+I got some nice emails from Michael Vassar. "I think that you are doing VERY good work right now!!!" he wrote. "The sort that shifts history! Only the personal is political" (Subject: "Talk like a normal person").
+
+I aptly summed up my mental state with [a post that evening](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154813104220199):
+
+> She had a delusional mental breakdown; you're a little bit manic; I'm in the Avatar state.[^avatar-state]
+
+[^avatar-state]: A reference to the animated series _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ and _The Legend of Korra_, in which our hero can enter the ["Avatar state"](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar#Avatar_State) to become much more powerful—and also much more vulnerable (not being reincarnated if killed in the Avatar state).
+
+I made plans to visit a friend's house, but before I left the office, I spent some time drafting an email to Eliezer Yudkowsky. I remarked via PM to the person whose house I was to visit, "oh, maybe I shouldn't send this email to someone as important as Eliezer". Then, "oh, I guess that means the manic state is fading". Then: "I guess that feeling is the exact thing I'm supposed to be fighting". (Avoiding "crazy" actions like emailing a high-status person _wasn't safe_ in a world where all the high-status people where committed to believing that _men could be women by means of saying so_.) I did eventually decide to hold off on the email, and make my way to the friend's house. "Not good at navigation right now", I remarked.
+
+------
+
+I stayed up late that night of 13–14 February 2017, continuing to post on Facebook. I'm proud of [this post from 12:48 _a.m._](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154813788715199):
+
+> Of course, Lawrence couldn't assume Korzybski as a prerequisite. The reality is (wait for it ...) even worse! We're actually men who love their model of what we wish women were, and want to become that.[^model-of]
+
+[^model-of]: Alfred Korzybski coined the famous rationality slogan, "The map is not the territory." (Ben Hoffman pointed out that the words "their model of" don't belong here; it's one too many layers of indirection.)
+
+That is, realistically, the AGP fantasy _about_ "being a woman" wouldn't—[_couldn't_ actually be fulfilled by magically being transformed to match the female distribution](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#if-i-have-to-choose). (At a minimum, because women aren't autogynephilic! The _male_ sex fantasy of, "Ooh, what if I inhabited a female body with my own breasts, vagina, _&c._", has no reason to match anything in the experience of women who always have just been female.)
+
+In ["Interpersonal Entanglement"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Py3uGnncqXuEfPtQp/interpersonal-entanglement) (in the Fun Theory Sequence back in 'aught-nine), Yudkowsky had speculated that gay couples might have better relationships than straights, since gays don't have to deal with the mismatch in desires across sexes. The noted real-life tendency for AGP trans women to pair up with each other is probably partially due to this effect[^transcel]: the appeal of getting along with someone _like you_, of having an appropriately-sexed romantic partner who behaves like a same-sex friend. The [T4T phenomenon](https://sexuality.fandom.com/wiki/T4T) is a real-life analogue of ["Failed Utopia #4-2"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTKbmm6uRgC/failed-utopia-4-2), a tantalizing ersatz substitute for actual opposite-sex relationships.
+
+[^transcel]: Of course, a lot of the effect is going to be due to the paucity of (cis) women who are willing to date trans women.
+
+The comment thread under the "nice/mean versions" post would eventually end up with 180 comments, a large fraction of which were, again, a thread mostly of me arguing with "Margaret". At the top of the thread (at 1:14 _a.m._), she asked if there was something that concisely explained why I believed what I believed, and what consequences it had for people.
+
+I replied (at 1:25 _a.m._):
+
+>> why you believe what you believe
+>
+> The OP has four cites. What else do you want?
+>
+>> what consequences you think this has for people
+>
+> Consequences for me: [http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/)
+>
+> Consequences for other people: I don't know! That's for those other people to decide, not me! But whatever they decide, they'll probably get more of what they want if they have more accurate beliefs! Rationality, motherfuckers! Do you speak it!
+
+(Looking back on the thread over six years later, I'm surprised by the timestamps. What were we all _doing_, having a heated political discussion half past one in the morning? We should have all been asleep! If I didn't yet appreciate the importance of sleep at this point in my life, I would soon learn very soon.)
+
+"Rebecca" took my side in the thread, explained why she was holding "Margaret" to a different standard of discourse than me: I was walking into this after years of personal, excruciating suffering, and was willing to pay the social costs to present a model. My brash tone should have been more forgivable in light of that—that I was ultimately coming from a place of compassion and hope for people, not hate.
+
+I messaged "Rebecca": "I wouldn't call it 'personal, excruciating suffering', but way to play the victim card on my behalf". She offered to edit it. I declined: "if she can play politics, we can play politics??"
+
+"Rebecca" speculated to me that "Margaret" might not be reacting as vehemently had I not recently asked her out in public, that she was now distancing herself from me as part of a signaling game—as if to say, "See? See, everyone? I rejected him! Don't burn me at the stake, too!"
+
+I said that I probably wouldn't have asked her out at all, except that I was going through a "well, maybe it's not morally wrong to do male-typical things" phase, like trying to spin a complaint ("again with pretending only guys can ever have difficulties getting dates") into a date.
+
+"Rebecca" summed up something she had gotten out of my whole campaign:
+
+> **"Rebecca"** — 02/14/2016 3:26 AM
+> I really _was_ getting to the point that I hated transwomen
+> **Zack M. Davis** — 02/14/2016 3:26 AM
+> I hate them, too!
+> Fuck those guys!
+> **"Rebecca"** — 02/14/2016 3:27 AM
+> I hated what happened to my husband, I hate the insistence that I use the right pronouns and ignore my senses, I hate the takeover of women's spaces, I hate the presumption that they know what a woman's life is like, I was _getting_ to the point that I deeply hated them, and saw them as the enemy
+> But you're actually changing that for me
+> You're reconnecting me with my natural compassion
+> To people who are struggling and have things that are hard
+> It's just that, the way they think things is hard is not the way I actually think it is anymore
+> **Zack M. Davis** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> the "suffering" is mostly game-theoretic victimhood-culture
+> **"Rebecca"** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> You've made me hate transwomen _less_ now
+> Because I have a model
+> I understand the problem
+> **Zack M. Davis** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> [http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/)
+> **"Rebecca"** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> I understand why it's hard
+> I feel like I can forgive it, to the extent that forgiveness is mine to give
+> This is a better thing for me
+> I did not _want_ to be a hateful person
+> I did not want to take seeming good people as an enemy in my head, while trying to be friends with them in public
+> I think now I can do it more honestly
+> They might not want _me_ as a friend
+> But now I feel less threatened and confused and insulted
+> And that has dissolved the hatred that was starting to take root
+> I'm very grateful for that
+
+I continued to stay up and post—and email.
+
+At 3:30 _a.m._, I sent an email to Scott Alexander (Subject: "a bit of feedback"):
+
+> In the last hour of the world before this is over, as the nanobots start consuming my flesh, I try to distract myself from the pain by reflecting on what single blog post is most responsible for the end of the world. And the answer is obvious: ["The Categories Were Made for the Man, Not Man for the Categories."](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/) That thing is a _fucking_ Absolute Denial Macro!
+
+At 4:18 _a.m._, I pulled the trigger on the email I had started drafting to Yudkowsky earlier (Subject: "the spirit of intervention"), arguing that Moldbug and neoreaction was onto something really important. It wasn't about politics _per se_; it was about reflectivity and moral progress skepticism. Instead of _assuming_ that we know better than people in the past, we should look at the _causal processes_ that produced our current morality, and reevaluate whether it makes sense (in light of our current morality, which was itself created those same causal processes). Insofar as we could see that the egalitarian strain of our current morality was shaped by political forces rather than anything more fundamental, it was worth reëvaluating. It wasn't that right-wing politics are good as such. More like, being smart is more important than being good (for humans), so if you abandon your claim to goodness, you can think more clearly.
+
+A couple of hours later, I was starting to realize I had made a mistake. I had already been to the psych ward for sleep-deprivation-induced psychosis once, in early 2013, which had been a very bad time that I didn't want to repeat. I suddenly realized, about three to six hours too late, that I was in danger of repeating it, as reflected in emails sent to Anna Salamon at 6:16 _a.m._ (Subject: "I love you and I'm scared and I should sleep to aboid [_sic_] being institutionalized") and to Michael Vassar 6:32 _a.m._ (Subject: "I'm scared and I can't sleep but I need to sleep to avoid being institutionalized and I want to be a girl but I am not literally a girl obviously you delusional bastards (eom)").
+
+Michael got back to me at 10:37 _a.m._:
+
+> I'm happy to help in any way you wish. Call any time. [...] I think that you are right enough that it actually calls for the creation of something with the authority to purge/splinter the rationalist community. There is no point in having a rationalist community where you get ignored and silenced if you talk politely and condemned for not using the principle of charity by people who literally endorse trying to control your thoughts and bully you into traumatic surgery by destroying meaning in language. We should interpret ["Margaret"] and ["Kevin"], in particular, as violent criminals armed with technology we created and act accordingly.
+
+Records suggest that I may have gotten as much as an hour and a half of sleep that afternoon: in an email to Anna at 2:22 _p.m._, I wrote, "I don't know what's real. I should lie down? I'm sorry", and in a message to Ben Hoffman at 4:09 _p.m._, I wrote, "I just woke up". According to my records, I hung out with Ben; I have no clear memories of this day.
+
+That night, I emailed Michael and Anna about sleep at 12:17 _a.m._ 15 February 2017 (Subject: "Can SOMEONE HELP ME I REALLY NEED TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SLEEP THIS IS DANGEROUS") and about philosophy and the nature and amount of suffering in the universe at 1:55 _a.m._ and 2:01 _a.m._ (Subjects: "I think I'm starting to understand a lot of the stuff you used to say that I didn't understand!" and "none of my goddamned business").
+
+I presumably eventually got some sleep that night. In the morning, I concluded my public Facebook meltdown with three final posts. "I got even more sleep and feel even more like a normal human! Again, sorry for the noise!" [said the first](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154817202665199). [Then](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154817329655199): "Arguing on the internet isn't that important! Feel free to take a break!" In [the third post](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154817359255199), I promised to leave Facebook for a week. The complete Facebook meltdown had ended up comprising 31 posts between Saturday 11 February 2017 and Wednesday 15 February 2017.
+
+------