quinoa marisa
all good :)
I am genuinely curious about how biological gender dysphoria is comparable with quickly slipping genders and genders outside the binary.
so, obviously there is a lot of nonsense on tumblr/tiktok. But I have also hard from people who—based on my general impression of their character and language when interacting with them—should be taken intellectually seriously—who report kinds of trans identification outside the standard medical dysphoria model. I don’t understand this myself but I’ve seen it in enough other credible people at this point than I think I need to take their self-reports seriously.
i have no proof that this model makes sense but imagine that a brain has both strongly “male” and “female” patterns in different regions. it’s not that these are getting switched on and off necessarily but there seems to be a lot of complex stuff going on psychologically in how “brain sex” gets turned into behavior. And if the “male” and “female” regions are both signaling strongly and/or in conflict that could produce a nonbinary/genderfluid phenotype.
for the general model, see my comment: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rt2yai8JkTPYgzoEj/why-i-transitioned-a-response?commentId=nHYdFcmBqjnpWZize
I find the Gender Mosaic theory (cf Daphna Joel) to be the most plausible, but I see it as a Sex Mosaic where there are male-typical and female-typical neural wirings for different brain regions. It’s very high-dimensional and the sex of each region can vary independently and (mostly) continuously based on the prenatal hormone wash. This easily explains the vast phenotypic variation in gendered behavior, and why it seems like we have every different possible combination of person.
when I say “not inherently politically harmful” I mean “try to avoid trying to explain or justify them to most regular americans but this is a liberal society and in general we should be respectful and welcoming of diversity in contexts where people are enlightened enough not to take it the wrong way”.
Anyway, it’s easier to cis-pass (i.e be “invisible”) as an FtM than an MtF but what I mean by political salience is if you look for example at Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier—a lot of the rhetoric focused on banning HRT for minors is about FtMs, and positive examples of FtMs who transitioned young or knew young and were harmed by not being allow to transition sooner—can help fight this.
transness is a spectrum, rather than a binary… If I understand correctly, some of what Dr. Will Powers is finding seems to be gesturing in this direction.
That’s correct.
I’m directionally sympathetic to some of your points but I think your comment could be more charitable and curious about the OP’s cruxes and world-model.
You raise a lot of different questions, but only briefly. If we are going to talk politics, I would find it more helpful if both you and Character#2736 could go more in-depth on your evidence and causal theory of change for what influences voter behavior.
A lot of the arguments presented so far are standard binary-vs-non-binary, transmed-coded-vs-trans-mainstream points one sees all over the internet. Maybe we can do better?
Also, I think OP is oversimplifying the gay rights story, and doesn’t make a compelling argument that a political strategy based on respectability is a tractable or effective goal in 2026. It might be, or might not, but the argument is missing evidence.
It is really really hard to get signal on what drives political change, since history is incredibly complex, and there is such a tenuous link between outcomes and empirics. I’m worried that the current level of rigor in this discussion isn’t sufficient to make progress towards understanding.
MtF… perspective, one that I will admit is more relevant (per capita and politically) than the reverse.
Aww… I don’t agree. I think the FtM direction is just as politically relevant!! Plus MtFs are overrepresented on LW so it’s really nice to read your post!
I questioned what they were talking about, and was told that if I were transgender, I would have told them already.
This is a really fucked up thing to say to a child. Also, your dad refusing to speak to you for days after you got your period… what the fuck???
my suicide ideation has dropped off to the normal amount (biweekly)
Is this a joke, a cry for help, or both :p
while Marisa demonstrates that [a biological basis for gender dysphoria] likely exists, she does not attempt to explain what it is.
So, it’s been a while, but when I looked into the neuroimaging & neuroanatomy studies before, I got the impression they don’t hold up well under careful scrutiny. I remember https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2BB3mc__tk being a good summary.
I don’t attempt to elucidate a specific cause in my post because, for genetics (per my research, ~40% of the cause) we don’t have the data. There is no bank of trans genomes nor a sufficiently-powered GWAS. Per LLMs the 8-10 candidate gene studies we do have are underpowered and fail to find large effects. This is not surprising in the context of Dr. Will Powers and Kate Meyer’s pioneering work https://www.reddit.com/r/DrWillPowers/wiki/meyer-powers_syndrome_faq/ -- Mainly what we know clinically is that the genetic story looks very complex and there are many ways to end up trans.
From the ACE model in my post, if we take the contribution of nonshared environment (E) as 55%, it is plausible to hypothesize path-dependent, nonlinear causation and gene-environment interaction. This is unfortunate because it feels like a cop-out. I really wish there were something more concrete and falsifiable I could point at. But I do think the incredible phenotypic diversity—not just in gender identity, but in sexual orientation, and every other dimension of gendered behavior—matches up with this picture.
As discussed by Marisa (seriously, read her post)
<3
the transgender community became dominated by people, many of whom do not suffer from gender dysphoria
So, I’ve spent very little time on TikTok (mostly Reddit and Discord), but I don’t agree with this. Not all trans people have dysphoria, but most of us seem to. I don’t think it’s helpful to impugn or deny the validity of trans people who claim not to have dysphoria.
Current medicine—for legal/political, not scientific reasons—seems incapable of predicting whether gender transition will benefit someone’s health. Dysphoria is too noisy to measure as a gatekeeping tool. Reasonable people disagree here, but the social, legal, political, administrative, and financial barriers to transition are already high.
So I think an informed consent model is better than trying to use dysphoria as a tool for social or medical gatekeeping. It is not good to give people an incentive to interpret their own symptoms as dysphoria.
Also, nonbinary identities like genderfluid and genderqueer are compatible with dysphoria. These identities are not inherently politically harmful. The issue is how they were deployed as part of a political program that is actively antagonistic to the majority.
This is not a value judgement about right or wrong. It’s merely fact that if a minority antagonizes a majority, the majority will strike back.
hi Laureana, thanks for the comment :)
I’m not sure how the piece reads because I tried to pare down most of my subjectivity and stick to objective description.
I didn’t intend to give the impression that I feel bad about being trans. I don’t anymore. I took a couple months to write it to try to make sure it wasn’t coming from a place of defensiveness.
You don’t need scientific backing nor explaining to do.
I disagree with this. Science is good. For me, knowing is freedom.
I don’t know if the point you’re making in your last paragraph is...
I don’t speak at all for the trans community, nor do/would they listen to me. But I think the current genetic evidence is actually reassuring for those who worry about “trans genocide”. Because it looks difficult to achieve.
I do think it would be best if trans activism focuses on trying to preserve healthcare access.
I don’t intend to express an opinion on whether there “should be” more or fewer trans people born into this world. I don’t think it’s possible to have a productive conversation about this in public right now. If at all possible, it would be good to lower the political temperature on the issue.
Preimplantation Genetic Testing can in theory catch specific catastrophic mutations. Whether you are cis or trans, it is not good to have a stop codon at the wrong place in your estrogen receptor gene, full stop (literally). Ditto for the androgen receptor.
After digging into the (speculative) science on this, my personal view is that is that there is still a large biological component in E for most trans people. And being trans looks like a complex polygenic trait. GWAS has struggled to fully explain heritability https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/missing-heritability-much-more-than
So I think even in a “maximal eradication” scenario, eradication looks difficult to achieve. I am much more worried about health insurance coverage in the present. A lot of trans people are poor and basically unable to afford surgery without insurance.
that’s probably true in general. I just don’t believe you can often rely on, like, school staff. Not enough context. Fwiw my middle school “health” / sex ed teacher said some stuff to me then than was very unhelpful. And she herself was queer! Not that she told us, but obvious 2000s lesbian, very short hair, piercings, etc.
I don’t know, I mostly got pretty lucky with my parents. But there were a couple big things they handled badly when I tried to tell them about my depression. I’ve long since forgiven them. The fact remains that I was really depressed, and, honestly, needed some kind of medical intervention, better therapy if not gender medicine. I didn’t want SSRIs but in hindsight they may have been better than nothing. If they didn’t help at least that would be a data point.
I was floundering and had little will to live. This had long term repercussions. Dysregulated, procrastinated everything. Smart but bad grades, didn’t get into a good college → more social isolation in college, because I didn’t fit in in the party atmosphere. I didn’t actually start going to therapy regularly until 2021, though I realize now, looking back, it was something I needed. In college I used the 2 free sessions at the health center, but I had no money to continue beyond that, even though I wanted to.
I would love it if there were more funding for youth psychotherapy in the US. But when it comes time to vote for this, voters continue to not vote for it. So I have become a libertarian on gender medicine for similar reasons as most trans people. The problem with gatekeeping is less the gatekeeping itself but that in the US we have no money to pay for it.
thank you for appreciating it <3
hi Lucie, thank you for the comment :)
Basically full on gender binary
I think it is underappreciated how much of the trans* trauma and conflict is downstream of the gender binary.
I am hesitant to say this because it sounds woke. But if you think about it, if something has gone “wrong” within a trans person’s brain, what are the odds that it just totally flipped them to being the other gender? It doesn’t work like that.
We were seen as shameful, deviant, taboo, perverted, and so, early trans care focused on assimilation. Passing as “assumed cis”, not “correct pronouns”, so we would not be a cognitive burden to mainstream society, and not cause fear.
Transmedicalism internalized this, which led to trans people over-identifying with the binary. But actually there is no rational reason why transmedicalism and being nonbinary must be in conflict.
I lol’d! Yes, totally checks out. Aliens, if you are reading this, PLEASE kidnap me!!
hey thanks for the comment :)
I feel like I don’t have a great read on where the actual level of introspective clarity is for trans people. All my trans friends are introspective, I don’t really know if I’m really capable of being friends with someone who isn’t. I can’t imagine not being curious about why I’m like this. So I was really surprised to read in Fiora’s post “none of my friends have ever really put forth a parsimonious theory of what their actual motivations may have been”.
Most of my impressions of not-my-friend trans people comes from social media and support groups I went to early in transition and just observing these community dynamics. I think people have the potential to be a lot more introspective, but they are held back by trauma and the stress of political doomerism. Which like, is genuinely stressful. Maybe we’re gonna lose healthcare. People will post about this while also not doing anything behavioral in the real world to prepare for it. Basically I think the transes need to get off social media.
The other toxic dynamic—and I am not the first one to describe this—is that community spaces for babytrans (online and support groups) tend to be filled with two kinds of trans: (1) babytrans (2) trans who is no longer baby but also never really graduated from that stage, again, usually because of trauma or addiction. So often there aren’t a lot of healthy role models or elders around for the young ones who need that.
It’s easy to fit a theory to existing data. That doesn’t mean the theory is true or useful.
I mean, I transitioned MtF at 31 and I’m posting on LessWrong. I’m not beating the allegations. lol. I called myself an AGP in my [substack linkpost](https://quinoam.substack.com/p/why-i-transitioned-a-response) because it’s funny. I have no problem doing so.
Also, I can honestly say that I transitioned because my health was falling apart, I had a lot of repressed psychological desires to act and be more feminine, a lot of dysphoria over my body, and most important, taking estradiol dramatically improved my happiness and cognitive function.
The person I was at the start of transition—he was more sexually gratified staying as a man.
Some MtFs do find AGP relatable and that doesn’t bother me. But Blanchard/Bailey et al appear, to me, needlessly cruel, and deliberately inflammatory. That doesn’t mean the theory is false. But circumstantially their behavior looks detrimental to truth-seeking.
So the predictive power of the theory better be really good for me to want to spend time on it.
I find the Gender Mosaic theory (cf Daphna Joel) to be the most plausible, but I see it as a Sex Mosaic where there are male-typical and female-typical neural wirings for different brain regions. It’s very high-dimensional and the sex of each region can vary independently and (mostly) continuously based on the prenatal hormone wash. This easily explains the vast phenotypic variation in gendered behavior, and why it seems like we have every different possible combination of person.
The reason we don’t see “male” or “female” brains with neuroimaging is that the vast majority of these regions are for general cognition (neocortex), where prenatal estrogen/androgen signaling does influence structure but not in ways that have any effect on subconscious sex. I expect the brain regions / wiring patterns that cause dysphoria are small. If we knew the connectomes for a bunch of trans people, I predict we could find them. The imaging tools we have now are extremely rudimentary.
All of this can coexist with ETLE, but again, as far as I know, ETLE doesn’t have any mechanistic basis in neuroscience. So it’s very uninteresting to me. If Blanchard actually predicted furries, then please link me to the source for that. What is surprising about furries is not the bestiality of it all (humans have been having sex with animals since the dawn of domestication), but the anthropomorphic cartoon aesthetic.
Can you give me an example of a testable prediction that isn’t something we already know? Or an example from the past where ETLE made a falsifiable prediction that was either proved or disproved by empirical research?
Why not just index on the psychological traits directly then?
I’m not an expert on this but ETLE seems more like a hypothesis than an explanation to me. Let’s suppose ETLE is true. What else would we expect to then be true then as a consequence of ETLE that wouldn’t be true under the standard “brain sex” model?
yup definitely a mix! appreciate your perspective and going through transition has made me more of a libertarian on health issues.
Being transgender is in some ways similar to an ethnicity or a culture. I think some of the intuitions about “eradication” are coming from the same place as for people who fear the end of their race, ethnicity, or culture. I think it’s a tribal intuition that evolution engraved deeply into us. I’ve never been deaf so I can’t really compare the two. I think it’s extremely difficult to discuss productively without a general theory. Otherwise we’ll be heavily biased by our priors on politics and whether we like deaf people, trans people, and so on.
imagine a perfect genetic therapy that could fully change adults person sex, like growing true new reproductive organs, no need for hormonal supplements, etc.
I’m sure some people would find it very threatening. “God doesn’t make mistakes”.
The thing is, I have a Y chromosome with an SRY gene. Even if we could make me XX in all my cells that wouldn’t regrow my anatomy. (I don’t know how it would affect my brain.) So there would have to be some kind of surgical step.
I would still consider this meaningfully “trans” since I would have the memories and experiences of living first in an XY body and then moving to an XX one. My brain would still have the neuroanatomy my confused XY genotype laid down during gestation. I doubt there would be a way to give me a “fully XX” brain without wiping out my identity.
But you’re right that this would hopefully solve a lot of problems.
I appreciate your comment, and thank you for reading my post :)
I do think what you wrote may be missing the point a bit. The debate is not over whether there is an observable-in-principle physical cause for being trans somewhere in a trans person’s body.
The debate is over whether that cause was itself caused by biology (genes, epigenetics, hormone disruptors in the water, random errors of prenatal neuroendocrine development) or social factors. Because the answer to this question has massive implications for what healthcare should look like for trans people.
When I talk about “trans eradication” in the post I am speaking descriptively (not normatively) about other people.
I like “aim to explain rather than persuade” a lot. I tried really hard to keep my personal beliefs out of this essay, and stick to description only.
I just want to double check—is your confusion about my personal normative belief, or about the feelings and beliefs of other trans people? Which are you curious about? It’s important to keep these separate.
Personally, I think the question is impossible to answer in a coherent way without an ethical stance on bringing new sentience into the world, in general. And that is an extremely difficult problem. I’m working on it but I don’t have a developed view on it yet.
“what’s the basis of sexual orientation?”
One of my friends who gave feedback on my draft is a gay cis man who very helpfully pointed out that there was a similar Double Bind dynamic in the gay community, complete with the medicalization piece (AIDS, PrEP), and worries about finding a “gay gene” leading to eradication. I overlooked this because of the Eye of Sauron effect you mentioned. It’s certainly not limited to the trans issue.
It also seems to me less than obvious that biology serves as a standard of legitimacy more broadly, even within medicalized discourse. Schizophrenia and bipolar are generally seen as mostly biological in etiology but “illegitimate,” for instance.
I think the key distinction is social legitimacy versus ‘the medical community believes insurance should cover this’. The second isn’t apolitical but I do think it’s mostly downstream of biological reality.
Scott’s post on this You Don’t Want A Purely Biological, Apolitical Taxonomy Of Mental Disorders is great.
I unabashedly love both Understand and Liking What You See.
Calli would probably be dysgenic long-term, but we humans do a lot of things that are dysgenic. Plastic surgery and makeup are likely dysgenic.
I value the story because transhumanism is strongly associated with the id, and the ego. Liking What You See is the rare work that competently sketches a transhumanism oriented towards Rawlsian compassion. And that is sorely needed, for both utilitarian and political reasons.