So why did autogynephiles agree to this trade? If you offered most people a choice between symbolic support like pronouns and their cause on a banner vs. sexual and romantic access to the sex they're attracted to they would choose the latter in a heartbeat. That's in fact why so many men stayed in SJW circles, "I don't care that my tribe is dragged through the mud here, at least I'm getting laid". Was it just everyone falling behind a few charismatic leaders who themselves wouldn't have problems getting chicks? Or did people truly believe the alternative was "chuds win and send you to reeducation camps"?
Once it got going then probably every autogynephile had to fall in line because all her autogynephile friends were at least pretending to be on board and losing all your friends is even worse than inceldom (femceldom?). But born males are horny and that fire isn't put out so easily by estrogen, I'm surprised there wasn't at least a counter-movement of PUA AGPs or something.
There's a lot of autogynephiles who don't transition, and this correlates with manosphere political views. The counter-movement of PUA AGPs are essentially indistinguishable from PUA non-AGPs.
As a LW-adjacent rationalist with aggressive AI timelines, I started experimenting with estrogen in Oct 2024 to help feel my emotions better so I could feel less like shit and be more agentic during these crucial months. Before first injection, I gave a 20% probability I'd want to stay on it long term as I wasn't particularly dysphoric about being a guy (e.g. I had a highly successful time in the military and a promising dating history).
I was quickly surprised by how much I liked the psychoactive effects. I started feeling much more embodied, seeing the world as more harmonious, enjoying social relations more, and suddenly became conscientious enough to lose 30 lbs in 70 days. I've gotten so much more than I bargained for and feel like I'm about to be as happy as I've ever been.
Idk about gender identity, but estrogen seems essential--and social technology like she/her pronouns seems very useful--for cultivating the "yin" and other energies that have been making my life so much better. I was incredibly unbalanced with way too much headiness, desire, anger, and other "yang" energies that I tried but practically could not do much about, and now I have finally found a deep sense of feeling regulated and okay.
The obsession, as seen in the article, with the sexuality of the transfeminine experience seems incredibly myopic and just a very male-brained way of understanding the appeal of leaning into transfemininity.
How were your overall hormone levels before taking estrogen? I wonder if you had low-hormones overall and that maybe exogenous testosterone would have been just as beneficial as exogenous estrogen.
Also I agree with your criticism of RCE her frustration with lesbians, it sounds similar to that of Incels who think that women are hypocritical for not sleeping with them since they are such "nice guys". While I think that both complaints have some validity because mainstream rhetoric is very simplistic and can be misleading, ultimately no one owes you sex and everyone would be a lot happier if they could come to terms with their relative position in the sexual marketplace.
Seems crazy to not have your baseline levels tested before hoping on exogenous hormones. But you do you i guess. Also 350 is pretty low and even if it was higher before the estrogen, high total test does not necessarily translate to high free test.
I think your post would benefit from acknowledgement of more categories of people than you have particularly gone into. Specifically: I am a trans woman, and post-transition I have been involved with one bi cis woman and several afab nonbinary people who have done zero medical transitioning (as well as several trans women). Do I count as an outlier, like Kelsey Piper does? Do the relevant people I have been involved with count as outliers?
If so, this was very unclear from your focus on whether or not trans women end up involved with specifically cis lesbians. If not, it seems to detract from a large chunk of your point, as I would be a non-outlier who has had plenty of involvement with people you would (to my best guess) describe as "cis" women.
Thank you for the antidote to gaslighting! Thank you so much! Why are you both able to see this, and to say this? If these individuals have drastic overrepresentation of ASD, why are they so apt to lie when it comes to this?
I collected data from public, anonymous or pseudonymous, but not well-known, internet fora and what you say checks out. I used to put it like this:’it was like these men felt liberated to display their sexuality in full daylight now that they were, according to dogma, women and thus it wasn’t brutal male desire, reeking of sperm, to mount, penetrate and ejaculate in women, it was beautiful girl sexuality with the ever-present "girl boners" and "gender euphoria"’ (… If someone had any doubt as to how men’s sexuality looks like without the manners we painstakingly instill into boys.)
I gave up on this avenue of research and, if I do go back to get that research doctorate, will pick something much more mainstream and respectable. Ultimately, Anne Lawrence’s book helped me develop some empathy, enough that I can honestly say I’d treat a patient like this to the best of my ability.
I personally know an agp mtf, all my trans patients have been ftm. And the mtf person is both sad and somewhat of a burden to interact with: he says things about his lesbianness and supposed femininity when it’s someone almost two metres tall with the stripper heels and handkerchief size skirt … I’m often left wordless: am I to give this person honesty or the lie that will massage their ego in the moment? How could I risk them getting mad at me for being honest about what I see?
We clinicians see dozens if not hundreds of women at work every day, as patients, colleagues, nurses, and family members. These individuals are very far removed from all these women in most ways that sex and gender differences exist. Our job is to observe and catalogue patient behaviour, human behaviour. It's unfair we have to lie about what we see.
Then again, those who exit the orthodoxy often go much too far and land somewhere in the teriphery.
I was leaving a long (long!) comment on this essay when I decided to just go ahead and post it as its own essay. Check it out; I hope you will find it an interesting addition to these (very interesting!) thoughts:
There are several VERY glaring inaccuracies in this essay, in no particular order:
1) T4T is and was always common among AGPs, often prefered over dating lesbians. It is because AGPs are also gynandromorphophilic, as Kevin Hsu's excellent research showed: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/she-loves-me/
2) Gynephilic traswomen (AGPs) have ALWAYS been more common than exclusively androphilic (homosexual transsexuals = HSTS) in Western cultures as Lawrence showed and my personal experience since first encountering them in 1976 at the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic taught me: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/better-the-second-time-around/
3) The big shift to "transgender" identity and the public's understanding of it occurred in the 1990s, not after 2015, though I agree that the public became much more aware of it after that date, but not because of Jenner, but because the bigoted right wing fascists needed a new boogie man to rile up their base after Marriage Equality not only become the law of the land, but enjoyed greater than 50% acceptance even among GOP faithful. Transgender fit that bill. Oh... and the very term "transgender" should tell you something about this, as it was originally a term to refer to exclusively AGP men and excluded transsexuals, especially HSTS. When "transgender" become the preferred label, it was part of the push to erase transsexuals, especially HSTS from the "community": https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/the-silent-transsexual/
I totally agree however that the public's perception of "trans" as being AGP / gynephilic did shift in the 2000s, though I don't think it was Jenner who did that... but in the early 1970s as I began "coming out" and socially transitioning as a teenager in high school... I didn't have to explain that I was into men exclusively. It was just "understood" by all my friends and supportive adults that as a transsexual I was of course also homosexual. It was quite a SHOCK to me in 1976, as I explained in my essay linked above, that that wasn't true of those I met at the clinic. They too were surprised by me, and indeed one finally got up the nerve to ask me how I could date men, being pre-op, and maybe just the thought of dating men seemed alien to them... BTW, that transwoman who did so is quite famous, Sandy Stone.
I used to hateread TERFs around the time they got kicked off Reddit, and one of the more... interesting... hot takes was that FTMs who date each other are ultra lesbians. They didn't really want to acknowledge T4T MTFs. This is a much easier to read take, even if I'm not sure I believe it.
Implications: cis women and FTM repressors who were creep repellent already lose much more by being shoved down the progressive stack, AND the un/fuckable ones lose out on solidarity with un/fuckable trans women when it comes time for #metoo.
This made me pretty thoughtful because i know multiple cis women in relationships with trans women, i’d call them bisexual (for their relationship status as well as other things they say and do aligns with how i define bisexual as sex based) but they enjoy the label lesbian. I tend to think a lot of people are bisexual and heterosexual but interested in socially non conforming sex roles/relationships because it seems true from my social experiences. I haven’t read other essays by you so my apologies if i’m missing context. Are you basing the idea that cis women and trans women/TIMs don’t date each other because that’s what you’ve seen?
as a lesbian in my 30s i’ve been in “queer communities “ ceaselessly and there are/were always m/f couples claiming to be homosexual or queer. some of these people dated exclusively heterosexually in fact but since all parties were trans identified, they retained queer social status.
"what are you talking about, women love violent video games" would probably mention Valorant. Overwatch if we talk 5 years ago. Borderlands 2 if we talk 10 years ago
"But in the entire decade I’ve been active in gamer circles on the internet, I’ve yet to see a single person discussing [Journey] organically in casual conversation"
That seems odd, I'd say it was discussed as much as Outer Wilds today
Well as "decade" implies I started using social media in around 2015, and the game came out in 2012, so I guess after three years it must've almost entirely petered out.
So why did autogynephiles agree to this trade? If you offered most people a choice between symbolic support like pronouns and their cause on a banner vs. sexual and romantic access to the sex they're attracted to they would choose the latter in a heartbeat. That's in fact why so many men stayed in SJW circles, "I don't care that my tribe is dragged through the mud here, at least I'm getting laid". Was it just everyone falling behind a few charismatic leaders who themselves wouldn't have problems getting chicks? Or did people truly believe the alternative was "chuds win and send you to reeducation camps"?
Once it got going then probably every autogynephile had to fall in line because all her autogynephile friends were at least pretending to be on board and losing all your friends is even worse than inceldom (femceldom?). But born males are horny and that fire isn't put out so easily by estrogen, I'm surprised there wasn't at least a counter-movement of PUA AGPs or something.
There's a lot of autogynephiles who don't transition, and this correlates with manosphere political views. The counter-movement of PUA AGPs are essentially indistinguishable from PUA non-AGPs.
As a LW-adjacent rationalist with aggressive AI timelines, I started experimenting with estrogen in Oct 2024 to help feel my emotions better so I could feel less like shit and be more agentic during these crucial months. Before first injection, I gave a 20% probability I'd want to stay on it long term as I wasn't particularly dysphoric about being a guy (e.g. I had a highly successful time in the military and a promising dating history).
I was quickly surprised by how much I liked the psychoactive effects. I started feeling much more embodied, seeing the world as more harmonious, enjoying social relations more, and suddenly became conscientious enough to lose 30 lbs in 70 days. I've gotten so much more than I bargained for and feel like I'm about to be as happy as I've ever been.
Idk about gender identity, but estrogen seems essential--and social technology like she/her pronouns seems very useful--for cultivating the "yin" and other energies that have been making my life so much better. I was incredibly unbalanced with way too much headiness, desire, anger, and other "yang" energies that I tried but practically could not do much about, and now I have finally found a deep sense of feeling regulated and okay.
The obsession, as seen in the article, with the sexuality of the transfeminine experience seems incredibly myopic and just a very male-brained way of understanding the appeal of leaning into transfemininity.
How were your overall hormone levels before taking estrogen? I wonder if you had low-hormones overall and that maybe exogenous testosterone would have been just as beneficial as exogenous estrogen.
Also I agree with your criticism of RCE her frustration with lesbians, it sounds similar to that of Incels who think that women are hypocritical for not sleeping with them since they are such "nice guys". While I think that both complaints have some validity because mainstream rhetoric is very simplistic and can be misleading, ultimately no one owes you sex and everyone would be a lot happier if they could come to terms with their relative position in the sexual marketplace.
Seems crazy to not have your baseline levels tested before hoping on exogenous hormones. But you do you i guess. Also 350 is pretty low and even if it was higher before the estrogen, high total test does not necessarily translate to high free test.
I think your post would benefit from acknowledgement of more categories of people than you have particularly gone into. Specifically: I am a trans woman, and post-transition I have been involved with one bi cis woman and several afab nonbinary people who have done zero medical transitioning (as well as several trans women). Do I count as an outlier, like Kelsey Piper does? Do the relevant people I have been involved with count as outliers?
If so, this was very unclear from your focus on whether or not trans women end up involved with specifically cis lesbians. If not, it seems to detract from a large chunk of your point, as I would be a non-outlier who has had plenty of involvement with people you would (to my best guess) describe as "cis" women.
Thank you for the antidote to gaslighting! Thank you so much! Why are you both able to see this, and to say this? If these individuals have drastic overrepresentation of ASD, why are they so apt to lie when it comes to this?
I collected data from public, anonymous or pseudonymous, but not well-known, internet fora and what you say checks out. I used to put it like this:’it was like these men felt liberated to display their sexuality in full daylight now that they were, according to dogma, women and thus it wasn’t brutal male desire, reeking of sperm, to mount, penetrate and ejaculate in women, it was beautiful girl sexuality with the ever-present "girl boners" and "gender euphoria"’ (… If someone had any doubt as to how men’s sexuality looks like without the manners we painstakingly instill into boys.)
I gave up on this avenue of research and, if I do go back to get that research doctorate, will pick something much more mainstream and respectable. Ultimately, Anne Lawrence’s book helped me develop some empathy, enough that I can honestly say I’d treat a patient like this to the best of my ability.
I personally know an agp mtf, all my trans patients have been ftm. And the mtf person is both sad and somewhat of a burden to interact with: he says things about his lesbianness and supposed femininity when it’s someone almost two metres tall with the stripper heels and handkerchief size skirt … I’m often left wordless: am I to give this person honesty or the lie that will massage their ego in the moment? How could I risk them getting mad at me for being honest about what I see?
We clinicians see dozens if not hundreds of women at work every day, as patients, colleagues, nurses, and family members. These individuals are very far removed from all these women in most ways that sex and gender differences exist. Our job is to observe and catalogue patient behaviour, human behaviour. It's unfair we have to lie about what we see.
Then again, those who exit the orthodoxy often go much too far and land somewhere in the teriphery.
I was leaving a long (long!) comment on this essay when I decided to just go ahead and post it as its own essay. Check it out; I hope you will find it an interesting addition to these (very interesting!) thoughts:
https://yorickinpenn.substack.com/p/the-jenner-cox-shift-and-its-consequences
There are several VERY glaring inaccuracies in this essay, in no particular order:
1) T4T is and was always common among AGPs, often prefered over dating lesbians. It is because AGPs are also gynandromorphophilic, as Kevin Hsu's excellent research showed: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/she-loves-me/
2) Gynephilic traswomen (AGPs) have ALWAYS been more common than exclusively androphilic (homosexual transsexuals = HSTS) in Western cultures as Lawrence showed and my personal experience since first encountering them in 1976 at the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic taught me: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/better-the-second-time-around/
http://www.transkids.us/invisible.html
3) The big shift to "transgender" identity and the public's understanding of it occurred in the 1990s, not after 2015, though I agree that the public became much more aware of it after that date, but not because of Jenner, but because the bigoted right wing fascists needed a new boogie man to rile up their base after Marriage Equality not only become the law of the land, but enjoyed greater than 50% acceptance even among GOP faithful. Transgender fit that bill. Oh... and the very term "transgender" should tell you something about this, as it was originally a term to refer to exclusively AGP men and excluded transsexuals, especially HSTS. When "transgender" become the preferred label, it was part of the push to erase transsexuals, especially HSTS from the "community": https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/the-silent-transsexual/
I totally agree however that the public's perception of "trans" as being AGP / gynephilic did shift in the 2000s, though I don't think it was Jenner who did that... but in the early 1970s as I began "coming out" and socially transitioning as a teenager in high school... I didn't have to explain that I was into men exclusively. It was just "understood" by all my friends and supportive adults that as a transsexual I was of course also homosexual. It was quite a SHOCK to me in 1976, as I explained in my essay linked above, that that wasn't true of those I met at the clinic. They too were surprised by me, and indeed one finally got up the nerve to ask me how I could date men, being pre-op, and maybe just the thought of dating men seemed alien to them... BTW, that transwoman who did so is quite famous, Sandy Stone.
I used to hateread TERFs around the time they got kicked off Reddit, and one of the more... interesting... hot takes was that FTMs who date each other are ultra lesbians. They didn't really want to acknowledge T4T MTFs. This is a much easier to read take, even if I'm not sure I believe it.
Implications: cis women and FTM repressors who were creep repellent already lose much more by being shoved down the progressive stack, AND the un/fuckable ones lose out on solidarity with un/fuckable trans women when it comes time for #metoo.
This made me pretty thoughtful because i know multiple cis women in relationships with trans women, i’d call them bisexual (for their relationship status as well as other things they say and do aligns with how i define bisexual as sex based) but they enjoy the label lesbian. I tend to think a lot of people are bisexual and heterosexual but interested in socially non conforming sex roles/relationships because it seems true from my social experiences. I haven’t read other essays by you so my apologies if i’m missing context. Are you basing the idea that cis women and trans women/TIMs don’t date each other because that’s what you’ve seen?
as a lesbian in my 30s i’ve been in “queer communities “ ceaselessly and there are/were always m/f couples claiming to be homosexual or queer. some of these people dated exclusively heterosexually in fact but since all parties were trans identified, they retained queer social status.
"what are you talking about, women love violent video games" would probably mention Valorant. Overwatch if we talk 5 years ago. Borderlands 2 if we talk 10 years ago
Are we talking trans women or cis women here?
I meant cis. But I would concede that trans women would be overpressented than general population in those gaming communities as well
"But in the entire decade I’ve been active in gamer circles on the internet, I’ve yet to see a single person discussing [Journey] organically in casual conversation"
That seems odd, I'd say it was discussed as much as Outer Wilds today
Well as "decade" implies I started using social media in around 2015, and the game came out in 2012, so I guess after three years it must've almost entirely petered out.