Previous: A First Attempt at Saving the World
Ziz came out shortly after her move to the big city. She emailed her family w/ the news on April Fool’s Day— her favorite holiday. A few fam. members thought it was a prank; a few were accepting; as for Ziz’s parents, they… did not take it well.
At first, her mother did not believe her. She then became "very upset", & asked invasive, humiliating questions abt Ziz's transition plans. She pulled the old "how could [you] demand that [I] consider [my] 'son' whom [I'd] grown to love dead" gambit, & asked Ziz: "aren't you being a bit... selfish?" Later, in an effort to get Ziz to spend more time w/ extended family, she would tell Ziz that she wasn’t a “real woman", bc "women hold families together.”
Ziz had shaken her head at all of this & thought, well, they're worse people than I'd expected them to be!
By contrast, when she'd come out to the Rationalists, the reaction had initially, mercifully, been subdued. This is how she figured it would be: the Rationalists were *rational* ppl, weren't they? Dedicated to shedding all biases in pursuit of cold, hard truth- weren't they?
Indeed, it had been a Rationalist— one Alice Monday— who’d first pulled Ziz out of the closet. True: as soon as Ziz was out, Alice* had turned around & told Ziz that "trans women weren't women"…
*Incidentally, Ziz notes Alice also believed that a Nazi victory in WII would have been good for the Rationalists’ planned defeat of demonic AIs.
…Still, for this help in coming out, Ziz will spend the next several years calling Alice her mentor.
Alice’s mentor is Michael Vassar:
a high Rationalist muckity-muck whom Ziz spends a lot of time with. Michael is the former CEO of a major Rationalist org called MIRI*.
*Of which Elizer is a founder.
He achieved this esteemèd role thru a combo of hard work, mind-bending intelligence, and... op, never mind: he just got made CEO after donating a shitton of money from his startup 🤑
Michael is a trendsetter among Rationalists. He is also known to gather around him a "circle of trans women”, whom he methodically “breaks”. Les filles in Michael's "circle" have a greater-than-usual tendency to suffer mental breakdowns- or, in Ziz's words, to turn around & inflict mental breakdowns on others.
It is from mind-bending Michael that Alice has taken their à la fois bullshit & batshit opinions.
Michael, a self-proclaimed TERF, has since begun peppering poor Ziz w/ both bull- & batshit— including but not limited to:
Trans women are men;
They should not transition;
Trans women might be gay men who've been "brainwashed" by "social justice ideology"; also, in his own words:
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Unfortunately, Ziz’s hero Eliezer is no more welcoming.
He is, ofc, the major trendsetter among Rationalists, & has been known to loudly opine that trans women are merely "[men] who [have] undergone surgery and hormone therapy". Following his example, many Rationalists have, in the name of ~flawless rationality~, taken up the flag for such causes as:
• The transcendent supremacy of "biological reality": arguing that trans identity is not "real" bc it (at least as far as they know) does not directly derive from evolutionary pressures;
• Transness as a "social contagion" or the result of poor reasoning: trans ppl, in this line of thought, might push for "irrational policies" that could "corrupt" decision-making processes (& thus should not be hired or promoted);
• Ray Blanchard's disgraced autogynephilia hypothesis: which states that transness is just a fetish; or, as Ziz puts it, that "trans women...[are] just perverted straight men, liars".
Further, they have recommended* that Rationalists greet trans women w/ this canard: "Given that most women are cis, I will assume that you are a *man* unless you give me sufficient proof to the contrary.”
*Our Rationalists are *fond* of recommending pat, pre-baked responses to each other- y'know, to simplify the need for thinking.
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In the first year after Ziz comes out, it is w/ Blanchard’s disgraced autogynephilia hypothesis that these Rationalist clowns most bedevil her: that is, w/ the démodé rumor that “transness is just a fetish”.
In response to the clowns who are telling her this, Ziz has, aptly, retorted that it's "unfalsifiable" "Freudian nonsense". She has run circles around herself explaining the difference between the feeling of *gender* & the feeling of *sexual attraction*. She has poured her heart out explaining her own childhood dysphoria*; she has resorted to nonviolent communication methods in an effort to reach them— all to no avail.
*Kid Ziz had severe gender dysphoria, & severe depression, dissociation, & depersonalization as a result. She could not talk abt this w/ anyone– she figured it was just how growing up felt.
She also figured the world must be "insane": bc no one talked abt how awful this "adulthood" was, no one would be able to fix it. Kid Ziz reasonably concluded that she did not have long to live.
Try as she might w/ these clowns, Ziz has been forced to "endure the constant assertion that she “is a lying perverted man", that "gender identity" is "logically-incoherent" & that a trans person's reaction to being misgendered is nothing but "narcissistic rage": "trans women have too much pride".
These mortal clowns have even tried to ask her whether her *gender* may be a symptom of schizophrenia.
All this has resulted in Ziz beginning to question whether she is "completely delusional". She feels continuously "put on trial". "A sort of persistent background creeping pain" has been filling her "mind, day by day".
...And yet, Ziz doesn't give up. As she says, "I always seemed so close to convincing them. Rationalists should help each other like that! Trans women should help each other like that!”
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An acquaintance of Ziz’s was once accidentally added to an alt-right* Rationalist discord server. The clowns in this server were fantasizing abt life after the ~singularity~: when homosexuality can be outlawed, & all trans ppl put to death.
*The Rationalists have been known to frequently platform the alt-right (just as they have platformed TERFs)— or, as they'd say, they’ve "given them a fair hearing". They claim they have done so in a spirit of "free speech" & "intellectual rigor"; this may be true, but there are also several interests which the alt-right & the Rationalists share in common:
Evolutionary psychology, genetics, & population ethics: here the Rationalists have been critiqued for eugenicist & frankly racist ideas. They have retorted that they countenance such ideas in a spirit of pure “intellectual inquiry”.
A hierarchical, anti-democratic, technocratic worldview: to be fair, many moderate Rationalists would dispute this; yet the Rationalists writ large have repeatedly platformed figures like Curtis Yarvin (who advocates for a return to monarchic rule). Again, our Rationalists have claimed to “hear him out” purely for the sake of “free speech” & “open inquiry”— but have, in the process, lent him their— arguably, disputable— veneer of intellectual legitimacy.
Opposition to trans rights: not only have the Rationalists deemed trans ppl “irrational”, they have often argued that to support trans ppl means ceding ground to an "irrational left".
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Ziz herself is no stranger to online clownery. Here is a chat log b/w her & a prominent Rationalist named Davis Kingsley (who, incidentally, is quoted elsewhere defending the Spanish Inquisition & Japanese internment camps):
Ziz: Followers of Yahweh have persecuted queer people, coerced us into marriage and sex with heterosexual people, exterminated us, for millenia. So yeah, I am kind of fucking pissed at this.
Davis: The concept of "queer" identity is like 30 years old or something, not millennia
Ziz: The word is new. Before people would just call trans women homosexual men or whatever
Davis: I believe a large number of those would not have such an identity if it weren't trendy and socially hip
Davis: But queer identity and even sexual orientation overall are modern concepts
Ziz: Yahweh does not permit concepts to describe rebellion.
Davis: Those concepts are bad and shouldn't be rebuilt. Sodomy is wrong, including in heterosexual relationships
Davis: I obviously don't hate gays
💀 This is the level of discourse which Mz. Ziz finds chez the Bay Area Rationalists.
*****
Next: How to Build a Cabal
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