A review of the empirical evidence for the two-type taxonomy is beyond the scope of this post. To interested or skeptical readers who only have time to read one paper, I recommend Lawrence's ["Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male-to-Female Transsexualism: Concepts and Controversies"](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/lawrence-agp_and_typology.pdf); for a more exhaustive treatment, see the first two chapters of Lawrence's monograph [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies_](https://surveyanon.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/men-trapped-in-mens-bodies_book.pdf) or follow the links and citations in [Kay Brown's FAQ](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/).
-To avoid getting mired in _unnecessary_ controversy, for the purposes of this post, I'd like to emphasize that it's possible to reject the hypothesis that autogynephilia is the _cause_ of the second type, while [still agreeing that](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/against-blanchardianism/) there observationally seem to be _at least_ two types of trans women, with the late-onset/non-exclusively-androphilic type or types being less overtly feminine and not sharing the etiology of the early-onset/androphilic type. We could perhaps imagine a gender identity "switch" in the brain that can get flipped around (explaining the eventual need to transition) without much affecting most other sexually-dimorphic parts of the brain (explaining how transition could be delayed so long, and come as such a surprise to others).
+To avoid getting mired in _unnecessary_ controversy, for the purposes of this post, I'd like to emphasize that it's possible to reject the hypothesis that autogynephilia is the _cause_ of the second type, while [still agreeing that](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/against-blanchardianism/) there observationally seem to be _at least_ two types of trans women, with the late-onset/non-exclusively-androphilic type or types being less overtly feminine and not sharing the etiology of the early-onset/androphilic type. (Personally, I _do_ think autogynephilia has a causal role, but that's another post.)
-This hypothesis is weaker than the strong autogynephilia theory, but still has implications for the ways in which transgender identity claims might or might not be validated by natural, prediction-motivated categorization schemes. If most trans women's traits are noticeably _not drawn from the female distribution_, then it becomes less practical to insist that others categorize them as women.
+Note that we _are_ supposing that the late-onset type or types is not an intersex condition—or at most, a very mild one: we could perhaps imagine a gender identity "switch" in the brain that can get flipped around (explaining the eventual need to transition) without much affecting most other sexually-dimorphic parts of the brain (explaining how transition could be delayed so long, and come as such a surprise to others).
+
+This hypothesis is weaker than the autogynephilia theory, but still has implications for the ways in which transgender identity claims might or might not be validated by natural, prediction-motivated categorization schemes. If most trans women's traits are noticeably _not drawn from the female distribution_, then it becomes less practical to insist that others categorize them as women.
To this it might be objected that there are many different types of women. Clusters can internally have many subclusters: Pureto Rican women (or married women, or young women, or lesbians, _&c_.) don't have the _same_ distribution of traits as women as a whole, and yet are still women. Why should "trans" be different from any other adjective one might use to specify a subcategory of women?
-The problem is that—under the two-types hypothesis—most trans women aren't
+The problem is that—under the two-types hypothesis where gender dysphoria in non-exclusively-androphilic biological males is mostly not an intersex condition—most trans women aren't just not part of the female cluster in configuration space, displaced from it in some arbitrary direction. They're specifically part of the _male_ cluster, which people _already_ have a concept for.
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projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff