From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 00:06:23 +0000 (-0700) Subject: extra word, missing word X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=b2f6b4ff506c285770acdc07ae44ad12a4f89aee extra word, missing word --- diff --git a/content/2021/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md b/content/2021/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md index 7c6785a..fe00128 100644 --- a/content/2021/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md +++ b/content/2021/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md @@ -345,7 +345,7 @@ And this is actually what we see. Most men are attracted to women, but some frac Recently I had an occasion [(don't ask)](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/uwBKaeQzsvkcErmBm/ialdabaoth-is-banned/comment/PqZ2NFfj2b2dJoZ9N) to look up if there was a word for having a statue fetish. Turns out it's called _agalmatophilia_, [defined by _Wikipedia_ as](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agalmatophilia) "sexual attraction to a statue, doll, mannequin or other similar figurative object", which "may include a desire for actual sexual contact with the object, a fantasy of having sexual (or non-sexual) encounters with an animate or inanimate instance of the preferred object, the act of watching encounters between such objects, or"—_wait for it_ ... "sexual pleasure gained from thoughts of being transformed or transforming another into the preferred object." I don't think the _Wikipedia_ editor who wrote that last phrase was being a shill for the general erotic-target-location-error hypothesis because it has political implications; I think "among guys who are sexually interested in _X_, some fraction of them want to be _X_" is just _something you notice_ when you honestly look at the world of guys who are sexually interested in arbitrary _X_. -And, and—I've never told anyone this and have barely thought about it in years, but while I'm blogging about all this anyway—I have a few _vague_ memories from _early_ teenagerhood of having transformation fantasies about things other than women.. Like wondering (while masturbating) what it would like to be a dog, or a horse, or a marble statue of a woman. Anyway, I lost interest in those before too long, but I think this vague trace-of-a-memory is evidence for me the thing going on with me being an underlying erotic-target-location-error-like predisposition rather than an underlying intersex condition. +And, and—I've never told anyone this and have barely thought about it in years, but while I'm blogging about all this anyway—I have a few _vague_ memories from _early_ teenagerhood of having transformation fantasies about things other than women.. Like wondering (while masturbating) what it would like to be a dog, or a horse, or a marble statue of a woman. Anyway, I lost interest in those before too long, but I think this vague trace-of-a-memory is evidence for the thing going on with me being an underlying erotic-target-location-error-like predisposition rather than an underlying intersex condition. I don't _know_ the details of what this "erotic target location error" thing is supposed to _be_, exactly—and would expect my beliefs to change a lot if _anyone_ knew the details and could explain them to me—but I think _some story in this general vicinity_ has to be the real explanation of what's going on with me. How _else_ do you make sense of an otherwise apparently normal biological male (whose physical and psychological traits seem to be basically in the male normal range, even if he's [one of those sensitive bookish males](/2020/Sep/link-wells-for-boys/) rather than being "macho") having the _conjunction_ of the beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing _and_, specifically, erotic female-transformation fantasies of the kind I've described? @@ -363,7 +363,7 @@ If I were to _actually_ become female, it _wouldn't_ seem like the scintillating No doubt many women appreciate their own bodies, but a woman's positive body self-image experience of, "I feel attractive today", is going to be _very different_ from the autogynephile-with-BodyApp's experience of, "Oh my God, I have _breasts_ and a _vagina_ that I can look at and touch _without needing anyone's permission_; this is _the scintillating apotheosis of sexual desire and the most important thing in the world._" -In this way, autogynephilia is _intrinsically self-undermining_ in a way that fantasies of flying to the moon are not. This doesn't in any way lessen the desire or make it go away—any more than [the guy who gets turned on by entropy decreasing a closed system](https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1049) would have his libido suddenly and permanently vanish upon learning about the second law of thermodynamics. But it does, I suspect, change the way you think of it: it makes a difference whether you interpret the desire as a confused anomaly in male sexuality—the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought—or _take it literally_. +In this way, autogynephilia is _intrinsically self-undermining_ in a way that fantasies of flying to the moon are not. This doesn't in any way lessen the desire or make it go away—any more than [the guy who gets turned on by entropy decreasing in a closed system](https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1049) would have his libido suddenly and permanently vanish upon learning about the second law of thermodynamics. But it does, I suspect, change the way you think of it: it makes a difference whether you interpret the desire as a confused anomaly in male sexuality—the scintillating but ultimately untrue thought—or _take it literally_. But the reasons not to take it literally might not be obvious to _everyone_. The detailed exposition above about what it would even mean to change sex is the result of a _lot_ of thinking influenced by everything I've read and learned—and in particular, the reductionist methodology I learned from Yudkowsky, and in even more particular, the very specific warning in "Changing Emotions" (and its predecessor in the Extropians mailing-list archives) that changing sex is a _hard problem_.