I think most people in roughly my situation (of haboring these gender-feelings for many years, but thinking that it's obviously not the same thing as being "actually trans", only to later discover that it's _not_ obviously not the same thing) tend to conclude that they were "actually trans" all along, and sometimes express intense bitterness at Ray Blanchard and all the other cultural forces that let them ever doubt.
-I ... went the other direction. In slogan form: "Holy shit, _almost no one_ is actually trans!" [TODO: rephrase and link https://www.gwern.net/Modus ]
+I ... [went the other direction](https://www.gwern.net/Modus). In slogan form: "Holy shit, _almost no one_ is actually trans!"
Okay, that slogan isn't right. Again, I'm a transhumanist. I believe in morphological freedom! If someone wants to change sex, that's a totally valid desire that Society should try to accomodate as much as feasible given currently-existing technology! In that sense, anyone can [_choose_ to](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/1327/) become trans.
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/)? How could 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](/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.
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.
+Another wrote a comment in one discussion condemning "autogynephilia discourse" and 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 rare. Elsewhere on the internet, the _same goddamned person_ reported being 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]
+Was it rude of me to confront her on the contradiction in her PMs? Yes, it was extremely rude; all else being equal, I would prefer _not_ to probe into other people's private lives and suggest that they're lying to themselves. But when they lie to the public, that affects _me_, and my attempts to figure out _my_ life. Is it a conscious political ploy, I asked her, or are people _really_ unable to entertain the hypothesis that their beautiful pure self-identity feelings are causally related to the fetish? If it's a conscious political ploy, [I wished someone would just say, "Congratulations, you figured out the secret, now keep quiet about it or else,"](/2016/new-clothes/) rather than trying to _undermine my connection of reality_; I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, but this was _really personally disturbing_.
+
+She said that she had to deal with enough invalidation already, that she had her own doubts and concerns but would only discuss them with people who shared her views. Fair enough—I can't blame anyone for prioritizing their mental health, even if I personally find it creepy that adults in the so-called "rationalist" community need to be protected from "invalidation".
The privately-sane responses were more interesting. "People are crazy about metaphysics," one told me. "That's not new. Compare with transubstantiation and how much scholarly work went in to trying to square it with natural materialism. As for causality, I think it's likely that the true explanation will not take the shape of an easily understood narrative."
Later, she told me, "It's kind of funny how the part where you're being annoying isn't where you're being all TERFy and socially unacceptable, but where you make very strong assumptions about truth due to being a total nerd and positivist—mind you, the vast majority of times people deviate from this the consequences are terrible."
-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."
+Someone else 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."
-[TODO: ↑ rework and revise above section in light of "The Two-Type Taxonomy Is a Useful Approximation for ..." after that's written and published]
+[TODO: ↑ rework and revise whole section in light of "The Two-Type Taxonomy Is a Useful Approximation for ..." after that's written and published]
------
Even after years of devouring heresies on the internet—I remember reading everything I could about race and IQ in the wake of [the James Waton affair back in 'aught-seven](https://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php)—I had never really questioned my coalitional alignment.
-It wasn't my place. I'm not a woman or a racial minority; I don't have their lived experience; I _don't know what it's like_ to face the challenges they face. So while I could permissibly _read blog posts_ skeptical of the progressive story about redressing wrongs done to designated sympathetic victim groups, but I clearly didn't have license to _talk_ about any reasons to be skeptical ...
-
-—until, suddenly, in 2016, it was now seeming that the designated sympathetic victim group of our age was ... _straight boys who wish they were girls_. And suddenly, [_I had standing_](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/). When a political narrative is being pushed for _your_ alleged benefit, it's much easier to make the call that it's obviously full of lies.
-
With some prompting from a right-wing friend (and some re-reading of Mencius Moldbug's [_Unqualified Reservations_](https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/), which I had previously skimmed in the process of skimming lots of things on the internet), that experience raised further questions about whether previous iterations of progressive ideology had been entirely honest with me. (If nothing else, I couldn't help but notice that my update from "Blanchard is probably wrong because trans women's self-reports say it's wrong" to "Self-reports are pretty crazy" probably had implications for "[Red Pill](https://heartiste.org/the-sixteen-commandments-of-poon/) is probably wrong because women's self-reports say it's wrong".)
[TODO: October 2016: another thing that happened around this time 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) ]
[TODO: "simplest and best" pronoun proposal, sometimes personally prudent; support from Oli]
-[TODO: the dolphin war]
-
-[TODO: David Xu's postrat]
+[TODO: the dolphin war, our thoughts about dolphins are literally downstream from Scott's political incentives in 2014; this is a sign that we're a cult]
[TODO: why you should care; no one should like Scott and Eliezer's proposals; knowledge should go forward, not back — what I would have hoped for, what you can do; hating that my religion is bottlenecked on one guy; the Church is _still there_ sucking up adherents; this is unambiguously a betrayal rather than a mistake]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff