_As it happens_, (I claim) the evidence that gender dysphoria is more than one thing is quite stong. For reasons of personal interest, I'm going to focus on the male-to-female case for the rest of this post. (An analysis of the female-to-male situation would be similar in many respects but different in others, and is left to the interested reader.)
-[explain the taxonomy, point out that it's possible to believe in a weaker version of it; link to Lawrence, &c.]
+[**TODO**: explain the taxonomy, point out that it's possible to believe in a weaker version of it; link to Lawrence, &c.]
In less tolerant places and decades, where MtF transsexuals were very rare and had to try very hard to pass as women out of dire necessity, their impact on the social order and how people think about gender was minimal—there were just too few trans people to make much of a difference. This is why experienced crossdressers often report it being easier to pass in rural or suburban areas rather than cities with a larger LGBT presence—not as a matter of tolerant social attitudes, but as a matter of _base rates_: it's harder to get [clocked](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clocked&defid=4884301) by people who aren't aware that being trans is even a thing. (In [predictive processing](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/) terms: the prediction errors caused by observations of a trans woman failing to match the observer's generative model of (natal) women get silenced for lack of alternative hypotheses if "She's trans" isn't in the observer's hypothesis space.)
> There have been "all women" things, like clothing swaps or groups, that then pre-transitioned trans women show up to. And it's hard, because it's weird and uncomfortable once three or four participants of twelve are trans women. I think the reality that's happening is women are having those spaces less—instead doing private things "for friends," with specific invite lists that are implicitly understood not to include men or trans women. This sucks because then we can't include women who aren't _already_ in our social circle, and we all know it but no one wants to say it.
-But this is a _terrible_ outcome with respect to _everyone's_ values. One can't even say, "Well, the cost to those bigoted cis women of not being able to have trans-exclusionary spaces is more than outweighed by trans women's identities being respected," because the non-passing trans women's identities _aren't_ being respected _anyway_; it's just that (natal) women are collectively too _nice_ to [make it common knowledge](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/15/it-was-you-who-made-my-blue-eyes-blue/). (The sex difference in [Big Five](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) Agreeableness [is](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/) [_d_](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_d)≈0.5.)
+But this is a _terrible_ outcome with respect to _everyone's_ values. One can't even say, "Well, the cost to those bigoted cis women of not being able to have trans-exclusionary spaces is more than outweighed by trans women's identities being respected," because the non-passing trans women's identities _aren't_ being respected _anyway_; it's just that (natal) women are collectively too _nice_ to [make it common knowledge](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/15/it-was-you-who-made-my-blue-eyes-blue/). (The sex difference in [Big Five](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) Agreeableness [is around](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/) [_d_](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_d)≈0.5.)
Another (natal) female friend of the blog writes:
> 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 self-consistently 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. Reading Alexander's eloquent appeal to the virtue of kindness, it's easy for the reader to be lulled into thinking that critics of gender-as-self-identification are just being arbitrarily mean to trans people for no reason. But 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/) without any obviously biologically-male people in them. Telling them that categories are relative to an intelligence's goals 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 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 categories are relative to an intelligence's goals 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 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 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. Social science is hard and I want to _try_ to avoid politics as much as I can (an unfortunately challenging goal when you're in the gender-blogging business). 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. But what I can say is that _whatever_ the right thing to do is, we stand a better chance of getting there if we can be _honest_ with each other about the world we see, using the most precise categories we can to construct maps that reflect the territory. And this is _incompatible_ with unconditionally affirming everyone's self-reported self-identity. My model of the universe doesn't stop at the boundary of your body, and yours shouldn't stop at mine. Kindness _is_ a virtue, but
+People should get what they want. Social science is hard and I want to _try_ to avoid politics as much as I can (an unfortunately challenging goal when you're in the gender-blogging business). 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.
+What I can say is that _whatever_ the right thing to do is, we stand a better chance of getting there if we can be _honest_ with each other about the world we see, using the most precise categories we can, to construct maps that reflect the territory. My model of the universe doesn't stop at the boundary of your body, and yours shouldn't stop at mine. This is definitely compatible with transitioning. It is _not_, I claim, compatible with the ideology of gender-as-self-identification that is rapidly establishing a foothold in Society. Consider this display at at recent conference of the American Philosophical Association (note, the people whose _job_ it is to use careful conceptual distinctions to understand reality)—
+
-This is not rationality. This is not even kindness.
+(photograph by [Lucia A. Schwarz](https://twitter.com/Lucia_A_Schwarz/status/949315365842116608))
+[**TODO**: wrap section: sticker failure; this is not kindness; we're smarter than this]
+-----
+
+Alexander ends his post by citing, as a charming example of the power of kindness, the case of Joshua Norton, a man who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, whose claims to power were widely humored by local citizens.
+
+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 psychotic 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 defer to their imperial majesty to their face, and then go on with your non-imperial life when they're not around?
+
+What if it were _you_?
+
+It was me, once. I had a couple [psychotic](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [episodes](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/) last year, including some delusions of grandeur. At various points, I thought that I had been appointed Gender Czar of this equivalence class of instances of Earth across the multiverse, that I was objectively one of the seven most important people in the world with a key role to play in the [intelligence explosion](TODO: linky),
+
+[...]
+
+I want you to imagine yourself as a resident of 1870s San Francisco, someone who Emperor Norton trusts as one of his chief imperial advisors.
+
+[...]
+
+"The categories were made for man, not man for the categories, Your Highness," you say. "An alternative categorization system is not an error, and category boundaries are drawn in specific ways to to capture trade-offs that we care about, not something that can be objectively _true_ or _false_. If we care about your identification as the Emperor—"
+
+"_What?_" he exclaims. He looks at you like you're crazy. And in that moment, caught in the old man's earnest, pleading gaze, you realize that you don't believe your own bullshit.
+
+"No, you're right," you say. "You're not actually Emperor. People around here have just been humoring you for the last decade because we thought it was funny. Um, sorry."
+
+He buries his head in his arms and begins to cry. He emits long, shuddering sobs for his lost empire. Worse that lost, an empire that never existed, except in the charitable facade of people who valued him as a local in-joke, but not as a man.
+
+You wait many minutes for him to calm down.
+
+"It's not wrong, is it?" he eventually says. "To _want_ to rule, to _want_ to be Emperor?"
+
+"No," you say, "it's not wrong to want it."
+
+"And there are men who have actually ruled empires. If that's not true of me _now_—it could _become_ true, right? We could _make_ it true."
+
+"In principle, yes—although given the practical difficulties presented by the task of conquering a country, it's worth exploring other, less-expensive interventions that might partially satisfy the underlying psychological drives that make you want to be Emperor."
-If you need a sticker to get people to gender you correctly, _your transition has failed_.
+He frowns, not understanding. "Will you help me?" he says. "Help me figure out what to do now—now that I know? If not as my subject—at least not yet—then as my friend?"
-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 percieve you.
+You nod. "Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down ideas, strategies—battle plans?
-All you can do is force them to lie.
+"But," you caution, "I'd be lying if I told you it was going to be _easy_."
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