+
+Reading the things I do, and talking to the people I do, I see this pattern _over and over and over_ again, where non-exclusively-androphilic trans women will, in the right context, describe experiences that _sound_ a lot like mine—having this beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing about the idea of being female, but also, separately, this erotic thing on the same theme—but then _somehow_ manage to interpret the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing as an inner "gender" and presumed brain-intersex condition, which I just—can't take seriously. (Even before contrasting to the early-onset type, which is what a brain-intersex condition _actually_ looks like.)
+
+All I've been trying to say is that, _in particular_, the word "woman" is such a noun.
+
+It _follows logically_ that, in particular, if _N_ := "woman", you can't define the word _woman_ any way you want. Maybe trans women _are_ women! But if you want people to agree to that word usage, you need to be able to _argue_ for why it makes sense; you can't just _define_ it to be true, and this is a _general_ principle of how language works, not something I made up on the spot in order to stigmatize trans people.
+
+> Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 10:04 PM
+> So Katie and Seanan did end up coming over last night, but I wasn't very fun to be around because I was emotionally floored because Michael Vassar (!) said that something I said in an _Overcoming Bias_ comment thread was really creepy and that his first reaction was that I should be banned. And I remember lying in bed last night or this morning feeling sick about it, and trying to think about something not thematic, so that I could relax--and I couldn't think of anything.
+
+> But Vassar had a point, and I apologized, and I feel better now.
+
+> So I am broken and I have made terrible mistakes, but in my rationalist's splendor, all I can do is try to understand the facts of the matter and do better tomorrow. This, even as in my rationalist's splendor, I must predict that this is unlikely to actually work.
+
+> Michael fucking Vassar. Shit!
+
+I'm worried about the failure mode where bright young minds [lured in](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/construction-beacons/) by the beautiful propaganda about _systematically correct reasoning_, are instead recruited into what is, effectively, the Eliezer-Yudkowsky-and-Scott-Alexander fan club.
+
+> I'm not trying to get Eliezer or "the community" to take a public stance on gender politics; I'm trying to get us to take a stance in favor of the kind of epistemology that we were doing in 2008. It turns out that epistemology has implications for gender politics which are unsafe, but that's more inferential steps, and ... I guess I just don't expect the sort of people who would punish good epistemology to follow the inferential steps? Maybe I'm living in the should-universe a bit here, but I don't think it "should" be hard for Eliezer to publicly say, "Yep, categories aren't arbitrary because you need them to carve reality at the joints in order to make probabilistic inferences, just like I said in 2008; this is obvious."
+
+https://twitter.com/caraesten/status/1092472430465929216
+> damn one extremely bad way to start my day is having the receptionist at slack say I look like a male celebrity
+> I'm so mad. wow. like. I look like this right now, how could anyone ever think that was an okay thing to say???
+
+* Dr. Will Powers
+
+[TODO: another clinical perspective: Dr. Will Powers]
+
+Or consider Dr. Will Powers, [whose presentation on trans healthcare](https://powersfamilymedicine.com/s/Healthcare-of-the-Transgender-Patient-V60.pptx) was [praised by people from my robot cult on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/strohl89/posts/10157396578969598). I was disappointed by the the brief mention of autogynephilia [(on slide 29 of the v.6.0 presentation)](/images/powers_slide_on_agp.png): Powers says Blanchard has been disproven, but that autogynephilia does exist _very_ rarely: "[i]n my now almost 7 years of treating transgender patients, I have seen this paraphilia only once in a person requesting MtF therapy", Powers says, going on to describe the particularly delusional patient (who wanted "the largest breasts possible", and claimed he needed to become a woman to please a Russian Instagram model whom he implausibly claimed to be his girlfriend) whom he denied informed-consent treatment.
+
+You might ask, why am I citing Will Powers in support of my thesis, when Powers's testimony seems to contradict it? Only one case in seven years, he says.
+
+I cite it because—surprise! _Powers was lying._ [In a November 2020 post to his own subreddit, he opens up](https://www.reddit.com/r/DrWillPowers/comments/jx9io9/my_official_post_on_my_personal_opinion_on/):
+
+> Every time I try and speak on this, I get attacked. People discredit what I have to say, call it harmful, and hateful. [...] I've previously stated I had one of these in my practice. I stated that, because I didn't want to push the narrative that it was common because I get literally eviscerated every time I try and talk about it. In reality, I see it fairly often. Almost once a month. Probably at least 10 times a year. [...] Continuing to lie about it and act like it isn't happening is a disservice to transgender people as a whole.
+
+You might think,
+
+This comment in particular is really something—
+https://www.reddit.com/r/DrWillPowers/comments/jxh3mz/in_this_thread_help_me_and_this_community_come_up/gd0mytr/