[TODO: notebook photos]
[TODO: more examples!]
+[TODO: Whipping Girl when it came out in 2007]
And so on.
At the time, I had _no reason to invent the hypothesis_ that I might somehow literally be a woman in some unspecified psychological sense. I knew I was a boy _because_ boys are the ones with penises. That's what the word _means_. I was a boy who had a weird _sex fantasy_ about being a girl. That was just the obvious ordinary straightforward plain-language description of the situation. It _never occured to me_ to couch it in the language of "dysphoria", or actually possessing some innate "gender". The beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing was about identifying _with_ women, not identifying _as_ a woman—roughly analogous to how a cat lover might be said to "identify with" cats, without claiming to somehow _be_ a cat, because _that would be crazy_.
-[TODO: need to introduce the word "autogynephilia" and link to "Beacon Through the Darkness", probably around here, and the two-types]
+[TODO: need to introduce the pefect and obvious word "autogynephilia" and link to "Beacon Through the Darkness", probably around here, and the two-types]
This brings me to the other thing I need to explain about my teenage years, which is that I became very passionate about—well, in retrospect I call it _psychological-sex-differences denialism_, but at the time I called it _antisexism_. Where sometimes people in the culture would make claims about how women and men are psychologically different, and of course I knew this was _bad and wrong_.
Sex differences would come up a couple more times in one of the last Sequences, on "Fun Theory"—speculations on how life could be truly _good_ if the world were superintelligently optimized for human values, in contrast to the cruelty and tragedy of our precarious existence [in a world shaped only by blind evolutionary forces](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god).
[TODO: rewrite/expand description here—"Sympathetic Minds" first, then bridge to "Failed Utopia #4-2"]
+[TODO: mention that I'm responsible for the protagonist's name getting changed]
The short story ["Failed Utopia #4-2"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTKbmm6uRgC/failed-utopia-4-2) portrays an almost-aligned superintelligence constructing a happiness-maximizing utopia for humans—except that because [evolution didn't design women and men to be optimal partners for each other](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Py3uGnncqXuEfPtQp/interpersonal-entanglement), and the AI is prohibited from editing people's minds, the happiness-maximizing solution ends up splitting up the human species by sex and giving women and men their own _separate_ utopias, complete with artificially-synthesized romantic partners.
One interesting prediction of this story [TODO: explain the ETLE theory]
+[TODO: I vaguely, vaguely remember having some other transformation fantasies before losing interest in them (perhaps suggesting something ETLE-like as an underlying trait)]
+
I don't _know_ the details of what this "erotic target location error" thing is supposed to _be_, exactly—and would expect my beliefs to change a lot if _anyone_ knew the details and could explain them to me—but I think _some story in this general vicinity_ has to be the real explanation of what's going on with me. How _else_ do you make sense of an otherwise apparently normal biological male (whose physical and psychological traits seem to be basically in the male normal range, even if he's one of those sensitive bookish males rather than being "macho") having the _conjunction_ of the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing _and_, specifically, erotic female-transformation fantasies of the kind I've described?
Am I supposed to claim to be a lesbian trapped inside a man's body? That I _am_ neurologically female-typical in some real sense, and that's the true cause of my beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing?
Imagine my surprise to discover that, in the current year, my weird sexual obsession is suddenly at the center of [one of the _defining political issues of our time_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights).
-All this time—the dozen years I spent reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych and doing various things with my social presentation (sometimes things I regretted and reverted after a lot of pain, like the initials) to try to seem not-masculine—I had been _assuming_ that my gender problems were not of the same kind as people who were _actually_ transgender, because the standard narrative said that that was about people whose ["internal sense of their own gender does not match their assigned sex at birth"](https://www.vox.com/identities/21332685/trans-rights-pronouns-bathrooms-sports), whereas my thing was obviously an outgrowth of my weird sex fantasy—I had never interpreted the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing as an "internal sense of my own gender".
+All this time—the dozen years I spent reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych and doing various things with my social presentation (sometimes things I regretted and reverted after a lot of pain, like the initials) to try to seem not-masculine—I had been _assuming_ that my gender problems were not of the same kind as people who were _actually_ transgender, because the standard narrative said that that was about people whose ["internal sense of their own gender does not match their assigned sex at birth"](https://www.vox.com/identities/21332685/trans-rights-pronouns-bathrooms-sports), whereas my thing was obviously at least partially an outgrowth of my weird sex fantasy—I had never interpreted the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing as an "internal sense of my own gender".
_Why would I?_ In the English of my youth, "gender" (as a single word, rather than part of the phrase "gender role") was understood as a euphemism for _sex_ for people who were squeamish about the potential ambiguity betweeen _sex_-as-in-biological-sex and _sex_-as-in-intercourse. (Judging by this blog's domain name, I am not immune to this.) In that language, my "gender"—my sex—is male. Not because I'm necessarily happy about it (and I [used to](/2017/Jan/the-erotic-target-location-gift/) be pointedly insistent that I wasn't), but as an observable biological fact that, whatever my pure beautiful sacred self-identity feelings, _I am not delusional about_.
-Okay, so trans people aren't delusional about their [developmental sex](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/); the claim is that their internal sense of their own gender is more real or more relevant and should take precedence.
+Okay, so trans people aren't delusional about their [developmental sex](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/); the claim is that their internal sense of their own gender is more real or more relevant in some sense and should take precedence.
+
+So where does that leave me? This post is about my _own_ experiences, and not anyone else's (which I obviously don't have access to). I've _mentioned_ transgenderedness several times in the main body of this post, but I've tried to mostly limit the intent of it to references to an explanation that one might be tempted to apply to my case, but which I don't think fits, or the brief summary of the two-type Blanchard taxonomy for which the word _autogynephilia_ (the obvious and perfect word for my thing) was coined. Everything I've said so far is _consistent_ with a world in which Blanchard was dumb and wrong, a world where my idiosyncratic weird sex perversion and associated beautiful pure sacred self-identity feelings are taxonomically and etiologically distinct from whatever brain-intersex condition causes _actual_ trans women. That's the world I _thought_ I lived in for the ten years after encountering the obvious and perfect word.
+
+But after moving to Berkeley and doing a little bit more reading ... I _don't_ think Blanchard was dumb and wrong. I think the two-type taxonomy is _basically_ correct, as a first approximation. (Where psychology is complicated enough such that there's much more to be said about what that means, and what better approximations would look like, but simple theories that [explain a lot of our observations](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/predictions-made-by-blanchards-typology/) are better than pretending not to have a theory.) I think a _substantial majority_ of trans women under modern conditions in Western countries are, essentially, guys like me who were _less self-aware about what the thing actually is_.
+
+So, I realize this is an inflamatory and (far more importantly) _surprising_ claim. Obviously, I don't have introspective access into other people's minds. If someone claims to have an internal sense of her own gender that doesn't match her assigned sex at birth, on what evidence could I _possibly_ have the _astounding_ arrogance to reply, "No, actually I think you're just a perverted male like me"?
+
+Actually, lots. For example, in 2018, the /r/MtF subreddit (which currently has 90,000 subscribers) [posted a link to a poll: "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation "fetish" (or similar) before you realised you were trans?"](https://archive.is/uswsz). The [results of the poll](https://strawpoll.com/5p7y96x2/r): [_82%_ said Yes](/images/did_you_have-reddit_poll.png). [Top comment in the thread](https://archive.is/c7YFG), with 232 karma: "I spent a long time in the 'it's probably just a fetish' camp".
+
+Certainly, 82% is not 100%. Certainly, you could argue that Reddit has a sampling bias such that poll results and karma scores from /r/MtF fail to match the distribution of real-world MtFs. But if you just _look_ at the _details_ of what people say and do, these kinds of observations are _not hard to find_.
-So where does that leave _me_? This post is about my _own_ experiences, and not anyone else's (which I obviously don't have access to). I've _mentioned_ transgenderedness several times in the main body of this post, but I've tried to limit the intent of it to either background material on the two-type Blanchard taxonomy for which the word _autogynephilia_ (the obvious word for my thing) was coined, or references to an explanation that one might be tempted to apply to my case, but which I don't think fits.
+Informal Reddit poll isn't "scientific" enough for you? Fine. The scientific literature says the same thing: [TODO: cite as many 80% surveys as I can from Kay Brown's bibliography].
-Everything I've said so far is _consistent_ with a world in which Blanchard was dumb and wrong, a world where my weird sex perversion and associated beautiful pure sacred self-identity feelings (for which _autogynephilia_ is obviously the perfect word) is etiologically and taxonomically distinct from whatever brain-intersex condition causes _actual_ trans women. That's the world I _thought_ I lived in for the ten years after encountering the word.
+Worried about leading survey questions pointing to the wrong conclusion, and want more detailed (if not standardizable and quantifiable) accounts? Me too!
+[TODO: McCloskey, or how did I missed this from Serano 2007]
-/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/#a-thing-about-me
+> There was also a period of time when I embraced the word "pervert" and viewed my desire to be female as some sort of sexual kink. But after exploring that path, it became obvious that explanation could not account for the vast majority of instances when I thought about being female in a nonsexual context.
-Men who fantasize about being women do not particularly resemble actual women! We just—don't? This seems kind of obvious, really? _Telling the difference between fantasy and reality_ is kind of an important life skill?!
+[...]
https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/ij4npe/mommy_im_actually_a_girl/
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/before-2
+
+Planned Parenthood on "How to Know If Your Kid Is Transgender": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJdafLVf6xo
> Somebody can be born with a wiener, but not be a boy. Somebody else can be a boy, but not have a wiener.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-do-boys-have-wieners/
+
+Is the Culture War lost? https://letter.wiki/conversation/930
-November activity sequence—
-16 Nov - Amy Wax linkpost
-17 Nov - The Causality of Ethnic Differences in COVID-19 Outcomes Is an Open
-18 Nov ✓ Interlude XX
-20 Nov _ Nixon on What You Can't Say
-22 Nov - Survey Data on Cis and Trans Women Among Haskell Programmers
-24 Nov ✓ The Feeling Is Mutual
-26 Nov - Comment on "The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Probabilistic Inference"
-28 Nov - Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences, in Relation to My Gender
-
+Ready—
+✓ Interlude XX
+✓ The Feeling Is Mutual
+
+Filler—
+ - Amy Wax linkpost
+ _ Nixon on What You Can't Say
+
+Not done—
+ - The Causality of Ethnic Differences in COVID-19 Outcomes Is an Open
+ - Survey Data on Cis and Trans Women Among Haskell Programmers
+ - Comment on "The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Probabilistic Inference"
_ Novemember 2020 Political Notes; Or, Sen. Kelly Loeffler Is Mostly Living in a Simulation Now
-Incidents to Include—
+Marketing—
-Done(ish)—
-✓ "Failed Utopia 4-2"
-✓ "Changing Emotions"
+To LW—
-Easy—
-* love of a man for a woman, and vice versa as separate fragments of value
-* Psychological Unity of Humankind is only up to sex
+_(content warning sexism)_
+_(content warning transphobia)_
+_(content warning too much information about weird fetishes)_
+_(content warning WTF did I just read)_
+
+(November 2020, [TODO] words)
+
+----
+
+On Twitter—
+WTF transphobic garbage did I just read?? Too bad Yudkowsky can't control how creepy randos on the internet interpret his work ...
+
+-----
+
+To SneerClub—
+
+Hi SneerClub! I noticed that you've enjoyed some of my [previous](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/fw9cng/the_lgbt_activist_machinery_instead_adapted/) [work](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/61t94y/rationalist_tries_justifying_their_transphobia_by/), so I thought I would go ahead and proactively share this one with you, because (I'm guessing) it probably checks a lot of the boxes for top sneerable content: it's got Yudkowsky hero-worship, _and_ sexism (as many of you would define that), _and_ transphobia (as many of you would define that), _and_ weird sex stuff!
+
+(From _my_ perspective, I'm pouring my heart out about the most important thing in my life, but if someone else with a different perspective would only sneer, then I can only hope to have been—if only for a moment, as part of a subroutine in the optimal sneer computation—_understood_. And for that moment, I am grateful.)
+
+-----
+
+Points to work in—
* Superhappies empathic inference for not wanting to believe girls were different
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qCsxiojX7BSLuuBgQ/the-super-happy-people-3-8
* "The Opposite Sex" https://web.archive.org/web/20130216025508/http://lesswrong.com/lw/rp/the_opposite_sex/
* EY was right about "men need to think about themselves _as men_" (find cite)
* Vassar slapping me down
* "Mr. Davis"
-* I'm not actually very good at first-person visualization, which demonstrates something
+* Faster Than Science, Transgender Edition (prior draft)
+* "I often wish some men/women would appreciate"
+* empathic inference: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NLMo5FZWFFq652MNe/sympathetic-minds https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zkzzjg3h7hW5Z36hK/humans-in-funny-suits https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9fpWoXpNv83BAHJdc/the-comedy-of-behaviorism
* study evidence that this is actually common
* AGPs dating each other is the analogue of "Failed Utopia 4-2"!!
+* wipe culturally defined values
+* finding things in the refrigerator
+* https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBgozHEv7J72NCEPB/my-way https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xsyG7PkMekHud2DMK/of-gender-and-rationality
+-----
-Harder—
-* Faster Than Science, Transgender Edition (prior draft)
-* "I often wish some men/women would appreciate"
-* empathic inference: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NLMo5FZWFFq652MNe/sympathetic-minds https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zkzzjg3h7hW5Z36hK/humans-in-funny-suits https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9fpWoXpNv83BAHJdc/the-comedy-of-behaviorism
+Outline for remaining Coda—
+ * you can doubt someone's theory without doubting their report-as-data
+ * what "as a first approximation" means in causal graphs
+ * people have a political incentive to deny, but I'm making a fact-claim
+ * I would have expected the "rationalists" to be interested in getting the right answer (quote the "20% of the ones with penises" Facebook post), but it doesn't look like that's happening
+
+
+-----
"different thing that I don't understand" /2019/Jan/interlude-xvi/
-* wipe culturally defined values
-* finding things in the refrigerator
-* https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBgozHEv7J72NCEPB/my-way https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xsyG7PkMekHud2DMK/of-gender-and-rationality
Be careful to phrase the early part as about _me_, and only point fingers at trans women in the coda
Anyway, I kind of spent the next ten years reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych and doing various things with my social presentation—sometimes things I regretted and reverted after a lot of pain—to try to seem not-masculine,
-
all the while assuming that my gender problems were clearly not the same thing as the gender problems of actual trans women,
because the standard narrative was that that's
-----
-_(content warning sexism)_
-_(content warning transphobia)_
-_(content warning too much information about weird fetishes)_
-_(content warning WTF did I just read)_
-
-(November 2020, [TODO] words)
-
-----
-
-WTF transphobic garbage did I just read?? Too bad Yudkowsky can't control how creepy randos on the internet interpret his work ...
-
------
-Hi SneerClub! I noticed that you've enjoyed some of my [previous](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/fw9cng/the_lgbt_activist_machinery_instead_adapted/) [work](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/61t94y/rationalist_tries_justifying_their_transphobia_by/), so I thought I would go ahead and proactively share this one with you, because (I'm guessing) it probably checks a lot of the boxes for top sneerable content: it's got Yudkowsky hero-worship, _and_ sexism (as many of you would define that), _and_ transphobia (as many of you would define that), _and_ weird sex stuff!
-(From _my_ perspective, I'm pouring my heart out about the most important thing in my life, but if someone else with a different perspective would only sneer, then I can only hope to have been—if only for a moment, as part of a subroutine in the optimal sneer computation—_understood_. And for that moment, I am grateful.)
Sometimes I sigh because I'll never get rich
(The scintillating but ultimately untrue thought.)
-
Fit in somewhere—
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KmghfjH6RgXvoKruJ/hand-vs-fingers
-I'm not objecting to your existence, I'm only objecting to the prerequisites to your existence
\ No newline at end of file
+I'm not objecting to your existence, I'm only objecting to the prerequisites to your existence
+
+From my email to Jessica—
+> As you know, reality has a single level (physics), but our models of reality have multiple levels. To get maximally precise predictions about everything, you would have to model the underlying quarks, &c., which is impossible. (As it is written: the map is not the territory, but you can't roll up the territory and put in your glove compartment.)
+
+> There could be situations in psychology where a good theory (not a perfect theory, but a good theory to the precision that our theories about engineering bridges are good) would be described by a 70-node causal graph, but it turns out that some of the more "important" variables in the graph happen to anti-correlate with each other, such that stupid humans who don't know how to discover the correct 70-node graph, do manage to pattern-match their way to a two-type typology that actually is better, as a first approximation, than pretending not to have a theory. (See Tailcalled on "zooming in" on the typology to at least a four node graph.)
+
+But once you stop taking the "gender identity"/"woman trapped in a man's body" story as _axiom_ and
+
+
+It's possible to disagree with people's _theoretical account_ of their own psychology, without doubting the honesty of their self-report, in the sense that people are doing their best to translate the ineffable _qualia_ of their experience into words.
+
+[throw a chair](/2019/Jan/use-it-or-lose-it/) and yell, "How dumb do you think we are?!"
+
+The claim is not that the trans woman who describes her experience as an "internal sense of her own gender" is lying.
+
+If someone claims to have an inter
+
+https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/the-mathematical-consequences-of-a-toy-model-of-gender-transition/
+
+You might ask, what do I mean by "as a first approximation"?
+
+/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/#a-thing-about-me
+
+Men who fantasize about being women do not particularly resemble actual women! We just—don't? This seems kind of obvious, really? _Telling the difference between fantasy and reality_ is kind of an important life skill?!
+
+_You have to let me show you what you are_.
\ No newline at end of file
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff