So far, I probably haven't actually said anything that Alexander didn't already say in the original post. ("A category 'fish' containing herring, dragonflies, and asteroids is going to be stupid [...] it fails to fulfill any conceivable goals of the person designing it.") But it seems worth restating and emphasizing that categories derive their usefulness from the way in which they efficiently represent regularities in the real world, because on the topic of exactly how to apply these philosophical insights to transgender identity claims, Alexander strangely—uncharacteristically—doesn't seem to find it necessary to make any arguments about representing the real world, preferring instead to focus on the mere fact that some people strongly prefer [self-identity](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities)-based gender categories:
+> If I'm willing to accept an unexpected chunk of Turkey deep inside Syrian territory to honor some random dead guy—and I better, or else a platoon of Turkish special forces will want to have a word with me—then I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it'll save someone's life. There's no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn't, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.
+
+This is true in a tautological sense: if you deliberately gerrymander your category boundaries in order to get the answer you want, you can get the answer you want, which is great for people who want that answer, and people who don't want to hurt their feelings [(and who don't mind letting themselves get emotionally blackmailed)](/2017/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/).
+
+But it's not very interesting to people like rationalists—although apparently not all people who _self-identify_ as rationalists—who want to use concepts to _describe reality_.
+
+-----
+
+Alexander gives an account of a woman whose ability to function at work was being disrupted by obsessive-compulsive fears of leaving her hair dryer on at home, whose problems were solved by the simple expediency of taking the hair dryer with her when leaving the house. Given that it _worked_ to resolve the woman's distress, we shouldn't care that this isn't how the problems that are categorized as _obsessive-compulsive disorder_ are "supposed" to be treated, and Alexander argues that the same should go for accepting transgender identity claims: if it _works_ for resolving people's gender dysphoria, why not?
+
+The problem is that there are _significant disanalogies_ between leaving a hair dryer in the front seat of one's car, and agreeing that gender should be defined on the basis of self-identity. The former has no appreciable effects on anyone but the person themselves; the latter affects _everyone who wants to use language to categorize humans by sex_. The words _man_ and _woman_ [are top-20 nouns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English#Nouns)! People need those nouns to describe their experiences!
+
(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.)
Imagine if the patient in the hair dryer story were obsessed with the fear not just that _she_ might accidentally leave her hair dryer plugged in unattended, but that that _someone_ might do so, and that it would burn down the whole city. In this slightly modified scenario, insisting that everyone in the city put their hair driers in the front seat of their cars doesn't look like an appealing solution.
I'm not "against" trans people. 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.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
"Who are you going to believe, my sticker, or your lying eyes? There's no rule of rationality saying that you shouldn't believe the sticker, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that you should."
-
-
-To paraphrase the ["Twelve Virtues"](http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/),
-
-> Perhaps your conception of rationality is that it is rational to believe the words of the Great Teacher, and the Great Teacher says, "I'm a woman," and you look at the Great Teacher and see a man. If you think: "It may look like the Great Teacher is a man, but an alternative categorization system is not an error, and borders are not objectively true or false," you lose a chance to discover your mistake.
-
-> Do not ask whether the rules of rationality or human decency say to do this or that. If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
------------------
-
-**DRAFT IS ABOVE THE LINE; BELOW ARE NOTES/SCRAPS/OUTLINING**
-
-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.)
-
-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.
-
-(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/).)
-
-[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]
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-A (cis) female friend of the blog, a member of the Berkeley, California rationalist community reports on recent changes in local social norms—
-
-> 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.
-
-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
-
-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.
-
-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._"
-
-------
-
-[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]
-
-[imagine you're Emperor Norton's best friend and he expresses doubt as to whether he's being hugboxed]
-
-[...]
-
-"What if—what if I'm not actually the Emperor?"
-
-"The categories were made for man, not man for the categories, Your Highness," you say.
-
-[...]
-
-"Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down, ideas, strategies—battle plans?
-
-"But," you caution, "I'd be lying if I told you it was going to be _easy_."
-
-
-------
-
-POINTS TO ADD (not sure where it fits best yet)—
-
- * the one-sidedness is breathtaking—it's as if Alexander's UN inspector said, "These Palestinians are willing to commit suicide to get what they want, so let's just give all of Palestine to them"
-
- * The case for using identified gender rather than biological sex is
- strongest for binary trans people who actually pass.
- * The tack where you show a picture of Buck Angel and say, "You're not
- really going to call this person a woman, are you?" makes a good point
- * It's less strong for ...
- * People who don't pass
- * Passing is a continuum rather than a binary and is also
- observer-dependent, which is inconvenient from the perspective of
- categorization, which tends to stick to bright-lines and Schelling
- points
- * Re observer dependence: quote Serano (do I rely/pick on Serano too
- much?) or someone about how it's actually _harder_ to pass in urban
- areas because people have a higher prior
- * Ref-to-rebut Zinnia Jones on "passing is subjective, therefore it's
- bullshit"
- * "nonbinary people"
- * Normies don't have nonbinary gender in their ontology; at least
- acknowledge that you're making a political demand when you want
- them to adapt
- * What are the decision criteria for nonbinary, anyway? People can
- still _tell_
- * Rundown of social consequences of different criteria—
- * When you have people who are _identifiably_ distinct from natal-sex
- people _and_ not drawn from the same psychological distribution, it
- becomes socially profitable for people to notice and adjust their
- expectations; you can't stop them from doing this
- * separate post "Stereotypes, Models, and Cognition"
- * People are making probabilistic inferences all the time whether
- they realize it or not
- * Being drawn from a different psychological distribution but _not_
- identifiably (AGPs who pass really well) doesn't hurt the dynamics
- as much
- * AGPs aren't drawn from the same psychological distribution as cis
- women. (Briefly explain the typology, but refer to external sources
- for justification. For a more hard-facts empirical justification of
- "not drawn from the same dist'n", cite data on sexual orientation (and
- [contrast](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/905572666332987392))
- and crime rates.)
- * Making it not-OK for people to _talk_ about the categories that they
- internally use to make sense of the world is bad
- * experiences in LWish spaces with lots of trans women: if you
- doctrinairely call everyone women, my brain rebels and wants to
- say, "That's not what I meant and _you fucking know it_." And
- honestly? (And I think they do, in fact, fucking know it.)
- * The inability to have women's clothing swaps is a _real loss_
- * Negotiation-structure: we've been using this word to refer to this
- thing for the past 200,000 years since the invention of language;
- if you want us to stop, you need to offer us something we value
- (and you have nothing to trade with); threatening to kill yourself
- is easily (if callously) countered with "We don't negotiate with
- terrorists"
- * For crime/medical statistics, you need natal sex or third-category.
-
- * The case of Emperor Norton looks cute at first glance, but
- ostensibly-benevolent gaslighting is still problematic (we call it
- _hugboxing_).
- * I've been crazy (link "Memoirs"), and I'm glad my friends patiently told
- me why I was wrong rather than saying "That's nice dear" (maybe quote
- care email).
- * Tell a story about what this could have been like for Norton beginning to
- doubt the reality of his reign.
- * Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
- ask her to put it back up again)
-
-/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/
-
-[point out that legal fictions aren't always taken seriously by people who are trying to talk about the world, use "Europe" examples from acquaintance; Seeing Like a State]
-
-two-types are relevant to trans child debate
-
-Buck Angel pic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Angel#/media/File:Buck_Angel_Headshot.jpg
-
-"Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885 retained a male pattern re criminality
-
-_Slate Star Codex_ 2017 survey: 6939 (87.2%) cis men, 733 (9.2%) cis women, trans women 114 (1.4%): 13.4% trans!!!!
-
--- /dev/null
+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.)
+
+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.
+
+(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/).)
+
+[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]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+A (cis) female friend of the blog, a member of the Berkeley, California rationalist community reports on recent changes in local social norms—
+
+> 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.
+
+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
+
+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.
+
+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._"
+
+------
+
+[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]
+
+[imagine you're Emperor Norton's best friend and he expresses doubt as to whether he's being hugboxed]
+
+[...]
+
+"What if—what if I'm not actually the Emperor?"
+
+"The categories were made for man, not man for the categories, Your Highness," you say.
+
+[...]
+
+"Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down, ideas, strategies—battle plans?
+
+"But," you caution, "I'd be lying if I told you it was going to be _easy_."
+
+
+------
+
+POINTS TO ADD (not sure where it fits best yet)—
+
+ * the one-sidedness is breathtaking—it's as if Alexander's UN inspector said, "These Palestinians are willing to commit suicide to get what they want, so let's just give all of Palestine to them"
+
+ * The case for using identified gender rather than biological sex is
+ strongest for binary trans people who actually pass.
+ * The tack where you show a picture of Buck Angel and say, "You're not
+ really going to call this person a woman, are you?" makes a good point
+ * It's less strong for ...
+ * People who don't pass
+ * Passing is a continuum rather than a binary and is also
+ observer-dependent, which is inconvenient from the perspective of
+ categorization, which tends to stick to bright-lines and Schelling
+ points
+ * Re observer dependence: quote Serano (do I rely/pick on Serano too
+ much?) or someone about how it's actually _harder_ to pass in urban
+ areas because people have a higher prior
+ * Ref-to-rebut Zinnia Jones on "passing is subjective, therefore it's
+ bullshit"
+ * "nonbinary people"
+ * Normies don't have nonbinary gender in their ontology; at least
+ acknowledge that you're making a political demand when you want
+ them to adapt
+ * What are the decision criteria for nonbinary, anyway? People can
+ still _tell_
+ * Rundown of social consequences of different criteria—
+ * When you have people who are _identifiably_ distinct from natal-sex
+ people _and_ not drawn from the same psychological distribution, it
+ becomes socially profitable for people to notice and adjust their
+ expectations; you can't stop them from doing this
+ * separate post "Stereotypes, Models, and Cognition"
+ * People are making probabilistic inferences all the time whether
+ they realize it or not
+ * Being drawn from a different psychological distribution but _not_
+ identifiably (AGPs who pass really well) doesn't hurt the dynamics
+ as much
+ * AGPs aren't drawn from the same psychological distribution as cis
+ women. (Briefly explain the typology, but refer to external sources
+ for justification. For a more hard-facts empirical justification of
+ "not drawn from the same dist'n", cite data on sexual orientation (and
+ [contrast](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/905572666332987392))
+ and crime rates.)
+ * Making it not-OK for people to _talk_ about the categories that they
+ internally use to make sense of the world is bad
+ * experiences in LWish spaces with lots of trans women: if you
+ doctrinairely call everyone women, my brain rebels and wants to
+ say, "That's not what I meant and _you fucking know it_." And
+ honestly? (And I think they do, in fact, fucking know it.)
+ * The inability to have women's clothing swaps is a _real loss_
+ * Negotiation-structure: we've been using this word to refer to this
+ thing for the past 200,000 years since the invention of language;
+ if you want us to stop, you need to offer us something we value
+ (and you have nothing to trade with); threatening to kill yourself
+ is easily (if callously) countered with "We don't negotiate with
+ terrorists"
+ * For crime/medical statistics, you need natal sex or third-category.
+
+ * The case of Emperor Norton looks cute at first glance, but
+ ostensibly-benevolent gaslighting is still problematic (we call it
+ _hugboxing_).
+ * I've been crazy (link "Memoirs"), and I'm glad my friends patiently told
+ me why I was wrong rather than saying "That's nice dear" (maybe quote
+ care email).
+ * Tell a story about what this could have been like for Norton beginning to
+ doubt the reality of his reign.
+ * Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
+ ask her to put it back up again)
+
+/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/
+
+[point out that legal fictions aren't always taken seriously by people who are trying to talk about the world, use "Europe" examples from acquaintance; Seeing Like a State]
+
+two-types are relevant to trans child debate
+
+Buck Angel pic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Angel#/media/File:Buck_Angel_Headshot.jpg
+
+"Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885 retained a male pattern re criminality
+
+_Slate Star Codex_ 2017 survey: 6939 (87.2%) cis men, 733 (9.2%) cis women, trans women 114 (1.4%): 13.4% trans!!!!
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff