domain:rifters.com
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
I've had mild insomnia all my life, and the good old autism spectrum "this tag on the collar of my clothing will drive me insane if I can't tear it off right now" sensory issues.
This and your other comment in this thread makes me wonder whether you're autistic. No judgment, it just sounds like that's what you're implying.
Scott made a point years ago that I've been thinking about for years. The conventional wisdom in so much of psychiatry is that mental illnesses are "historicist" i.e. caused by a personal experience that the patient in question had. It's not common to hear people state "I have an anxiety disorder as a result of being in an abusive relationship", ascribing a direct causal relationship between a certain series of events and a certain constellation of symptoms. In the case of post-traumatic stress disorder, the historical framing is right there in the name - in order to be formally diagnosed with PTSD, one must have gone through a traumatic experience.
But of course, not everyone who goes through a traumatic experience (or experiences) exhibits PTSD-like symptoms, and many people develop said symptoms who have never gone through a traumatic experience. And it's not so long ago that the received wisdom in the psychiatric community was that autism was a direct result of a child having a cold, emotionally remote mother. Now We Know Better and autism is now understood as a condition primarily determined by genetics, but it's remarkable how little self-reflection the psychiatric community has engaged in when it comes to the historicist paradigm undergirding so many other psychiatric diagnoses. We might soon learn that there's a genetic basis for what we now call PTSD which is only activated in the case of profoundly elevated cortisol levels over an extended period of time, and the idea that someone might suffer from PTSD in the absence of said gene expression will seem as preposterous as the idea of children with emotionally remote mothers invariably developing autism as a result.
Per your twin studies example - because WEIRD people spend most of their time in hermetically sealed antiseptic environments, there's a tendency to conflate "environmental" with "social", and assume that anything which isn't caused by genetics must be caused by social influence in some nebulously defined fashion. But of course, that isn't the only thing that "environmental factors" can refer to. Maybe schizophrenia will eventually turn out to be caused by pesticides that only one twin was exposed to, or a pathogen of some kind (e.g. if one twin is more promiscuous than the other and catches an STD). Maybe the recent surge in PTSD diagnoses will turn out to be a side effect of the fact that we all have microplastics in our balls/breasts. Who can say?
JarJarJedi
1d ago
I'm 185cm and 100+kg (yes, I know, sigh) and I've been doing Aikido for a while, and I've seen women than could unbalance me reliably. If they know what they are doing, it's definitely possible, and strength has very little to do with it, more speed and precision. Of course, BJJ has very different modality, Aikido techniques usually end where BJJ is beginning :) And yes, somebody who did not practice maintaining balance is usually really easy to unbalance and really uncomfortable when the balance is broken - it's one of the challenges when working with novices, they do weirdest things when the balance is gone.
Reading your updates makes me want to try BJJ though the prospect of abject humiliation is always mildly daunting.
I don't think "humiliation" should be a part of it. I mean, if you didn't do BJJ what you expect to happen when you come to the practice first? Of course everybody would be better than you - I mean, if they aren't, you should seek another place to practice, since here people obviously are wasting their time! So, there's nothing humiliating in it - it's like if you tried to learn Japanese and discovered after a week you are not good at it yet. If you practiced for 10 years and kept losing to everybody, that'd be humiliating. But as a beginner, literally nothing - at least nothing related to not being good in BJJ - should be humiliating.
ChickenOverlord
1d ago
The author is making the case that the current status quo privileges men’s interests at the expense of women’s. Even if women would prefer a longer “runway” towards consummating a relationship, it’s the men who get to set the timetable, with their implicit threat of walking away otherwise.
The conservative Christian wait until marriage position is vindicated, yet again. Yet like Cassandra, they're cursed to have the rest of the world not believe them.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
Ok, I guess we're taking this seriously as an idea.
If we're speculating about it like this -- I could easily see a humiliation kink developing around self-esteem issues involving math; I've struggled with math since I was in primary school, and despite having a lot of interest in tyical "geeky dude" hobbies like computers and spacecraft, I find math really hard to wrap my head around. I don't think that was bad teaching or anything, I just don't have the aptitude, and it shows up on actual IQ tests because my verbal IQ massively outstrips my performance IQ. So I've always had a bit of a complex about being intersted in lots of things where math is very significant, but finding it really hard to grasp the mathematical concepts that make them work. I could easily see a complex like that becoming a kind of humiliation kink, because being unable to do things that people you respect can do creates a power hierarchy!
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
Do these people want to make me actively hate 'trans' people?
You could ask the same of many "terminally online" types of people.
They don't want you to hate them. But, they kinda just are the way they are. Which contributes to their persistent social difficulties.
Yeah, and what makes these models worth more than a hole in the ground?
Ideally, predictive power.
The original paper on the autism-schizotypy spectrum that was cited in the blogpost didn't actually have anything to do with gender. The single determining criteria of autism vs schizotypy was an oversensitivity vs undersensitivity to errors in sensory prediction. All other differences in cognitive and personality traits were taken to be downstream of that criteria.
This could be cashed out in terms of predictions about e.g. how subjects will perform on tasks related to attention and context-switching, and how those results will be correlated with personality traits.
Now I want to know whether "being forced to find the derivative of an integral" is someone's kink. Surely not?
I assume /u/FarmReadyElephants was referencing bimbofication fetishes, and I have also observed a huge overlap between transwomen and bimbofication fetishes online.
It seems far less common for people to fantasize about people becoming smarter, and so I doubt there's been a lot of kink around being forced to do derivatives of an integral.
Mostly, my "grand unifying theory" of kink is that most fetishes (in the non-clinical sense) involve sexual power dynamics filtered through an "unusual" power hierarchy. So gigantification/shrinking fetishes are dominance-submission dynamics filtered through the lens of size, bimbofication fetishes are dominance-submission dynamics filtered through the lens of intelligence and low class beauty norms, weight gain fetishes are dominance-submission dynamics filtered through the lens of weight, etc., etc.
I suspect that normal human psychology in both men and women goes out "looking" for power hierarchies to internalize, and that most people in our society converge on a broadly overlapping set of hierarchies (wealth, beauty, class, height, etc.) Those hierarchies then play a role in what a person goes looking for in a sexual partner. But in a subset of the population, they become fixated on a single power hierarchy, like height, weight, or intelligence and so when the internalized hierarchy interacts with their psycho-sexual development, it manifests as a fetish.
I suspect that "being forced to find the derivative of an integral" is off the beaten path of power hierarchies, though I suppose it could have overlap with teacher-student roleplay.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
I tried to come up with some sort of calculus joke that would fit, but I think I’ve reached my limit.
Then again I remember barely anything from Calculus and I got Cs on many of my Calc exams. Maybe I’m a woman. (I’m not. The Asian girls always did way better than me.)
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1d ago
Oops. I've let it through now.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
a point for women in the battle of the sexes: there is a point at which a woman can submit me, if I'm not at least a little careful.
Isn't the whole point of martial arts (at least some technical ones, like BJJ) to make this possible? I mean, if it were all Grogg smash and whoever has the best muscle wins and there's no possibility of the weaker partner to prevail at least sometimes at some point, then what would be the point of learning all those intricate techniques instead of just hitting the gym and eating the proteins or whatever is the recommended way of getting more Grogg smash in.
Surely, strength matters, so if you'd lose to a much weaker opponent all the time, you're probably doing something wrong (or they are extremely good). But getting it once in a while, when you didn't play full strength, by a choke (which - I don't practice BJJ but I can assume - is not supposed to be a strength-against-strength thing) is IMHO not very surprising.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1d ago
This is all hopelessly confounded by the fact that, on the author's own admission, they were doing significant amounts of ketamine at the same time.
FarmReadyElephants
1d ago
Now I want to know whether "being forced to find the derivative of an integral" is someone's kink. Surely not?
The mind of AAPs are completely alien to me, so who knows? Maybe one of them is hot and bothered by roleplaying Grigori Perelman.
I've also noted one instance of an AAGP in the wild (a woman who wanted to be a man who wanted to be a woman). Human culture has no end of oddities.
anti_dan
1d ago
The Dems run Mark Robinsons all the time, they still hit their floor which is demonstrably quite high.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1d ago
Despite being an interesting and well-written essay, I have absolutely no sympathy for the author or her views.
All in all, the average woman is psychologically abused in the dating market.
Right. As if the average man is doing so hot.
Dating apps suck for the majority of people. I'd say they'd suck less for the average woman, if they were capable of setting up boundaries.
FarmReadyElephants
1d ago
There seems to be a large cohort of fairly far-left educated millennial voters that frankly scare me a bit. Call it the Reddit generation. It's the same group that powered Bernie Sanders into stardom. They have the politics of university campus but they are larger than in the past due to the expansion of college education and they keep ideological coherence longer into adulthood due to reinforcement over social media.
We rely on older voters to notice when their policies are going off the rails and elect center-left liberals to clean up their messes. But boomers are a scarce resource and overall it seems like the ideological mix of the American voter is heading in a bad direction, with Mamdani as the latest symptom. The more ideological voters seem to be indifferent to how their policies affect their city or economy. Politics is a badge of righteousness rather than a tool for governance.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
This figure includes FTM trans people too, which aren't what I'm talking about with autism
A high number of FTMs I've known have at least stated they're autistic. While autism among the female sex is controversial, I suspect they're correct. I have no data for this, but I think the two greatest risk factors for FTM transitioning are 1) autism and 2) PCOS. I have a friend with PCOS who is a huge fan of Abigail Shirer, and believes that a great number of FTM transitioners are women with the same syndrome -- which is caused by abnormally and dangerously high levels of testosterone in women -- who feel like the symptoms of the condition like male-pattern hair growth and irregular periods make them less of a woman and therefore seek to embrace them as part of their "true self."
This is perhaps analogous in some ways to AGPs and transwomen more generally who are bullied or ostracized for femininity and come to believe that they really are a sissy loser who can't be a man and might as well embrace the only gendered path that seems possible for them.
Actual bona-fide gender dysphoria obviously plays its role, although I wonder sometimes if much of it isn't so much active identification with the preferred sex and more a feeling of alienation and incapability to be accepted as a member of their birth sex that emerges into body image issues. That would make it something that social contagion can affect, much as anorexia can take even subtle (or not so subtle) social cues towards physical fitness and thinness and transmute them like a witch into an inability (Edit: originally there was a typo here that was "anability", which is an uncomfortably good phrase to describe the perception problems of anorexia) to accurately perceive the body's actual thinness. Obviously not all cases, but I think transgenderism is a multi-factor phenomenon and this might be one of the factors.
People sometimes conceptualize transitioners as villains or attention-seekers, and sometimes they can be like that, but I strongly believe there's a wellspring of intense suffering that motivates it in many cases, even if we don't have to affirm every decision that someone who is suffering makes or even agree with their interpretation of their experience.
HereAndGone
1d ago
I think that this "estrogen cures autism" analysis is false
Well for a start, there are women with autism.
HereAndGone
1d ago
I'm going to assume the word they are groping for here is "meaningfulness" and not "meaningness" but of course their new girly oestrogen brain can't word properly, tee-hee!
Seriously, if guys think this is what being a woman is like, there is no goddamn hope for any mutual understanding between the sexes. On the other hand, it does explain the 'dressing like an anime avatar my new name is Lilith Raven Andromeda see how I've coated my face in a thick layer of makeup so girly now' transformations.
Along similar lines to what @WhiningCoil and @TIRM have said i think context and distribution matter a great deal. As an example, I live in a mid-size American city that has a significantly above average crime rate on paper, but said crime is largely restricted to certain nieghborhoods and classes of people (IE Shitbirds). Respectable citizens know that nothing good happens north of a certain avenue after sundown, while the city PD maintains a visible presence in public spaces and transit (which discourages pan-handlers and loitering ner-do-wells) and actively persues property crimes. As a result the day to day perception and experience of most residents and visitors is mostly that of clean and safe '1' streets despite the ostensibly high rate of criminality.
- 1: from crime at least, our drivers and cyclists are another matter.
Do these people want to make me actively hate 'trans' people? I mean, I have some difficulties with how some strands of activism are playing out (particularly the rigid reinforcement of simplistic gender roles of the 'blue is for boys, pink is for girls' type) but I don't think I hate anyone.
And then I read shit like this and I want to get a gun and start shooting (in Minecraft).
"Ooh, I tried oestrogen and it made me so girly! I liked tarot and magical stuff and giggling and being all fuzzy brained!"
(And I say this as someone who likes playing around with tarot imagery but don't treat it as serious.)
I have been on oestrogen all my life (up to menopause) and if it made me describe my sensations like this, I would have preferred to jump off a cliff. "Oh gee, the reason I can't maths is because my little girl brain so soaked in hormones, gosh!"
I think there's a lot of "I expect X to be the opposite of Y, and if taking A gives me the sensations of X, then I will behave differently to how I normally behave" going on here. I think there may well be some physical changes, but mucking around like this is just annoying as all hell.
"According to these models, everyone falls somewhere on the autism–schizotypy continuum"
Yeah, and what makes these models worth more than a hole in the ground? "Hey, by our new model, everyone is some flavour of crazy and if you're not Stereotypically Male Brain Things oriented then you must be Stereotypically Female Brain People oriented".
Give me a break. Or a bottle of sherry. I feel the glittery pink girly need to get blind stinkin' drunk after being exposed to this.
EDIT: On a more serious note, why doesn't progesterone get any love? In cis females, oestrogen isn't there on its own. There's a balance between the two (and more). Do trans women/trans experimenters like our guy here ever dose themselves with progesterone as well to get the full female experience?
Oh, I see he did:
Additionally, at one point I tried taking a 300 mg progesterone suppository. This made me feel quite stupid the following day, so I did not try this again.
Passing a remark about "well duh you stuck a progesterone suppository up yourself all in the name of amateur hour endocrinology, I don't think it was the progesterone that made you stupid" would be too easy - oh darn, there I went and did it. But yeah: wanting the alleged results of oestrogen without figuring out the natural cycle of the cis female hormone levels does lead me to think that there's a lot of "I expect to feel like a, b and c, and I'm going to feel like that even if I have to imagine it!" going on here, I don't think there's a neutral/blind "let's see what happens" trial happening here.
EDIT EDIT: Clearly I'm coming at this from the angle of someone who naturally had these hormones all my life, so I can't speak as to what it would be like to experience the effects for the first time. But I have to say, all the "it's like being on mild psychedelics" - I've never tried psychedelics so I can't say if being female is like being slightly stoned all the time, but the rest of it - cutting down sensory issues, helping with sleep, etc.
Oh how I wish. I've had mild insomnia all my life, and the good old autism spectrum "this tag on the collar of my clothing will drive me insane if I can't tear it off right now" sensory issues. Oestrogen is not a magic cure for that, folks, so I strongly suspect some placebo effect going on, as well as the guy admitting he's doing/had been doing a lot of ketamine at the same time.
FarmReadyElephants
1d ago
That predictably leads to social deficits and-- guess what-- trans people report high levels of social isolation and loneliness (This figure includes FTM trans people too, which aren't what I'm talking about with autism, but I'll get to that later). Meanwhile, estrogen increases oxytocin and oxytocin reducing autism symptoms and oxytocin decreases the felt impact of social isolation. So immediately, there's a pretty compelling link between autism->feeling lonely->taking estrogen->feeling better that explains the "success" of the trans phenomenon, including the high rates of treatment satisfaction.
Part of this satisfaction could also be gaining a new social group. You might find similar rates of satisfaction among people who joined a church, or who in past generation may have joined a music subculture (goth, emo, punk) instead of becoming LGBTQ++.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
Also, "Increased experience of meaningness in day-to-day life." - yeah, making major life changes, having a new project, and potentially a new social group, can do that for you.
I have an acquaintance from college who transitioned male to female. They once showed me a picture of a neckbeard with acne, saying "this is what I used to look like, then I transitioned and I'm so happy with how I look." Well, no crap my friend, you shaved the neckbeard and started taking care of yourself!
Whacking it to not being able to do math is a common AGP pastime.
Now I want to know whether "being forced to find the derivative of an integral" is someone's kink. Surely not?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
An older dude who used to do Aikido joined recently, and I will say he definitely learned something in the way of balance and body positioning from his aikido practice, he's very tough to off balance and he's got strong resistance. But at times he is a little goofy with his technical choices.
No, I know what he's talking about with that one. (Not because I've ever been on HRT, but because on this particular point he's just describing how I am by default, and this point seems to be a persistent and noticeable difference between how I experience things and how other people experience things.)
The simplest way I could describe it would be something like, "the impression that sensory perceptions carry semantic content that extends beyond the boundaries of what is literally contained in the sense perception". Normally irrelevant details like colors, landscape features, or the particular spatial arrangement of objects triggering strong emotional associations, taking on "narrative weight", etc. I think that everyone is familiar with these types of experiences to some degree (could be something as simple as, visiting a place you haven't been to since you were a little kid and triggering nostalgic memories as a result), but some people have these types of sensations much more frequently and intensely than others, and from a wider range of stimuli. But the point is that it doesn't have to be attached to traditional "centers of meaning" like new projects or new social relations.
It could also be described as "a strong natural resistance to depression". Typically when I hear people describe depressive moods they use language like "feeling empty", feeling like everything has been "drained of meaning", feeling like "nothing matters", and... I've never felt any of that. Like ever. It's hard to imagine feeling like that when everything is so damn meaningful all the time! (On the flip side, I am extremely prone to anxiety, so it's not at all the same thing as just having a clean bill of mental health.)
This is how my perception has worked since early childhood, so I can confidently say I'm not describing the effects of psychedelics or other foreign substances.
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