Okay, but what does that _mean_? Are the things about me that I've been attributing to autogynephilia actually an internal gender identity, or did I [get it right the first time](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/), and how can I tell? No one seems interested in clarifying!
-This shift in belief (from thinking the narrative is true about other people but not me, to thinking that the narrative is just a lie) happened gradually over the course of 2016 as the evidence kept piling up, partially from my reading, but also as I kept initiating conversations with local trans women to try to figure out what was going on.
+My shift in belief, from thinking the narrative is true about other people but not me, to thinking that the narrative is just a lie, happened gradually over the course of 2016 as the evidence kept piling up, partially from my reading, but also as I kept initiating conversations with local trans women to try to figure out what was going on.
[Someone I talked to](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) denied experiencing autogynephilia at all, and I believe her. (This person was unusual along a lot of other dimensions, and again, I don't think a psychological theory needs to predict _every_ case in order to be broadly useful for understanding the world.)
But many of the people I talked to seemed to report similar experiences to me—at least, to the low resolution of the conversation; talking about this stuff _at all_ was hard enough, that I wasn't going to press people for the specific details of their sexual fantasies—but seemed to me to be either pretty delusional, or privately pretty sane but (from my view) oddly indifferent to the state of public knowledge.
-One trans woman told me that autogynephilia is a typical element of cis woman sexuality. (This, I had learned, was a [standard cope](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-gostak-distims-the-doshes/), but one I have [never found remotely plausible](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#am-i-supposed-to-claim).) She told me that if I don't feel like a boy, I'm probably not one. (Okay, but again, _what does that mean?_)
+One trans woman told me that autogynephilia is a typical element of cis woman sexuality. (This, I had learned, was a [standard cope](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-gostak-distims-the-doshes/), but one I have [never found remotely plausible](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#am-i-supposed-to-claim).) She told me that if I don't feel like a boy, I'm probably not one. (Okay, but again, _what does that mean?_ [TODO: what is the underlying truth that "probably" is pointing at])
Another wrote a comment in one discussion expressing skepticism at the idea that someone would undergo a complete medical and social transition because of a fetish: it might be _possible_, she admitted, but it must be extremely unlikely. Elsewhere on the internet, the _same goddamned person_ reported being sexually into gender-bender manga and finding it arousing at the same time when she was first seriously questioning her gender identity. [TODO: my reaction; it's rude for me to probe and doubt, but this is gaslighting]
Another trans woman I talked to was less philosophical. "I'm an AGP trans girl who really likes anime, 4chan memes, and the like, and who hangs around a lot with ... AGP trans girls who like anime, 4chan memes, and the like," she said. "It doesn't matter to me all that much if some specific group doesn't take me seriously. As long as trans women are pretty OK at respectability politics and cis people in general don't hate us, then it's probably not something I have to worry about."
+As the tension between what I was seeing and what I felt allowed to say in public kept mounting, I started
+
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/concerns/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/identity/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/apostasy/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/wicked-transcendence/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/falself/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/prescription/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-world-by-gaslight/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-roark-quirrell-effect/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/book-recommendations-i/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/wicked-transcendence-ii/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/concerns-ii/
+
[TODO: September 2016: I start my "secret" blog under a pen name]
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/
+
[TODO: October 2016: I wrote Eliezer to ask about the conflict with "Changing Emotions" and made a Cheerful Price offer to talk about it https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price (shut up, we're not a cult) ]
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price
+
[it was around this time I snuck a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_ into the [MIRI](https://intelligence.org/) office library. (It seemed like something Harry Potter-Evans-Verres would do—and ominously, I noticed, not like something Hermione Granger would do.)]
[TODO: early 2017, eventually I start being louder on Facebook and eventually have a nervous breakdown]
"What does it cost you to just say the dish name?"
+"Just a minute ago when you asked what we should eat, I suggested 'Italian' as a general food category, _before_ you narrowed it down to lasana in particular."
\ No newline at end of file
Tags: linkpost
Status: draft
+At /r/theschism, Trace Woodgrains
+
https://www.reddit.com/r/theschism/comments/si7k2c/on_transitions_freedom_of_form_and_the_righteous/
+
+* TW endorses me
+* nature sucks
+* Freedom of Form foundation is quirky and may not succeed, but they're the good guys
+* I'm losing favor with both people who think perverts are bad and would not be satisfied that I'm one of this honest ones, but also trans people
+* respectability politics: trans people want to distance themselves from furries https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/
+* threat-response narratives outrun reality /2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/
+
+My comment: furries are actually facing a different problem; it's clear that they don't want to _actually_ species transition, because then you couldn't talk
Title: Links: Amy Wax Bloggingheads Appearances
-Date: 2021-01-01
+Date: 2021-02-22 05:00
Category: other
Tags: linkpost, video, Amy Wax
Status: draft
-Having watched a [few of](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLE67Z_YmSA) [her](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iURajqpbU3E) [appearances](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1vQFMxPk54) on the Glenn Loury show and [one opposite Adam Serwer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8uEbK83BYM), is it weird if I admit that I find something about Amy Wax _incredibly attractive_? I mean, on a spiritual level—as a female intellectual with _no patience_ for the Egregore. No patience!
+Watching a [few of](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLE67Z_YmSA) [her](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iURajqpbU3E) [appearances](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1vQFMxPk54) on the Glenn Loury show and [one opposite Adam Serwer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8uEbK83BYM), is it weird if I admit that I find something about Amy Wax _incredibly attractive_? I mean, on a spiritual level—as a female intellectual with _no patience_ for the Egregore. No patience!
+<br/><br/><br/><br/>
Ironically, in the inferno of shame over having betrayed my mandate to the University, my attitude towards school flipped practically overnight. I had never been the most _diligent_ student, but I had mostly accepted the duty of getting an "education": I didn't always do my homework, but when I didn't, I at least felt guilty about it. But suddenly, the difference between schooling-as-education and actual _learning_ became distinct. I had _always_ been a voracious reader; for years, I had been filling little pocket notebooks with my own thoughts—clearly, school itself couldn't take credit for everything I knew. I took a leave of absence from the University and went back to my (previously, "summer") job at the supermarket, with the intention of being an explicit autodidact. I had always learned from books "in passing", in my "free time", but now I would give it the full force of my _legitimate_ effort—it wasn't "leisure" anymore; it was my _actual_ work.
-And not just reading, either. I remembered enjoying the linear algebra class I took in winter quarter freshman year at the University, although the course had gone slowly, such that a year and a half after the course was over, I found I didn't recall what an eigenvalue was, although I had retained mastery of taking the [reduced row echelon form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_echelon_form#Reduced_row_echelon_form). But what did it matter that the "course" was "over", if I didn't _know_? So I got out the textbook [(Bretcher, 3rd edition)](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144938.Linear_Algebra_with_Applications) and [set to work](/images/math_page_1.jpg) ...
+And not just reading, either. I remembered enjoying the linear algebra class I took in winter quarter freshman year at the University, although the course had gone slowly, such that a year and a half after it was over, I found I didn't recall what an eigenvalue was, although I had retained mastery of taking the [reduced row echelon form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_echelon_form#Reduced_row_echelon_form) of a matrix. But what did it matter that the "course" was "over", if I didn't _know_? So I got out the textbook [(Bretcher, 3rd edition)](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144938.Linear_Algebra_with_Applications) and [set to work](/images/math_page_1.jpg) ...
[TODO: the trauma of having no function other than to obey; that's why actual work didn't feel oppressive ]
[TODO sentences about Lia Thomas and Cece Tefler https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1466044767561830405 (Thomas and Tefler's feats occured after Yudkowsky's 2018 Tweets, but this kind of thing was easily predictable to anyone familiar with sex differences)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10445679/Lia-Thomas-UPenn-teammate-says-trans-swimmer-doesnt-cover-genitals-locker-room.html
+https://twitter.com/sharrond62/status/1495802345380356103 Lia Thomas event coverage
+https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/weekly-recap-lia-thomas-birth-certificates Zippy inv. cluster graph!
]
In light of these _empirical_ observations, Yudkowsky's suggestion that an ignorant comittment to an "Aristotelian binary" is the main reason someone might care about the integrity of women's sports, is revealed as an absurd strawman. This just isn't something any scientifically-literate person would write if they had actually thought about the issue _at all_, as contrasted to having _first_ decided (consciously or not) to bolster one's reputation among progressives by dunking on transphobes on Twitter, and wielding one's philosophy knowledge in the service of that political goal. The relevant empirical facts are _not subtle_, even if most people don't have the fancy vocabulary to talk about them in terms of "multivariate trait distributions".
when worrying about the future and what I should do about it, I find myself more concerned with whether Eliezer would disapprove rather than the everyone-dying part
me criticizing dath ilan (after being blocked from his Twitter) is also a nearest-unblocked-strategy
+
+If there's a generalized remembering-history skill, it should apply to "remembering when pronouns implied sex" and as well as "remembering when neural nets weren't used in the Netflix contest" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cCrpbZ4qTCEYXbzje/ngo-and-yudkowsky-on-scientific-reasoning-and-pivotal-acts
Blogroll maybe? https://strigoi.substack.com/p/a-few-notes-on-agp
https://dnyuz.com/2022/02/18/nyt-under-fire-for-chilling-advert-inviting-readers-to-imagine-harry-potter-without-creator/
+
+https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name
+
+----
+
+I found my chat history with S. that I thought was missing when she deleted her Facebook!! September 2016
+
+Z: I can't know what's going on in anyone else's head, but my case is _obviously obviously obviously_ a form of bizarrely misdirected heterosexuality, and I'm really really grateful to Blanchard for coining the world \"autogynephilia\" and really really disappointed that the political incentives line up such that anyone who says this out loud is socially punished
+S: Hm, so, like, you could date girls better if you were a girl?
+Z: no, it's a lot weirder than that
+Z: The idea of having female anatomy oneself and being able to appreciate it from the first person is intrinsically more exciting than the mere third-person appreciation that you can do in ordinary real life as a man.
+Z: Much more speculatively: if you think about this a lot under circumstances where you, um, receive positive reinforcement, it acutally does bleed into your self-concept, and some men interpret this as \"Ah, this was my innate gender identity all along; it just took me a while to notice because of [some ridiculous confabulation]
+Z: ... when that's really _not_ what's going on at _all_
+Z: This sounds insane if you haven't personally experienced it and only know the socially-deriable narratives that people write about publicly
+[...]
+Z: ... I hope this is scientifically interesting rather than unforgiveably creepy to even talk about
+S: hm, this is interesting
+S: so, like, literal autogynephilia is a thing?
+Z: in me, Yes Obviously Yes
+Z: a lot of people who otherwise fit the clinical profile deny it, many others report having such fantasies but claim that it must be an effect rather than a cause of gender dysphoria, or claim that it's just like cis women appreciating their own bodies, or something like that
+S: (data point: my only effective sex fantasy is \"me as hot girl\", it's crass but so it goes)
+
+"I expect that to be a qualitatively distinct phenomenon, both on priors and, um, details that probably would be creepy to talk about",
+S; "ok",
+S: "so, like, you believe that autogynephilia is a real thing & in your case you don't have lots of desires to be seen as a girl, have a girl name, etc?"
+"no, I _also_ have long history of non-sexual I-should-be-a-girl-or-at-least-non-masculine themed self-identity thoughts (I hope that my ponytail and clean-shavenness help visually distinguish me from guys who are proud of being guys; there was a years where I tried going by \"Z.M.\" because I wanted an ostensibly gender-neutral name but eventually gave that up because it didn't feel like a name and in order to get people to call you something different you have to yell at them constantly, which I wasn't assertive enough to do for something that didn't feel like a name; feeling happy about getting \"ma'am\"ed over the phone or being told that someone assumed I was gay; feeling happy about feminine pronouns)",
+ "... but that all developed in the years _after_ puberty",
+and this is not a coincidence, because nothing is ever a coincidence. (At least, in my current model)
+
+S: hm. so male puberty was a thing you did not like.
+Z: no, puberty was fine
+Z: Your previous message feels like you're instinctually rounding off my report to the standard narrative, whereas what I'm saying is that the standard was-always-a-girl-in-some-metaphysical-sense narrative (at least for me, I think for many others) is not truuuuuuuue
+S: "oh ok",
+"i'm just trying to figure out what the thing is",
+"\"men who love women and want to become what they love\"",
+"hm",
+"So, given that I have the experimental result that I couldn't even make a _nickname change_ work, transition is obviously completely out of the question, particularly because I would feel like a fraud because I think that (late-onset) trans women are not women (I know, I won't say that in public)",
+S: if that's your true belief about yourself then why isn't the answer \"don't\"?"
+Z: well, so I'm thinking in terms of \"experiment with drugs, but don't tell anyone\" model"
+S: ....it will show.
+
+[...]
+
+Z" "the thing is, I don't think it's actually that uncommon! http://lesswrong.com/lw/xe/changing_emotions/ It's just that there's no script for it and no one wants to talk about it!",
+S" "ok, *very* weird",
+"yeah, I just don't have a built-in empathic handle for \"wants to be a woman.\""
+Z: "it even has a TVTrope! http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManIFeelLikeAWoman",
+S" "ok, yeah. wow. it's really just easier for my brain to go \"ok, that's a girl\" than to understand why anyone would want boobs",
+Z: "... which is why the standard \"Oh, 'autogynephilia' is really just normal female sexuality as expressed in someone who was unfortunately assigned-male-at-birth\" dodge seems like such a ludicrous rationalization to me",
+
+[...]
+
+S: "I could *work* with \"girl!Zach is a precious delicate flower.\" I am not sure wha t to do with \"Zach wants to try this body hack.\""
+
+I said, "if http://unremediatedgender.space/ ever gets popular, I expect to be smeared on Andrea James's website, too!" and that came true, except she made a bad guess about my True Name https://www.transgendermap.com/community/michael-mcclure/
+
+-----
+
+go-to link for "current year" trope: https://www.theonion.com/report-stating-current-year-still-leading-argument-for-1819576151
_ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data
-
-Queue—
-_ "On Transitions, Freedom of Form, [...]" linkpost
-_ "Never Smile" linkpost
+Minor—
+_ Link: Amy Wax
_ Student Dysphoria, and a Previous Life's War
_ Happy Meal
-_ Amy Wax linkpost
+_ Link: "On Transitions, Freedom of Form, [...]"
-_ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WikzbCsFjpLTRQmXn/declustering-reclustering-and-filling-in-thingspace
+
+_ in real life, when your sexuality is considered an infrohazard, you don't take it lying down
+_ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WikzbCsFjpLTRQmXn/declustering-reclustering-and-filling-in-thingspace
_ Subspatial Distribution Overlap and Cancellable Stereotypes
_ "But I'm Not Quite Sure What That Means": Costs of Nonbinary Gender as a Social Technology
_ Four Clusters
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff