... the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought.
-There's a word in the psychology literature for the beautiful feeling at the center of my life: _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"), coined in the context of a theory that it represented one of two distinct etiologies for male-to-female transsexualism. This theory didn't seem to be the standard mainstream view, and, I learned, people get really mad at you when you mention it in a comment section, so for a long time I self-identified with the _word_ "autogynephilia", but assumed that the associated _theory_ was false. _I_ wasn't one of those people who were _actually trans_; I was just, you know, one of those guys who is pointedly insistent on not being _proud_ of the fact that they're guys, and who are erotically and romantically obsessed with the idea of being a woman.
+There's a word in the psychology literature for the beautiful feeling at the center of my life: _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"), coined in the context of a theory that it represented one of two distinct etiologies for male-to-female transsexualism. This theory didn't seem to be the standard mainstream view, and, I learned, people get really mad at you when you mention it in a comment section, so for a long time I self-identified with the _word_ "autogynephilia", but assumed that the associated _theory_ was false. _I_ wasn't one of those people who were _actually trans_; I was just, you know, one of those guys who is pointedly insistent on not being _proud_ of the fact that they're guys. (And who dimly suspects that this is somehow causually related to [...])
Recent life events led me to do some reading—Kay Brown's blog [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), Anne Lawrence's [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html), and Imogen Binnie's novel [_Nevada_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/) (this item is reverse-scored)—and I concluded that, no, wait, actually the theory looks _correct_, and I _do_ have the same underlying psychological condition that leads people to transition. That in fact, my story till now may even be _typical_ of people who transition in their thirties, right up to the ["Oh, I just want to _experiment_ with hormones, I'm not actually going to _transition_" part](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) (although I still think I'm smarter than that).
I understand that for people who have _already_ built up a self-image around the idea that they are literally women and always have been, the idea that their female gender identity arose out of a misinterpretation of misdirected male sexuality could be extremely disturbing.
-I'm happy to shut up about, um, enpvny qvssreraprf va VD, but this, _this_ is _personal_
+I'm happy to shut up about, um, rguavp VD qvssreraprf univat n fvmnoyr trargvp pbzcbarag, but this, _this_ is _personal_.
But people dealing with gender dysphoria who haven't already transitioned deserve accurate information! This is _personal_ to me. If being a good person means submitting to social pressure aimed at getting me to _shut up and stop thinking_ about the true nature of the beautiful feeling at the center of my life for _twenty-five fucking years_ (!?), then I have _no interest_ in being a good person.
I'm certainly not _trying_ to say things that will hurt people—_least_ of all people who are mostly just like me but read different books in a different order and are living out a pretty decent approximation of _my wildest fantasy_.
-But if you try _not_ to say things that will hurt people, you end up conceding the entire future history of world to people on the basis of their being colonized by mind-viruses that make them the _easiest to hurt_.
+But if you try _not_ to say things that will hurt people, [you](https://devinhelton.com/2015/03/23/standing-up-to-offense-bullying/) [end](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/22/ot9-the-thread-pirate-roberts/#comment-160689) [up](http://lesswrong.com/lw/59i/offense_versus_harm_minimization/3y0k) conceding the entire future history of world to people on the basis of their being colonized by mind-viruses that make them the _easiest to hurt_.
I don't want to live in that world.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff