If we notice further patterns _within_ the group of cases that make up a category, we can spit it up into sub-categories: for example, a diagnosis of bipolar I requires a full-blown manic episode, but hypomania and a major depressive episode qualify one for bipolar II.
-Is the two-type typology of bipolar disorder a good theory? Are bipolar I and bipolar II "really" different conditions, or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition, part of a "bipolar spectrum" along with [cyclothymia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclothymia)? In our current state of knowledge, this is debateable, but if our understanding of the etiology of bipolar disorder were to advance, and we were to find evidence that that bipolar I has a different underlying _causal structure_ from bipolar II with decision-relevant consequences, like responding to different treatments, that would support a policy of thinking and talking about them as mostly separate things—even while they have enough in common to both be kinds of "bipolar". The simple high-level category ("bipolar disorder") is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the sub-category (bipolar I _vs._ II), and the subcategory is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the patient's detailed case history.
+Is the two-type typology of bipolar disorder a good theory? Are bipolar I and bipolar II "really" different conditions, or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition, part of a "bipolar spectrum" along with [cyclothymia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclothymia)? In our current state of knowledge, this is debateable, but if our understanding of the etiology of bipolar disorder were to advance, and we were to find evidence that that bipolar I has a different underlying _causal structure_ from bipolar II with decision-relevant consequences (like responding to different treatments), that would support a policy of thinking and talking about them as mostly separate things—even while they have enough in common to both be kinds of "bipolar". The simple high-level category ("bipolar disorder") is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the sub-category (bipolar I _vs._ II), and the subcategory is a useful approximation in the absence of knowing the patient's detailed case history.
-With a _sufficiently_ detailed causal story, you could even dispense with the high-level categories altogether and directly talk about the consequences of different neurotransmitter counts or whatever—but lacking that supreme precise knowledge, it's useful to sum over the details into high-level categories, and meaningful to debate whether a one-type or two-type taxonomy is a better statistical fit to the underlying reality whose full details we don't know yet.
+With a _sufficiently_ detailed causal story, you could even dispense with the high-level categories altogether and directly talk about the consequences of different neurotransmitter counts or whatever—but lacking that supreme precise knowledge, it's useful to sum over the details into high-level categories, and meaningful to debate whether a one-type or two-type taxonomy is a better statistical fit to the underlying reality whose full details we don't know.
-----
In the case of male-to-female transsexualism, we notice a pattern where androphilic and non-androphilic trans women seem to be different from each other—not just in their sexuality, but also in their age of dysphoria onset, interests, and personality.
-This claim is most famously associated with the work of [Blanchard](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf), [Bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen), and [Lawrence](http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html), who argue that there are two discrete types of male-to-female transsexualism: an autogynephilic type (basically, [men who love women and want to become what they love](/papers/lawrence-becoming_what_we_love.pdf)), and an androphilic/homosexual type (basically, the extreme right tail of feminine gay males).
+This claim is most famously associated with the work of [Blanchard](/papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf), [Bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen), and [Lawrence](http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html), who argue that there are two discrete types of male-to-female transsexualism: an autogynephilic type (basically, [men who love women and want to become what they love](/papers/lawrence-becoming_what_we_love.pdf)), and an androphilic/homosexual type (basically, the extreme right tail of feminine gay men).
-But many authors have noticed the same bimodal clustering of traits under various names, [while disagreeing about the underlying causality](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/). [Veale, Clarke, and Lomax](/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf) attribute the differences to whether defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity. [Anne Vitale](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm) identifies distinct groups (Group One and Group Three), and hypothesizes that the difference is due to degree of prenatal androgenization. Julia Serano [concedes that "the correlations that Blanchard and other researchers prior to him described generally hold true"](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/serano-agp-a_scientific_review_feminist_analysis_and_alternative.pdf), but argues that [...]
+But many authors have noticed the same bimodal clustering of traits under various names, [while disagreeing about the underlying causality](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/). [Veale, Clarke, and Lomax](/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf) attribute the differences to whether defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity. [Anne Vitale](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm) identifies distinct groups (Group One and Group Three, in her terminology), but hypothesizes that the difference is due to degree of prenatal androgenization. Julia Serano [concedes that "the correlations that Blanchard and other researchers prior to him described generally hold true"](http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/serano-agp-a_scientific_review_feminist_analysis_and_alternative.pdf), but denies their causal or taxonometric significance.
Is a two type typology of male-to-female transsexualism a good theory? Is it "really" two different conditions (following Blanchard _et al._), or slightly different presentations of "the same" condition (following Veale _et al._)?
What are the reasons a male-to-female transition might seem like a good idea to someone? _Why_ would a male be interested in undergoing medical interventions to resemble a female and live socially as a woman? I see three prominent reasons, depicted as the parents of the "transition" node in a graph.
-First and most obviously, femininity: if you happen to be a male with unusually female-typical psychological traits, then [...]
+First and most obviously, femininity: if you happen to be a male with unusually female-typical psychological traits, you might fit into the social world better as a woman rather than as an anomalously effeminate man.
-Second—second is hard to explain if you're not already familiar with the phenomenon, but basically, [...]
+Second—second is hard to quickly explain if you're not already familiar with the phenomenon, but basically, autogynephilia is very obviously a real thing; [I wrote about my experiences with it in a previous post](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/). Crucially, autogynephilic identification with the _idea_ of being female, is distinct from naturally feminine behavior, of which other people [know it when they see it](/2022/May/gaydar-jamming/).
-[3. cultural/ideological factors]
+Third—various cultural factors. You can't be trans if your culture doesn't have a concept of "being trans", and the concepts [and incentives](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) that your culture offers, make a difference as to how you turn out. People who think of themselves as trans women in today's culture, could very well be "the same" as people who thought of themselves as drag queens or occasional cross-dressers 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. (Either "the same" in terms of underlying dispositions, or, in many cases, just literally the same people.)
-[Threshold model]
+If there are multiple non-mutually-exclusive reasons why transitioning might seem like a good idea to someone, then the decision of whether to transition could take the form of a liability–threshold model: males transition if the _sum_ of their femininity, autogynephilia, and culture-related-trans-disposition exceed some threshold.
-[Okay, but where do the two types come from? The graph is just showing cause-and-effect, but if this were actually a Bayes net, there would be numbers representing a probability distribution, and I claim that the distribution clusters into two types]
-
-[The sexual orientation node increases femininity and decreases AGP, so those pathways are anti-correlated; however, the fact that straight AGP men also vary somewhat in their degree of femininity; some accounts have emphasized how masculine (even hypermasculine) AGPs are, but this seems wrong]
+So where do the two types come from? This graph is just illustrating (conjectured) cause-and-effect relationships, but if we were actually to flesh it out as a complete Bayesian network, there would be additional data that quantitatively specifies what (probability distribution over) values each node takes conditional on the values of its parents. When I claim that Blanchard–Bailey–Lawrence's two-type taxonomy is a useful approximation for this causal model, I'm conjecturing that the distribution represented by this Bayesian network (if we had the complete network) can also be approximated a two-cluster model: _most_ people high in the "femininity" factor will be low in the "autogynephilia" factor and _vice versa_, such that you can buy decent predictive accuracy by casually speaking as if there were two discrete "types".
+[The sexual orientation node increases femininity and decreases AGP, so those pathways are anti-correlated; however, the fact that straight AGP men also vary somewhat in their degree of femininity; some informal accounts (link Sailer) have emphasized how masculine (even hypermasculine) AGPs are, but this seems wrong]
+[briefly mention ETLE]
+[Berkson's paradox is also a thing]
[People who don't quite seem to fit the coarse taxonomy might still be explained by the graph and a threshold model]
-[Why do I believe this? All six arrows in the graph are something that I think we have a huge weight of evidence for, either formally, or just looking at the world]
-
-[Sexual orientation effect on femininity documented by Lippa and Bailey-Zucker]
+Why do I believe this? Anyone can name some variables and sketch a directed graph between them. Why should you believe this particular graph is _true_? Ultimately, the reader cannot abdicate responsibility to think it through and decide for herself, but it seems to _me_ that all six arrows in the graph are things that we separately have a pretty large weight of evidence for, either in published scientific studies, or just informally looking at the world.
[femininity->transition would be obvious even if it weren't in th]
+[Sexual orientation effect on femininity documented by Lippa and Bailey-Zucker]
+
[ETLE sexual orientation AGP v-structure, and effect of AGP on transition documented by Lawrence]
[I don't have a good formal citation on cultural factors, but it seems really obvious if you've been paying attention for the last decade]
whereas a straight man needs to be (.68-.36 = 0.32) 0.32/0.12=2.67 more feminine than average to be as feminine as a straight woman—that's rarer, but not impossible
]
-[okay, my inner Tailcalled is telling me I need to quantitatively model the joint effect of AGP and femininity to see if two types actually emerge]
-
[further implications: as cultural factors increase, the late-onset type becomes more of a "NOS" rather than AGP type]
_(Thanks to the immortal [Tailcalled](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/) for discussion.)_
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff