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Hello Motte world! Some of you may remember me as /u/M_T_Saotome-Westlake on the Reddit incarnation. (I've since dropped the pseudonym which I was using for my political writing.)
I recently published the first two parts of my memoir telling the Whole Dumb Story of my conflict with the so-called "rationalist" community about (at first) the etiology of gender dysphoria in males and (later, much less excusably) the philosophy of language regarding categorization, which I would like to share with you today:
It really does strike me that Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Aella et al are putting on the kid gloves tight when it comes to the proposals of transgenderism.
Take Scott, for example, responding to the 4chan post about trans-Napoleonism. He basically says "just let him wear the silly bicorne hat" and points to "Emperor" Norton of San Francisco as a happy-go-lucky story of just going along with what a trans-emperor says because it's easier. But he doesn't ever adequately address the hardball arguments - a Napoleon-gender that demands absolute power over the French Empire and its satellites in Europe (as the 4chan post said), and a Norton that demands the head of President Rutherford B. Hayes (as you, Zack M. Davis, point out). As far as I can tell, Scott's response to people pointing out the demands for a French Empire and Hayes's head - although he doesn't explicitly state this - is "lol, that just doesn't happen".
This is a very troubling dismissal, because there are a lot of Rutherfords in transgenderism. The reason why people point out President Rutherford Hayes and demands for a French Empire is because transgenderism affects others - it has externalities - and attempting to cure someone's distress by agreeing to their false map of reality is not a cost-free action and is not something with no meaningful consequences to other people (hence, the story about putting the hair dryer in the passenger seat is simply irrelevant). In other words, "just be nice" is a really bad argument.
For example, the inclusion of trans athletes in women's sports, or the inclusion of trans people in women's bathrooms, or the inclusion of trans people in women's prisons. Everyone seems to agree that it would be a very bad thing if a trans-Napoleon today gained control over the countries that used to make up the former French Empire, or if Norton was given the head of Rutherford B. Hayes, so they just... dismiss those and say it could never happen. They say they would never demand Rutherford's head and that it's absurd to even consider the possibility that Rutherford might be decapitated to fulfill the desires of an Emperor Norton.
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.
In my opinion, the refusal to honestly engage with these arguments reflects poorly on the leaders - or otherwise influential figures - of the rationalist community. To put it lightly, it's unbelievable how they make a simple mistake - that their own foundational writings (the Sequences) warned about - and how they have failed to correct their own mistake (at least, they haven't corrected it yet, although I'm not optimistic about their chances of doing so).
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.
Sure. Obviously, a lot of the externalities with transgenderism go away if you have a social norm to actually be nice, including not using transgenderism for bad results.
But I understood Scott (and others) to be talking about trans people in wider society. I would have less of an issue with them if they clarified that they were only talking about trans people in the context of the rationalist community.
Or if they drew a line in the sand and said, no, actually, it's not acceptable to give Norton the head of Rutherford B. Hayes, and we need policies on emperor-identified people to ensure that doesn't happen.
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).
Do you have a source?
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