In an article titled ["Pronouns are Rohypnol"](https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/), Barra Kerr compares preferred pronouns to the famous [Stroop effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect). When color words are printed in text of a different color (_e.g._, <span style="color:blue;">red</span>, <span style="color:green">orange</span>, <span style="color:red">yellow</span>, <span style="color:purple">green</span>, <span style="color:orange">blue</span>, _&c._) and people are asked to name the color of the text, they're slow to respond: the meaning of the word interferes with their ability to name the color in front of our eyes.
-Kerr suggests that preferred pronouns have a similar effect, that "a conflict between what we see [...] and what we are expected to say, affects us." As an exercise, she suggests (privately!) translating sentences about transgender people to use natal-sex-based pronouns.
+Kerr suggests that preferred pronouns have a similar effect, that "a conflict between what we see and know to be true, and what we are expected to say, affects us." As an exercise, she suggests (privately!) translating sentences about transgender people to use natal-sex-based pronouns.
-Unfortunately, I don't have a study with objective measurements on hand (let me know in the comments if you do!), but I think most native English speakers who try this exercise and introspect—especially using examples where the trans person exhibits features or behavior typical of their natal sex—will agree with Barr's assessment: "You can know perfectly the actual sex of a male person, and yet you will still react differently if someone calls them _she_ instead of _he_."
-
-[TODO: Contrary to Yudkowskys' claims about lies, Kerr _isn't_ claiming that pronouns can be "lies"; the article is _very_ explicit about this; Yudkowsky is obviously completely unfamiliar with his opponents' arguments]
+Unfortunately, I don't have a study with objective measurements on hand (let me know in the comments if you do!), but I think most native English speakers who try this exercise and introspect—especially using examples where the trans person exhibits features or behavior typical of their natal sex—will agree with Kerr's assessment: "You can know perfectly the actual sex of a male person, and yet you will still react differently if someone calls them _she_ instead of _he_."
[TODO: let's related this to Yudkowsky's specialty multimodal neurons— both CLIP and biological neurons respond to text/images; typographic attacks are the same thing as pronoun badges; you would expect the people aligning language models to be able to think these thoughts]
-Given this multitude of reasons why the _existing_ meanings of _she_ and _he_ are relevant to the question of pronoun reform, what is Yudkowsky's response?
+Importantly, Kerr is _explicitly_ appealing to psychological effects of different pronoun conventions. She is absolutely _not_ claiming that the use of preferred pronouns is itself a "lie" about some testable proposition. She writes:
+
+> I've heard many people tell me they don't mind doing this, as a courtesy, although it takes some effort to keep up the mental gymnastics of perceiving one sex, but consistently using pronouns for the other. That's a personal choice, and I respect the reasons why some people make it.
+
+> I've also heard many people declaring that anyone who won't comply (usually directed at a woman) is obnoxious, mean, hostile, and unpleasant. 'Misgendering' is hate speech. They say.
+
+> But I refuse to use female pronouns for anyone male.
+
+Note the wording: "That's a personal choice", "_I_ refuse". She knows perfectly well that people who use gender-identity-based pronouns aren't making a false claim that trans men produce sperm, _&c._! Rather, she's saying that a pronoun convention that groups together females, and a minority of males who wish they were female, affects our cognition about that minority of males in a way that's disadvantageous to Kerr's interests (because she wants to be especially alert to threats posed by males), such that Kerr refuses to comply with that convention in her own speech. (Compare to how a Spanish speaker might refuse to address someone they disrespected as _usted_ because of its connotations, without thereby claiming that using _usted_ would make the sentence literally false.)
+
+I take pains to emphasize this because Yudkowsky [misrepresents what his political opponents are claiming](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/), repeatedly trying to frame the matter of dispute as to whether pronouns can be "lies" (to which Yudkowsky says, No, that would be ontologically confused)—whereas if you _actually read_ what the people on the other side of the policy debate are saying, they're largely _not claiming_ that "pronouns are lies"! (It seems fair to regard Kerr's article as representative of gender-critical ("TERF") concerns; I've seen the post linked in those circles more than once, and it's cited in [embattled former University of Sussex professor Kathleen Stock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock#Views_on_gender_self-identification)'s book _Material Girls_.)
+
+Anyway, given these reasons why the _existing_ meanings of _she_ and _he_ are relevant to the question of pronoun reform, what is Yudkowsky's response?
Apparently, to play dumb. In the comments of the Facebook post, Yudkowsky claims:
...
-I'm sorry, but I can't take this self-report literally. I certainly [don't think Yudkowsky was _consciously_ lying](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist) when he wrote that. Nevertheless, I am _incredibly_ skeptical that Yudkowsky _actually_ doesn't know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to sex more firmly than a proper name is attached to someone's appearance.
+I'm sorry, but I can't take this self-report literally. I certainly [don't think Yudkowsky was _consciously_ lying](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist) when he wrote that. (When speaking or writing quickly without taking the time to scrupulously check, [it's common for little untruths and distortions to slip into one's speech](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pZSpbxPrftSndTdSf/honesty-beyond-internal-truth).) Nevertheless, I am _incredibly_ skeptical that Yudkowsky _actually_ doesn't know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to sex more firmly than a proper name is attached to someone's appearance.
+
+I realize this must seem impossibly rude and presumptuous of me. Yudkowsky _said_ he doesn't know what it feels like from the inside! That's a report out his own mental state, which he has privileged introspective access to, and I don't! What grounds could I possibly, _possibly_ have to think he's not telling the truth about his own mind?
-[TODO: how could you possibly know that?]
+It's a good question. And my answer is, even without mind-reading technology, people's minds are still part of the same cause-and-effect physical universe that I can (must) make probabilistic inferences about, and verbal self-reports aren't my _only_ source of evidence about someone's mind. In particular, if someone's verbal self-report mis-predicts what we know about their _behavior_, it's far from clear that we should trust the report more than our senses.
The thing is, Eliezer Yudkowsky is a native English speaker born in 1979. As a native English speaker born in 1987, I have a _pretty good_ mental model of how native English speakers born in the late 20th century use language.
And one of the things native English speakers born in the late 20th century are _very good_ at doing, is noticing what sex people are and using the corresponding pronouns without consciously thinking about it, because the pronouns are attached to the concept of sex in their heads more firmly than proper names are attached to something in their heads.
+I would bet at very generous odds at some point in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ on the basis of perceived sex to refer to someone whose name he didn't know. Because _all native English speakers do this_. Moreover, we can say something about the cognitive algorithm underlying _how_ they do this: [people can recognize sex from facial structure _alone_ (hair covered, males clean-shaven) at 96% accuracy](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf)
-I would bet at very generous odds at some point in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ on the basis of perceived sex to refer to someone whose name he didn't know. Because _all native English speakers do this_.
+
+I would also bet at very generous odds that in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has very rarely if ever assumed what someone's name is on the basis of their appearance without being told.
[TODO: self-identity is a Schelling point]
-
+appeal to inner privacy conversation-halter https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wqmmv6NraYv4Xoeyj/conversation-halters
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