rae
5mo ago
Personally, I'm very happy it's out of the news cycle. I think the mania goes both ways and it's incredible how much both the left and right have completely blown out of proportion this private medical issue that affects a small amount of people, and I believe the ideological obsession over it (including from the left) does more harm than good.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm transgender, and I had dysphoria since I was a child myself, but I am a bit of an old-fashioned "truscum" as I don't really fully subscribe to the mainstream leftist trans views. I do know some people in the "neutral middle" - most of my more right-wing friends are opposed to the excesses of the trans movement, but otherwise either don't care or just passively go with the medical consensus.
Can anybody enlighten me why people aren't more curious, why they're happy for children to be groomed into lifelong medicalisation, with their life choices pre-emptively narrowed before they even understand what consent means? The true-believers I understand, it's supposedly smart, moral people that aren't engaged that I'm confused about.
Lifelong medicalisation happens anyway no matter when you transition, but if you do it as an adult, it's much worse. You have to pay huge sums of money (tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars) for very painful, potentially risky surgery - for MtFs, facial feminisation surgery - which is literally slicing your face open, shaving your bones with a saw, and stitching it back up - tracheal shave, voice feminisation surgery, hairline reduction, and some more. All of this you do if you want to pass as a normal member of the opposite sex instead of a freak that's the butt of jokes.
Meanwhile if you transition around the start of puberty, you don't have to do any of these surgeries - you'll go through the rest of your life as a normal-looking member of the opposite sex, and won't have to go through the trauma of watching your body turn into something that gives you psychological pain every day. There's only one surgery you might have to do and that's sex reassignment surgery, and there I don't have any issue with not allowing minors to go through it.
You know what pre-emptively narrows your life choices before you understand what consent means? Good old fashioned puberty. If given the option between a natural puberty that tortures you psychologically has you spend significant amount of effort and money trying to undo its consequences, and a different medically induced one that does not, what is the justification in going with the first one, apart from the naturalistic fallacy?
Now there is a risk of regret - catching teenagers that think they're transgender but later desist. This is where I'm against the leftist discourse glorifying the state of being transgender - you want to make it clear that it's an unpleasant, undesirable medical condition. From what I've seen, the rate of detransition is fairly low; say it was theoretically 10% (it is much lower than that from what I've read), why is preventing the regret of that 10% more important than preventing the regret of that 90% from not going through transition early?
I’m as grey tribe as they come and to me the pendulum has swung firmly the other way. I’ve come from being sympathetic to the right in ‘16, to seeing it as my complete ideological opponent. I started as an edgy online atheist watching Creationism Debunked videos, got into the Intellectual Dark Web, cheered when the libs lost in ‘16, only to realise that maybe the so-called SJWs might have had a point when the hardcore Christian Right took over the movement.
The latter were the same people I was opposed to at the start of my political journey; anti-science, anti-intellectual, dogmatic theocrats who want to suppress anything that doesn’t agree with their outdated religious views. They’ve just repackaged the old stodgy pearl-clutching views we used to mock in the Bush era as somehow “based and redpilled”. They just stole the colours of the cool, rebellious counter-culture to make the grey tribe forget they used to be their ideological opponent.
rae
6mo ago
Your links are comparing natal parents to step-parents, not adoptive parents; a single mother remarrying is completely a different environment compared to two infertile parents deciding to adopt and raise a child from infancy. Adoptive children seem to have poorer physical health but greater parental support than biological children, interestingly enough.
Also if a gay couple adopts a child, it’s not as if the child is being deprived of a mother and a father; the alternative to the gay couple is the child being raised in an orphanage and then going from foster home to foster home.
And in case you suggest it, I’m not sure a closeted gay biological parent in a sham straight marriage is preferable long-term to a stable gay marriage either.
rae
6mo ago
So why does the terminally online alt-right link itself to Trump so much? I remember in 2016 when the left accused Trump and his followers of being white supremacists, misogynists, homophobic, far-right fascists and the response from them was that Trump wasn't any of those things; what the right movement stood against was The Establishment. I remember Trump waving the LGBT flag and being proud of receiving support from Blacks and Latinos.
I personally thought the accusations of Nazism towards the Trump movement were an exaggeration, but now ZHP and his ilk are saying, no, the left was right, we are all of bad the things they said we were. Things the average Westerner would consider not only to be morally repugnant, but the very values of the most reviled enemy in recent history. Debate between a Democrat and a Republican is possible because at heart they both share similar core values and goals; but is there even a point to debating those that admit to views that are the complete antithesis of Western civilisation?
rae
6mo ago
Yes, men need to be successful to be psychologically healthy in a manner that isn't the same for women.
That’s true for certain men but is that so for a huge numbers of men who seem content to work at a dead end job, and do nothing but play video games and watch porn? I’ve met and unfortunately dated men like that, and they genuinely have no drive and no ambition, no matter how hard I tried to push them.
I’ve seen that perspective on Reddit very often, many men said that if it weren’t for women, they would be content to live in a cardboard box. Achieving a minimal standard of living is pretty easy in a modern western society, so it feels to me like the ambitious, career driven man is in the minority.
rae
6mo ago
People with no dysphoria who don’t medically transition but ask to be considered the opposite sex, well, I’m fairly suspicious of their motives. I’ve personally seen people like that on dating apps, and it seems to be either men who want to hook up with female-attracted trans women, or women that want to hook up with gay men; both think that just stating they’re trans but doing nothing else is enough.
I don’t think it’s useful to gatekeep trans identity too much, but I think mainstream trans views have gone too far and made the definitions useless. If you’re trans you should at least want to transition. Allowing sexual predators and fetishists to claim the label is hurting actual trans people, who just want to be seen and function as normal members of the opposite sex.
rae
6mo ago
I’m not sure there’s a difference between how the emotions from how interpret the experience vs. the experience itself? Mental issues are by definition intrinsic. Not all soldiers develop PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event - there seems to be many variables influencing its development, such as age, pre existing conditions, support network, even genes (I’m reading that PTSD is 30-40% heritable). And there’s depressingly large amounts of women that have PTSD from sexual assaults and physical abuse - while only a small minority of men become soldiers in the west.
I’m also not sure what you mean by women’s mental issues being more intrinsic? Anxiety, depression, addiction and abusive relationships would be common reasons the average westerner would go to therapy, and I don’t see how there’s a difference in “cause” there when it comes to gender?
rae
6mo ago
That hasn’t been my experience. I did CBT and there it was quite focused on tracking my emotional state and finding actions to regulate it, and more ordinary talk therapy where I was pushed to be more assertive, recognise abusive relationships and be more emotionally resilient overall. therapy does encourage you to have more self-compassion and avoid emotional repression, but to me that’s the opposite of fragility. People who bottle up everything tend to be very brittle - seeming solid until it gets too much and they shatter.
rae
6mo ago
Why would therapy be less effective for men? I’ve heard moreso that men don’t want to start going to therapy for various reasons (associating therapy with leftism is a new one for me, which I don’t really understand) but it’s a very useful tool to have.
And there’s more than one way to practice it - cognitive behavioural therapy has been found to be effective for anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, and more, and I can’t conceive of a reason it would be less effective for men.
rae
6mo ago
It’s an especially stupid reason to commit suicide because it’s still possible to provide for your family if your business fails - you can still get an ordinary job, or do consulting work, drive an Uber, whatever it takes. The only sure way to be unable to provide is to be dead, so what does killing yourself accomplish? Your spouse now has to shoulder the entire burden on their own.
The scientific evidence, from what I’ve read, seems to say that both sexuality and gender identity are influenced by the exposure to prenatal androgens and other hormonal factors. Gay men and trans women would have less androgen exposure than straight men - resulting in different physiological traits such as higher digit ratio and the infamous “gay face”. A gay man will be involuntarily aroused by homosexual sexual stimuli and there’s no evidence that psychological interventions can change that baseline physiological response. All kinds of men (bisexual, or straight men in prison) can have sex with men, but for gays, their attraction is fundamental physiological trait.
Meanwhile a trans woman is a biological male with some degree of gender dysphoria that takes steps to alter their gender presentation and goes on cross-sex hormones to alleviate that dysphoria. Again, gender presentation is a choice, but the gender dysphoria itself is an involuntary (possibly hormonally caused) condition, and psychological interventions will also have limited success - trans repressors will attest to the psychological toll it takes.
One difficulty I see is distinguishing between one’s inner state and one’s actions. A man is not gay because he has sex with men, he is gay because he is attracted to men. A gay man can be married to a woman and need to fantasise about men to have sex with her, and a straight man can have sex with men (e.g. in prison, on a ship) while thinking about women. There are people that will argue that if you’re a man who has sex with men, then you’re gay, but then does that mean that men who masturbate are attracted to their own hands? That teenage boys are attracted to couches, apple pies or whatever objects that they stereotypical use as masturbation aids?
Same with gender identity, except there definitions get even more controversial (i.e. “what is a woman”). The mainstream trans orthodoxy, from what I understand, says there is an inner “gender state” that can be reflected by your gender presentation, and the inner state is what we should call man/woman/non-binary/etc. Conservatives say there’s just biological sex and someone that’s an adult human male is a man, and someone that’s an adult female human is a woman. Personally I’m not sure there is really an inner “gender identity” in the same way there’s an inner sexual orientation, but gender dysphoria is definitely a thing, and it’s possible to change your gender presentation so that other people see you as the opposite sex and consequently call you a man/woman.
rae
8mo ago
That’s the first time I hear of such a hypothesis and I would say that while there might be a subgroup to which this applies to - the exhibitionist type that flaunts their bodies regardless how well they pass and engage in hugboxing on Reddit - the majority of trans people I know are the opposite in that they have body dysmorphic disorder, imposter syndrome, and issues with self worth. Of course the former group is going to be more visible, but applying conclusions to the entire transgender phenomenon based on them would be a mistake.
If an institution gives preferential treatment to individuals based entirely on their identity, it’s absolutely understandable why someone would fake it if all it takes is self-declaration.
It’s completely the prison’s own fault if Nazi inmates are pretending to be Jewish so that they don’t eat the standard prison slop, and I have little sympathy for the abusive, violent institution that is the US justice system. If they wanted to “fix” the problem, they should make the kosher food as unpalatable and inconvenient as the rest of their offerings, not test inmates for Judaism.
Personally, my preferred solution would be to limit or remove the circumstances where individual identity matters at all. For instance, my preferred solution to the pronoun issue would just be to remove gendered pronouns completely; in languages like Hungarian or Turkish for example, they don’t exist and people communicate just fine, while romance languages go further than English and have almost every single noun and adjective be gendered. Obviously this is not always practical but the general goal should be towards less identity politics, not more.
rae
9mo ago
I was under the impression that straight men were into seeing breasts and butts, but weren’t particularly visually into vulvas on their own, as that’s what the (admittedly limited) conversations I’ve had with straight men focused on.
rae
9mo ago
Wouldn’t straight men not also be weirded out by an unsolicited labia pic? Dick pics aren’t the same as a nude or a thirst trap, they’re an impersonal, disembodied close-up robbed of context and personality, and when they’re unsolicited, it’s like they’re intentionally there to shock or provoke; the equivalent of someone flashing their genitals at you but in the digital world.
rae
9mo ago
If just looking at attractive people is being a slave to unproductive passions, then surely making the extra effort to have sex with them is even worse? The recipe for sexual success is relatively straightforward and you probably know what’s involved - on some level I’m sure you’re aware that it would require you to invest a significant amount of time on what is ultimately a vacuous pursuit and you’re choosing to spend it on things you care about instead. So there’s no reason to feel let down.
Personally I was very promiscuous in the past but all my hook-ups were exactly as you describe being around attractive women - transitory happiness, like eating a nutrient-bereft slice of cheesecake but feeling empty despite all the calories, a quick fix of validation to make me feel better when I felt unattractive or worthless. No amount of sex can substitute for genuine human connection, but it’s hard to really internalise that when society is pushing hard for equating self worth with sex appeal - but I hope you’re able to make the leap and go for forming genuine friendships and romantic connections without spending huge amounts of energy at the meat market first.
rae
9mo ago
What do you mean “deal with”? It’s not like you can’t control yourself, and I don’t see how the fewer clothes women are wearing, the more you’re more depressed about your dating life. Whether you mostly interact with women in hijabs or bikinis won’t make you any more or less single, so isn’t it a positive to be around people you’re attracted to?
The straight men I know seem to enjoy and get cheered up by being in Southern European beaches where a decent proportion of women look like outright models, vs. say the UK where most English women are plain at best; that’s even if they’re married and aren’t looking to cheat. Single men I know are happy just being in the presence of attractive women.
rae
9mo ago
One point is that trans people are far more likely to be the victims rather than the perpetrators of sexual assault and violence, and you won’t have much luck convincing groups like rationalists to focus on the statistically smaller externalities of bad actors that they don’t know, versus the statistically more common occurrence of their friends being threatened, abused, raped or victimised.
But moreso I fail to see why trans people need any special policies. Assault or sexual harassment in bathrooms is illegal regardless of the perpetrator’s gender or biological sex; trans people should go where they pass/are safest. Segregating by biological sex is a losing battle; if trans men are forced to use the bathroom of their biological sex, they can get assaulted for being “men in women’s bathrooms”.
Rape in prisons should not be tolerated, people who sexually assault their cell mate should be isolated and dealt with appropriately.
Women’s sports is more thorny, but I don’t see anything wrong with banning anyone who went through male puberty or more generally went above a certain threshold of exogenous or endogenous androgens in the past (a former trans man who took T from ages 13-17 would have an advantage against cis women, a trans woman who took puberty blockers since the age of 12 would not).
I’ve seen your blog in the wild before and always wanted to respond, so I’m happy to see you here!
I will second a few comments and encourage you to attempt to condense your writing; your two linked articles are long even by the standards of this community and engaging with them in their entirety would take a lot of effort. I think I can summarise, from skimming them and having read a bit of your blog, but do correct me if I make any mistakes:
- You disagree with Scott et al’s assertion that categories are purely man-made and believe that there are natural ways to “carve reality at its seams”
- This comes up with trans people where you state there’s natural binary categories of male/female or man/woman, and disagree with the pro-trans view
- You further support the Blanchardian taxonomy of autogynophiliacs (AGP) vs homosexual transsexuals (HSTS) as opposed to the gender identity or “brain in a body of the opposite sex” mainstream view
- You yourself have very intense autogynophilia and mild gender dysphoria which has caused you significant amounts of distress (hence the long posts)
- You tried HRT but it didn’t do much for you, and stopped
- You claim fulfilling the AGP fantasy is impossible for the foreseeable future as it requires you not only to have a body typical of the opposite sex but also a brain (as per Yudkowsky’s post that RandomRanger brought up).
- You had a break with progressivism in 2017
With that in mind, I do wonder if perhaps one of your issues is that you saw a false dichotomy between two extreme viewpoints of “gender theory”: either men are men and women and women and accepting trans people is lying about biological reality (perhaps for the sake of a fetish), or that being trans is purely due to an innate sense of gender identity that’s not aligned with the body, and that we should 100% respect someone’s self-declared gender no matter their appearance.
But I don’t think I’ve seen you address the “trans medical”/truscum POV which would be relatively uncommon nowadays but which is to me the most sensible one. There’s a condition called gender dysphoria, which is psychological distress towards one’s biological sex. The most effective treatment is transitioning, and the goal is to pass as the opposite sex and have people refer to you by the right pronouns based on your appearance. Your sexual orientation, “gender identity”, etc. is basically irrelevant, the only thing that matters is, do you feel better on HRT and is your life improved by transitioning?
And I agree you that being trans gender is not a physical intersex condition in the sense of “brain stuck in an opposite sex body”, what do you think about hypotheses like Meyer-Powers syndrome or the RCCx hypothesis? You stated you were neurodivergent but I do wonder if you have any of the other physiological symptoms - almost all the trans people I know do. I ask this because there are anecdotal reports of possible treatment for mild gender dysphoria that can be an option if you are open to possibilities other than “I have a fetish” or “I am a woman on the inside”.
I’ve brought these links up before and very aware that any conclusion they have are purely conjecture, but checking physical symptoms and getting tested for a gene mutation is something that might give you objective results. I am also biased towards the trans medical POV because that’s what worked for me as a trans woman who didn’t fit in either the Blanchardian typology or the woke gender identity narrative.
rae
9mo ago
And then when those externalities do happen, and a male-born trans person wins against a female athlete (inherently, unfairly), or a trans person assaults a woman in the bathroom, or a trans prisoner impregnates a woman, those objections are at best handwaved away and dismissed as outliers or discredited, or at worst labeled "transphobic" and censored.
As others have said, trans people (and other gender non-conformists) are a significant part of the rationalist community. The points you mentioned simply do not come up when it comes to the daily interactions that people in it would have.
Take the prototypical Bay Area trans woman someone like Scott Alexander would know: autistic, nerdy, moderate-to-high income, involved in tech, polyamorous (but mostly dating other trans women), and largely similar to other rationalists in terms of mentality. This type of individual is not particular athletic (unless it’s rock climbing), unlikely to be involved in criminal activity or engage in violent behaviour (much like the average male nerd).
This is a stereotype perhaps, but familiar to anyone that hangs around those circles; there’s very little downside to being accepting of them, and the factors you brought up have no direct impact and are in fact very low-probability events when it comes to that demographics.
rae
9mo ago
The issue is that for a lot of trans people, the goal is to look like an ordinary member of the opposite sex, not a someone with a unique appearance. And that’s achievable if the person transitions young: they aren’t going to be a freak who looks visibly different from the rest of the population, they’ll just pass as the gender they transitioned to. Meanwhile an adult transitioner is more likely to be conspicuously trans and require cosmetic surgery to look “normal” (especially in the case of MtFs).
While fewer seem to want to go “stealth” these days as opposed to in the past, many do hold conventional jobs. I know trans hairdressers, programmers, cooks, receptionists, etc, and most go through their daily life without having anybody stare at them the way people would stare at someone with horns or who tattooed their whole body.
rae
9mo ago
Justice is what keeps a social group cohesive instead of turning on each other. A “weaker” tribe with a functioning social system can often outlast a stronger one that tears itself apart due to power struggles and revenge over perceived slights.
But different societies absolutely have different conceptions of justice, how do you know yours is the objective truth? Many things you do, people from other nations or time periods would find absolutely abhorrent, and vice versa.
rae
9mo ago
Here is a decent blogpost that goes into detail with a few links: https://kate.meyerhome.net/blog/2023/meyer-powers-syndrome-lenore-syndrome
While some correlations have been known, most of them are understudied but definitely deserve further attention.
rae
9mo ago
Smell is the one thing that’s pretty much guaranteed with HRT. Trans women smell like women and trans men definitely smell like men, even “down there”. Skin texture also dramatically changes.
Looking female will depend on this early the transition is and the individual’s baseline. Some will pass as female to the average person but remain “clockable” to people who know what to look for. Some trans women who started off hormones young enough will be indistinguishable, some are lucky to pass after a few surgeries. But we definitely can’t take any random biological adult male and making him fully look like a woman.
Reproduction isn’t there yet, but some results of sexual reassignment surgery are quite visually impressive, others less so (Thai surgeons for instance are known to have better results and use a different technique). For some, it has been enough to fool unsuspecting men before (plenty of reports of trans women going stealth) and it certainly is enough to reduce dysphoria and function as a sexual organ in most cases. However, it is a gamble.
I’d say current technology is good enough to alleviate dysphoria and at the very least there’s no point of delaying taking HRT in the hopes of a better transhumanist future. But if you’re just curious and want a magic gender swap to experience life as the opposite sex for whatever reason, obviously we’re not there yet and the current treatments should absolutely not be taken lightly as some changes are irreversible.
If it is successful, it makes other people perceive you like a woman, which is one of the goals.
It's not purely a psychological issue. A large number of trans people have underlying hormonal issues - in FtMs, PCOS and congenital adrenal hyperplasia are very common, and there's growing evidence that a number of mutations and physical conditions are associated with it. The controversial trans health practitioner Dr Powers found he could treat gender dysphoria in natal females by administrating them anti-androgens, if it is done early enough. Otherwise, trans people report better functioning and mental health on cross-sex hormones even if they change nothing else.
Meditation and Buddhist practice help you come to peace with what you can't change, sure. But why accept suffering when you can change it? Transition might not be able to give me all of the changes I want, but I am exceptionally grateful for all the changes it did.
The audio-visual self-perception is only a small part of it. This sound similar in effect to giving amputees a headset that superimposes a CGI limb on top of their prosthesis - it can help a little, sure, but it does nothing for touch and proprioception, actual functionality. Others will still see an amputee, plus you'll be acutely aware that you're living a lie - in addition to having to occasionally take off the glasses.
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