> If that starts to scale up, we might see a really, really interesting moral panic in 5–10 years or so. I mean, if you thought gay marriage was causing a moral panic, you just wait and see what comes next ...
-Indeed—here we are seven years later, and _I am panicking_.[^panic] (As 2007–9 Sequences-era Yudkowsky [taught me](https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good), and 2016 Facebook-shitposting-era Yudkowsky seemed to ignore, the thing that makes a moral panic _really_ interesting is how hard it is to know you're on the right side of it—and the importance of [panicking](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/erGipespbbzdG5zYb/the-third-alternative) [sideways](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/05/policy_tugowar.html) when the "maximize the number of trans people" and "minimize the number of trans people" coalitions are both wrong.)
+Indeed—here we are over seven years later, and _I am panicking_.[^panic] (As 2007–9 Sequences-era Yudkowsky [taught me](https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good), and 2016 Facebook-shitposting-era Yudkowsky seemed to ignore, the thing that makes a moral panic _really_ interesting is how hard it is to know you're on the right side of it—and the importance of [panicking](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/erGipespbbzdG5zYb/the-third-alternative) [sideways](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/05/policy_tugowar.html) when the "maximize the number of trans people" and "minimize the number of trans people" coalitions are both wrong.)
-[^panic]: Or rather, I _did_ panic from mid-2016 to mid-2021, and this and the next three posts are the retrospective accounting of that panic, a memoir written in the ashes of my defeat.
+[^panic]: Or rather, I _did_ panic from mid-2016 to mid-2021, and this and the next four posts are the retrospective accounting of that panic, a memoir written in the ashes of my defeat.
But at the time, this was merely _very confusing_. I left [a careful comment in the Facebook thread](/images/facebook_etle_comment.png) (with the obligatory "speaking only for myself; I obviously know that I can't say anything about anyone else's experience" [disclaimer](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html)), quietly puzzled at what Yudkowsky could _possibly_ be thinking.
"It became obvious that explanation could not account." I don't doubt Serano's reporting of her own phenomenal experiences, but "that explanation could not account" is _not an experience_; it's a _hypothesis_ about psychology, about the _causes_ of the experience. I [don't _expect_ anyone to be able to get that sort of thing right from introspection alone!](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/).
-Or consider _Nevada_. This was a popular book! Part 2, Chapter 23 is our protagonist Maria's rant about the self-evident falsehood and injustice of autogynephilia theory. And she starts out by ... acknowledging the phenomenon which the theory is meant to explain:
+Or consider _Nevada_. This was a popular book! Part 2, Chapter 23 is our protagonist Maria's rant about the self-evident falsehood and injustice of autogynephilia theory. And she starts out by ... acknowledging the phenomenon which the theory is meant to explain:
> But the only time I couldn't lie to myself about who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to be, and like, the way I needed to exist in the world if I was going to actually exist in the world, is when I was jacking off.
>
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, 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](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 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 (_i.e._, left) side of history, [the Blue Team and not the Red Team](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/brand-rust/).
Even after years of devouring heresies on the internet—I remember fascinatedly reading everything I could about race and IQ in the wake of [the James Watson 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. With some prompting from "Wilhelm", I was starting to question it now.
------
-I messaged an alumna of my [App Academy](https://www.appacademy.io/) class of November 2013. I remembered that on the first day of App Academy, she had asked about the harrassment policy, to which the founder/instructor hesitated and promised to get back to her; apparently, it had never come up before. (This was back when App Academy was still cool and let you sleep on the floor if you wanted.) Later in the cohort, she started a quarrel with another student (an 18-year-old boy, in contrast to most attendees already having a college degree) over the offensive political implications of something he had said; someone else pointed out in his defense that he was young. (Young enough, or autistic enough, not to have been trained not to say anything that could be construed as anti-feminist in a professional setting?)
+I messaged an _alumna_ of my [App Academy](https://www.appacademy.io/) class of November 2013. I remembered that on the first day of App Academy, she had asked about the harrassment policy, to which the founder/instructor hesitated and promised to get back to her; apparently, it had never come up before. (This was back when App Academy was still cool and let you sleep on the floor if you wanted.) Later in the cohort, she started a quarrel with another student (an 18-year-old boy, in contrast to most attendees already having a college degree) over the offensive political implications of something he had said; someone else pointed out in his defense that he was young. (Young enough, or autistic enough, not to have been trained not to say anything that could be construed as anti-feminist in a professional setting?)
In short, I wanted to consult her feminism expertise; she seemed like the kind of person who might have valuable opinions on whether men could become women by means of saying so. "[O]n the one hand, I'm glad that other people get to live my wildest fantasy", I said, after explaining the problem, "but on the other hand, maaaaaybe we shouldn't actively encourage people to take their fantasies quite this literally? Maybe you don't want people like me in your bathroom for the same reason you're annoyed by men's behavior on trains?"
------
-At the end of December 2016, my gatekeeping sessions were finished, and I finally started HRT. In an effort to not let my anti–autogynephilia-denialism crusade take over my life, earlier that month, I [promised myself](/ancillary/a-broken-promise/) (and [published the SHA256 hash of the promise](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154596054540199) to signal that I was Serious) not to comment on gender issues under my real name through June 2017—_that_ was what my new pseudonymous blog was for.
+At the end of December 2016, my gatekeeping sessions were finished, and I finally started HRT. In an effort to not let my anti–autogynephilia-denialism crusade take over my life, earlier that month, I [promised myself](/ancillary/a-broken-promise/) (and [published the SHA256 hash of the promise](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154596054540199) to signal that I was Serious) not to comment on gender issues under my real name through June 2017—_that_ was what my new secret blog was for.
-... the promise didn't take. There was just too much gender-identity nonsense on my Facebook feed; I _had_ to push back on some of it.
+... the promise didn't take. There was just too much gender-identity nonsense on my Facebook feed; I _had_ to push back on some of it, at least a little, at least subtly.
"Folks, I'm not sure it's feasible to have an intellectually-honest real-name public conversation about the etiology of MtF," I wrote in one thread in mid-January. "If no one is willing to mention some of the key relevant facts, maybe it's less misleading to just say nothing."
I would later get to attend a support group at the Q Center on a future visit to Portland. I snuck a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies_ into their library.
-In a 4 February 2017 email confirming the plans with Sophia (Subject: "Re: February??"), I wrote:
+At the close of a 4 February 2017 email confirming the plans with Sophia (Subject: "Re: February??"), I wrote:
> (Thanks very much for your promise not to be offended by things that I might say, which I am interpreting literally, and without which I wouldn't _dare_ meet you; unfortunately, I kind of feel motivated to generally avoid trans women now, because the conjunction of validate-everyone's-identity social norms and my continuing obsession with last year's shocking mega-update make me feel like I'm made out of social antimatter: better to quietly (except for pseudonymous internet yelling) stay out of everyone's way rather than risk the temptation to say the wrong thing, mutually annihilating me and my interlocutor and killing everyone in the room in a shower of gamma rays.)
discussion with hundreds of comments, especially with Anna T.
31 posts total between—"some of you may have noticed" Sat 11 Feb, and promising to quite Facebook for a week 0844 15 Feburary
-I was actually planning to visit Sophia in Portland!
-4 February
-> Okay, I've got my flight, hotel, con tickets, and makeup; I'll be flying in the morning of Friday the 17th, and leaving the evening of Sunday the 19th. My objectives are (1) take original photographs at key landmarks (Q Center, TriMet trains, that bridgey thing, &c.) to lend verisimilitude to the "fiction" posts on my secret blog, which are set in Portland/Beaverton, (2) cosplay Pearl at WizardWorld on Saturday, and (3) meet you in some capacity (at the con or elsewhere).
Katie Tue Feb 14 2017 10:52:04: So my theory is Anna would not be reacting as vehemently had you not recently asked her out / And that she is trying to play a signaling game to salvage her status in the community by distancing herself from you" / "See? See everyone? I rejected him! Don't burn me at the stake too!
-14 Feb exchange with Katie about reconnecting with her natural compassion
+------
+
+
+> **"Chaya"** — 02/14/2016 3:26 AM
+> I really *was* getting to the point that I hated transwomen
+> **Zack M. Davis** — 02/14/2016 3:26 AM
+> I hate them, too!
+> Fuck those guys!
+> **"Chaya"** — 02/14/2016 3:27 AM
+> I hated what happened to my husband, I hate the insistence that I use the right pronouns and ignore my senses, I hate the takeover of women's spaces, I hate the presumption that they know what a woman's life is like, I was _getting_ to the point that I deeply hated them, and saw them as the enemy
+> But you're actually changing that for me
+> You're reconnecting me with my natural compassion
+> To people who are struggling and have things that are hard
+> It's just that, the way they think things is hard is not the way I actually think it is anymore
+> **Zack M. Davis** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> the "suffering" is mostly game-theoretic victimhood-culture
+> **"Chaya"** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> You've made me hate transwomen _less_ now
+> Because I have a model
+> I understand the problem
+> **Zack M. Davis** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> [http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/)
+> **"Chaya"** — 02/14/2016 3:28 AM
+> I understand why it's hard
+> I feel like I can forgive it, to the extent that forgiveness is mine to give
+> This is a better thing for me
+> I did not _want_ to be a hateful person
+> I did not want to take seeming good people as an enemy in my head, while trying to be friends with them in public
+> I think now I can do it more honestly
+> They might not want _me_ as a friend
+> But now I feel less threatened and confused and insulted
+> And that has dissolved the hatred that was starting to take root
+> I'm very grateful for that
+
+
+-----
[email Yudkowsky "the spirit of intervention" at 0418 a.m. (I don't even want to read it now) 14 February]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff