* something about the horror of a world without ambition or the life of the mind (or specifically, the philosopher–scientist's mind, rather than the activist's)? Binnie (who will always have more readers than me) writes characters don't have any concept of _doing_ anything except drugs and complaining about Society's transphobia.
* Abigail Shrier's _Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters_
* _Damage_ is sensationalist right-wing journalism, rather than the kind of careful, nuanced scholarship of the kind you would expect to be reviewed by such a refined blog as _The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_—but damned if the situation on the ground doesn't call more sensationalist right-wing journalism
+ * Shon Faye's _The Transgender Issue_
* Multi-Book Review: Various Sex-Ed Books for Children
* comparing and contrasting mainstream (for now) selections ([_What's the Big Secret? Talk about Sex with Girls and Boys_](https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Big-Secret-Talking-about/dp/0316101834), [_Amazing You! Getting Smart About Your Private Parts_](https://www.amazon.com/Amazing-You-Getting-Smart-Private/dp/0142410586), and [_It's Not the Stork! A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families, and Friends_](https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Stork-Families-Friends/dp/0763633313)), to a genderist alternative ([_Who Are You? The Kid's Guide to Gender Identity_](https://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-You-Gender-Identity/dp/1785927280)) and a Christian alternative ([the _God's Design for Sex_ series](https://www.amazon.com/Full-Set-Design-Revised-Paperback/dp/B00O5DIVTU))
* The ideological books are what you would expect and impossible to parody, but I would be [more comfortable reading the Christian book](/2020/Apr/peering-through-reverent-fingers/) to a child, because at least it explains the facts ("I have a penis. That makes me a boy like Daddy") in the course of attributing everything to God, whereas _Who Are You?_ is trying to set up [a world where facts aren't a thing](/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/) ("Babies can't talk, so grown-ups make a guess by looking at their bodies").
* the Christians also believe in beauty and have much more competent illustrations
- * You can also see a propaganda gradient in the mainstream books over time. _What's the Big Secret?_ (1997) acknowledges sex stereotypes as having a grain of truth, but is firm about them not being normative or definitive ("Girls and boys do play in different ways. Sometimes, but not always"), whereas _It's Not the Stork_ (2006) bizarrely tries to rebut psychological-sex-difference claims without even acknowledging what they claims are ("Girls catch fish and worms and bugs!" "So do boys!") and has more racially diverse illustrations.
+ * You can also see a propaganda gradient in the mainstream books over time. _What's the Big Secret?_ (1997) acknowledges sex stereotypes as having a grain of truth, but is firm about them not being normative or definitive ("Girls and boys do play in different ways. Sometimes, but not always"), whereas _It's Not the Stork_ (2006) bizarrely tries to rebut psychological-sex-difference claims without even acknowledging what the claims are ("Girls catch fish and worms and bugs!" "So do boys!") and has more racially diverse illustrations.
New list of more ideas I want to finish—
The _problem_ is that the public narrative of trans rights doesn't seem to be _about_ making a principled case for morphological freedom, or engaging with the complicated policy question of what accomodations are feasible given the imperfections of currently-existing technology. Instead, we're told that everyone has an internal sense of their own gender, which for some people (who "are trans") does not match their assigned sex at birth.
-Okay, but what does that _mean_? Are the things about me that I've been attributing to autogynephilia actually an internal gender identity, or did I [get it right the first time](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/), and how can I tell? No one seems interested in clarifying!
+Okay, but what does that _mean_? Are the things about me that I've been attributing to autogynephilia actually an internal gender identity, or did I [get it right the first time](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/)? How could I tell? No one seems interested in clarifying!
My shift in belief, from thinking the 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, partially from my reading, but also as I kept initiating conversations with local trans women to try to figure out what was going on.
But many of the people I talked to seemed to report similar experiences to me—at least, to the low resolution of the conversation; talking about this stuff _at all_ was hard enough, that I wasn't going to press people for the specific details of their sexual fantasies—but seemed to me to be either pretty delusional, or privately pretty sane but (from my view) oddly indifferent to the state of public knowledge.
-One trans woman told me that autogynephilia is a typical element of cis woman sexuality. (This, I had learned, was a [standard cope](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-gostak-distims-the-doshes/), but one I have [never found remotely plausible](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#am-i-supposed-to-claim).) She told me that if I don't feel like a boy, I'm probably not one. (Okay, but again, _what does that mean?_ There needs to be some underlying truth condition for that "probably" to _point to_. If it's not sex, _what is it?_)
+One trans woman told me that autogynephilia is a typical element of cis woman sexuality. (This, I had learned, was a [standard cope](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-gostak-distims-the-doshes/), but one I have [never found remotely plausible](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#am-i-supposed-to-claim).) She told me that if I don't feel like a boy, I'm probably not one. (Okay, but again, _what does that mean?_ There needs to be some underlying truth condition for that "probably" to _point to_. If it's not sex and it's not sex-atypical behavior, then _what is it?_)
Another wrote a comment in one discussion expressing skepticism at the idea that someone would undergo a complete medical and social transition because of a fetish: it might be _possible_, she admitted, but it must be extremely unlikely. Elsewhere on the internet, the _same goddamned person_ reported being sexually into gender-bender manga and finding it arousing at the same time when she was first seriously questioning her gender identity.
[aside (footnote?) on the blog name: I had already claimed _ultimatelyuntruethought@gmail.com_ in 2014, to participate in [a contest](http://celebbodyswap.blogspot.com/2014/02/magic-remote-caption-contest.html) by one of the [transformation/bodyswap captioned-photo erotica blogs](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/) / it's a little bit awkward having the blog title and URL be different, and people think "space" is a separate word]
-Besides writing to tell everyone else about it, another obvious response to my Blanchardian enlightenment was that I wanted to try hormone replacement therapy. Not to actually socially _transition_, which seemed as impossible (to actually pull off) and dishonest (to try) as ever, but just [to try as a gender-themed drug experiment](/2017/Sep/interlude-ix/). Everyone else was doing it—why should I miss out just for being more self-aware about the reasons?
+Besides writing to tell everyone else about it, another obvious response to my Blanchardian enlightenment was that I wanted to try hormone replacement therapy. Not to actually socially _transition_, which seemed as impossible (to actually pull off) and dishonest (to try) as ever, but just [to try as a gender-themed drug experiment](/2017/Sep/interlude-ix/). Everyone else was doing it—why should I have to miss out just for being more self-aware?
A friend who once worked for [our local defunct medical research company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaMed) still offered lit-reviews as a service, so I paid her $5,000 to do [a post about the effects of hormone replacement therapy](https://srconstantin.github.io/2016/10/06/cross-sex-hormone-therapy.html), in case the depths of the literature had any medical insight to offer that wasn't already on the informed-constent paperwork. Meanwhile, I made the requisite gatekeeping appointments with [my healthcare provider](http://kp.org/) to get approved for HRT, first with a psychologist that I had seen before, then with a couple of licensed clinical social workers before finally getting approved for an HRT perscription.
-I got the sense that the shrinks didn't quite know what to make of me. 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 pretty preoccupied with the thing about how _everyone had been lying to me about the most important thing in my life for fourteen years_, and the professional shrinks were _in on it_. Not in the sense that I thought they secretly agreed with me about the typology and were consciously lying, but in the sense that the whole paradigm of providing ["equitable" and "compassionate" "gender-affirming care"](https://thrive.kaiserpermanente.org/care-near-you/northern-california/eastbay/departments/gender-affirming-care/) is garbage-tier epistemology. Before one of my appointments with the LCSW, I wrote to the psychologist expressing frustration about this, and she wrote back:
+I got the sense that the shrinks didn't quite know what to make of me. In the process of drafting this post, I was happy to discover that the [notes from the appointments](TODO: compile ancillary page and linky) were later made available to me via the provider's website [(despite this practice introducing questionable incentives for the shrinks)](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/jia4ox/has_scott_written_about_this_im_curious_what_his/ga6vhke/); it's very amusing to read (for example) one of the LCSW's note about 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".
+
+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 pretty 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.)
+
+Actually, [it's worse](/2016/new-clothes/) than if they were in on it. In some ways, it would be _better_ 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/peering-through-reverent-fingers/)), but is so pervasive within its adherents' milieu, that they don't even know how to interpret observations someone not buying it even when you state your objections very clearly. Before one of my appointments with the LCSW, I wrote to the psychologist expressing frustration about the culture of lying (and noting that I should probably chill out before tinkering with my biochemistry), and she wrote back:
> I agree with you entirely, both about your frustration with people wanting to dictate to you what you are and how you feel, and with the importance of your being emotionally stable prior to starting hormones. Please explain to those who argue with you that it is only YOUR truth that matter when it comes to you, your body and what makes you feel whole. No one else has the right to dictate this.
> I'm not sure you do! I know condescending to patients is part of your usual script, but I hope I've shown that I'm smarter than that. This solipsistic culture of "it is only YOUR truth that matters" is _exactly_ what I'm objecting to! People can have false beliefs about themselves! As a psychologist, you shouldn't be encouraging people's delusions; you should be using your decades of study and experience to help people understand the actual psychological facts of the matter so that they can make intelligent choices about their own lives! If you think the Blanchard taxonony is _false_, you should _tell_ me that I'm wrong and that it's false and why!
-[for however weird I am, I don't understand what anyone _else_ says in these sessions]
-[conscious that I could cherry-pick to create a trans narrative: Polly Pocket, a girl's scooter, ]
-
-
+Similarly, the notes from my first call to the gender department claim that I was "exploring gender identity" and that I was "interested in trying [hormones] for a few months to see if they fit with his gender identity". That's not how I remember that conversation! _I_ distinctly remember asking if the department would help me if I wanted to experiment with HRT _without_ socially transitioning. That is, I was asking if they would provide medical services _not_ on the basis of "gender identity". Apparently my existence is so far out-of-distribution that the nurse on the phone wasn't capable of writing down what I actually said.
-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.)
+However weird I must have seemed, I have trouble imagining what anyone else tells the shrinks, given the pile of compelling evidence summarized earlier that most trans women are, in fact, guys like me. If I _wanted to_, I could cherry-pick pieces of evidence from my life to weave a more congruent narrative about always having been a girl on the inside. As a very small child, I remember asking for (and receiving, because I had good '90s liberal parents) [Polly Pocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Pocket), and a pink-and-purple girl's scooter with hearts. I could go on about [my beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#beautiful-pure-sacred-self-identity) that emerged shortly after puberty.
+But (as I told the LCSW) I would _know_ that I was cherry-picking.
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/
+[TODO: break with progressive morality: http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/]
[TODO: October 2016: I wrote Eliezer to ask about the conflict with "Changing Emotions" and made a Cheerful Price offer to talk about it https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price (shut up, we're not a cult) ]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff