"I Tell Myself" 7 December drafting session 4: Serano/Reddit evidence

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@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ Men who wish they were women do not particularly resemble actual women! We just
 
 Okay, I understand that in Berkeley 2020, that probably sounds like some kind of reactionary political statement, probably intended to provoke. But try interpreting it _literally_, as a _factual claim_ about the world. Adult human males who _fantasize about_ being adult human females, are still neverless drawn from the _male_ multivariate trait distribution, not the female distribution.
 
-It seems useful to be able to _express this claim in natural language_. I can phrase the claim in more or fewer words, using a greater or lesser amount of caveats, qualifications, or polysyllabic obfuscations, depending on my audience's sensibilities and what aspects of my model I want to call attention to. But I need to be able to talk about the model _somehow_, and talking about the model becomes _more expensive_ if I'm not occasionally allowed to use the phrase "actual woman" in a context where _you know goddamned well_ what I mean by it.
+It seems useful to be able to _express this claim in natural language_. I can phrase the claim in more or fewer words, using a greater or lesser amount of caveats, qualifications, or polysyllabic obfuscations, depending on my audience's sensibilities and what aspects of my model I want to call attention to. But I need to be able to talk about the model _somehow_, and talking about the model becomes _more expensive_ if I'm not occasionally allowed to use the phrase "actual woman" in a context where [_you know goddamned well_ what I mean by it](/2018/Apr/reply-to-the-unit-of-caring-on-adult-human-females/).
 
 I mean it just as I might say "actual meat" to distinguish such from [plant-based imitations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue), or "actual wood" to distinguish such from [composite materials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-plastic_composite), without anyone raising an eyebrow. The general concept here is that of _mimickry_. The point is not to denigrate the mimic—one might have any number of reasons to _prefer_ meat substitutes or composite wood to the real thing. (Nonhuman animal welfare! Termite-proof-ness!) One might have any number of reasons to _prefer_ trans women to the real thing. (Though I still feel uncomfortable trying to think of any in particular.) The _point_ is that I need language that _asymmetrically_ distinguishes the _original_ thing, from the artificial thing that's trying to mimic its form while not being exactly the same thing, either by design or due to technological limitations.
 
@@ -198,9 +198,22 @@ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cyj6wQLW6SeF6aGLy/the-psychological-unity-of-hum
 
 So far, I've mostly been linking to [Anne Lawrence](http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html) or [Kay Brown](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/faq-on-the-science/) for the evidence for this rather than writing up my own take (I already have enough problems with writing quickly, that I don't feel motivated to spend wordcount making a case that other people have already made), but maybe that was a tactical mistake on my part, because people don't click links, and so if I don't include at least _some_ of the evidence inline in my own text, hostile readers (that's you!) will write me off as making unjustified assertions.
 
-And honestly, realistically? I suspect it _mostly_ wasn't the research literature that convinced me, as unscientific as that sounds to say out loud. (This blog is not about sounding scientific.) Research can obfuscate as well as clarify. Even a very educated layman can be brought to vexation looking back and forth between Lawrence and [Veale](/papers/veale-evidence_against_a_typology.pdf), struggling to look up the definitions of complicated statistics, all the MAXCOVs and _p_ values and Cohen's ω (_omega_?!—but I'd grown [so comfortable with _d_](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/)), before eventually throwing her hands up in despair: who am I to know? Who is anyone to know?
+And honestly, realistically? I suspect it _mostly_ wasn't the research literature that convinced me, as unscientific as that sounds to say out loud. (This blog is not about sounding scientific.) Research can obfuscate as well as clarify. Even a very educated layman can be brought to vexation looking back and forth between Lawrence and [Veale](/papers/veale-evidence_against_a_typology.pdf), struggling to look up the definitions of complicated statistics, all the MAXCOVs and _p_ values and Cohen's ω (he has an _omega_, too?!—but I'd grown [so comfortable with _d_](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/)), before eventually throwing her hands up in despair: who am I to know? Who is anyone to know?
+
+So if it wasn't the science literature, what was it? It was a _lot_ of things all pointing in the same direction, but _impossible_ to dismiss once you knew what to look for, even after taking into account that the phrase "once you know what to look for" is a 20-meter fire-truck-red flag for [confirmation bias](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rmAbiEKQDpDnZzcRf/positive-bias-look-into-the-dark).
+
+I'm talking about shit like—okay, here's one example, in April 2018, the /r/MtF subreddit [put up a survey](http://archive.is/auSxF) asking, "Did you have a gender/body swap/transformation "fetish" (or similar) before you realised you were trans?" (The poll website itself uses the phrase "before you hatched", a reference to the terminology of pre-transition trans women as "eggs.") Results come back 82.4% Yes, with over 2000 responses. [Top comment on the Reddit thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/89nw0w/did_you_have_a_genderbody_swaptransformation/dws9h8k/), with some 230 upvotes: "I spent a long time in the 'it's probably just a fetish' camp."
+
+Perhaps some readers are still scoffing at how unscientific this is. Reddit? I expect you to believe that Society's narrative on gender identity is false based on a _Reddit poll_? But think about it. /r/MtF has over 67,000 subscribers.
+
+[80 is not 100, but]
+[AGP makes this look less confusing, the feminine essence narrative can't handle it]
+[the research literature says the same dang thing, up to the ~80% figures!]
+
+I picked on this poll as my first exhibit just because the poll question was _so_ explicit, and the sample size _so_ large, but once you stop being blinded by the Narrative, this stuff is just _not hard to find_.
+
+I bought famed trans activist Julia Serano's _Whipping Girl_ in 2007, when it was new. Again, back then, I didn't think _I_ was Actually Trans—didn't think Serano and I belonged to the same natural category. It was a _shock_ looking back 
 
-So if it wasn't the science literature, what was it? I'm talking about shit like—in April 2018, the /r/MtF subreddit [put up a survey](http://archive.is/auSxF) 
 
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