-At the end of December 2016, my gatekeeping sessions were finished, and I finally started HRT. In an effort to not let my anti–autogynephilia-denialism crusade take over my life, earlier that month, I [promised myself](/ancillary/a-broken-promise/) (and [published the SHA256 hash of the promise](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154596054540199) to signal that I was Serious) not to comment on gender issues under my real name through June 2017—_that_ was what my new pseudonymous blog was for.
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-... the promise didn't take. There was just too much gender-identity nonsense on my Facebook feed; I _had_ to push back on some of it.
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-"Folks, I'm not sure it's feasible to have an intellectually-honest real-name public conversation about the etiology of MtF," I wrote in one thread in mid-January. "If no one is willing to mention some of the key relevant facts, maybe it's less misleading to just say nothing."
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-As a result of that, I got a PM from a woman who I'll call "Chaya", whose marriage had fallen apart after (among other things) her husband transitioned. She told me about the parts of her husband's story that had never quite made sense to her (but which sounded like a textbook case from my reading). In her telling, the husband was always more emotionally tentative and less comfortable with the standard gender role and status stuff, but in the way of like, a geeky nerd guy, not in the way of someone feminine. He was into crossdressing sometimes, but she had thought that was just a weird and insignificant kink, not that he didn't like being a man—until they moved to the Bay Area and he fell in with a social-justicey crowd. When I linked her to Kay Brown's article on ["Advice for Wives and Girlfriends of Autogynephiles"](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/advice-for-wivesgirlfriends-of-autogynephiles/), her response was, "Holy shit, this is _exactly_ what happened with me." It was nice to make a friend over shared heresy.
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-"Helen" had rebuffed my last few requests to chat or hang out. "I don't fully endorse the silence," she said, "just find talking vaguely aversive." In a Facebook thread in January 2017 about why so many rationalists were trans, she said something about the metacognition needed to identify the strange, subtle unpleasantness of gender dysphoria.
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-I messaged her, ostensibly to ask for my spare key back out of security fastidiousness, but really (I soon let slip) because I was angry about the deceptively pompous Facebook comment: _maybe_ it wouldn't take so much _metacognition_ if someone would just mention the _other_ diagnostic criterion!
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-She sent me a photo of the key snapped in half (proving that it was unusable, to satisfy my security anxiety) and told me to go away.
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-[TODO: the story of my Facebook crusade, going off the rails, getting hospitalized
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-I didn't stop there
-exchange with Rob Bensinger (significant because of his position at MIRI) 7 February
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-[my first contact with Ben at all was 8 Feb
-> I guess I didn't really have a compelling reason to message you except that having a messaging app creates an affordance to say hi to ppl
-> well, maybe part of me wants to say, thanks for the Like in Robby/Amelia's thread, but maybe it's petty and tribalist to be counting Likes]
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-tantrum started evening of Saturday 11 Feb
-my terrible date with Anna T. was actually on 12 February—that explains why I remember being so distracted!
-discussion with hundreds of comments, especially with Anna T.
-31 posts total between—"some of you may have noticed" Sat 11 Feb, and promising to quite Facebook for a week 0844 15 Feburary
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-I was actually planning to visit Sophia in Portland!
-4 February
-> Okay, I've got my flight, hotel, con tickets, and makeup; I'll be flying in the morning of Friday the 17th, and leaving the evening of Sunday the 19th. My objectives are (1) take original photographs at key landmarks (Q Center, TriMet trains, that bridgey thing, &c.) to lend verisimilitude to the "fiction" posts on my secret blog, which are set in Portland/Beaverton, (2) cosplay Pearl at WizardWorld on Saturday, and (3) meet you in some capacity (at the con or elsewhere).
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-Katie Tue Feb 14 2017 10:52:04: So my theory is Anna would not be reacting as vehemently had you not recently asked her out / And that she is trying to play a signaling game to salvage her status in the community by distancing herself from you" / "See? See everyone? I rejected him! Don't burn me at the stake too!