> THERE'S A WORD FOR IT. _There's a word for it._ I don't know whether to be happy that there's an adjective for what I have, or sad that other men have it, & that it's not mine, & only mine. Bless Wikipedia for showing me [...] But still, after all emotions have fitted themselves away, there is the word. "Autogynephilia." So simple; I know all the foreign roots; I should have thought of it. "Autogynephilic." That's what I am.
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And:
> Scarcity is a _metaphysical_ fact, so why am I hurt when my word (which I didn't invent & only discovered a few hours ago) has so many connotations attached to it that I don't like? The dictionary definition is perfect for me, but all the exposition after that has to do with transsexualism, which annoys me, although thinking of it now, I suppose it would seem to be a logical extension to some. I'm autogynephilic _without_ being gender-dysphoric—_or am I?_ _If_ transitioning cheap & fast & painless & perfect—wouldn't I at least be tempted? What I can't stand is transsexuals who want to express the man/woman they "truly are inside"—because I don't think there's any such thing. It _has_ to be about sex—because gender shouldn't exist.
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<a id="views-have-changed"></a>My views on gender have changed a _lot_ over the past ten years—most notably, I'm not a psychological sex differences denialist anymore, so I'm afraid I can no longer endorse that "gender shouldn't exist" stance. (Given that sex differences exist and people aren't going to _pretend not to notice_, social-role defaults are inevitably going to accrete around them.)
The monetary offer, admittedly, was awkward: I included another paragraph clarifying that any payment was only to get his attention, and not _quid quo pro_ advertising, and that if he didn't trust his brain circuitry not to be corrupted by money, then he might want to reject the offer on those grounds and only read the post if he expected it to be genuinely interesting.
-Again, I realize this must seem weird and cultish to any normal people reading this. (Paying some blogger you follow one grand just to _read_ one of your posts? What? Why? Who _does_ that?) To this, I again refer to the reasons justifying my 2016 cheerful price offer—and that, along with tagging in Anna and Michael, who I thought Yudkowsky respected, it was a way to signal that I _really really really didn't want to be ignored_, which I assumed was the default outcome. Surely an ordinary programmer such as me was as a mere _worm_ in the presence of the great Eliezer Yudkowsky. I wouldn't have had the audacity to contact him at _all_, about _anything_, if I didn't have Something to Protect.
+Again, I realize this must seem weird and cultish to any normal people reading this. (Paying some blogger you follow one grand just to _read_ one of your posts? What? Why? Who _does_ that?) To this, I again refer to [the reasons justifying my 2016 cheerful price offer](/2023/Jun/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/#cheerful-price-reasons)—and that, along with tagging in Anna and Michael, who I thought Yudkowsky respected, it was a way to signal that I _really really really didn't want to be ignored_, which I assumed was the default outcome. Surely an ordinary programmer such as me was as a mere _worm_ in the presence of the great Eliezer Yudkowsky. I wouldn't have had the audacity to contact him at _all_, about _anything_, if I didn't have Something to Protect.
Anna didn't reply, but I apparently did interest Michael, who chimed in on the email thread to Yudkowsky. We had a long phone conversation the next day lamenting how the "rationalists" were dead as an intellectual community.
_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 between _sex_-as-in-biological-sex and _sex_-as-in-intercourse. (Judging by this blog's domain name, I'm not immune to this, either.) 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 beautiful pure 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 in some way more relevant, and should take precedence. So where does that leave me? In ["Sexual Dimorphism ..."](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/), I wrote about my _own_ experiences, and not anyone else's (which I obviously don't have access to). I _mentioned_ transgenderedness a number of times, but I tried to cast it as explanation that one might be tempted to apply to my case, but which I don't think fits. Everything I said is _consistent_ with a world in which Ray Blanchard was being dumb and wrong when he coined "autogynephilia" as the obvious and perfect word for my thing while studying actual transsexuals—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 ten years after [encountering the obvious and perfect word](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/).
+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 in some way more relevant, and should take precedence. So where does that leave me? In ["Sexual Dimorphism ..."](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/), I wrote about my _own_ experiences, and not anyone else's (which I obviously don't have access to). I _mentioned_ transgenderedness a number of times, but I tried to cast it as explanation that one might be tempted to apply to my case, but which I don't think fits. Everything I said is _consistent_ with a world in which Ray Blanchard was being dumb and wrong when he coined "autogynephilia" (which is sometimes abbreviated as _AGP_) as the obvious and perfect word for my thing while studying actual transsexuals—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 ten years after [encountering the obvious and perfect word](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/).
My first clue that I wasn't living in that world came from—Eliezer Yudkowsky. (Well, not my first _clue_. In retrospect, there were lots of _clues_. My first wake-up call.) In [a 26 March 2016 Facebook post](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154078468809228), he wrote—
Indeed—here we are over seven years later, and _I am panicking_.[^panic] (As 2007–9 Sequences-era Yudkowsky [taught me](https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good), and 2016 Facebook-shitposting-era Yudkowsky seemed to ignore, the thing that makes a moral panic _really_ interesting is how hard it is to know you're on the right side of it—and the importance of [panicking](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/erGipespbbzdG5zYb/the-third-alternative) [sideways](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/05/policy_tugowar.html) when the "maximize the number of trans people" and "minimize the number of trans people" coalitions are both wrong.)
-[^panic]: Or rather, I _did_ panic from mid-2016 to mid-2021, and this and the following posts are the retrospective accounting of that panic, a memoir written in the ashes of my defeat.
+[^panic]: Or rather, I _did_ panic from mid-2016 to mid-2021, and this and the following posts are the retrospective accounting of that panic, a memoir telling the Whole Dumb Story, written in the ashes of my defeat.
But at the time, this was merely _very confusing_. I left [a careful comment in the Facebook thread](/images/facebook_etle_comment.png) (with the obligatory "speaking only for myself; I obviously know that I can't say anything about anyone else's experience" [disclaimer](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html)), quietly puzzled at what Yudkowsky could _possibly_ be thinking.
(With the caveated understanding that psychology is complicated and there's [a lot to be said about what "as a first approximation" is even supposed to mean](/2022/Jul/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model/), but I need a few paragraphs to first talk about the _simple_ version of the theory that makes _pretty good_ predictions on _average_, as a prerequisite for more complicated theories that might make even better predictions including on cases that diverge from average.)
-The theory was put forth by Blanchard in a series of journal articles in the late 'eighties and early 'nineties, but notably popularized [(to some controversy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen#Negative_reactions) by J. Michael Bailey in the popular-level book _The Man Who Would be Queen_ in 'aught-three. The idea is that male-to-female transsexualism isn't actually one phenomenon; it's two completely different phenomena that don't actually have anything to do with each other, except for the (perhaps) indicated treatments of hormone therapy, surgery, and social transition. (Compare to how different medical conditions might happen to respond to the same drug.)
+The theory was put forth by Blanchard in a series of journal articles in the late 'eighties and early 'nineties, but notably popularized [(to some controversy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen#Negative_reactions) by J. Michael Bailey in the popular-level book _The Man Who Would Be Queen_ in 'aught-three. The idea is that male-to-female transsexualism isn't actually one phenomenon; it's two completely different phenomena that don't actually have anything to do with each other, except for the (perhaps) indicated treatments of hormone therapy, surgery, and social transition. (Compare to how different medical conditions might happen to respond to the same drug.)
In one taxon, the "early-onset" type, you have same-sex-attracted males who have just been extremely feminine (in social behavior, interests, _&c._) their entire lives going back to early childhood, in a way that's salient to other people and causes big social problems for them—the far tail of effeminate gay men who end up fitting into Society better as straight women. (Blanchard called them "homosexual transsexuals", which is sometimes abbreviated as _HSTS_.) _That's_ where the "woman trapped inside a man's body" trope comes from. [This one probably _is_ a brain-intersex condition.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3180619/)
What's the _usual_ reason for males to be obsessed with female bodies?
-So, basically, I think a _substantial majority_ of trans women under modern conditions in Western countries are autogynephilic (sometimes abbreviated _AGP_): essentially, guys like me who were _less self-aware about what the thing actually is_. It's not an innate gender identity; it's a sexual orientation that's _surprisingly easy to misinterpret_ as a gender identity.
+So, basically, 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_. It's not an innate gender identity; it's a sexual orientation that's _surprisingly easy to misinterpret_ as a gender identity.
I realize this is an inflammatory 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, _possibly_ have the astounding arrogance to reply, "No, I think you're really just a perverted male like me"?
My shift in belief, from thinking the standard 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—from my reading, from correspondence with the aforementioned [Kay Brown](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/)—and also as I kept initiating conversations with local trans women to try to figure out what was going on.
-Someone I met at the Berkeley _Less Wrong_ meetup named Ziz[^ziz-privacy] denied experiencing autogynephilia at all, and I believe her—but it seems worth noting that Ziz was unusual along a lot of dimensions; again, I don't think a psychological theory needs to predict _every_ case in order to be broadly useful for understanding the world.
+Someone I met at the Berkeley _Less Wrong_ meetup who went by Ziz[^ziz-privacy] denied experiencing autogynephilia at all, and I believe her—but it seems worth noting that Ziz was unusual along a lot of dimensions; again, I don't think a psychological theory needs to predict _every_ case in order to be broadly useful for understanding the world.
[^ziz-privacy]: Ziz [wrote about her interactions with me in _her_ memoir](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) and explicitly confirmed with me on 5 November 2019 that we weren't under any confidentiality agreements with each other, so it seems fine for me to name her here, in contrast to how I'm leaving other private individuals unnamed or assigning them pseudonyms.
I was happy to sit through the sessions as standard procedure rather than [going DIY](https://diytrans.wiki/How_to_Begin_HRT), but I was very preoccupied with the thing about how [_everyone had been lying to me about the most important thing in my life for fourteen years_](/2017/Jan/im-sick-of-being-lied-to/) and the professionals were _in on it_, and spent a lot of the sessions ranting about that. I gave the psychologist and one of the LCSWs a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_. (The psychologist said she wasn't allowed to accept gifts with a monetary value of over $25, so I didn't tell her that it actually cost $40.)
-I got the sense that the shrinks didn't quite know what to make of me. Years after the fact, I was grateful to discover that the notes from the appointments were later made available to me via the provider's website [(despite this practice introducing questionable incentives for the shrinks going forward)](https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/jia4ox/has_scott_written_about_this_im_curious_what_his/ga6vhke/); it's very amusing to read about (for example) one of the LCSWs discussing my case with the department director and "explor[ing] ways in which pt's [patient's] neurodiversity may be impacting his ability to think about desired gender changes and communicate to therapists".
+<a id="gender-clinic-notes"></a>I got the sense that the shrinks didn't quite know what to make of me. Years after the fact, I was grateful to discover that the notes from the appointments were later made available to me via the provider's website [(despite this practice introducing questionable incentives for the shrinks going forward)](https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/jia4ox/has_scott_written_about_this_im_curious_what_his/ga6vhke/); it's very amusing to read about (for example) one of the LCSWs discussing my case with the department director and "explor[ing] ways in which pt's [patient's] neurodiversity may be impacting his ability to think about desired gender changes and communicate to therapists".
The reality was actually worse than my hostile summary that everyone was lying, and the professionals were in on it. [In some ways, it would be _better_](/2016/new-clothes/) if the professionals secretly agreed with me about the typology and were cynically lying in order to rake in that sweet pharma cash. But they're not—lying. They just, have this whole paradigm of providing ["equitable" and "compassionate" "gender-affirming care"](https://thrive.kaiserpermanente.org/care-near-you/northern-california/eastbay/departments/gender-affirming-care/) which is transparently garbage-tier epistemology ([for a belief that needs to be affirmed is not a belief at all](/2020/Apr/peering-through-reverent-fingers/)), but is so pervasive within its adherents' milieu, that they're incapable of seeing someone not buying it, even when you state your objections very clearly.
_ phenotypic capture and memetic identity (insert into pt. 1)
pre-edit phase—
-_ footnote about "density of outright falsehoods"
_ security code drama?? ("Although, speaking of documenting" 2 March)
_ integrate 5150 scene scraps into a coherent section
_ hostile prereader? (first-choice: April)
_ professional editor?
+Needed for pt. 1—
+- "Thomas" [pt. 1-2]
_ Tail (AGP discussion) [pt. 1]
-- "Thomas" [blanket]
+_ Sarah (name mention, whether to name conversation) [pt. 1-3]
+_ Sophia [pt. 1-2]
_ Anna [blanket]
-_ Sarah (name mention, whether to name conversation) [blanket]
-_ Ben/Jessica (Michael) [blanket]
+
+Needed for pt. 2–3—
_ Scott [blanket]
+_ Ben/Jessica (Michael) [pt. 2-]
_ Divia? (ask if she wants to be mentioned?) [blanket]
-_ "Bill" [blanket]
-_ Sophia [pt. 1-2]
-
+_ "Bill" [pt. 3-]
_ "Roberta"? [pt. 2]
_ Alicorn: briefly, and for Melkor Glowfic reference link [pt. 2-3]
_ "Noreen" [pt. 2]
--------------
-from the top editing session— bookmark phrase "In a Facebook thread"
+from the top editing session— bookmark phrase "The thing about being psychiatrically"
----------------
------
With internet available—
+_ define ersatz
_ link to my Facebook post for Coming Out Day
_ "All You Zombies"
_ links to PA hospitals
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff