At first I was imagining a post on my existing blog, but a couple of my very smart and cowardly friends recommended a pseudonym, which I reluctantly agreed was probably a good idea. So I made up a pen name and [started this blog](/2016/Sep/apophenia/) (with [loving attention to technology choices, rather than just using WordPress](/2020/Apr/dont-read-the-comments/)).
-(I'm not entirely without misgivings about the naming choices I made, although I don't actively regret it, the way I regret [my attempted nickname switch in the late 'aughts](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#literary-initials). For the pen name: a hyphenated last name (a feminist tradition), abbreviated-first-initial + gender-neutral middle name (as if suggesting a male ineffectually trying to avoid having an identifiably male byline), "Saotome" from [a thematically-relevant Japanese graphic novel series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD), "West" (+ an extra syllable) after a character in a serial novel whose catchphrase is ["Somebody has to and no one else will"](https://unsongbook.com/chapter-6-till-we-have-built-jerusalem/). For the blog name: I had already imagined that if I ever did stoop to the depravity of starting one of my own one of those [transformation/bodyswap captioned-photo erotica blogs](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/), I would call it _The Titillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_, and in fact had already claimed _ultimatelyuntruethought@gmail.com_ in 2014, to participate in [a captioning contest](http://celebbodyswap.blogspot.com/2014/02/magic-remote-caption-contest.html), but since this was to be a serious autogynephilia _science_ blog, rather than tawdry _object-level_ autogynephilia blogging, I picked "Scintillating" as a more wholesome adjective. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to choose a URL different from the blog's title—people seem to remember the URL more than the title, and as far as the URL goes, to be led by the dot before the TLD to interpret "space" as a separate word, rather than my intent of "genderspace" being analogous to "configuration space"—but it doesn't bother me that much.)
+... the pseudonymity is kind of a joke at this point. It turned out that my need for openness and a unified identity was far stronger than my perception of what my very smart and cowardly friends think is prudence, such that I ended up frequently linking to and claiming ownership of the blog from my real name, _and_ otherwise leaking entropy through a sieve on this side.
+
+Given the world of the current year (such that this blog was even _necessary_), it's _probably_ a good idea if the _first_ page of my real-name
+
+Google result
+
+(Plus, after having made the mistake (?) of listening to my very smart and cowardly friends at the start, now I have a backwards
+
+But it's definitely a mere differential-visibility market-segmentation pen name, like how everyone knows that Robert Galbraith is actually J. K. Rowling, and not an Actually Secret pen name.
+
+(Separately, I'm not entirely without misgivings about the naming choices I made, although I don't actively regret it, the way I regret [my attempted nickname switch in the late 'aughts](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#literary-initials). For the pen name: a hyphenated last name (a feminist tradition), abbreviated-first-initial + gender-neutral middle name (as if suggesting a male ineffectually trying to avoid having an identifiably male byline), "Saotome" from [a thematically-relevant Japanese graphic novel series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD), "West" (+ an extra syllable) after a character in a serial novel whose catchphrase is ["Somebody has to and no one else will"](https://unsongbook.com/chapter-6-till-we-have-built-jerusalem/). For the blog name: I had already imagined that if I ever did stoop to the depravity of starting one of my own one of those [transformation/bodyswap captioned-photo erotica blogs](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/), I would call it _The Titillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_, and in fact had already claimed _ultimatelyuntruethought@gmail.com_ in 2014, to participate in [a captioning contest](http://celebbodyswap.blogspot.com/2014/02/magic-remote-caption-contest.html), but since this was to be a serious autogynephilia _science_ blog, rather than tawdry _object-level_ autogynephilia blogging, I picked "Scintillating" as a more wholesome adjective. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to choose a URL different from the blog's title—people seem to remember the URL more than the title, and as far as the URL goes, to be led by the dot before the TLD to interpret "space" as a separate word, rather than my intent of "genderspace" being analogous to "configuration space"—but it doesn't bother me that much.)
Besides writing to tell everyone else about it, another obvious consequence of my Blanchardian enlightenment was that I decided 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?
But (as I told the LCSW) I would _know_ that I was cherry-picking. HSTS-taxon boys are identified as effiminate _by others_. [You know it when you see it, even when you're ideologically prohibited from _knowing_ that you know.](/2022/May/gaydar-jamming/) That's—not me. I [don't even _want_ that to be me](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#if-i-have-to-choose). I definitely have a gender _thing_, but I have a pretty detailed model of what I think the thing actually is in the real physical universe, and my model doesn't _fit_ in the ever-so-compassionate and -equitable ontology of "gender identity", which presupposes that what's going on when I report _wishing_ I were female is the _same thing_ as what's going on with actual women who (objectively correctly) report being female. [I don't think it's the same thing](TODO: linky autogenderphilia reply?), and I think you'd have to be [crazy or a liar](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y4bkJTtG3s5d6v36k/stupidity-and-dishonesty-explain-each-other-away) to say it's plausibly the same thing.
-Another consequence of my Blanchardian enlightenment is that around this time was my [break with progressive morality](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/). I had never _really_ been progressive, as such. (I was registered to vote as a Libertarian, the legacy of a teenage dalliance with Ayn Rand and the [greater](TODO linky Reason Hit & Run) [libertarian](TODO linky Roderick Long) [blogosphere](TODO linky ... Cafe Hayek?).) But there was still an embedded cultural assumption, reflected in [my antisexist faith](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#antisexism), that, as far as America's culture wars went, I was unambiguously on the right side of history, [the Blue Team and not the Red Team](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/brand-rust/).
+Another consequence of my Blanchardian enlightenment is that around this time was my [break with progressive morality](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/). I had never _really_ been progressive, as such. (I was registered to vote as a Libertarian, the legacy of a teenage dalliance with Ayn Rand and the [greater](https://web.archive.org/web/20070531085902/http://www.reason.com/blog/) [libertarian](https://praxeology.net/unblog07-06.htm) [blogosphere](https://cafehayek.com/).) But there was still an embedded cultural assumption, reflected in [my antisexist faith](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#antisexism), that, as far as America's culture wars went, I was unambiguously on the right side of history, [the Blue Team and not the Red Team](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/brand-rust/).
(I remember that in senior year of high school back in 'aught-five, on [Coming Out Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coming_Out_Day), my physics teacher said that she was coming out as a Republican. Even then, I got the joke, but I didn't realize the implications.)
While I was in this flurry of excitement about my recent updates and the insanity around me, I thought back to that "at least 20% of the ones with penises are actually women" Yudkowsky post from back in March that had been my wake-up call to all this. What _was_ going on there?
-Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't have dared bother Eliezer Yudkowsky (who I considered to be the most important person in the world) on _any_ topic, let alone this weird personal obsession of mine. But ... Yudkowsky _had_ posted about how he was willing to accept money to do things he otherwise wouldn't in exchange for enough money to feel happy abou the trade—a Happy Price, or [Cheerful Price, as the custom was later termed](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price)—and his [schedule of happy prices](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10153956696609228) listed $1,000 as the price for a 2 hour conversation. Cheap, right?!
+Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't have dared bother Eliezer Yudkowsky (who I considered to be the most important person in the world) on _any_ topic, let alone this weird personal obsession of mine. But ... Yudkowsky _had_ posted about how he was willing to accept money to do things he otherwise wouldn't in exchange for enough money to feel happy about he trade—a Happy Price, or [Cheerful Price, as the custom was later termed](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price)—and his [schedule of happy prices](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10153956696609228) listed $1,000 as the price for a 2 hour conversation. Cheap, right?!
I had his email address from previous contract work I had done for MIRI back in '12, so I wrote him offering $1K to talk about sometime between [January 2009](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions) and [March of the current year](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154078468809228) what kind of _massive_ update he made on the topics of human psychological sex differences and MtF transsexuality, mentioning that I had been "feeling baffled and disappointed (although I shouldn't be) that the rationality community is getting this _really easy_ scientific question wrong."
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff