Previous: Clapback to the Clapback
*Prior* to Ziz coming out, she'd been on good terms w/ Anna.
Anna had downright buttered her up, saying she "could be strategically important" in the fight against demon AIs.
Anna had given her life advice, & had helped her break free from the clutches of an abusive thesis advisor.
…Now, after their latest "convo", Ziz feels "absolutely crazy, like everything [she believes is] completely false.”
She will, w/ time, recall that Anna is merely playing out her tired, sad, & odious "gambit": "that trans women must know our place as inferior to not be ‘dangerous'".
But for the present, our girl is floored. We have never seen her so low.
She feels like Anna has attempted to reach into her brain & take away the very grounds of her identity (which... Anna has!) She wonders whether those Rationalist clowns were right all along: maybe she is just a "perverted, lying man". Maybe her rage at Anna is *really* due to the fact that Anna "sees" thru her ~deluuuusions~;
maybe she's "doomed to bring destruction to all" she touches!
We weep for Ziz, & shake our fists at the filthy tricks of Anna.
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Ziz pulls herself off the floor thru Zizesque means: she makes a spreadsheet of all the data she's gathered comparing the brains of trans & cis women. Indeed, "the numbers [line] up very precisely": trans women have female brains. Anna… is girlboss-gaslighting her.
And thank God: at the end of the day, Ziz trusts The Numbers more than she trusts any of *these* devil-clowns:
This bundle of terrible truths that set me against everyone would not go away... I couldn't just give up on reality.
We applaud our women in STEM.
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Having reaffirmed the need for WAR w/ Anna, Ziz finally drafts a FB callout post. Chief among her complaints:
• Anna has socially punished Ziz for not seeing herself the way that Anna sees her.
• Anna has "[called] trans women corrupt and wrong and part of an anti-epistemic ideology".
• Anna, a "wise cis elder", drives ppl to "renounce their transness": esp. ppl who value so-called "truth"* over their own feelings, & who may over-rely on *others* to shape their visions of reality.
*We have, editorially, said "so-called 'truth'", but note that Mz. Ziz just says "truth". Throughout this affair, she remains convinced of Rationalism as an ideology- even as she, thank God, has begun to put the Rationalists *themselves* under her microscope.
• Anna has created "a political force that drives trans people away from hotbeds of forbidden epistemics".
• Anna tried to impose her "DRM' d cognition" over Ziz, and, when Ziz did not submit, Anna retaliated. 🤔🤔🤔🤔
...Once more, we must turn to Chat.
Chat muses that "DRM" may be referencing:
A form of access control used to restrict how digital content can be used.🤔
In this context, it suggests a type of restricted, controlled, or artificially limited thinking-perhaps cognition that is constrained by external rules, social pressures, or ideological frameworks in a way that prevents free exploration or independent reasoning.
Ahhh, thank you Chat!
🤭 Anna's way of thinking- which she punished Ziz for not indulging— may be DRM'd in that:
• It has built-in restrictions which prevent certain ideas from being questioned.
• It forces ppl to think w/in predefined boundaries.
• Any attempt to "modify" or think outside the system is blocked.
This is an excellent call-out post- & Ziz has more:
• To call trans women "anti-epistemic" "is to make us more part of an anti-epistemic ideology": that is,…
• …to accuse trans women of bad faith, intellectual dishonesty, or deception forces them into a defensive position where engaging in open discourse becomes impossible.
• It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which trans women are alienated from "open discourse", which reinforces perception of their "separateness".
• Ironically, it is *Anna* who is making the *truly* anti-epistemic move: her bigotry is so powerful, it has distorted reality itself by refusing to face up to trans women's actual perspectives.
Brava to Mz. Ziz: now go ahead and press that bu... op, there's one thing Ziz wants to do first, & that's:
Run her searing observations past a cavalcade of Rationalist clowns.
Let's see how this goes for her.
Rationalist clown #1 texts: "😩 Anna's my friend!"
He begs Ziz to "not make social moves against her", & expresses confusion over what, exactly, she thinks Anna's done wrong....
To her phone, Ziz whispers: "Go back to your masters and huddle with them in darkness!"
On her phone, Ziz politely declines to talk it over w/ clown #1.
Rationalist clown #2 is none other than mind-bending Michael, whose bull- & batshit opinions we were reluctantly introduced to in pt. 3.
Re: Anna's conduct, Michael says, "Holy shit!" Yet he advises Ziz to avoid the post for, y'know, "strategic reasons".
Rationalist clown #3 seems initially eager to talk to Ziz: she says she's compiling her *own* anti-Anna call-out, & that "a bunch of cis ppl" are upset w/ her as well.
She soon pivots to gaslighting Ziz, & flipping critical elements of the story around to favor Anna's DRM'd perspective.
At some pt., Ziz & Rationalist clowns #1 & 2 are all in a room together. Apropos of nothing, clown #1 starts yelling at Ziz abt bathrooms, to which clown #2 responds by he/him-ing Ziz— "perhaps to sooth" clown #1.
...Ziz's blog doesn't mention if she posted the call-out or not... which we're gonna tentatively assume means SHE DIDN'T.
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