--- /dev/null
+Title: Commentary on David R. MacIver on Gendering
+Date: 2020-01-01
+Category: commentary
+Tags: sex differences
+Status: draft
+
+Mathematician–programmer David R. MacIver (author of the [Hypothesis](https://hypothesis.works/) property-testing framework and the _tragically_ [unfinished](https://www.drmaciver.com/2017/09/programmer-at-large-progress-report/) serial ["Programmer-at-Large"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233966/chapters/20941043)) has a [new post on the social process of gendering](https://www.drmaciver.com/2019/09/gendering/).
+
+Overall, I really like this post! [...]
+
+I guess my main question is, what's with the heroic efforts to avoid acknowledging the concept of biological sex?
+
+Right? The question of what gender is "seems to be a very hard one to answer well," MacIver writes. Is it? What's wrong with ["social roles based on the sex of [a] person"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction)?
+
+MacIver is clearly not a biological sex denialist.
+
+
+
+https://theotherlifenow.com/respectability-is-not-worth-it-reply-to-slatestarcodex/
Tags: game theory, sociology
Status: draft
-_(Rejected alternative title: "Schelf-Identity.")_
-
-Previously on _The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_, we've [considered]() at [length]() the ways in which the self-identity criterion for gender ("Women are people who identify as women")
+Previously on _The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_, we've [considered]() at [length]() the ways in which the self-identity criterion for gender ("Women men are people who identify as women")
https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10155049296600199
+
+Ben's commentary: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/um3FHuHfcHh98YYs9/duncan-sabien-in-defense-of-punch-bug#9SK3NpevW5BffjfH8
"As no woman has ever referred to herself as ‘a person with a cervix’, there’s a real danger that misguided deference to trans activists will mean some women end up missing out on medical check-ups specific to their sex.": https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/12/26/the-year-of-trans-tyranny/#.XCNeJ5uEWR8.twitter
+
+Anyway, all of this leading up to a psychological hypothesis (maybe this is "obvious", but I hadn't thought about it before): when people see someone wavering between their coalition and a rival coalition, they're motivated to offer a few concessions to keep the wavering person on their side. [...] could afford to not-understand (pace Upton Sinclair) the "words need to carve reality at the joints" thing when it was just me freaking out alone, but "got it" almost as soon as I could credibly threaten to walk (defect to a coalition of people she dislikes) [...] (assuming he otherwise wouldn't have spontaneously tweeted something about the univariate fallacy two weeks later)??
+
+This probably doesn't work if you repeat it (or if you try to do it consciously)?
* what did I expect, taking on an egregore so much bigger than me?
* if I agree that people should be allowed to transition, why am I freaking out? Because I _actually care about getting the theory correct_
-
+* culture matters: if you're surrounded by crazy people
+* it's not particular to social justice; I'd punch right in a Christian theocracy
* what I mean by "gaslighting"
person paper on purity
James Watson 'aught-seven
-
Arguing is not a punishment https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/argue-politics-with-your-best-friends/
Brief group conversational silences are ostracism threats, but like, threats are great because you have the option of complying with them if you don't want a war.)
-
-
I do, however, think there's a subtler failure mode than "heretics get shouted down", namely, "heretics have to put up with spurious isolated demands for rigor, logical rudeness, conversation-halters, &c., such that the community doesn't update or updates slower than it could have."
This is, of course, a much harder problem to solve, because "Speaker gets shouted down" is easy for third parties to detect as a discourse-norm violation, whereas "Speaker's (polite!) interlocutors are engaging in motivated continuation" is a subtle judgment call that a lot of third-parties are going to get wrong. But if and to the extent that such a thing does happen in our community—and you shouldn't take my word for it—I think it's causally downstream of silencing going on elsewhere in the trash fire that is Society (which we're not isolated from).
+
+http://www.sl4.org/archive/0602/13903.html
+
+probably the strongest is "These people have ignored their own carefully gathered experimental evidence for decades in favor of stuff that sounds more intuitive." : https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9KvefburLia7ptEE3/the-correct-contrarian-cluster
+
+power is weird: I feel a bit icky when I notice Sophia or Rachel or Tetra changing their description in a way that seemed influenced by me
+
+
I felt especially awkward being at a table with him in public in the context of the black waitress complementing me on my Steven Universe T-shirt five minutes earlier
I guess I see your point that if I can't trust these clowns to even put a "social trust" term into their utilitarian pseudo-calculation for open bathrooms, then I shouldn't trust them on open borders, either
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/itsafetish/comments/cp1tap/gender_euphoria_genital_engorgement_whats_the/
Self-Identity Is a Schelling Point
-
+Reply to David R. MacIver on Gendering
On the Argumentative Form "Super-proton Things Tend to Come in Varieties"
Reply to Ozymandias on Fully Consensual Gender
"I Tell Myself to Let the Story End"; Or, A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning
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