Submitted: (I’m defaulting submissions to anon unless you specifically ask me otherwise)
As an a.m.a.b. person with a lot of complicated gender feels who is cis but somewhat plausibly might not have been if I had been braver and read different books in a different order, I see the autogynephilia/erotic-location-target-error idea as a fundamentally plausible proposed mechanism that does an excellent job of explaining my experiences, and I’m really grateful that people like Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence have written about it as a thing that exists, even if the stronger two-type theory of MtF transsexualism in general is surely false. I understand that people with serious dysphoria rather than my vague, un-acted-upon wishes have very good reasons to not want to draw excess attention to my existence (and the existence of people like me but brave enough to do more about it) because the cis will abuse the knowledge to deny them their rights. But is the vitriol at someone writing a popular-level book that discusses the hypothesis really necessary? Can’t we agree to some sort of truce?—I’ll respect your right to speculate about the etiology of your self-identity, if you respect mine (and Anne Lawrence’s)?
I don’t have a beef with people who think AGP exists, my beef is with people who claim the two-type theory is anything other than thorough bullshit. The problem with BBL is the way they try to coerce millions of people into their own typologies. Anne Lawrence certainly knows herself better than I do, but Anne Lawrence has zero right to claim she knows me better than I do, unless she has some pretty damn bulletproof evidence (spoiler: she doesn’t).
The sides in this war aren’t “AGP don’t real” vs. “AGP sometimes real”, the sides are “treating people as people” vs. “erasing inconvenient people”. BBL fall squarely in the latter one, (as do some shitty trans activists, such as truscum, HBS etc.) and I think the truce you’re talking of looks like exactly the very thing I’m trying to advocate: treat people as people, don’t erase their experiences with some simplistic typology.
And if one were to assume that such a truce was in force, TMWWBQ would be an act of aggression against its terms. It doesn’t say “this is a thing which sometimes exists”, it says “millions of people are lying when they say they aren’t this”. (And those who erase the experiences of AGPs are similarly in violation of the terms, and should also be scorned.)
2 weeks ago · tagged #discourse cw #submission · 3 notes · .permalink
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Z. M. Davis submitted this to socialjusticemunchkin