Was it rude of me to confront her on the contradiction in her PMs? Yes, it was extremely rude; all else being equal, I would prefer _not_ to probe into other people's private lives and suggest that they're lying to themselves. But when they lie to the public, that affects _me_, and my attempts to figure out _my_ life. Is it a conscious political ploy, I asked her, or are people _really_ unable to entertain the hypothesis that their beautiful pure self-identity feelings are causally related to the fetish? If it's a conscious political ploy, [I wished someone would just say, "Congratulations, you figured out the secret, now keep quiet about it or else,"](/2016/new-clothes/) rather than trying to _undermine my connection of reality_; I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, but this was _really personally disturbing_.
-She said that she had to deal with enough invalidation already, that she had her own doubts and concerns but would only discuss them with people who shared her views. Fair enough—I can't blame anyone for prioritizing their mental health, even if I personally find it creepy that adults in the so-called "rationalist" community need to be protected from "invalidation".
+She said that she had to deal with enough invalidation already, that she had her own doubts and concerns but would only discuss them with people who shared her views. Fair enough—I can't blame anyone for prioritizing their mental health, even if I personally find it pathetic that grown adults in the so-called "rationalist" community need to be protect themselves from "invalidation".
The privately-sane responses were more interesting. "People are crazy about metaphysics," one told me. "That's not new. Compare with transubstantiation and how much scholarly work went in to trying to square it with natural materialism. As for causality, I think it's likely that the true explanation will not take the shape of an easily understood narrative."
Gatekeeping sessions finished, I finally started HRT at the end of December 2016. In an effort to not let my anti–autogynephilia-denialism crusade take over my life, earlier that month, I promised myself (and [published the SHA256 hash of the promise](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154596054540199)) not to comment on gender issues under my real name through June 2017—_that_ was what my new pseudonymous blog was for.
-... the promise didn't take. There was just too much gender-identity nonsense on my Facebook wall; I _had_ to push back on some of it.
+... the promise didn't take. There was just too much gender-identity nonsense on my Facebook feed; I _had_ to push back on some of it.
-[TODO: meeting Katie]
+"Folks, I'm not sure it's feasible to have an intellectually-honest real-name public conversation about the etiology of MtF," I wrote in one thread. "If no one is willing to mention some of the key relevant facts, maybe it's less misleading to just say nothing."
+
+As a result of that, I got a PM from a woman whose marriage had fallen apart after (among other things) her husband transitioned. She told me about the parts of her husband's story that had never quite made sense to her (but which sounded like a textbook case from my reading). In her telling, the husband was always more emotionally tentative and less comfortable with the standard gender role and status stuff, but in the way of like, a geeky nerd guy, not in the way of someone feminine. He was into crossdressing sometimes, but she had thought that was just a weird and insignificant kink, not that he didn't like being a man—until they moved to the Bay Area and he fell in with a social-justicey crowd. When I linked her to Kay Brown's article on ["Advice for Wives and Girlfriends of Autogynephiles"](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/advice-for-wivesgirlfriends-of-autogynephiles/), her response was, "Holy shit, this is _exactly_ what happened with me."
[TODO: the story of my Facebook crusade, going off the rails, getting hospitalized]
> ["One may even consider the act of defining a word as a promise to \[the\] effect [...] \[that the definition\] will somehow help you make inferences / shorten your messages."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yLcuygFfMfrfK8KjF/mutual-information-and-density-in-thingspace)
+[TODO: and this is a completely general point that has nothing to do with gender]
+
So when I quit my dayjob in order to have more time to study and work on this blog, the capstone of my sabbatical was an exhaustive response to Alexander, ["The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) (which Alexander [graciously included in his next linkpost](https://archive.ph/irpfd#selection-1625.53-1629.55)). A few months later (having started a new dayjob), I followed it up with ["Reply to _The Unit of Caring_ on Adult Human Females"](/2018/Apr/reply-to-the-unit-of-caring-on-adult-human-females/), responding to a similar argument. I'm proud of those posts: I think Alexander's and _Unit of Caring_'s arguments were incredibly dumb, and I think I did a pretty good job of explaining exactly why.
At this point, I was certainly _disappointed_ with my impact, but not to the point of bearing much hostility to "the community". People had made their arguments, and I had made mine; I didn't think I was _entitled_ to anything more than that.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff