If I’m psychologically different from typical men, I desire to believe I am psychologically different from typical men.
If I’m psychologically different from typical women, I desire to believe I am psychologically different from typical women.
If I would be happier thinking of myself female, I desire to believe I would be happier thinking of myself as female.
If I would be happier acting culturally female, I desire to believe I would be happier acting culturally female.
I see two overlapping problems with application of litany of Tarski in this context.
First. Litany should be relatively short for practical reasons, and as such its statement is simplification of real state of affairs when it is applied to complex system such as human and his/her social interactions. Thus litany implicitly suggest to believe in this simplified version, even if it was supposed to represent some complex mental image. And that leads us to
Second. Beliefs about oneself is tricky thing, as if they aren’t compartmentalized (and we don’t want them to be compartmentalized), then they shape our behavior.
Thus I think that in this case litany of Tarski implicitly suggest to become a simplified version of a person one thinks oneself is. And it doesn’t seem too good.
I’m apparently awkward in social interactions (karma and even this post is evidence for this), so I’d rather abstain from suggesting alternative way of dealing with problems mentioned in top post.
I’m pretty much sure about 1, 3 and 4, but not so much about 2.
From my observations, if by “typical women” we mean a complete statistical average, then yes, I’m psychologically different if only by my tendencies towards introspection and rational thought, but the same can be said of virtually all Less Wrong residents. I feel a strong mental resonance with intelligent educated women, especially of my age range, and far more often than not find myself agreeing on beliefs (various aspects of feminism, for instance). I’m also statistically atypical in that I identify as a lesbian (I’m glad to have a girlfriend who regards me as, well, her girlfriend).
It probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to hypothesize that LGBT people are more introspective on average than the general population, if only because they somehow had to arrive at their conclusions.
It’s interesting to me that you identify as lesbian, given that you say you came to the realisation of your trans status relatively late, as of the trans people I know (I know quite a few as my wife is very involved in LGBT politics) the straight- or bi-identifying ones realised they were trans relatively early, while the lesbian-identifying ones many seem to have realised in their twenties (in at least two cases I can think of, after getting married—luckily in both cases to bisexual women).
Maybe it’s partly your sexual orientation that was/is clouding the issue for you? If before transitioning you felt like (or thought you felt like) a straight man, is it possible that you are somehow thinking, at least in part, “I can’t be a woman because I am attracted to women”?
Either way, whether you’re ‘really’ trans or not has no real meaning—there is no ‘real’ you, as opposed to an ‘unreal’ one, as you, like all human beings, are a mass of different, often conflicting, drives. And likewise, there is no platonic essence of transsexuality/transgenderism against which you can be judged. And both ‘you’ and ‘transsexuality’ are at least in part cultural constructs which only exist in relation to the culture you’re in.
Live the way you want to . You’re no more an impostor than anyone else. If you don’t feel inside the way (some, vocal, online, out) other trans people do, so what? What difference does—or should—that actually make to you or them? Your only question should be “does this behaviour allow me to live a life closer to the life I want?”
And it’s fairly clear that in the case of ‘behaving as if female and being treated as such’ the answer is yes. Don’t let other issues cloud that.
I never had any issues with being a woman who is attracted to women, except for the fear of rejection by a lesbian. (“What if she considers me a man and singles me out immediately before even getting a chance to know me?”)
But yes, I used to consider myself a straight man before. Reflecting back, it seems that I used to single out the entire LGBT umbrella as “weirdoes” (“thanks” in part to indoctrination by pop culture and conservative parents), and it was thus difficult for me to think of myself in any LGBT category. Perhaps it’s easier to switch to one “weird” category (a transgendered straight woman) from another “weird” category (if you thought of yourself as a gay man before), than it is from a “normal” category to a “doubly weird” category.
It was perhaps also difficult to take the first step: once I got the guts to do one small thing that I “wasn’t supposed to do” but could easily hide (in my case, shaving my legs), the rest of my restraint of actions and thought cascaded on its own, unstoppable from that point, like an avalanche.
(nods) Yeah; giving up the invisible knapsack the second time around is often easier than the first time.
That said, I could see it working either way—if identifying as a woman causes your understanding of your expected sexual preference to shift from preferring women to preferring men, then continuing to prefer women would be a second switch, as you describe; if it doesn’t, then it wouldn’t be.
Presumably that would depend a lot on how strongly “being a woman” and “being attracted to men” are implicitly associated in your mind.
A similar effect occurs in the reverse direction, I think, when gay men are expected to be effeminate, or lesbians to be masculine. As gender identity and sexual preference become less tightly linked, I expect you see less of this.
Presumably that would depend a lot on how strongly “being a woman” and “being attracted to men” are implicitly associated in your mind.
That’s a tough one. My first impulse would be to say “not tied at all”, given that generally I interact with people without making implicit assumptions about their sexual orientation.
But. I rationally know, of course, that straight people are statistically an overwhelming majority. So in the absence of other information, when interacting with anyone, I should assign them a large prior probability of being straight. Yet I behave without making any predictions.
I wonder if this means I consciously choose to discard the available information and fall back to fifty-fifty, or whether I keep the information, but the decisions I make do not depend on it.
What sort of decisions do you make that could, rationally, depend on it?
I mean, someone’s sexual orientation is generally only relevant when setting them up with someone, and in such cases it would seem very weird not to find out their orientation as soon as possible.
EDIT (I originally included “trying to date/seduce them” but in such a case their orientation is only a small part of the story. If it’s easy to find out, do so, if not, then find out whether they fancy you, and the rest of their orientation is irrelevant.)
I can’t speak for lucidfox, but to pick a recent example of my own: a friend of mine, a gay man, recently asked for introductions to friends of friends who might be worth approaching as potential dates.
So I started thinking about people I knew who seemed like potential good matches for him, and realized that a difficulty here was not knowing the sexual preferences of the people I know.
I don’t think it was especially weird for me not to have previously found that out about everyone I might someday consider setting my friend up with, nor especially weird for me not to have immediately asked them all (say, via a bulk email or something).
Yeah; which is ultimately what I did. But it was a situation where I became very aware of the differences between the cultural norm (roughly, that everyone is implicitly assumed straight until explicitly declared otherwise) and my own defaults.
Initially, I thought what you had in mind was a scenario where I’m trying to set up two people, and therefore just need to know the sexual preferences of those two people.
I was contrasting that with a scenario where I’m trying to set up a known person with someone in a relatively large class, and therefore need to know the sexual preferences of everyone in that class (either that, or need to live in a culture where it’s socially acceptable to proceed as though someone’s sexual preference is unknown, which is why I say that the experience demonstrated that I don’t live in such a culture).
It’s similar to the difference between having cached the size of a directory in an operating system, vs calculating it on demand. If I’m just looking at one directory and can calculate the size relatively quickly, it makes no difference at all. If I’m trying to sort a hundred directories by size, it suddenly makes a huge difference. The difference in scale creates a qualitative difference in user experience… and reveals that the user’s expectation is that the size is cached, even though in the one-directory case that expectation does not lead to measurable differences.
All that said, I agree with you that we’re not saying anything particularly different at this point.
either that, or need to live in a culture where it’s socially acceptable to proceed as though someone’s sexual preference is unknown, which is why I say that the experience demonstrated that I don’t live in such a culture
Ah, yes, this is a relevant point I was missing.
Within my present social sphere proceeding as though someone’s sexual preference is unknown, and inquiring into it, is entirely acceptable. But this is due to the subcultures I’m embedded in*, and I was forgetting that the mainstream culture is less permissive re: such inquiries.
(*primarily the lgbT, fetish, geek and polyamorous groupings)
(nods) I often have to explicitly remind myself that certain possibilities that are highly available for me (e.g., that someone is in a triad) are not even promoted for consideration in mainstream culture (e.g., when I’m at work).
I remember once commenting to a coworker that I was startled to realize, when a mutual coworker showed up at a party of mine with his girlfriend, that his girlfriend was married to the boyfriend of another guest at the party. Small world, and all.
You could almost hear the needle skipping as they struggled to make sense of that, after which they said “Well, that sounds awkward,” and it took me a while to realize they’d assumed the spouses were ignorant of the situation.
When we finally cleared up each other’s misunderstandings, we were rather symmetrically appalled at one another’s cultural norms
Incidentally, if you’re in the New England or Bay areas, we likely have friends in common.
As it happens, I’m in England Classic, so probably not.
Interesting anecdote however; has been added to my mental directory of small-talk anecdotes for discussions that involve (or that I want to involve) polyamory/relationships.
In my own case it started out as a kind of a political stance—roughly speaking, as a way of treating straight people as actually having a sexual orientation, rather than as the unmarked case—and turned into a habit of thought without my quite meaning for it to.
In my case I’m fairly certain that I don’t discard the information… that is, I’m fairly certain that if you did an IAT on me around gender and sexuality you’d find I expect opposite-sex attraction much more than I expect same-sex attraction… but rather that I’ve trained myself to behave, as you say, in ways that don’t depend on it.
Either way, whether you’re ‘really’ trans or not has no real meaning—there is no ‘real’ you, as opposed to an ‘unreal’ one, as you, like all human beings, are a mass of different, often conflicting, drives. And likewise, there is no platonic essence of transsexuality/transgenderism against which you can be judged. And both ‘you’ and ‘transsexuality’ are at least in part cultural constructs which only exist in relation to the culture you’re in.
Interesting throughout.
I’ll only add some Tarskis’:
If I’m psychologically different from typical men, I desire to believe I am psychologically different from typical men. If I’m psychologically different from typical women, I desire to believe I am psychologically different from typical women. If I would be happier thinking of myself female, I desire to believe I would be happier thinking of myself as female. If I would be happier acting culturally female, I desire to believe I would be happier acting culturally female.
I see two overlapping problems with application of litany of Tarski in this context.
First. Litany should be relatively short for practical reasons, and as such its statement is simplification of real state of affairs when it is applied to complex system such as human and his/her social interactions. Thus litany implicitly suggest to believe in this simplified version, even if it was supposed to represent some complex mental image. And that leads us to
Second. Beliefs about oneself is tricky thing, as if they aren’t compartmentalized (and we don’t want them to be compartmentalized), then they shape our behavior.
Thus I think that in this case litany of Tarski implicitly suggest to become a simplified version of a person one thinks oneself is. And it doesn’t seem too good.
I’m apparently awkward in social interactions (karma and even this post is evidence for this), so I’d rather abstain from suggesting alternative way of dealing with problems mentioned in top post.
Those are really insightful and comforting!
I’m pretty much sure about 1, 3 and 4, but not so much about 2.
From my observations, if by “typical women” we mean a complete statistical average, then yes, I’m psychologically different if only by my tendencies towards introspection and rational thought, but the same can be said of virtually all Less Wrong residents. I feel a strong mental resonance with intelligent educated women, especially of my age range, and far more often than not find myself agreeing on beliefs (various aspects of feminism, for instance). I’m also statistically atypical in that I identify as a lesbian (I’m glad to have a girlfriend who regards me as, well, her girlfriend).
It probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to hypothesize that LGBT people are more introspective on average than the general population, if only because they somehow had to arrive at their conclusions.
It’s interesting to me that you identify as lesbian, given that you say you came to the realisation of your trans status relatively late, as of the trans people I know (I know quite a few as my wife is very involved in LGBT politics) the straight- or bi-identifying ones realised they were trans relatively early, while the lesbian-identifying ones many seem to have realised in their twenties (in at least two cases I can think of, after getting married—luckily in both cases to bisexual women).
Maybe it’s partly your sexual orientation that was/is clouding the issue for you? If before transitioning you felt like (or thought you felt like) a straight man, is it possible that you are somehow thinking, at least in part, “I can’t be a woman because I am attracted to women”?
Either way, whether you’re ‘really’ trans or not has no real meaning—there is no ‘real’ you, as opposed to an ‘unreal’ one, as you, like all human beings, are a mass of different, often conflicting, drives. And likewise, there is no platonic essence of transsexuality/transgenderism against which you can be judged. And both ‘you’ and ‘transsexuality’ are at least in part cultural constructs which only exist in relation to the culture you’re in.
Live the way you want to . You’re no more an impostor than anyone else. If you don’t feel inside the way (some, vocal, online, out) other trans people do, so what? What difference does—or should—that actually make to you or them? Your only question should be “does this behaviour allow me to live a life closer to the life I want?”
And it’s fairly clear that in the case of ‘behaving as if female and being treated as such’ the answer is yes. Don’t let other issues cloud that.
I never had any issues with being a woman who is attracted to women, except for the fear of rejection by a lesbian. (“What if she considers me a man and singles me out immediately before even getting a chance to know me?”)
But yes, I used to consider myself a straight man before. Reflecting back, it seems that I used to single out the entire LGBT umbrella as “weirdoes” (“thanks” in part to indoctrination by pop culture and conservative parents), and it was thus difficult for me to think of myself in any LGBT category. Perhaps it’s easier to switch to one “weird” category (a transgendered straight woman) from another “weird” category (if you thought of yourself as a gay man before), than it is from a “normal” category to a “doubly weird” category.
It was perhaps also difficult to take the first step: once I got the guts to do one small thing that I “wasn’t supposed to do” but could easily hide (in my case, shaving my legs), the rest of my restraint of actions and thought cascaded on its own, unstoppable from that point, like an avalanche.
(nods) Yeah; giving up the invisible knapsack the second time around is often easier than the first time.
That said, I could see it working either way—if identifying as a woman causes your understanding of your expected sexual preference to shift from preferring women to preferring men, then continuing to prefer women would be a second switch, as you describe; if it doesn’t, then it wouldn’t be.
Presumably that would depend a lot on how strongly “being a woman” and “being attracted to men” are implicitly associated in your mind.
A similar effect occurs in the reverse direction, I think, when gay men are expected to be effeminate, or lesbians to be masculine. As gender identity and sexual preference become less tightly linked, I expect you see less of this.
That’s a tough one. My first impulse would be to say “not tied at all”, given that generally I interact with people without making implicit assumptions about their sexual orientation.
But. I rationally know, of course, that straight people are statistically an overwhelming majority. So in the absence of other information, when interacting with anyone, I should assign them a large prior probability of being straight. Yet I behave without making any predictions.
I wonder if this means I consciously choose to discard the available information and fall back to fifty-fifty, or whether I keep the information, but the decisions I make do not depend on it.
What sort of decisions do you make that could, rationally, depend on it?
I mean, someone’s sexual orientation is generally only relevant when setting them up with someone, and in such cases it would seem very weird not to find out their orientation as soon as possible.
EDIT (I originally included “trying to date/seduce them” but in such a case their orientation is only a small part of the story. If it’s easy to find out, do so, if not, then find out whether they fancy you, and the rest of their orientation is irrelevant.)
I can’t speak for lucidfox, but to pick a recent example of my own: a friend of mine, a gay man, recently asked for introductions to friends of friends who might be worth approaching as potential dates.
So I started thinking about people I knew who seemed like potential good matches for him, and realized that a difficulty here was not knowing the sexual preferences of the people I know.
I don’t think it was especially weird for me not to have previously found that out about everyone I might someday consider setting my friend up with, nor especially weird for me not to have immediately asked them all (say, via a bulk email or something).
Why would you ask them all?
Presumably, you’d have a good filter on which friends you thought might be worth his time, ie. similar enough interests etc.; if they were interested.
At which point, you need only ask those guys.
Yeah; which is ultimately what I did. But it was a situation where I became very aware of the differences between the cultural norm (roughly, that everyone is implicitly assumed straight until explicitly declared otherwise) and my own defaults.
So, you actually did do what I thought would be the sensible thing to do, and asked the people you were considering setting up.
I’m now confused; because your first reply to me seemed to indicate that you felt that was a bad idea somehow?
Did I perhaps present it in such a way that I appeared to be advocating a different course of action?
(nods) Yeah, pretty much.
Initially, I thought what you had in mind was a scenario where I’m trying to set up two people, and therefore just need to know the sexual preferences of those two people.
I was contrasting that with a scenario where I’m trying to set up a known person with someone in a relatively large class, and therefore need to know the sexual preferences of everyone in that class (either that, or need to live in a culture where it’s socially acceptable to proceed as though someone’s sexual preference is unknown, which is why I say that the experience demonstrated that I don’t live in such a culture).
It’s similar to the difference between having cached the size of a directory in an operating system, vs calculating it on demand. If I’m just looking at one directory and can calculate the size relatively quickly, it makes no difference at all. If I’m trying to sort a hundred directories by size, it suddenly makes a huge difference. The difference in scale creates a qualitative difference in user experience… and reveals that the user’s expectation is that the size is cached, even though in the one-directory case that expectation does not lead to measurable differences.
All that said, I agree with you that we’re not saying anything particularly different at this point.
Ah, yes, this is a relevant point I was missing.
Within my present social sphere proceeding as though someone’s sexual preference is unknown, and inquiring into it, is entirely acceptable. But this is due to the subcultures I’m embedded in*, and I was forgetting that the mainstream culture is less permissive re: such inquiries.
(*primarily the lgbT, fetish, geek and polyamorous groupings)
(nods) I often have to explicitly remind myself that certain possibilities that are highly available for me (e.g., that someone is in a triad) are not even promoted for consideration in mainstream culture (e.g., when I’m at work).
I remember once commenting to a coworker that I was startled to realize, when a mutual coworker showed up at a party of mine with his girlfriend, that his girlfriend was married to the boyfriend of another guest at the party. Small world, and all.
You could almost hear the needle skipping as they struggled to make sense of that, after which they said “Well, that sounds awkward,” and it took me a while to realize they’d assumed the spouses were ignorant of the situation.
When we finally cleared up each other’s misunderstandings, we were rather symmetrically appalled at one another’s cultural norms
Incidentally, if you’re in the New England or Bay areas, we likely have friends in common.
As it happens, I’m in England Classic, so probably not.
Interesting anecdote however; has been added to my mental directory of small-talk anecdotes for discussions that involve (or that I want to involve) polyamory/relationships.
Yeah, I observe myself doing something similar.
In my own case it started out as a kind of a political stance—roughly speaking, as a way of treating straight people as actually having a sexual orientation, rather than as the unmarked case—and turned into a habit of thought without my quite meaning for it to.
In my case I’m fairly certain that I don’t discard the information… that is, I’m fairly certain that if you did an IAT on me around gender and sexuality you’d find I expect opposite-sex attraction much more than I expect same-sex attraction… but rather that I’ve trained myself to behave, as you say, in ways that don’t depend on it.
Upvoted for this.