About detransitioning

A posting on detransitioning

The RLE aspect–the idea that there are tests to pass, results to collect–may have had negative rather than positive effects. While it may help people see and process their doubts and fallacies, it may also teach them to suppress them for fear that they will be unfairly delayed. If uncertainty means that you’re not really transsexual, well, maybe you just won’t be uncertain anymore.

I think this makes a fairly good point. We recognize the usefulness of a RLE, but what we don’t recognize is whether or not the current RLE is worth anything. The RLE shouldn’t currently be a binding authority. It should inform rather than decide.

Its important to remember that the RLE is currently only a hypothesis. As far as I know there are zero medical studies stating its effectiveness.

I personally didn’t have to go through any sort of RLE. I just had to show that I wasn’t crazy and was committed for six months.

That has its own issues because you get fakes who just want to convince you not to transition, but who wont tell you that until you have given them a bit of money.

It also creates a sort of ordeal-dynamic for the natural feelings of loss and gut-liquifying terror that accompany a change of this order. They become important, but perhaps not in the right way.

To me a future where I didn’t transition was a blank emptiness. There was no such future. So I had no reason to be afraid or to feel any loss because of it aside from normal worries like fitting in. It wasn’t really “transition or death”. Its more like “transition or something unthinkable”

Even now after transition though I still occasionally wonder if I made the right choice. When I think about it I can logically think about the health and other worries and compare. However the idea of living as a man is still something my mind can’t process on an emotional level.

So for me if I had to guess at an effective “nonbinding transgender evaluation” it would be on whether you have logical reasons for transition and emotional fears. Then you could follow up with the people who have been through it and if they are still content with their decision several years down the road you could say that it is worth something.

Transformative change vs incrementalism

This is a comment on Nate silver's political disagreements with sirota

There is the logical leap from "no corporate power" to "state socialism" and the whole emphasis on it.

That being said what I think Nate was getting at is that there are reasons to despise transformative change beyond the whole soviet canard.

To make a programming comparison there is an essay out about the cathedral and the bazzar at The cathedral and the bazzar

The point it makes is that incremental solutions deal much better with bugs. And the same applies to policy as law is just software on humans.

Fundamentally I don't trust transformative change because it does not rigorously test every element of its plan for usability, efficiency, and so on before moving to the next step.

I think that incrementalism is the real populist position. Transformative change is much more likely to come from CEOs and dictators rather than a democracy.

To make a corporate comparison

If you look at google the reason why they can put out so many great and solid products is because they embrace the incrementalist mindset. They don't give their engineers direction and if something bubbles up and becomes popular more people can work on it and produce a better more solid product.

Whereas microsoft embraces the transformative mindset. The process is locked down and resistant to input so the leader of the team can execute their goals. The problems are that they generally release bug filled products that execute a singular vision by people who have little ability to change the product for the better.

A divide amongst the liberal blogs

The Obama supporters have a view of the world where the people are basically good and failures come primarily from miscommunications, incompetence, and stupidity.

The obama criticizers have a much more good and evil religiously based view of the world. To them the first group are religious zealots who support people based on charisma or unthinking irrationality.

So the first group basically trusts Obama and assume that the request is primarily so that Obama can do it right. The second group basically doesn't and assumes that the request is so that Obama can be Bush 2.0

The request that the first group makes is not that you should support things that you don't like. It is a request for you to see the world in a less binary good and evil manner

Now to be fair that might not entirely be a good thing. I think the latter view is probably more effective at organizing and mobilizing because it is based on simpler principles. A wait and see attitude does not translate into hits on a blog after all.

And I think while we criticize you we do think that you provide a helpful counterbalance to the right. But we don't agree and we aren't going to act like we do agree. We think that you might be too apt to ignore the importance of things like experience and skill.

Suffering does not make you more moral

I was reading http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/07/BA2N155CN1.DTL and thinking about Gaza and I had to post a thought that I had been thinking about for a while.

Suffering does not make you more moral. The rockets Gaza fires at Israel are wrong and riots are wrong.

They are an expression of rage.

When you suffer it is easy to justify making other people suffer too. But that makes hurting others no less immoral. And generally the targets of your reprisals are random or loved ones.

Such rage and hate is a natural response. But it is not a good response.

The importance of thinking about ones spouse

There was a point at which the movie GWB struck me. It was when GWB at one point was seeking attention and approval from his father and yet his father was only paying attention to his brother.

In that case it was the emotional that mattered. The instant response that shows who you are thinking about.

I recently bought my spouse a glass rose. When I saw it I immediately thought of my wife and I went back and bought it for her later on. It was only a 20 dollar gift, but it had a very large emotional impact on us both and I think that it improved our relationship from a couple of issues we have had.

I think the lesson is that you should never let problems with your spouse get to you. You both work off of a set of expectations towards the other. And if one person is doing badly and changing those expectations for the worse you probably will need to show your emotions and change things for the worse. Because that is honest and honesty is important in relationships.

But once that honesty is done you should do something to reset things and show that you still care and that you are still thinking about her.

Is a love of the oppressor a bad thing?

A rare video by MLK

MLK may have often been criticized for his "Love of the oppressor" and his attempts to kindly reach out to those who disagreed with him.

But he was also very smart and very effective. And that is the way I want Obama to act as well.

I personally wish that I could be always surrounded and supported only by those who agree with me on everything too. But that is a wish of comfort. Not a wish of change.

The way forward on the free markets

I think that the way we should be going is realizing that a blanket tariff is the best way to keep the market undistorted.

We have a blanket equal tax for people being paid incomes and it is a good idea to have the same for overseas products. Right now only having that tax on domestically produced goods creates a distorted market and a tax on foreign produced goods would equalize the field.

In addition to really equalize the field we would also need to institute real quality controls on such goods.

Ending the massive subsidies and lack of quality control to foreign produced goods is what is needed to bring back buying American.

The argument for those subsidies is that we get a lot of cheap goods, but we shouldn't be subsidizing china to give us cheap goods.