Hm. Would an example w/r/t triggers be that many trans men don't like being called female-bodied? This doesn't stem from seeing sex and gender as synonymous, but is just due to the terminology rubbing the wrong way.* AFAB (assigned female at birth) and AMAB are the generally preferred terms.

*I'd speculate that "female-bodied" implies that the word "female" on its own has something to do with gender (why else add "-bodied"?) which in turn makes "female-bodied"'s implied meaning "body belonging to one of the female gender". Also, not merely referring to birth assignment means that the term breaks down during medical transition as the body changes.

Comment author: VAuroch 14 October 2014 03:18:26AM 1 point [-]

Things like that, yes, but it applies pretty broadly. In my experience (and I've talked about this with a couple close friends to get a sense of the boundaries), anything that generalizes beyond very specific traits tends to trigger dysphoria, and that includes stuff like "you still have a typically-female muscle distribution, so you should probably use workout advice for women initially", or 'well, female bodies are usually more sensitive to extreme temperatures'; the kind of things that are talking about how their body is shaped right now, where it's the growth pattern, rather than assignment at birth, which is important. This is especially relevant because for a lot of this kind of thing, it doesn't change even when going through hormones; hip bones, larynx, and sex organs are the most obvious ones, but a lot of stuff about bone structure will only change on the scale of decades.

A lot of this will become less relevant if puberty-blockers become standard, because then a lot of the generalizations will only apply to people who first considered the possibility later in life or were blocked for family reasons. Some people I know are optimistic that standard will happen soon, and if they're right, then that probably will happen before the cultural payoff of separating the terms would show up. I don't think that's terribly likely, myself.

Comment author: Azathoth123 14 October 2014 11:23:13PM 2 points [-]

Things like that, yes, but it applies pretty broadly. In my experience (and I've talked about this with a couple close friends to get a sense of the boundaries), anything that generalizes beyond very specific traits tends to trigger dysphoria, and that includes stuff like "you still have a typically-female muscle distribution, so you should probably use workout advice for women initially", or 'well, female bodies are usually more sensitive to extreme temperatures'; the kind of things that are talking about how their body is shaped right now, where it's the growth pattern, rather than assignment at birth, which is important.

If they insist on claiming to be negative utility monsters, I don't see why we should be indulging them.

A lot of this will become less relevant if puberty-blockers become standard, because then a lot of the generalizations will only apply to people who first considered the possibility later in life or were blocked for family reasons.

I find this sentence, and the whole tone of this comment, rather amusing because of how vividly it illustrates the contradictions of their claims. Namely, that people have an "inherent gender" that is independent of their biological sex and not subject to change by any means even as, they hope, all other sex-related traits are changeable.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 23 October 2014 12:19:05PM 2 points [-]

What do you think is going on with trans people? Many of them spend considerable amounts of money and effort to change their genders. (At least in the US, sex change surgery isn't covered by insurance, so far as I know.) They're also generally up against a lot of stigma. They risk their marriages.

These revealed preferences suggest that they really don't like their assigned at birth genders.

Comment author: Azathoth123 24 October 2014 02:56:47AM -1 points [-]

People do highly irrational things all the time.

What do you think is going on with trans people?

Probably a combination of things. A lot of MtoF's are cases of autogynophilia. Some are men who realized that by putting on a dress they transform from yet another white male CEO to a twofer minority CEO. Now that some municipalities are passing laws requiring bathrooms to be based on self-identified "gender", I predict creepy guys suddenly claiming to be trans-women as an excuse to hang out in women's bathrooms.

A few articles on by Steve Sailer on some of what else may be going on here and here.

Many of them spend considerable amounts of money and effort to change their genders.

What do you think is going on with this guy?

Comment author: Vulture 15 October 2014 12:03:03AM * 1 point [-]

If they insist on claiming to be negative utility monsters

"Claiming" is an odd word choice, since we don't have any reason to expect that they're lying. Even if we reject innate dysphoria or whatever, it's ridiculously easy to self-modify into being more easily upset (even unintentionally).

Comment author: Azathoth123 17 October 2014 01:30:33AM 4 points [-]

it's ridiculously easy to self-modify into being more easily upset (even unintentionally).

I know, I still don't see the point of humoring the people who do so.

Comment author: Vulture 17 October 2014 02:01:29AM 0 points [-]

I just thought it was important to point out, because there's a significant difference between humoring people who are pretending to be easily upset and handling people who are actually easily upset.

Comment author: Azathoth123 18 October 2014 02:18:05AM 2 points [-]

If you refuse to humor someone who is easily upset, he will (possibly after a tantrum) become less easily upset. If you humor someone who is easily upset, he will become even more easily upset.

Comment author: Vulture 18 October 2014 06:23:44PM 0 points [-]

Interesting. My experience dealing with easily-upset people is limited, so this is good to know.

continue this thread »

Comment author: VAuroch 18 October 2014 10:15:53PM 0 points [-]

I find this sentence, and the whole tone of this comment, rather amusing because of how vividly it illustrates the contradictions of their claims. Namely, that people have an "inherent gender" that is independent of their biological sex and not subject to change by any means even as, they hope, all other sex-related traits are changeable.

There is no contradiction there, and I never addressed your ridiculous claim to the contrary. Here's a short, basic developmental human biology excerpt: Secondary and tertiary sexual characteristics are shaped during devlopment by simple hormone balance and reshaped during puberty by hormone floods, which are simple to change at the correct time. A person's gender, along with many other idiosyncratic features like their preferences about sex, food, etc., are properties of their mind and brain, and brain structure is both vastly more complex, and much slower to change.

Comment author: Azathoth123 19 October 2014 06:07:51PM 3 points [-]

Secondary and tertiary sexual characteristics are shaped during devlopment by simple hormone balance and reshaped during puberty by hormone floods, which are simple to change at the correct time.

And your claim is that there are significant numbers of people where nearly all those secondary characteristics associated with the brain and only those are one way whereas all the other ones are the other. Given the type of code evolution tends to write this is highly improbable.

Comment author: VAuroch 19 October 2014 06:38:22PM * 0 points [-]

Given the type of code evolution tends to write this is highly improbable.

Citation needed; evolution writes shitty spaghetti code that's highly vulnerable to minor changes in the runtime environment during the build process, and has no error-checking or error-correcting short of a crash.

And your claim is that there are significant numbers of people where nearly all those secondary characteristics associated with the brain and only those are one way whereas all the other ones are the other.

Since the brain structure develops at a totally different stage from the secondary sexual characteristics (continuously from birth through childhood vs. puberty), this is totally plausible and there's not much reason to think they should happen in the same direction in all cases. Also, calling anything about the brain a "secondary sexual characteristic" is highly specious.

Comment author: Azathoth123 19 October 2014 10:12:35PM 3 points [-]

evolution writes shitty spaghetti code that's highly vulnerable to minor changes in the runtime environment during the build process, and has no error-checking or error-correcting short of a crash.

Precisely, it also has no reason to neatly compartment mental from physical.

Since the brain structure develops at a totally different stage from the secondary sexual characteristics (continuously from birth through childhood vs. puberty)

However, most aspects of brain structure do in fact develop either pre-birth or during puberty, same as the other secondary sexual characteristics, and the primary sexual characteristics for that matter.

Comment author: ChristianKl 19 October 2014 11:03:02PM 1 point [-]

Citation needed; evolution writes shitty spaghetti code that's highly vulnerable to minor changes in the runtime environment during the build process, and has no error-checking or error-correcting short of a crash.

What do you mean with that statement? There are various DNA repair mechanisms that do error checking.

Evolution frequently copies genes and then changes one of those copies. You could see that as a way to produce redundancy against errors.

We have two copies of every chromosome to provide for some error correction and survive one of the two being broken.

Comment author: VAuroch 15 October 2014 06:40:15AM 0 points [-]

While 'inherent' might be a little strong, 'fixed' is a totally accurate description. I suggest you find some actual trans friends to talk about this with before you dismiss them.

Also, I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that they're in any sense negative utility monsters. If you're cis and don't have any trans people you interact with frequently, this won't affect you at all, except insofar as it might gradually move the words 'sex' and 'gender' further apart in conceptspace. It's still good practice to do it anyway, because you might regularly interact with a closeted trans person who you are harming, but unless you choose to do that it had no impact either way.

Comment author: Azathoth123 17 October 2014 01:29:49AM 0 points [-]

I suggest you find some actual trans friends to talk about this with before you dismiss them.

How is this sentence different from: "I suggest you some actual people who've experienced miracles to talk to with before you dismiss them"?

Comment author: VAuroch 17 October 2014 11:20:30PM 3 points [-]

Trans people exist, fairly abundantly. Even if you don't agree that their self-identification is justified, it is a true fact about the world that the category exists and has clear properties. And since the truth claim they make is entirely about their subjective experience, you have little to no evidence about it and cannot realistically justify a low prior , especially not as low as the prior on physics-violating miracles.

Comment author: Azathoth123 18 October 2014 01:00:46AM 0 points [-]

Even if you don't agree that their self-identification is justified, it is a true fact about the world that the category exists and has clear properties.

So does the category of people who claim to have experienced miracles.

Comment author: VAuroch 18 October 2014 10:04:51PM 1 point [-]

You're disingenuously moving the goalposts. Previously you drew analogy to "people who have experienced miracles", and now that I've demonstrated out that analogy doesn't work, you've retreated to "people who claim to have experienced miracles", which is not at all the same thing.

"People who have actually experienced miracles" is a null category, and you cannot be expected to talk to them because if you are right, they don't exist. "People who claim to have experienced miracles" is a category that definitely exists, and in order to evaluate the truth of their beliefs you should acquire some evidence about the detailed character of those beliefs, as close to firsthand as possible; you can then test this against alternate explanations, evaluate the plausibility of the alternate explanations, and update on it.

Trans people's beliefs are entirely about internal subjective experience, which you would have no knowledge of under their explanation of events, or under any competing explanation you might hold. You have no evidence above the prior of uniform ignorance without some direct testimony about the internal subjective experience which is widely shared enough to have been labeled "being transgender"; in fact, you almost certainly have less evidence than you think you do for this topic, due to the Typical Mind fallacy. If you want to justify a strong belief that they are universally in error, you need to acquire a whole bunch of evidence to justify that.

continue this thread »

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