From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2021 02:43:05 +0000 (-0800) Subject: complete draft "You Are Right and I Was Wrong" X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=52221d6446aaff0e66f8fe5e274ba63ce2a572a2 complete draft "You Are Right and I Was Wrong" --- diff --git a/content/drafts/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md b/content/drafts/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md index 6937c6d..fc0d532 100644 --- a/content/drafts/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md +++ b/content/drafts/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality.md @@ -1,19 +1,19 @@ Title: You Are Right and I Was Wrong: Reply to Tailcalled on Causality -Date: 2021-02-01 +Date: 2021-02-01 05:00 Category: commentary Tags: causality, Tailcalled, autogynephilia, two-type taxonomy Status: draft -Friend of the blog [Tailcalled responds to](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/causality-is-essential-reply-to-mtsw-on-autogynephilia/) my [2016 response](/2016/Oct/reply-to-ozy-on-agp/) to [Ozy on autogynephilia](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/on-autogynephilia/). +Friend of the blog [Tailcalled responds to](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/causality-is-essential-reply-to-mtsw-on-autogynephilia/) my [2016 response to Ozy on autogynephilia](/2016/Oct/reply-to-ozy-on-agp/)! -Summarizing—Ozy had claimed that the concept of _autogynephilia_ is conflating three things: ordinary female sexual behavior (cis women _also_ have female bodies in their fantasies!), a manifestation of gender dysphoria, and "true" autogynephilia without concomitant gender issues. +Summarizing—[Ozy had claimed that](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/on-autogynephilia/) the concept of _autogynephilia_ is conflating three things: ordinary female sexual behavior (cis women _also_ have female bodies in their fantasies!), a manifestation of gender dysphoria, and "true" autogynephilia without concomitant gender issues. -I was, and am, intensely skeptical that these are really separate things, but at the time, I didn't have the language to properly articulate the theoretical basis of my skepticism. Frustrated by the tendency I perceived of many trans advocates to [resist making scientific generalizations about psychology](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/) while acknowledging the empirical correlations that motivate the generalizations, I wrote, "Summarizing correlations is the _entire point_ of making a taxonomy." +I was, and am, intensely skeptical that these are really three separate things. I think it's more parsimonious to suppose that some males are autogynephilic, and that some fraction of them go on to develop sex dysphoria, rather than to posit _different_ causes for what really _looks like_ [the same erotic phenomenon](http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/05/reconceptualizing-autogynephilia-as_26.html) depending on whether the person goes on to transition or not. But at the time, I didn't have the language to properly articulate the theoretical basis of my skepticism. Frustrated by the tendency I perceived of many trans advocates to [resist scientific generalizations about psychology](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/) while acknowledging the empirical correlations that motivate the generalizations, I wrote, "Summarizing correlations is the _entire point_ of making a taxonomy." But as Tailcalled's response points out, this is just wrong! Different causal theories can generate the same correlations in a particular set of observations, while still making meaningfully and drastically different claims about the world. -As an illustrative example, suppose you observe that among professional athletes in Chicago, [basketball players wear red jerseys](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/185700267974/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2018-2019), but [gridiron football players wear navy-blue jerseys](http://www.gridiron-uniforms.com/GUD/images/2020_Chicago.png). Reifying these observations into a two-type "basketball/red" and "football/blue" taxonomy of professional athletes is perhaps not the _worst_ theory—it does [compress the length of the message needed to describe your observations](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length)—but it's not a particularly _good_ one, largely because it's so _fragile_: it _completely_ breaks down the moment you leave Chicago, or [the Bulls unveil a new jersey](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/635656121361809408/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2020-2021), or you just look at what the visiting team is wearing. And it's fragile _because_ it doesn't reflect what's "really going on" in the world: in fact, what color shirt you're wearing doesn't causally affect what games you can play, and _vice versa_. +As an illustrative example, suppose you observe that among professional athletes in Chicago, [basketball players wear red jerseys](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/185700267974/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2018-2019), but [gridiron football players wear navy-blue jerseys](http://www.gridiron-uniforms.com/GUD/images/2020_Chicago.png). Reifying these observations into a two-type "basketball/red" and "football/blue" taxonomy of professional athletes is not the _worst_ theory—it does [compress the length of the message needed to describe your observations](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length)—but it's definitely not a _good_ one, largely because it's so _fragile_: it completely breaks down the moment you leave Chicago, or [the Bulls unveil a new jersey](https://nbajerseydatabase.tumblr.com/post/635656121361809408/chicago-bulls-city-jersey-2020-2021), or you just look at what the _visiting_ team is wearing. And it's fragile _because_ it doesn't reflect what's "really going on" in the world: in fact, what color shirt you're wearing doesn't causally affect what games you can play, and _vice versa_. -In the case of sex dysphoria in [developmental males](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/), I think the documented correlations between age-of-onset and sexual orientation and history of autogynephilic arousal _do_ reflect what's really going on in the world. +In the case of sex dysphoria in [developmental males](/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/), I think the documented correlations between age-of-onset, sexual orientation, history of female embodiment fantasies, _&c._, _do_ reflect distinct taxons in what's really going on in the world. (If I only get one table to showcase the correlational data, I'll pick [Table IV](/images/lawrence_table_vi.png) from Anne Lawrence's ["Sexuality Before and After Male-to-Female Sex Reassignment Surgery"](/papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf).) I think alternative theories that try to explain the same bimodality in the data, such as [Veale, Clarke, and Lomax's identity defense model](/papers/veale-clarke-lomax-identity-defense_model_of_gender-variance_development.pdf) (which chalks up the difference to whether or not defense mechanisms are used to suppress a gender-variant identity) are a stretch. -[TODO: wrap up, talk more about the specifics in Tailcalled's post, maybe cite Veale's identity-defense model or Serano 2020] +But I'm making that scientific judgment between theories based on my own parsimony intuitions applied to everything I've read and seen; _convincing_ someone else who doesn't already think the same the way is, and should be, a _lot_ more work. Trying to get away with "You agree to the bimodality, therefore you must agree to the taxonomy" would be both _lazy_ and _wrong_, and I thank Tailcalled for his vigilance. diff --git a/content/images/lawrence_table_vi.png b/content/images/lawrence_table_vi.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5102687 Binary files /dev/null and b/content/images/lawrence_table_vi.png differ