Previously, I had already thought it was nuts that trans ideology was exerting influence on the rearing of gender-non-conforming children—that is, children who are far outside the typical norm of behavior for their sex: very tomboyish girls and very effeminate boys.
Under recent historical conditions in the West, these kids were mostly “pre-gay” rather than trans. (The stereotype about lesbians being masculine and gay men being feminine is, like most stereotypes, basically true: sex-atypical childhood behavior between gay and straight adults has been meta-analyzed atCohen’s d ≈ 1.31 standard deviations for men and d ≈ 0.96 for women.) A solid majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria ended up growing out of it by puberty. In the culture of the current year, it seemed likely that a lot of those kids would instead get affirmed into a cross-sex identity at a young age, even though most of them would have otherwise (under a “watchful waiting” protocol) grown up to be ordinary gay men and lesbians.
I think I might be confused about what your position is here. As I understood the two-type taxonomy theory, the claim was that while some “trans women” really were unusually feminine compared to typical men, most of them were just non-feminine men who were blinded into transitioning by autogynephilia. But the early-onset group, as I understood the theory, were the ones who really were trans? Your whole objection to people classifying autogynephilic people as “trans women” was that they didn’t actually have traits drawn from a female distribution, and so modelling them as women would be less accurate than modelling them as men. But if members of the early-onset group really do behave in a way more typical of femininity than masculinity, then that would mean they essentially are “women on the inside, men on the outside.”
“Essentially are” is too strong. (Sex is still real, even if some people have sex-atypical psychology.) In accordance with not doing policy, I don’t claim to know under what conditions kids in the early-onset taxon should be affirmed early: maybe it’s a good decision. But whether or not it turns out to be a good decision, I think it’s increasingly not being made for the right reasons; the change in our culture between 2013 and 2023 does not seem sane.
If a person has a personality that’s pretty much female, but a male body, then thinking of them as a woman will be a much more accurate model of them for predicting anything that doesn’t hinge on external characteristics. I think the argument that society should consider such a person to be a woman for most practical purposes is locally valid, even if you reject that the premise is true in many cases.
If a person has a personality that’s pretty much female, but a male body, then thinking of them as a woman will be a much more accurate model of them for predicting anything that doesn’t hinge on external characteristics. I think the argument that society should consider such a person to be a woman for most practical purposes is locally valid, even if you reject that the premise is true in many cases.
I have to point out that if this logic applies symmetrically, it implies that Aella should be viewed as a man. (She scored .95% male on the gender-contimuum test, which is much more than the average man (don’t have a link unfortunately, small chance that I’m switching up two tests here).) But she clearly views herself as a woman, and I’m not sure you think that society should consider her a man for most practical purposes (although probably for some?)
You could amend the claim by the condition that the person wants to be seen as the other gender, but conditioning on preference sort of goes against the point you’re trying to make.
Fair. I do indeed endorse the claim that Aella, or other people who are similar in this regard, can be more accurately modelled as a man than as a woman—that is to say, if you’re trying to predict some yet-unmeasured variable about Aella that doesn’t seem to be affected by physical characteristics, you’ll have better results by predicting her as you would a typical man, than as you would a typical woman. Aella probably really is more of a man than a woman, as far as minds go.
But your mentioning this does make me realize that I never really had a clear meaning in mind when I said “society should consider such a person to be a woman for most practical purposes.” When I try to think of ways that men and women should be treated differently, I mostly come up blank. And the ways that do come to mind are mostly about physical sex rather than gender—i.e. sports. I guess my actual position is “yeah, Aella is probably male with regard to personality, but this should not be relevant to how society treats ?her.”
Consider a biased coin that comes up Heads with probability 0.8. Suppose that in a series of 20 flips of such a coin, the 7th through 11th flips came up Tails. I think it’s possible to simultaneously notice this unusual fact about that particular sequence, without concluding, “We should consider this sequence as having come from a Tails-biased coin.” (The distributions include the outliers, even though there are fewer of them.)
I agree that Aella is an atypical woman along several related dimensions. It would be bad and sexist if Society were to deny or erase that. But Aella also … has worked as an escort? If you’re writing a biography of Aella, there are going to be a lot of detailed Aella Facts that only make sense in light of the fact that she’s female. The sense in which she’s atypically masculine is going to be different from the sense in which butch lesbians are atypically masculine.
I’m definitely not arguing that everyone should be forced into restrictive gender stereotypes. (I’m not a typical male either.) I’m saying a subtler thing about the properties of high-dimensional probability distributions. If you want to ditch the restricting labels and try to just talk about the probability distributions (at the expense of using more words), I’m happy to do that. My philosophical grudge is specifically against people saying, “We can rearrange the labels to make people happy.”
The question, then, is whether a given person is just an outlier by coincidence, or whether the underlying causal mechanisms that created their personality actually are coming from some internal gender-variable being flipped. (The theory being, perhaps, that early-onset gender dysphoria is an intersex condition, to quote the immortal words of a certain tribute band.)
If it was just that biological females sometimes happened to have a couple traits that were masculine—and these traits seemed to be at random, and uncorrelated—then that wouldn’t imply anything beyond “well, every distribution has a couple outliers.” But when you see that lesbians—women who have the typically masculine trait of attraction to women—are also unusually likely to have other typically masculine traits—then that implies that there’s something else going on. Such as, some of them really do have “male brains” in some sense.
And there are so many different personality traits that are correlated with gender (at least 18, according to the test mentioned above, and probably many more that can’t be tested as easily) that it’s very unlikely someone would have an opposite-sex personality just by chance alone. That’s why I’d guess that a lot of the feminine “men” and masculine “women” really do have some sort of intersex condition where their gender-variable is flipped. (Although there are some cultural confounders too, like people unconsciously conforming to stereotypes about how gay people act.)
I completely agree that dividing everyone between “male” and “female” isn’t enough to capture all the nuance associated with gender, and would much prefer that we used more words than that. But if, as seems to often be expected by the world, we have to approximate all of someone’s character traits all with only a single binary label… then there are a lot of people for whom it’s more accurate to use the one that doesn’t match their sex.
I do indeed endorse the claim that Aella, or other people who are similar in this regard, can be more accurately modelled as a man than as a woman
I think that’s fair—in fact, the test itself is evidence that the claim is literally true in some ways. I didn’t mean the comment as a reductio ad absurdum, more as as “something here isn’t quit right (though I’m not sure what)”. Though I think you’ve identified what it is with the second paragraph.
I think I might be confused about what your position is here. As I understood the two-type taxonomy theory, the claim was that while some “trans women” really were unusually feminine compared to typical men, most of them were just non-feminine men who were blinded into transitioning by autogynephilia. But the early-onset group, as I understood the theory, were the ones who really were trans? Your whole objection to people classifying autogynephilic people as “trans women” was that they didn’t actually have traits drawn from a female distribution, and so modelling them as women would be less accurate than modelling them as men. But if members of the early-onset group really do behave in a way more typical of femininity than masculinity, then that would mean they essentially are “women on the inside, men on the outside.”
Am I missing something about your views here?
“Essentially are” is too strong. (Sex is still real, even if some people have sex-atypical psychology.) In accordance with not doing policy, I don’t claim to know under what conditions kids in the early-onset taxon should be affirmed early: maybe it’s a good decision. But whether or not it turns out to be a good decision, I think it’s increasingly not being made for the right reasons; the change in our culture between 2013 and 2023 does not seem sane.
If a person has a personality that’s pretty much female, but a male body, then thinking of them as a woman will be a much more accurate model of them for predicting anything that doesn’t hinge on external characteristics. I think the argument that society should consider such a person to be a woman for most practical purposes is locally valid, even if you reject that the premise is true in many cases.
I have to point out that if this logic applies symmetrically, it implies that Aella should be viewed as a man. (She scored .95% male on the gender-contimuum test, which is much more than the average man (don’t have a link unfortunately, small chance that I’m switching up two tests here).) But she clearly views herself as a woman, and I’m not sure you think that society should consider her a man for most practical purposes (although probably for some?)
You could amend the claim by the condition that the person wants to be seen as the other gender, but conditioning on preference sort of goes against the point you’re trying to make.
Fair. I do indeed endorse the claim that Aella, or other people who are similar in this regard, can be more accurately modelled as a man than as a woman—that is to say, if you’re trying to predict some yet-unmeasured variable about Aella that doesn’t seem to be affected by physical characteristics, you’ll have better results by predicting her as you would a typical man, than as you would a typical woman. Aella probably really is more of a man than a woman, as far as minds go.
But your mentioning this does make me realize that I never really had a clear meaning in mind when I said “society should consider such a person to be a woman for most practical purposes.” When I try to think of ways that men and women should be treated differently, I mostly come up blank. And the ways that do come to mind are mostly about physical sex rather than gender—i.e. sports. I guess my actual position is “yeah, Aella is probably male with regard to personality, but this should not be relevant to how society treats ?her.”
Consider a biased coin that comes up Heads with probability 0.8. Suppose that in a series of 20 flips of such a coin, the 7th through 11th flips came up Tails. I think it’s possible to simultaneously notice this unusual fact about that particular sequence, without concluding, “We should consider this sequence as having come from a Tails-biased coin.” (The distributions include the outliers, even though there are fewer of them.)
I agree that Aella is an atypical woman along several related dimensions. It would be bad and sexist if Society were to deny or erase that. But Aella also … has worked as an escort? If you’re writing a biography of Aella, there are going to be a lot of detailed Aella Facts that only make sense in light of the fact that she’s female. The sense in which she’s atypically masculine is going to be different from the sense in which butch lesbians are atypically masculine.
I’m definitely not arguing that everyone should be forced into restrictive gender stereotypes. (I’m not a typical male either.) I’m saying a subtler thing about the properties of high-dimensional probability distributions. If you want to ditch the restricting labels and try to just talk about the probability distributions (at the expense of using more words), I’m happy to do that. My philosophical grudge is specifically against people saying, “We can rearrange the labels to make people happy.”
The question, then, is whether a given person is just an outlier by coincidence, or whether the underlying causal mechanisms that created their personality actually are coming from some internal gender-variable being flipped. (The theory being, perhaps, that early-onset gender dysphoria is an intersex condition, to quote the immortal words of a certain tribute band.)
If it was just that biological females sometimes happened to have a couple traits that were masculine—and these traits seemed to be at random, and uncorrelated—then that wouldn’t imply anything beyond “well, every distribution has a couple outliers.” But when you see that lesbians—women who have the typically masculine trait of attraction to women—are also unusually likely to have other typically masculine traits—then that implies that there’s something else going on. Such as, some of them really do have “male brains” in some sense.
And there are so many different personality traits that are correlated with gender (at least 18, according to the test mentioned above, and probably many more that can’t be tested as easily) that it’s very unlikely someone would have an opposite-sex personality just by chance alone. That’s why I’d guess that a lot of the feminine “men” and masculine “women” really do have some sort of intersex condition where their gender-variable is flipped. (Although there are some cultural confounders too, like people unconsciously conforming to stereotypes about how gay people act.)
I completely agree that dividing everyone between “male” and “female” isn’t enough to capture all the nuance associated with gender, and would much prefer that we used more words than that. But if, as seems to often be expected by the world, we have to approximate all of someone’s character traits all with only a single binary label… then there are a lot of people for whom it’s more accurate to use the one that doesn’t match their sex.
I think that’s fair—in fact, the test itself is evidence that the claim is literally true in some ways. I didn’t mean the comment as a reductio ad absurdum, more as as “something here isn’t quit right (though I’m not sure what)”. Though I think you’ve identified what it is with the second paragraph.