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-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:
+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-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.
Another factor affecting the degree to which trans people form a more natural category with their identified gender than their natal physiological sex is the nature of transgenderedness itself. If gender dysphoria is caused by a brain-restricted intersex condition, such that trans people's psychology is much more typical of the other physiological sex—if the "woman trapped in a man's body" trope is basically accurate—that would tend to weigh in favor of accepting transgender identity claims: trans women would be "coming from the same place" as natal women in a very literal psychological sense, despite their natal physiology.
-On the other hand, if gender dysphoria is caused by something else, that would tend to weigh against accepting transgender identity claims: however strongly felt trans people's _subjective_ sense of gender identity might be, if the mechanism underlying that feeling actually has nothing in particular in common with anything people of the identified-with sex feel, it becomes relatively more tempting to classify the subjective sense of gender identity as an illusion, rather than the joint in reality around which everyone needs to carve their gender categories.
+On the other hand, if gender dysphoria is caused by something else, that would tend to weigh against accepting transgender identity claims: however strongly felt trans people's _subjective_ sense of gender identity might be, if the mechanism underlying that feeling actually has nothing in particular in common with anything people of the identified-with sex feel, it becomes relatively more tempting to classify the subjective sense of gender identity as an illusion, rather than the joint in reality around which everyone needs to carve their gender categories. (It [shouldn't be surprising](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities) that people can be mistaken about the nature of their subjective experiences. A trans man who reports knowing himself to be a man is expressing the _hypothesis_ that his subjective experience is the same as that of typical natal males in the relevant aspects, but this is an empirical claim that could be falsified by sufficiently advanced neuroscience.)
Of course, the phrasing _If gender dysphoria is caused by ..._ implies that we're considering _gender dysphoria_ as one category to reason about homogeneously. But different people might want to transition for very different underlying psychological reasons. What categories we use may not be a question of simple fact that we can get wrong, but if, empirically, there happens to be a sufficiently robust statistical structure to the simple facts of the cases—if some people want to transition for reason _A_ and tend to have traits _W_ and _X_, but others want to transition for reason _B_ and have traits _Y_ and _Z_—then aspiring epistemic rationalists may find it useful to distinguish multiple, distinct psychological conditions that all happen to cause gender dysphoria as a symptom.
Analogously, in medicine, many different pathogens can cause the same symptoms (_e.g._, sneezing, or fever), but doctors care about distinguishing different illnesses by etiology, not just symptoms, because distinct physical mechanisms can give rise to distinct treatment decisions, if not immediately, then at least in principle. (For example, a bacterial illness will respond to antibiotics, but a viral one won't—or today's treatments might be equally effective against two different species of bacteria, but future drugs might work better on one or the other.)
-_As it happens_, (I claim that) the evidence that gender dysphoria is more than one thing is quite strong. For reasons of personal interest, I'm going to focus on the male-to-female case for the rest of this post. (An analysis of the female-to-male situation would be similar in many respects but different in others, and is left to the interested reader.)
+_As it happens_, (I claim that) the evidence that gender dysphoria comprises more than one etiologically distinct condition is quite strong. For the rest of this post, I'm going to focus on the male-to-female case for reasons of personal interest (see many other [posts](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/) [on](/2017/Jan/the-erotic-target-location-gift/) [this](/2017/Dec/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009/) [blog](/2016/Nov/chromatic-key/)), quality of available research (the etiology of trans men is less well-researched and the [distribution may be changing](http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/09/13/trans_youth_clinics_are_seeing_more_trans_boys_than_before_why.html)), and societal impact (which I would claim is asymmetric between MtF and FtM for several reasons). An analysis of the female-to-male situation would be similar in many respects but different in others, and is left to the interested reader.
-A minority of male-to-female transsexuals exhibit lifelong sex-atypical behavior and interests, are attracted to men, and transition early in life. Essentially, these are physiological males whose psychology is so far outside of the male normal range that they find themselves more comfortable and socially successful living as women rather than as extremely effeminate gay men. This likely _is_ a brain-intersex condition: [along with non-gender-dysphoric gay men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation), they [have a statistical preponderance of older brothers](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-011-9777-6) which is [theorized to be due to the mother's immune system response to male fetuses affecting the development of later pregnancies](http://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/302).
+A minority of male-to-female transsexuals exhibit lifelong sex-atypical behavior and interests, are attracted to men (note: female-typical sexual orientation), and transition early in life (typically no later than their early twenties). Essentially, these are physiological males whose psychology is so far outside of the male normal range along so many dimensions that they find themselves more comfortable and socially successful living as women rather than as extremely effeminate gay men. This likely _is_ a brain-intersex condition: [along with non-gender-dysphoric gay men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation), they [have a statistical preponderance of older brothers](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-011-9777-6) which is [theorized to be due to the mother's immune system response to male fetuses affecting the development of later pregnancies](http://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/302).
-However, the majority of male-to-female trans people in Western countries do not fit this profile. They are attracted to women or are bisexual and, while reporting a desire to be female dating back to puberty or childhood, their lives tend to follow broadly male-typical trajectories prior to transition. In contrast to the "early-onset", androphilic type of gender-dysphoric males who couldn't fit in to the world as men if they tried, this second group of "late-onset", non-exclusively-androphilic gender-dysphoric males _can_ function socially as men, we just—aspire to a higher form of existence. (I think I'm justified in counting myself in this taxon even though I'm [choosing not to transition](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/).)
+However, the majority of male-to-female trans people in Western countries do not fit this profile. They are attracted to women or are bisexual and, while reporting a desire to be female dating back to puberty or earlier in childhood, they don't exhibit an _unusual_ number of female-typical traits compared to other males. In contrast to the "early-onset", androphilic type, who couldn't fit in to the world as men if they tried, this second group of "late-onset", non-exclusively-androphilic gender-dysphoric males _can_ function socially as men; we just—aspire to a higher form of existence. (I think I'm justified in counting myself in this taxon even though I'm [choosing not to transition](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/).) The covertness of late-onset gender dysphoria explains why someone like [Caitlyn Jenner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caitlyn_Jenner) can have a long, successful public existence as a man—winning men's decathalons, racing sports cars, marrying women and fathering children—before eventually deciding to transition at age 65.
-This proposed two-type taxonomy of MtF trans people is very controversial, probably in large part because it is theorized that the non-exclusively-androphilic type is rooted in an unusual sexual interest termed _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"). Anne Lawrence, herself a self-identified autogynephilic transsexual, iconically describes autogynephiles as ["men who love women and want to become what they love."](http://annelawrence.com/becoming_what_we_love.pdf)
+This proposed two-type taxonomy of trans women is very controversial, probably in large part because it's part of a theory that claims that the late-onset type is rooted in an unusual sexual interest termed _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"). Anne Lawrence, herself a self-identified autogynephilic transsexual, iconically describes autogynephiles as ["men who love women and want to become what they love."](http://annelawrence.com/becoming_what_we_love.pdf)
A review of the empirical evidence for the two-type taxonomy is beyond the scope of this post. To interested or skeptical readers who only have time to read one paper, I recommend 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 the first two chapters of Lawrence's monograph [_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/).
-To avoid getting mired in _unnecessary_ controversy, for the purposes of this post, I'd like to emphasize that it's possible to reject the hypothesis that autogynephilia is the _cause_ of the second type, while [still agreeing that](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/against-blanchardianism/) there observationally seem to be _at least_ two types of trans women, with the late-onset/non-exclusively-androphilic type or types being less overtly feminine and not sharing the etiology of the early-onset/androphilic type. (Personally, I _do_ think autogynephilia has a causal role, but that's another post.)
+To avoid the main ideas of this post getting mired in _unnecessary_ controversy, I'd like to emphasize that it's possible to reject the hypothesis that autogynephilia is the _cause_ of the second type, while [still agreeing that](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/against-blanchardianism/) there observationally seem to be _at least_ two types of trans women, with the late-onset/non-exclusively-androphilic type or types being less overtly feminine and not sharing the etiology of the early-onset/androphilic type. Between the statistical signal in the psychology literature (I again defer to [Brown's review](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/)), and studying the public biographies of trans women (the life-arcs of people like Jenner or [the Wachowski sisters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wachowskis) seem noticeably different from those of people like [Janet Mock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Mock) or [Laverne Cox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laverne_Cox)), I think this should be hard to dispute.
-Note that we _are_ supposing that the late-onset type or types is not an intersex condition—or at most, a very mild one: we could perhaps imagine a gender identity "switch" in the brain that can get flipped around (explaining the eventual need to transition) without much affecting other sexually-dimorphic parts of the brain (explaining how transition could be delayed so long, and come as such a surprise to others).
+(To be clear, I _do_ think autogynephilia has a causal role in the late-onset type, but again, we can leave that to other posts.)
-This hypothesis is weaker than the autogynephilia theory, but still has implications for the ways in which transgender identity claims might or might not be validated by natural, prediction-motivated categorization schemes. If most trans women's traits are noticeably _not drawn from the female distribution_, then it becomes less practical to insist that others categorize them as women.
+We _are_, however, supposing that the late-onset type or types is either not an intersex condition, or at _most_, a very mild one: we could perhaps imagine a gender identity "switch" in the brain that can get flipped around (explaining the eventual need to transition) without much affecting other sexually-dimorphic parts of the brain (explaining how transition could be delayed so long, and come as such a surprise to others).
+
+This hypothesis is weaker than the autogynephilia theory, but still has implications for the ways in which transgender identity claims might or might not be validated by natural, prediction-motivated categorization schemes. If most trans women's traits are noticeably _not drawn from from the female distribution_, that's a factor making it less practical to insist that others categorize them as women.
To this it might be objected that there are many different types of women. Clusters can internally have many subclusters: Pureto Rican women (or married women, or young women, or lesbians, _&c_.) don't have the _same_ distribution of traits as women as a whole, and yet are still women. Why should "trans" be different from any other adjective one might use to specify a subcategory of women?
-What makes this difficult is that—under the two-types hypothesis where gender dysphoria in non-exclusively-androphilic biological males is mostly not an intersex condition—most trans women aren't just not part of the female cluster in configuration space, displaced from its center in some arbitrary direction. They're specifically part of the _male_ cluster along most dimensions, which people _already_ have a concept for.
+What makes this difficult is that—supposing the two-types hypothesis is true and gender dysphoria in non-exclusively-androphilic biological males is mostly not an intersex condition—most trans women aren't just not part of the female cluster in configuration space, displaced from its center in some arbitrary direction. They're specifically part of _male_ cluster along many or most dimensions, which people _already_ have a concept for.
<a href="/images/genderspace_cluster_choice.png"><img src="/images/genderspace_cluster_choice.png" width="479" height="379" alt="genderspace cluster choice"></a>
-In less tolerant places and decades, where MtF 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. This is why experienced crossdressers often report it being easier to pass in rural or suburban areas rather than cities with a larger LGBT presence—not as a matter of tolerant social attitudes, but as a matter of _base rates_: it's harder to get [clocked](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clocked&defid=4884301) by people who aren't aware that being trans is even a thing. (In [predictive processing](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/) terms: the prediction errors caused by observations of a trans woman failing to match the observer's generative model of (natal) women get silenced for lack of alternative hypotheses if "She's trans" isn't in the observer's hypothesis space.)
+In less tolerant places and decades, where MtF 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. [This is why](/2018/Feb/blegg-mode/) experienced crossdressers often report it being easier to pass in rural or suburban areas rather than cities with a larger LGBT presence—not as a matter of tolerant social attitudes, but as a matter of _base rates_: it's harder to get [clocked](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clocked&defid=4884301) by people who aren't aware that being trans is even a thing. (In [predictive processing](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/) terms: the prediction errors caused by observations of a trans woman failing to match the observer's generative model of (natal) women get silenced for lack of alternative hypotheses if "She's trans" isn't in the observer's hypothesis space.)
Nowadays, in progressive enclaves of Western countries, transness is definitely known to be a thing—and in particular subcultures 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](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/03/ssc-survey-results-2018/), 9.4% of respondents selected _F (cisgender)_ for the gender question, compared to 1.4% of respondents selecting _F (transgender m → f)_. So, if trans women are women, _13.4%_ (!!) of women who read _Slate Star Codex_ are trans.
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