the Autogynephilic Interpersonal Fantasy, Attraction to Feminine Males, and Attraction to Transgender Fiction scales did not sufficiently measure what Blanchard proposed would distinguish the two subtypes, autogynephilia. My response to this is twofold: Firstly, the initial analysis was exploratory in nature. Working on the theory that there are two