"The Categories ..." pasting loose ends

Including more cuttings from the notes file. This is what I showed my writing
coach today.

diff --git a/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md b/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md
index bd2e6cc..89574f0 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md
+++ b/content/drafts/the-categories-were-made-for-man-in-order-to-make-predictions.md
@@ -86,10 +86,43 @@ A (cis) female friend of the blog, a member of a very ["Blue Tribe"](http://slat
 
 > There have been "all women" things, like clothing swaps or groups, that then pre-transitioned trans women show up to. And it's hard, because it's weird and uncomfortable once three or four participants of twelve are trans women. I think the reality that's happening is women are having those spaces less—instead doing private things "for friends," with specific invite lists that are implicitly understood not to include men or trans women. This sucks because then we can't include women who aren't _already_ in our social circle, and we all know it but no one wants to say it.
 
 
 > There have been "all women" things, like clothing swaps or groups, that then pre-transitioned trans women show up to. And it's hard, because it's weird and uncomfortable once three or four participants of twelve are trans women. I think the reality that's happening is women are having those spaces less—instead doing private things "for friends," with specific invite lists that are implicitly understood not to include men or trans women. This sucks because then we can't include women who aren't _already_ in our social circle, and we all know it but no one wants to say it.
 

-But this is a _terrible_ outcome with respect to _everyone's_ values. One can't even say, "Well, the cost to those bigoted cis women of not being able to have trans-exclusionary spaces is more than outweighed by trans women's identities being respected," because the non-passing trans women's identities aren't being respected _anyway_; it's just that (cis) women are collectively too _nice_ to [make it common knowledge](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/15/it-was-you-who-made-my-blue-eyes-blue/). (The sex difference in [Big Five](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) Agreeableness is [_d_](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_d)=0.48.)
+But this is a _terrible_ outcome with respect to _everyone's_ values. One can't even say, "Well, the cost to those bigoted cis women of not being able to have trans-exclusionary spaces is more than outweighed by trans women's identities being respected," because the non-passing trans women's identities aren't being respected _anyway_; it's just that (cis) women are collectively too _nice_ to [make it common knowledge](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/15/it-was-you-who-made-my-blue-eyes-blue/). (The sex difference in [Big Five](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) Agreeableness [is](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/) [_d_](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_d)≈0.5.)
+
+As a transhumanist as and as an individualist, I want to protect people's freedom to modify their body and social presentation, which _implies_ the right to transition. For the same reasons, I want to protect freedom of association, which _implies_ the right to have sex-segregated spaces that are actually segregated by biological sex if there exists demand that kind of space.
+
+People should get what they want. We should have social norms that help people get what they want. I don't _know_ what the optimal social norms around transitioning are. 
+
+[...]
+
+the _idiot sophistry_ of "Women are people who identify as women, _by definition_, and definitions can't be wrong, except if you use another definition, you're hurting people!—look, even Scott Alexander says so!"

 
 -----
 
 
 -----
 

-People should get what they want. We should have social norms that help people get what they want. Unfortunately, helping people get the things that they want is a hard problem, because people are complicated and the world is complicated. That's why, when renegotiating social norms to apply to a historically unprecedented situation,
+[cut for flow from an earlier draft, partially salvagable?—]
+
+Is this too absolutist?—effectively equating "trans" with "passing", and even then marked as an [atypical case](http://lesswrong.com/lw/nk/typicality_and_asymmetrical_similarity/)? Would it really be so costly to grant an occasional isolated unprincipled exception to our usual category boundaries, for kindness's sake?
+
+Perhaps not—if we could trust that the exception to our normal ways of thinking and speaking would _stay_ isolated. But the goals of the modern transgender movement seem to be somewhat broader in scope. Consider this display at at recent conference of the American Philosophical Association—
+
+![APA pronoun stickers]({filename}/images/apa_pronoun_stickers.jpg)
+
+(photograph by [Lucia A. Schwarz](https://twitter.com/Lucia_A_Schwarz/status/949315365842116608))
+
+But this isn't how _anyone_ actually thinks about gender! Human brains are good at _noticing patterns_, even if we usually can't articulate exactly how or why. The process by which we notice someone's features (voice, facial structure, whether they have breasts, gendered clothing cues, any number of [subtle differences in motor behaviors](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/all-the-wrong-moves/) that your perceptual system can pick up on without you being consciously aware of them), categorize them as a _woman_ or _man_, and use that category (and everything else we can infer about the person, using more-detailed, finer-grained categories) to guide our interactions with them, isn't something subject to conscious control.
+
+That is: if you need a sticker to get people to gender you correctly, your transition has _failed_. In a free Society, everyone should have the right to express themselves, to modify their body and social presentation however they see fit. But having your best to present your true self, you can't—not even _shouldn't_, but _can't_—exert detailed control how other people percieve you.
+
+All you can do is force them to lie.
+
+----
+
+need to work in—

 
 

-As a transhumanist as and as an individualist, I want to protect people's freedom to modify their body and social presentation, which _implies_ the right to transition. For the same reasons, I want to protect people's freedom of association, which _implies_ the right to transition.
+ * my quip about "men who love what we _wish_ women were, and want to become _that_"
+ * explicitly address the "Puerto Rican women don't have exactly the same distribution as women as a whole, but they're still women" argument (distribution of MtTs isn't just different from women as a whole, it's actually part of the _male_ cluster, which people already have a concept for)
+ * link "Blegg Mode" somewhere
+ * restrooms as safe spaces quote?? (if I can get permission)
+ * link Ozy on "We don't have a gender gap, we have an _assigned sex at birth_ gap"
+ * call out the mendacity of "assigned at birth" language
+ * more justified segregation examples: sports (link "Questions Such As ..."), prison
+ * section about how this a question of what social norms we want to negotiate