The Strategy of Stigmatization

One common reaction by the Blanchpilled to autogynephilia-truther sites—I mean, the shouty sensationalist kind run by conservatives or radical feminists that almost never use phrases like "uselessly low-dimensional subspace", not The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought—goes like this:

That is going to make the problem worse. We need to support honest autogynephiles earnestly trying to live satisfying and good lives. Don't try to shame them—we need more of them!

But what constitutes "the problem" depends on your goals, and the best response further depends on historically contingent features of the political environment.

A toy model: suppose there are three life trajectories available to AGP natal males:

(1) Stay in the closet and quietly live in shame forever,
(2) Transition but be transmedicalist/assimilationist/gatekeepy about it (think of this as the Debbie Hayton or Anne Lawrence model), or
(3) Go all-in on trans activism ("Some women have penises, get over it", &c.; the Danielle Muscato or Rachel McKinnon model).

Which trajectory is taken is going to be partially influenced by incentives.

"This is going to make the problem worse" expresses the concern that the likes of /r/itsafetish push people from (2) to (3): if the option of both acknowledging and acting on AGP is "taken off the table", then the trans-activism coalition can "offer a better deal" than quietly living in shame forever.

But from the perspective of hard-core TERFs, (2) itself is already a loss: they're trying to push people from (2) to (1). Whether that's a strategic mistake on their part depends on whether the (2)→(3) "radicalization effect" is larger than the (2)→(1) "stigmatization effect". If it is a mistake in the Current Year (because it's better to seek favorable terms of surrender rather than risk the victor's wrath when the war is already effectively lost), it might not have been in Current Year Minus Five, or Minus Ten, &c., when the coalition backing (3) was less powerful and therefore had a weaker bid.

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