enqueue "Amulet"

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+Title: Amulet
+Date: 2021-05-23 05:00
+Category: commentary
+Tags: ideology
+
+After some recent Twitter and Discord discussions, I'm still amazed at how well my "only Nixon could go to China" effect continues to hold up: everyone is respectfully sympathetic to the poor self-hating trans woman even when her _whole bit_ is specifically about explaining why that frame is delusional. (When anyone else making the same points would have been dismissed as hateful.)
+
+Is it my nuance, originality, and nonpartisanship? I can play the philosophy-of-language mind games with the best of them—[better, I think](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/onwgTH6n8wxRSo2BJ/unnatural-categories-are-optimized-for-deception)—and am clearly doing _more work_ than just copying the standard appeals to fourth-grade biology from the TERF cache. (And showing your work matters even if postgraduate biology and artificial intelligence eventually conclude that fourth-grade biology basically had the right idea.) If it's the nuance, that bodes well for [continuing to](/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/) broaden the topic scope of the blog.
+
+But I don't think that's all of it; somehow I doubt whether anti-feminist women and black Republicans have it this easy. (Or even merely non-feminist women and black libertarians, if nonpartisanship is a factor.) Some would say it's my white male privilege—but I have some other ideas.
+
+Maybe people _still think they can crack my egg_. [Phyllis Schlafly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly) and [Hermain Cain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain)'s eligibility markers for membership in the coalition of the fringes, were immutable—having already left the coalition, there was nothing that could be changed to induce them to come back. Whereas my pre-eligibility status gives me the _option_ to be marked by transitioning—which would change my incentives. If I have to _keep_ [putting the "cis" in "decision"](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/) every day, the coalition can still hope to [offer me a better deal](/2019/Dec/the-strategy-of-stigmatization/) should my current alignment falter.
+
+Or, as a reader points out, maybe I'm just too _weird_ relative to the current distribution of thought? People already _know_ that unwoke minorities exist, and have ready-made concepts to make sense of their existence (and thereby dismiss their perspectives as unimportant): Hermain Cain is an ["Uncle Tom"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom#Epithet), for example. (Gender-critical feminists have their own form of this: pro-trans liberal-feminist women are ["handmaidens"](https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/31271/things-handmaidens-say-that-you-find-annoying).)
+
+In contrast, my whole "I think I have the same underlying psychological condition that results in lesbian and bisexual trans women, but I disagree with the popular account of what the condition is exactly, and have some serious reservations with some of the cultural practices that have recently sprung up around it, while continuing to support morphological freedom more generally" thing isn't something most people have heard before. They don't know what to make of it! Maybe if self-aware TERF-sympathetic-but-also-transhumanist autogynephilic men were more common, there would be some catchy epithet to dismiss us ("us") with. Until then ... I have a lot of writing to do.

diff --git a/content/drafts/amulet.md b/content/drafts/amulet.md
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-Title: Amulet
-Date: 2021-03-15 05:00
-Category: commentary
-Tags: ideology
-Status: draft
-
-After some recent Twitter and Discord discussions, I'm still amazed at how well my "only Nixon could go to China" effect continues to hold up: everyone is respectfully sympathetic to the poor self-hating trans woman even when her _whole bit_ is specifically about explaining why that frame is delusional. (When anyone else making the same points would have been dismissed as hateful.)
-
-Is it my nuance, originality, and relative nonpartisanship? I can play the philosophy-of-language mind games with the best of them—better, I think—and am clearly doing _more work_ than copying the standard appeals to fourth-grade biology from the TERF cache. (And showing your work matters even if postgraduate biology and artificial intelligence eventually concludes that fourth-grade biology basically had the right idea.) If it's the nuance, that bodes well for broadening the topic scope of the blog.
-
-But I don't think that's all of it; somehow I doubt whether anti-feminist women and black Republicans have it this easy. (Or even merely non-feminist women and black libertarians, if nonpartisanship is a factor.) Some would say it's my white male privilege—but I have another theory.
-
-Maybe people _still think they can crack my egg_. Phyllis Schlafly and Hermain Cain's eligibility markers were immutable—having already left the coalition of the marginalized, there was nothing that could be changed to induce them to come back. Whereas my pre-eligibility status gives me the _option_ to be marked—which would change my incentives. If I have to _keep_ [putting the "cis" in "decision"](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/) every day, the coalition can still hope to [offer me a better deal](/2019/Dec/the-strategy-of-stigmatization/) should my current alignment falter.