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!
-This 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.
+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.
[Someone I talked to](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) denied experiencing autogynephilia at all, and I believe her. (This person was unusual along a lot of other dimensions, and again, I don't think a psychological theory needs to predict _every_ case in order to be broadly useful for understanding the world.)
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?_)
+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?_ [TODO: what is the underlying truth that "probably" is pointing at])
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. [TODO: my reaction; it's rude for me to probe and doubt, but this is gaslighting]
Another trans woman I talked to was less philosophical. "I'm an AGP trans girl who really likes anime, 4chan memes, and the like, and who hangs around a lot with ... AGP trans girls who like anime, 4chan memes, and the like," she said. "It doesn't matter to me all that much if some specific group doesn't take me seriously. As long as trans women are pretty OK at respectability politics and cis people in general don't hate us, then it's probably not something I have to worry about."
+As the tension between what I was seeing and what I felt allowed to say in public kept mounting, I started
+
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/concerns/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/identity/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/apostasy/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/wicked-transcendence/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/falself/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/prescription/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-world-by-gaslight/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-roark-quirrell-effect/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/book-recommendations-i/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/wicked-transcendence-ii/
+http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/concerns-ii/
+
[TODO: September 2016: I start my "secret" blog under a pen name]
+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) ]
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price
+
[it was around this time I snuck a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_ into the [MIRI](https://intelligence.org/) office library. (It seemed like something Harry Potter-Evans-Verres would do—and ominously, I noticed, not like something Hermione Granger would do.)]
[TODO: early 2017, eventually I start being louder on Facebook and eventually have a nervous breakdown]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff