+Gatekeeping sessions finished, I finally started HRT at the end of December 2016. In an effort to not let my anti–autogynephilia-denialism crusade take over my life, earlier that month, I promised myself (and [published the SHA256 hash of the promise](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154596054540199)) not to comment on gender issues under my real name through June 2017—_that_ was what my new pseudonymous blog was for.
+
+... the promise didn't take. There was just too much gender-identity nonsense on my Facebook wall; I _had_ to push back on some of it.
+
+[TODO: meeting Katie]
+
+[TODO: the story of my Facebook crusade, going off the rails, getting hospitalized]
+
+A striking pattern from my attempts to argue with people about the two-type taxonomy was the tendency for the conversation to get derailed on some variation of "Well, the word _woman_ doesn't necessarily mean that," often with a link to ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), a 2014 post by Scott Alexander arguing that because categories exist in our model of the world rather than the world itself, there's nothing wrong with simply _defining_ trans people to be their preferred gender, in order to alleviate their dysphoria.
+
+This ... really wasn't what I was trying to talk about. _I_ thought I was trying to talk about autogynephilia as an _empirical_ theory of psychology, the truth or falsity of which obviously cannot be altered by changing the meanings of words.
+
+Psychology is a complicated empirical science: no matter how "obvious" I might think something is, I have to admit that I could be wrong—[not just as an obligatory profession of humility, but _actually_ wrong in the real world](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GrDqnMjhqoxiqpQPw/the-proper-use-of-humility). If my fellow rationalists weren't sold on the autogynephilia and transgender thing, I might be a bit disappointed, but it's definitely not grounds to denounce the entire community as a failure or a fraud.
+
+But this "I can define the word _woman_ any way I want" mind game? _That_ part was _absolutely_ clear-cut. That part of the argument, I knew I could win.
+
+To be clear, it's _true_ that categories exist in our model of the world, rather than the world itself—the "map", not the "territory"—and it's true that trans women might be women _with respect to_ some genuinely useful definition of the word "woman." However, the Scott Alexander piece that people kept linking to me goes further, claiming that we can redefine gender categories _in order to make trans people feel better_:
+
+> I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it'll save someone's life. There's no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn't, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.