I don't know what _you_ should do! Why would I know that? (Also, what does this "should" thing even _mean_, anyway?)
-I'm _saying_ that useful words correspond to predictively useful concepts, and that biological sex is a predictively useful concept, and that there are at least two distinct classes of psychological motivation for why some males wish they could change sex, one of which is not an intersex condition, and that our currently-existing hormonal and surgical interventions for approximating a sex change are imperfect, such that there are some circumstances where someone making predictions or decisions about a trans person might want to base those predictions or decisions on their model of the person's [developmental sex](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/) rather than their target gender, and to use corresponding non-obfuscated language in the context of those circumstances.
+I'm _saying_ that useful words correspond to predictively useful concepts, and that biological sex is a predictively useful concept, and that there are at least two distinct classes of psychological motivation for why some males wish they could change sex, one of which is not an intersex condition, and that our currently-existing hormonal and surgical interventions for approximating a sex change are imperfect, such that there are some circumstances where someone making predictions or decisions about a trans person might want to base those predictions or decisions on the person's [developmental sex](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/) rather than their target gender, and to use corresponding non-obfuscated language in the context of those circumstances.
That _doesn't_ mean that no one should transition (_i.e._, try to approximate changing sex with hormonal and surgical interventions)! A lot of people do it—I'm not, like, denying that they _exist_. It seems to work out pretty well for many of them! Maybe _more_ people should do it!
But in order for someone to _figure out_ whether or not to do it—and in order for the people they interact with to figure out how to react—it would probably help to _get the theory right_: the biology and psychology and sociology and cognitive science and political science of what sex and gender actually _are_ in the real physical universe, and under what conditions they might actually in-fact be changed. Get the theory right _first_, and _then_ use the theory to make the best decisions.
-And if different people's interests come into conflict, such that there _is no_ collective decision that everyone is happy with, I can still hope to objectively catalogue the possible outcomes of the conflict—what happens if who wins, and what the space of available ceasefire agreements looks like.
+And if different people's interests come into conflict, such that there _is no_ collective decision that everyone is happy with, I can still hope to objectively catalogue the possible outcomes of the conflict—what happens if who wins, and what the space of available armistice agreements looks like.
-I'm a person, and this is a (deeply) personal blog. I have my own preferences and my own æsthetics, and no doubt that's going to sometimes bleed in to my attempts to get the theory right. (I wish I could claim otherwise—but that wouldn't be _true_.) But I can at least make an effort to _minimize_ the extent to which that happens—and to _make it clear_ which paragraphs and posts I write are advocating for my preferences (which are likely to not be shared by others) and which are trying to perform an objective analysis (which is information anyone can benefit from). But _for the most part_, I don't do policy—except in the minimalist sense that getting [...]
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-_actually true_, and not a lie or even a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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-[TODO: sentence about how my victory condition is the two-type taxonomy in textbooks, but that I'm agnostic about how many people should transition, given good information]
+I'm a person, and this is a (deeply) personal blog. I have my own preferences and my own æsthetics, and no doubt that's going to sometimes bleed in to my attempts to get the theory right. (I wish I could claim otherwise—but that wouldn't be _true_.) But I can at least make an effort to _minimize_ the extent to which that happens—and to _make it clear_ which paragraphs and posts I write are advocating for my preferences (which are likely to not be shared by others) and which are trying to perform an objective analysis (which is information anyone can benefit from). But _for the most part_, I don't do policy. The victory condition of my political campaign is not defined in terms of how many people end up transitioning, but _just_ getting the two-type taxonomy (or whatever more precise alternative succeeds it) into the _standard_ sex-ed textbooks—because I think the taxonomy is _actually true_, and not a lie or even a self-fulfilling prophecy. The further question as to whether autogynephilia should be regarded as recommending transition or not is a policy question and explicitly out-of-scope.
I've gotten praise from trans-activist types (_e.g._, for ["Lesser-Known Demand Curves"](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/)), and from gender-critical feminists (_e.g._, for ["Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes"](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/)). If I could just get them to praise the _same post_, then I will have succeeded as a writer.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff