drafting "Challenges to Yudkowsky's Pronoun Reform Proposal"

Net 520 words in the hour before dayjob—I had been dead and
despairing, but then I remembered my righteous fury and leaned into
it, and honestly it's better this way

diff --git a/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md b/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md
index 82f1a79..4489816 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md
+++ b/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md
@@ -187,11 +187,25 @@ As I have explained at length, this _rationale_ doesn't work and isn't true (eve
 
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-[TODO: not the woke position—it's an incoherent position]
+[TODO: "Can't imagine a sympathetic protagonist"—lies, imagine a rape victim]
 
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+[TODO: quote Yudkowsky: not the woke position]
 
-[TODO: "Can't imagine a sympathetic protagonist"—lies, imagine a rape victim]
+[TODO: propose frame where the defense lawyer objects, and the judge faces a forced choice between Sustained and Overruled]
+
+Right. It's an _incoherent_ position that's optimized to concede to the woke the policy that they want for a _different stated reason_ in order to make the concession appear politically neutral. But this is intellectually dishonest, because in order to _actually_ be politically neutral, you need to _acknowledge_ the costs and benefits of a policy to different parties, even if all policies impose costs on _someone_ and there's no solution that everyone is happy with.
+
+Policy debates should not appear one-sided. Exerting social pressure on a native-English-speaking rape victim to refer to her male rapist with _she_/_her_ pronouns is a _cost_ to her. And, simultaneously, _not_ exerting that pressure is a _cost_ to many trans people, by making recognition of their social gender _conditional_ on some standard of good behavior, rather than an unconditional social fact.
+
+You might think the cost of making the victim say _she_ is worth it, because you want to make it easy for gender-dysphoric people to socially transition, and because you think it's dumb that pronouns imply sex in the actually-existing English language and you see the self-identity convention as a step towards degendering the language.
+
+Fine. That's a perfectly coherent position. But if that's your position and you care about being intellectually honest, you need to _acknowledge_ that your position exerts costs on some actually-existing English speakers who have a use-case for using pronouns to imply sex. You need to be able to look that rape victim in the eye and say, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes that trans people's feelings are more important than yours with respect to this policy question; sucks to be you."
+
+And of course—it _should_ be needless to say—this applies symmetrically. If you think speakers _should_ be able to misgender according to their judgement and you care about being intellectually honest, you need to be able to look a trans person in the eye and say, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes the freedom of speech of speakers is more important than your gender being recognized; sucks to be you."
+
+Or if you have more important things to worry about and don't want to take a position on controversial social issues, fine: use whatever pronoun convention happens to be dominant in your local social environment, and, if questioned, say, "I'm using the pronoun convention that happens to be dominant in my local social environment." You don't have to invent _absurd lies_ to make it look like the convention that happens to be dominant in your local social environment has no costs.
+
+Really, "I do not know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than 'doesn't look like an Oliver'"? Any seven-year-old in 2016 could tell you that that's just _factually not true_; if you grew up speaking English, you _goddamned well do_ know what it feels like. Did the elephant in your brain really expect to get away with that? How dumb do you think we are?!
 
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