All you can do is incentivize them to lie.
-This is the other problem with gender-as-self-identification: passing is hard and not-passing hurts, so kind-hearted people try to protect their trans friends from the pain of not being read the way that they would prefer—with the inevitable result that the laudable instinct to be kind gets corrupted into [universal socially-mandatory lies](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/). Even if you don't need predictively-natural categories for any particular practical decision—even if we collectively agree to integrate previously sex-segregated bathrooms and sports leagues and prisons so that no actual policy decision depends on what "gender" somebody is—as an aspiring [epistemic rationalist](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/02/a-common-misunderstanding/), there's something spritually deadening about a world in which the mental representations you need to _make sense_ of the world can't be spoken about without layers of obsfuscating euphemisms.
+This is the other problem with gender-as-self-identification: passing is hard and not-passing hurts, so kind-hearted people try to protect their trans friends from the pain of not being read the way that they would prefer—with the inevitable result that the laudable instinct to be kind gets corrupted into [universal socially-mandatory lies](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/). Even if you don't need predictively-natural categories for any particular practical decision—even if we were to collectively agree to integrate previously sex-segregated bathrooms and sports leagues and prisons so that no actual policy decision depended on what "gender" somebody is—as an aspiring [epistemic rationalist](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/02/a-common-misunderstanding/), there's something spiritually deadening about a world in which the mental representations you need to _make sense_ of the world can't be spoken about without layers of obfuscating euphemisms.
-Friend of the blog Ozymandias [writes that the _Less Wrong_ community doesn't have a gender gap](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/lw-has-an-assigned-sex-at-birth-gap-not-a-gender-gap/)—we just have an _assigned sex at birth_ gap. (Gee, that makes me feel _so much better_.)
+[Friend of the blog](/tag/ozy/) Ozymandias [writes that the _Less Wrong_ community doesn't have a gender gap](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/lw-has-an-assigned-sex-at-birth-gap-not-a-gender-gap/)—we just have an _assigned sex at birth_ gap. (Gee, that makes me feel _so much better_.)
-I don't _want_ to be "anti-trans." I can easily imagine _myself_ transitioning (I've [already experimented](/tag/hrt-diary/) with the relevant drugs), in a nearby possible past where my analogue was braver and read different books in a different order, or a nearby possible future after the technology gets better.
+I don't _want_ to be "anti-trans." I can easily imagine _myself_ transitioning (I've [already experimented](/tag/hrt-diary/) with the relevant drugs), in a nearby possible past in which my analogue was braver and read different books in a different order, or a nearby possible future in which the technology gets better.
But when a man can do nothing but wear a sticker that says "SHE" and say, "Who are you going to believe, my sticker, or your lying eyes? There's no rule of rationality saying that you shouldn't believe the sticker, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that you should" and the _finest minds of my generation_ can permit themselves no other response than, "She's absolutely correct; the categories were made for man, not man for the categories," I can only plead—
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff