-Let's consider some of what is known about trans women. (For the remainder of this post, I'm going to focus on trans women, for reasons of personal interest. The task of analyzing the situation of trans men is left to the interested reader.)
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-While a minority of trans women in Western countries fit the "classical transsexual" profile of being attracted to men, displaying lifelong female-typical social behavior and interests, and transitioning early. But the majority don't fit this pattern.
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-(To interested readers who only have time to read one paper, I recommend Anne Lawrence's ["Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male-to-Female Transsexualism: Concepts and Controversies"](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/lawrence-agp_and_typology.pdf) For a more exhaustive treatment, see Lawrence's book [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies_](https://surveyanon.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/men-trapped-in-mens-bodies_book.pdf) or follow the links and citations in [Kay Brown's FAQ](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/).)
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-[caveats: take care to note that it's possible to believe in a weaker form of it: maybe you agree to the bimodality in the data, but don't think it's two discrete etiological types; or, maybe you [agree that there are two etiologies, but](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/against-blanchardianism/) don't buy that AGP is the cause]
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-In less tolerant places and decades, where transsexuals were very rare and had to try very hard to pass as women out of dire necessity, their impact on the social order and how people think about gender was minimal—there were just too few trans people to make much of a difference.
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-Nowadays, in progressive enclaves of Western countries, this is no longer true, and in communities that form around [non-sex-balanced interests](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/), the numbers can be quite dramatic. For example, on the 2018 _Slate Star Codex_ reader survey, 9.4% responded _F (cisgender)_ to the gender question, compared to 1.4% responding _F (transgender m -> f)_. So, if trans women are women, _13.4%_ (!!) of female _Slate Star Codex_ readers are trans.
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-A (cis) female friend of the blog, a member of the Berkeley, California rationalist community reports on recent changes in local social norms—
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-> There have been "all women" things, like clothing swaps or groups, that then pre-transitioned trans women show up to. And it's hard, because it's weird and uncomfortable once three or four participants of twelve are trans women. I think the reality that's happening is women are having those spaces less—instead doing private things "for friends," with specific invite lists that are implicitly understood not to include men or trans women. This sucks because then we can't include women who aren't _already_ in our social circle, and we all know it but no one wants to say it.
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-This is a _terrible_ outcome with respect to _everyone's_ values. One couldn't even say, "The cost to bigoted cis women of not being able to have trans-exclusionary spaces is more than outweighed by trans women's identities being respected," b
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-Depending on your values, of course, you might be in favor of making it socially unacceptable to have sex-segregated spaces that are actually segregated by biological sex. The methods of rationality themselves have nothing to say on the matter.
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-To only say, "What's the problem? Trans women are women, by definition, and definitions can't be wrong" is to invite the reply, "That's not what I meant _and you fucking know it._"
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-------
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-[Alexander cites Emperor Norton as a charming example of the power of kindness, but as fun as the story is to read about on Wikipedia, that kind of "benevolent" gaslighting is not something you would do to someone you actually _respected_; I'm glad my friends didn't lie to me when I was having delusions of grandeur]
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-[imagine you're Emperor Norton's best friend and he expresses doubt as to whether he's being hugboxed]
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-[...]
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-"What if—what if I'm not actually the Emperor?"
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-"The categories were made for man, not man for the categories, Your Highness," you say.
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-[...]
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-"Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down, ideas, strategies—battle plans?
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-"But," you caution, "I'd be lying if I told you it was going to be _easy_."
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+FULL OUTLINE—
+* Scott says category boundaries aren't true or false; you can group whales with other sea-dwelling animals if you want
+* Sure, this is a great motte
+* But that doesn't mean no categorizations are wrong; whales actually do cluster with both mammals and fish in different subspaces of the configuration space
+* Rationalists can at least map the details of boundary disputes
+* Also, if a potential category is too gerrymandered, it won't be useful for people who want to map reality
+-----
+* Scott definitely knows this, so it's weird that when the topic turns to transgender that he suddenly doesn't feel like he needs to make any arguments
+* The hair dryer story isn't applicable when other people's interests are at stake, too
+* Which isn't to say that trans isn't real: people can successfully socially transition
+-----
+* Another factor affecting how natural trans identities are is how trans works
+* Intersex brains are more legit than other causes
+* But it could be more than one thing
+* In fact, I claim it is more than one thing, and the second thing is not intesex-brain
+*
+
+
+REMAINING POINTS—
+
+* better phrasing: other than the desire to be female, AGPs don't have an unusual number of female-typical traits
+* (say) Caitlyn Jenner and Janet Mock don't _look_ like the same thing
+* you can define categories how you want, but they have consequences
+* the reason it _matters_ that people already have a concept for male because of the high-dimensionality, which my diagram can't express, but intution can
+* passing is _hard_
+* link /2018/Feb/blegg-mode/
+* link http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail
+* link http://lesswrong.com/lw/xe/changing_emotions/
+* the mismatch gets _worse_ with less gatekeeping
+* "gay" trans women are etiologically straight
+* weird social taboos, stickers
+* no matter what policy decision you ultimately decide on, you need to be
+ honest about the trade-offs, rather than appealing to the idiot sophistry
+ of "Trans women are women, by definition"
+* address "This never happens"
+* better phrasing: Most of the time when we say "X is an instance of Y", we're appealing to some sort of truth condition: something that can be observed to distinguish things that are Y from things that are not-Y. If the only such criterion is "X _says_ they're a Y", that at that point I struggle to understand what Y is or why anyone (including X themself) should care.
+* link Ozy on "We don't have a gender gap, we have an _assigned sex at birth_ gap"
+* call out the mendacity of "assigned at birth" language
+* section about how this a question of what social norms we want to negotiate
+* better phrasing: Is this too absolutist?—effectively equating "trans" with "passing", and even then marked as an [atypical case](http://lesswrong.com/lw/nk/typicality_and_asymmetrical_similarity/)? Would it really be so costly to grant an occasional isolated unprincipled exception to our usual category boundaries, for kindness's sake? Perhaps not—if we could trust that the exception to our normal ways of thinking and speaking would _stay_ isolated. But the goals of the modern transgender movement seem to be somewhat broader in scope.
+* better phrasing: Unfortunately, helping people get the things that they want is a hard problem, because people are complicated and the world is complicated. That's why, when renegotiating social norms to apply to a historically unprecedented situation, [...]
+* As a rationalist, I want to protect people's freedom to describe the world as it
+* This is a question about what sort of social norms we want to establish, and different choices of social norms have different costs and benefits! In a world where trans isn't a thing, the standard is, "Pass as a natal woman, or be regarded as a man pretending to be a woman." This isn't good for autogynephilic transsexuals! Later, the standard became, "If if looks like you're sincerely trying to pass as a natal woman, we'll model you that way, even if you don't quite pass." This is a better deal for autogynephilic transsexuals!
+* (Even if you're [not a fan of gender roles](/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/) and wish that people were less eager to distinguish humans by sex when it's not absolutely necessary, to the extent that not everyone shares this value or wants to apply it in _all_ areas of life, it matters how the categories are defined.)
+* I'm glad [I was able to experiment with hormones](http://unremediatedgender.space/tag/hrt-diary/) on the basis of informed consent, rather than being gatekept.