-Now, I am not a cognitive psychologist, and can't claim to _know_ exactly what my beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing is, or where it comes from—that's [not the kind of thing I would expect people to _know_ from introspection alone](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/). But it seems like a pretty obvious guess that there must have been some sort of _causal relationship_ between the erotic thing, and the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing, even if the two things don't _feel_ the same.
+Now I am not a cognitive scientist, and can't claim to _know_ exactly what my beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing is, or where it comes from—that's [not the kind of thing I would expect people to _know_ from introspection alone](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/). But it has always seemed like a pretty obvious guess that there must have been _some sort of [causal relationship](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zvu6ZP47dMLHXMiG3/optimized-propaganda-with-bayesian-networks-comment-on)_ between the erotic thing, and the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing, even if the two things don't _feel_ the same: the overlap in subject matter is too much to be a coincidence. And the erotic thing definitely came _first_.
+
+Maybe this story reads differently in 2020 from how it was to live in 2005? I think that teenage boys in today's world having the kind of feelings I was having then, upon referencing or hinting at the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing—
+
+(and the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing is _much_ easier to talk about than the erotic thing)
+
+(I mean, the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing is much harder to talk about _clearly_, but talking about it _un_-clearly is less shameful and requires much less bravery)
+
+—are immediately provided with "Oh, that means you're not a cis boy; you're a trans girl" as the definitive explanation. But it was a different time, then. Of course I had _heard of_ transsexualism as a thing, in the form of the "woman trapped in a man's body" trope, but it wasn't something I expected to actually encounter in real life.