-[TODO: Sep 2020 categories clarification from EY—victory?!
-https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10158853851009228
-_ex cathedra_ statement that gender categories are not an exception to the rule, only 1 year and 8 months after asking for it
- * this ruins my chances for being a "neutral" bridge between the Vassarites and the Caliphate, but that's OK
-]
+These emails were pretty reckless by my usual standards. (If I was entertaining some hope of serving as a mediator between the Caliphate and Vassar's splinter group after the COVID lockdowns were over, this outburst wasn't speaking well to my sobriety.) But as the subject line indicates, I was just—out of patience. I had spent years making all the careful arguments I could make. What was there left for me to do but scream?
+
+The result of this recklessness was ... success! Without disclosing anything from any private conversations that may or may not have occurred, Yudkowsky did [publish a clarification on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10158853851009228), that he had only meant to criticize the naïve essentialism of asserting that a word Just Means something and that anyone questioning it is Just Lying, and not the more sophisticated class of arguments that I had been making.
+
+In particular, the post contained this line:
+
+> you are being the bad guy if you try to shut down that conversation by saying that "I can define the word 'woman' any way I want"
+
+There it is! A clear _ex cathedra_ statement that gender categories are not an exception to the general rule that categories aren't arbitary. (Only 1 year and 8 months after [asking for it](/2023/Jul/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning/#ex-cathedra-statement-ask).) I could quibble with some of Yudkowsky's exact writing choices, which I thought still bore the signature of political maneuvering, but it would be petty to dwell on quibbles when the core problem had been addressed.
+
+I wrote to Michael, Ben, Jessica, Sarah, and "Riley", thanking them for their support. After successfully bullying Scott and Eliezer into clarifying, I was no longer at war with the robot cult and feeling a lot better (Subject: "thank-you note (the end of the Category War)").
+
+I had a feeling, I added, that Ben might be disappointed with the thank-you note insofar as it could be read as me having been "bought off" rather than being fully on the side of clarity-creation. But not being at war actually made it emotionally easier to do clarity-creation writing. Now I would be able to do it in the spirit of "Here's what I think the thing is actually doing" rather than the spirit of "I hate you lying motherfuckers _so much_. [It, it—the fe—it, flame—flames. Flames—on the side of my face.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrqxmQr-uto)"