> 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/)[ref]It is tempting to interpret Alexander's Turkish special forces metaphor as particularly telling in this light.[/ref]).
+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/)[ref]It is tempting to interpret Alexander's Turkish special forces reference as particularly telling in this light.[/ref]).
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_.
So a natal female who presents to the world as a man, and whom other people _model_ as a man on a System 1 level with no apparent incongruities, might be said to be a man in the sense of social gender (but not in the sense of "biologically male adult human"), because that's the mental category that people are actually using for him, and therefore, the social class that he actually functions as a member of. Essentially, this is the argument that offers a photograph of a passing trans person, and says, "C'mon, do you _really_ want to call [this person](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Angel#/media/File:Buck_Angel_Headshot.jpg) a woman?"
-Well, no. But the point is that this is an _empirical_ argument for why successfully socially-transitioned trans people fit into _existing_ concepts of gender, _not_ a redefinition of top-20 nouns by fiat in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings. It works _because_ and _to the extent that_ transitioning actually works. To the extent that this fails to be true of self-identified trans people or some subset thereof—for example, insofar as physical transition _isn't_ always effective, or insofar as people _do_ have legitimate use-cases for biological-sex classifications that aren't "fooled" by hormones and surgery—then the conclusion is correspondingly weakened.
+Well, no. But the point is that this is an _empirical_ argument for why successfully socially-transitioned trans people fit into _existing_ concepts of gender, _not_ a redefinition of top-20 nouns by fiat in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings. It works _because_ and _to the extent that_ transitioning actually works. To the extent that this fails to be true of self-identified trans people or some subset thereof—for example, insofar as physical transition _isn't_ always effective, or insofar as people _do_ have legitimate use-cases for biological-sex classifications that aren't "fooled" by hormones and surgery[ref]_E.g._, discussions of reproduction[/ref]—then the conclusion is correspondingly weakened.
-----
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 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.[ref]To be clear, I _do_ think autogynephilia has a causal role in late-onset gender dysphoria in males, but justifying that can be left to other posts; arguments can only be strengthened by leaving out [burdensome details](http://lesswrong.com/lw/jk/burdensome_details/).[/ref] Between the statistical signal in the psychology literature (I again defer to [Brown's review](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/)), and study of the public biographies of trans women (the life-arcs of people like Jenner or [the Wachowski sisters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wachowskis) _look 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 is hard to dispute.[ref]But for reference, some of the most popular critiques of the typology (often—I claim erroneously—cited as [debunkings](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/13/debunked-and-well-refuted/)) are [Serano 2010](http://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf) and [Moser 2010](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/moser-blanchards_autogynephilia_theory_a_critique.pdf).[/ref]
+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.[ref]To be clear, I _do_ think autogynephilia has a causal role in late-onset gender dysphoria in males, but justifying that can be left to other posts; arguments can only be strengthened by leaving out [burdensome details](http://lesswrong.com/lw/jk/burdensome_details/).[/ref] Between the statistical signal in the psychology literature (I again defer to [Brown's review](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/)) and study of the public biographies of trans women (the life-arcs of people like Jenner or [the Wachowski sisters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wachowskis) _look 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 is hard to dispute.[ref]But for reference, some of the most popular critiques of the typology (often—I claim erroneously—cited as [debunkings](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/13/debunked-and-well-refuted/)) are [Serano 2010](http://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf) and [Moser 2010](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/moser-blanchards_autogynephilia_theory_a_critique.pdf).[/ref]
I _am_, 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.
> I think of women's restrooms as safe havens. If a suspicious looking man is following me on the street, or I am concerned about someone male being a danger to me because they are loud and shouty and sexist or catcalling, I will sometimes make a beeline for the nearest women's restroom because I know that is a safe haven. Other people might not intervene if someone is just suspiciously following me, but there is a strong taboo against men in women's restrooms and I feel confident that the men will either not follow me in there due to that taboo or other women will intervene if they do. It's also got useful plausible deniability: I, and potential bystanders, may not be willing to say "you are a possible instigator of violence and we feel unsafe" because that's rude, but we can say "you're not allowed in here, this is a woman's bathroom" because coming into the wrong bathroom is ruder. If that safe haven did not exist because there was no taboo against people who look male in female restrooms, I would be extremely distressed about the non-possibility of retreating somewhere safe, and be much less comfortable entering clubs or pubs or other public party/drink-themed spaces. It would likely cause me to not go to some of them.
-Of course, the existence of these complaints from women don't necessarily imply any particular policy position. One could say, "Cis women who don't want trans women in women's spaces need to unlearn their bigotry." (Consider that this is exactly what we say to white people who don't feel comfortable sharing water fountains with black people.) But it's important to recognize that this is an issue with real stakes on the "anti-trans" side as well as the "pro-trans" side. Critics of gender-as-self-identification aren't just being arbitrarily mean to trans people for no reason. A lot of (cis) women believe that they have an interest in having hospital wards and domestic violence shelters and [sports leagues](/2017/Jun/questions-such-as-wtf-is-wrong-with-you-people/) and some social events without any obviously biologically-male people in them. Telling them that "the categories were made for man, not man for the categories" is _not addressing their concerns_—concerns that are about the actual distribution of bodies and minds in the real world that can't be changed by calling things different names.
+Of course, the existence of these complaints from women don't necessarily imply any particular policy position. One could say, "Cis women who don't want trans women in women's spaces need to unlearn their bigotry." (Consider that this is exactly what we say to white people who don't feel comfortable sharing water fountains with black people.) But it's important to at least recognize that this is an issue with real stakes on the "anti-trans" side as well as the "pro-trans" side. Critics of gender-as-self-identification aren't just being arbitrarily mean to trans people for no reason. A lot of women believe that they have an interest in having hospital wards and domestic violence shelters and [sports leagues](/2017/Jun/questions-such-as-wtf-is-wrong-with-you-people/) and some social events without any obviously biologically-male people in them. Telling them that "the categories were made for man, not man for the categories" is _not addressing their concerns_—concerns that are about the actual distribution of bodies and minds in the real world that can't be changed by calling things different names.
-People should get what they want. We should have social norms that help people get what they want. I don't _know_ what the optimal social norms about transitioning would be. As a transhumanist as and as an individualist, I want to protect people's freedom to modify their body and social presentation, which _implies_ the right to transition. For the same reasons, I want to protect freedom of association, which _implies_ the right to be able to have sex-segregated spaces that are actually segregated by biological sex should there exist demand for that kind of space.
+-----
+
+People should get what they want. We should have social norms that help people get what they want. I don't _know_ what the optimal social norms about transitioning would be. As a transhumanist and as an individualist, I want to protect people's freedom to modify their body and social presentation, which _implies_ the right to transition. For the same reasons, I want to protect freedom of association, which _implies_ the right to be able to have sex-segregated spaces that are actually segregated by biological sex should there exist demand for that kind of space.
People should get what they want. Social science is hard and I want to _try_ to avoid politics as much as I can.[ref]Unfortunately, a very challenging goal in the gender blogging business.[/ref] When different people's wants come into conflict, it's not for me to say what the optimal compromise is; it's too much for me to compute.
-(photograph by [Lucia A. Schwarz](https://twitter.com/Lucia_A_Schwarz/status/949315365842116608))
+<span class="photo-credit">[(photograph by Lucia A. Schwarz)](https://twitter.com/Lucia_A_Schwarz/status/949315365842116608)</span>
-But this isn't how _anyone_ actually thinks about gender!
+But this isn't how _anyone_ actually thinks about gender! The subconscious perceptual systems by which we notice people's sex aren't going to _turn off_ because _a sign said so_. The harsh truth is, if you need a sticker to get people to gender you correctly, _your transition has failed_.
-If you need a sticker to get people to gender you correctly, _your transition has failed_.
-
-In a free Society, everyone should have the right to express themselves, to modify their body and social presentation however they see fit. But having your best to present your true self, you can't—not even _shouldn't_, but _can't_—exert detailed control how other people perceive you.
+In a free Society, everyone should have the right to express themselves, to modify their body and social presentation however they see fit. But having done your best to present your true self, you can't—not even _shouldn't_, but _can't_—exert detailed control how other people perceive you.
All you can do is incentivize them to lie.
-And when the laudable instinct to be kind gets corrupted into [universal socially-mandatory lies](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/)—when a man can wear a sticker that says "SHE" and say, "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" and the _finest minds of my generation_ can permit themselves no other response than, "She's absolutely correct; the categories were made for man, not man for the categories."
+This is the other problem with gender-as-self-identification: passing is hard and not-passing hurts, so kind-hearted people try to protect their trans friends from the painful realization that they don't pass—with the inevitable result that the laudable instinct to be kind gets corrupted into [universal socially-mandatory lies](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/).
+
+—when a man can wear a sticker that says "SHE" and say, "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" and the _finest minds of my generation_ can permit themselves no other response than, "She's absolutely correct; the categories were made for man, not man for the categories."
This is not rationality. This isn't even kindness. We're _smarter_ than this.
Norton's story is certainly _entertaining to read about_ a hundred and forty years after the fact. But before endorsing it as a model of humane behavior, I think it's worth dwelling on what it would be like to live through, not just read about as a historical curiosity.
-What if one of your friends had a mental break and decided that they were Emperor of the United States? Would it be kind, just, respectful to them for you to play along, and _keep_ playing along for the rest of your lives? To solemnly defer to their imperial majesty to their face, and then gush about how heartwarmingly episodic it is when they're not around?
+What if one of your friends had a mental break and decided that they were Emperor of the United States? Would it be kind, fair, respectful to them for you to play along, and _keep_ playing along for the rest of your lives? To solemnly defer to their imperial majesty to their face, and then gush about how heartwarmingly episodic it is when they're not around?
What if it were _you_?
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