I think a significant piece on a very similar vein is autists both believing and taking their hard-line, black-and-white thinking style to generalisations and stereotypes. “Boys like sports and cars while girls are caring”; well I don’t like sports and cars, therefore…
While I like your explanation I think it's also that many people who do high level engineering work feel like they don't live up to the standards of masculinity, or rather don't want to compete by those standards. If you sit at a computer all day you're going to end up a scrawny dude who doesn't have much social ability. Guys in those positions tend to be marginalized implicitly. They see that women with those qualities are treated much better (as long as they're pretty), and they're used to more fluid identity overall due to their interactions being primarily online. So it seems logical that they'd rather be judged by woman's or trans people's standards than straight guy's, which they feel they don't align with anyway. And given that there's a significant group of people (leftists) who will support and commend you for doing this, all the ingredients are there to make this a seemingly workable proposition.
An additional component of the autism-transgender connection you don't mention is the connection between autism and autogynephilia. There are basically two types of MtF transgenders: female-brained homosexuals, and autogynephiliacs. The type of transgender that most coders and STEM types are is the autogynephiliac transgender, almost exclusively. Something about autism predisposes the mind to autogynephiliac self-fetishization, making an MtF identity driven by sexual fetishism much more likely. This is why you see these transgender coders dressing like anime girls and wearing striped "coding socks," they're presenting themselves as the type of girl they're sexually attracted to.
I agree! Originally the post mentioned this. A beta reader pointed out that it distracted from the main thesis of the post without adding much, so I took it out.
Regardless of the actual content of this post, I want to applaud you for using the word "autists" in a serious context. There is no greater example of progressive activists blatantly not listening to the marginalized group they claim to speak for than the fact that "identity-first language" used to be considered dehumanizing, so 4chan invented it for autism before the psychiatric establishment did, so then when the cultural zeitgeist shifted, they felt the need to invent alternate "person-first language" that actually does sound dehumanizing, on top of butchering what few consistent grammar rules the English language has. The (plural, for clarity) noun form of "fascism" is "fascists", not "fascistics". The noun form of "Buddhism" is "Buddhists", not "Buddhistics". Why the fuck is the noun form of "autism" supposed to be "autistics" and not "autists"?
Really, this and the Jenner Shift are due to the same underlying phenomenon, where when their culture's social norms shift, allists instantaneously forget that they weren't always that way, because they're such a bedrock part of the allistic people's world model that it would break their brains to acknowledge that they're made up and constantly changing. As soon as they decided that actually, you're supposed to use identity-first language, they all immediately forgot that that wasn't always the rule, so when they saw that people only used "autist" in impolite contexts, they assumed that it must be intrinsically impolite and they had to come up with new, polite identity-first language.
Thank you for validating my interpretation of the data I collected! It goes so hard against the prevailing orthodoxy that I had started to doubt my own judgment a little… but, it really is the case that trans women with feelings of gynephilic attraction aren’t all that truthful when interviewed at the clinic. Some books can be judged by the cover.
So, the big question is, what makes you different, capable of seeing yourself and others with the AGP experiences more realistically? And crucially, why can you say it? I understand why they won't, and can't, but what's different for you?
> Autists believe people that tell them they can totally be women. Since they take ideas seriously and act on their beliefs, the autists then transition
Ok, but why do they want to transition in the first place?
Yes. From where I'm standing, women and girls today are raised to see femininity as a burden in situations where they aren't trying to be at least somewhat attractive or pleasant. This results in femininity, as presented to society, being 100% attractive and pleasant. Grass is greener type stuff.
"AGP" is motte-and-baileyed between two things: "a profile of traits that tend to cluster together as per Blanchard", vs "lots of trans women think being a woman is really hot, which proves they don't have a psychic core of femininity".
I think it would be hot to be a hot woman and have sex with a hot guy for like an hour or whatever. I don't want to live my life as a woman. I've been facing down that prospect my whole life and it's always remained the same amount of awful.
"How many legs does a sheep have if you call its tail a leg?"
Believe it or not, I actually mean living my life as a woman!
I was a tomboy as a teenager. I wore plaid and sweatshirts and Converse. I had a pixie cut for a while because it was the shortest my mom and the hairdresser would sign off on. Male friends let me into their lives, just not as a guy. I dated people I found attractive, just not as a guy. None of that was enough.
Yeah, it would be nice if mechanical jobs would look twice at me. But that wouldn't be enough either.
I'm not really a butch woman, and I didn't like having to pretend to be one.
OK I admit I'm very confused by this. If you're a woman than any way you live your life is living life as a woman, right? Like, I know a lot of tomboys, they were kinda my favorite for a long dang time, and none of the were living life as men? Do you mean like... being a lot more feminine?
Do you not believe that I would sign up to switch bodies with you, and that I genuinely would not regret it based on any of the libido or aggression side effects, or people treating me with less warmth and expecting me to Be a Provider, and in fact that I would mostly experience that stuff as a welcome "reversion" to a never-experienced healthy state?
"[...] it is a false map of reality that was given them by a society of callous cowards."
Callous coward here. Though experiment: If I put a Mario costume on my dog and someone yells "oh my god he looks exactly like Mario" then I don't perceive that as a lie. The person is just expressing their joy triggered by how much their "Mario-recognition" network is firing fueled by the hilarity that the clothing is on a cute dog. Like yeah. It's not literally f-king Mario. No none needs to point that out, it's understood. But it also is Mario in ~some~ sense, right?
If a transgender woman asked me "do I look feminine today?" and I see she has more face shade than me and a bigger Adam's apple, then obviously I'm answering a question about her clothes, hair, and make-up, not her morphological features. Why would she be asking me if she looks indistinguishable from a female unless it's some kind of weird-ass trap that's designed to end in drama? Obviously I'm gonna say yes you look like Mario - because mirrors and photos exist so she must be aware of her own physical features and I'm commenting on the "quality" of the Mario outfit, not reaffirming that she's actually Mario.
There are some transgender women of course, who really nail the voice and even the physique to the point where I literally couldn't tell. That's incredibly impressive, but why would you be asking me then? No matter if you "pass" or not - you can record your voice, your movements, your body and work on it. It's stupendously uncomfortable to be asked the "body-morphology-pass"-question, the only options are be incredibly honest and thus stupendously rude or lie (apart from the presumably very rare case where they look and sound 100% like a woman to such a degree that I actually didn't notice).
Suppose they don't reach that 100% female looking threshold... am I actually supposed to point out their bodily "masculinity flaws"? You know, the ones they can see themselves in a mirror? That's overstepping the social boundary by a million miles if we're not sharing the same blanket - why would anyone ambush me with such a question that I can only get wrong? Seems callous to me.
Obviously, I'll take the more "cowardly" option and conveniently assume they ask me about their Mario costume, not if they're actually Mario. Because like Game of Thrones taught us: a real Mario doesn't need to ask if he looks like Mario.
*friendly reminder that not all transgender women are autistic, so the question "do I pass as a girl" is really a social reality question, not an invitation to critique their masculine flaws.
The dog is Mario in the sense that we look at it and say "haha, it's like a furry facsimile of Mario!" Do you think this is what transwomen want? To be seen as an obvious facsimile putting on the costume of women?
>the question "do I pass as a girl" is really a social reality question
Exactly. And everyone lies to them to be polite. Let me be clear - I generally also lie to my trans friends. The fact that I'm lying to them is what prevents me from transitioning myself. I don't want to be lied to, and I don't want to force others to lie to me out of social politeness.
The issue is that transitioning is not "just" a physiological thing, but typically the voice is the dead giveaway no matter what you look like and according to that video it seems to be a quite long-winded process to properly train, yet also surprisingly doable.
Do you know Conchita Wurst? She sang for Austria in Eurovision 2014. I think the interesting part with her was that she didn't even try to fully pass by rocking a beard. So if you were physically transitioning and thus it became obvious anyway for quite some time that you aren't passing, then maybe there are satisfying "stop-gaps" looks- and style-wise on the road to the magic 100% that don't feel "disappointing" - Conchita Wurst style. If you can "handle the heat of the haters" (which you would get anyway once you started transitioning) and also don't try to neurotically reach the 100% as closely as you can, then I think there are interesting styles that could be explored. I mean once people can tell anyway why not go Conchita for a while? I think it shows more confidence and I'm actually less weirded out, because if you're clearly "trying too hard" to reach those 100% as closely as possible but clearly you can't reach yet, then I always wonder are they deluded and think they pass or are they actually cool? With a Conchita come-up I don't have to wonder about that, she owns that she's not Mario and instead just says "I'm Luigi, deal".
I think as long as you're not 100% convincing, i.e. literally indistinguishable, then there simply is no "socially passing as a woman" because most of society will not see you as a woman but as a Mario costume dog. If there is even a single croak in your voice that gives it away you're clearly not Mario anymore. And I think it's not out of some evil denial, it's just because people understand and categorize the world in a certain way and if you slip up for a second the female tag gets ripped off immediately and will not go on again, because in most people's mind gender and sex are the same and without beakers and DNA wizardry there is no real crossing, only cross-dressing and surgery. Unless we cis plebs can be fooled to not know at all.
Some of it is transmaxxing. Tech is a male overrepresented field. Like 80%+ of coders are male. With DEI laws, programs and companies seeking parity you can get a hiring advantage and jobs you otherwise couldn’t.
If they're really among the best of the best, they don't need a (striped-stockinged) leg up. Employers should be fighting over them anyway. At most, this could help explain why marginally competent engineers transition, but honestly, I doubt that, too. Until a year or two ago, demand was extremely strong and even marginally competent engineers didn't need any help.
What makes you think they are the best of the best? They often have the best jobs, especially at employers that have strong DEI practices, but that explanation almost writes itself.
It's interesting also that trans coders seem to cluster even heavier into infosec than other compsci areas.
It is taken as received wisdom among trans people that getting hired as a woman in tech is harder than as a man.
Personally one of the big downsides when I thought about transitioning, was the thought of interviewing as a trans woman. No one is changing genders to get a job.
I question the validity of the premise. But going with it, I suspect lower baseline testosterone may have something to do with this. In two senses:
1. In the sense that lower testosterone after adolescence may predispose someone to being a coder and trans. (It may predispose towards coding since you have better focus and want a low risk lifestyle). Testosterone vs intelligence exhibits a U-shaped curve. Too much is bad.
2. In the sense that hormone replacement may give trans coders an edge. Especially autistic trans coders. It may be that the autistic "male-ish" brain on low T, high estrogen may be a secret sauce.
Wow the amount of wild and claims in the comments to this post is truly astounding. Like we transitioned due to gender stereotypes. But particularly that you all still believe in AGP, and you call autists gullible.
Regarding the computer engineer/trans connection. It could be as simple as all the good programmers are at least a little bit autistic. Also it could just be a matter of visibility, computers engineers are relatively high status. So we don’t feel as much pressure to pass. Many trans people are either pushed to the outskirts of society. Or go to great lengths to pass (yes you won’t know, no you can’t always tell, because you don’t know when you can’t tell). Were-as top software engineers are in high demand (until AI takes all our jobs) so we aren’t as afraid to be visible.
My personal to theory why my autistic people transition is that we are already loosely connected to society and feel social pressure less intensely. So it is easier to overcome the intense societal and familial pressure to not transition. We also tend to value truth, so I think it is hard for us to hide who we truly are and the truth eventually comes out. For me once, I admitted that I was a woman and started transitioning. That was a huge burden lifted. Not having to hide that anymore.
I think you're spot on, but I've always wondered about the ones who don't go that way. The ones who while equally autistic, equally deep into computers, still experience the idea of transgender identity as unrealistic as the idea of transracial identity or transagism.
There is something more than autism at play - autism is a meaningful contribution, but not sufficient explanation.
I think a significant piece on a very similar vein is autists both believing and taking their hard-line, black-and-white thinking style to generalisations and stereotypes. “Boys like sports and cars while girls are caring”; well I don’t like sports and cars, therefore…
While I like your explanation I think it's also that many people who do high level engineering work feel like they don't live up to the standards of masculinity, or rather don't want to compete by those standards. If you sit at a computer all day you're going to end up a scrawny dude who doesn't have much social ability. Guys in those positions tend to be marginalized implicitly. They see that women with those qualities are treated much better (as long as they're pretty), and they're used to more fluid identity overall due to their interactions being primarily online. So it seems logical that they'd rather be judged by woman's or trans people's standards than straight guy's, which they feel they don't align with anyway. And given that there's a significant group of people (leftists) who will support and commend you for doing this, all the ingredients are there to make this a seemingly workable proposition.
An additional component of the autism-transgender connection you don't mention is the connection between autism and autogynephilia. There are basically two types of MtF transgenders: female-brained homosexuals, and autogynephiliacs. The type of transgender that most coders and STEM types are is the autogynephiliac transgender, almost exclusively. Something about autism predisposes the mind to autogynephiliac self-fetishization, making an MtF identity driven by sexual fetishism much more likely. This is why you see these transgender coders dressing like anime girls and wearing striped "coding socks," they're presenting themselves as the type of girl they're sexually attracted to.
I agree! Originally the post mentioned this. A beta reader pointed out that it distracted from the main thesis of the post without adding much, so I took it out.
Regardless of the actual content of this post, I want to applaud you for using the word "autists" in a serious context. There is no greater example of progressive activists blatantly not listening to the marginalized group they claim to speak for than the fact that "identity-first language" used to be considered dehumanizing, so 4chan invented it for autism before the psychiatric establishment did, so then when the cultural zeitgeist shifted, they felt the need to invent alternate "person-first language" that actually does sound dehumanizing, on top of butchering what few consistent grammar rules the English language has. The (plural, for clarity) noun form of "fascism" is "fascists", not "fascistics". The noun form of "Buddhism" is "Buddhists", not "Buddhistics". Why the fuck is the noun form of "autism" supposed to be "autistics" and not "autists"?
Really, this and the Jenner Shift are due to the same underlying phenomenon, where when their culture's social norms shift, allists instantaneously forget that they weren't always that way, because they're such a bedrock part of the allistic people's world model that it would break their brains to acknowledge that they're made up and constantly changing. As soon as they decided that actually, you're supposed to use identity-first language, they all immediately forgot that that wasn't always the rule, so when they saw that people only used "autist" in impolite contexts, they assumed that it must be intrinsically impolite and they had to come up with new, polite identity-first language.
Yeah, it seems like a bunch of things others have discussed:
1. Imagining yourself as the person you'd be attracted to and then believing you can become them because everyone is telling you that
2. Failing at trad masculinity and being treated better as a trans woman than an unsuccessful straight man in left-leaning spaces
3. Propaganda about how women are better all over the place (this is related to 2.)
Thank you for validating my interpretation of the data I collected! It goes so hard against the prevailing orthodoxy that I had started to doubt my own judgment a little… but, it really is the case that trans women with feelings of gynephilic attraction aren’t all that truthful when interviewed at the clinic. Some books can be judged by the cover.
So, the big question is, what makes you different, capable of seeing yourself and others with the AGP experiences more realistically? And crucially, why can you say it? I understand why they won't, and can't, but what's different for you?
> Autists believe people that tell them they can totally be women. Since they take ideas seriously and act on their beliefs, the autists then transition
Ok, but why do they want to transition in the first place?
imo AGP. https://deathisbad.substack.com/p/my-agp-dudes-it-does-get-better
I believe it's a lot more prevalent in the general populace than people let on, and likely even more among autists?
Yes. From where I'm standing, women and girls today are raised to see femininity as a burden in situations where they aren't trying to be at least somewhat attractive or pleasant. This results in femininity, as presented to society, being 100% attractive and pleasant. Grass is greener type stuff.
"AGP" is motte-and-baileyed between two things: "a profile of traits that tend to cluster together as per Blanchard", vs "lots of trans women think being a woman is really hot, which proves they don't have a psychic core of femininity".
I think it would be hot to be a hot woman and have sex with a hot guy for like an hour or whatever. I don't want to live my life as a woman. I've been facing down that prospect my whole life and it's always remained the same amount of awful.
What does “living your life as a woman” mean for you?
"How many legs does a sheep have if you call its tail a leg?"
Believe it or not, I actually mean living my life as a woman!
I was a tomboy as a teenager. I wore plaid and sweatshirts and Converse. I had a pixie cut for a while because it was the shortest my mom and the hairdresser would sign off on. Male friends let me into their lives, just not as a guy. I dated people I found attractive, just not as a guy. None of that was enough.
Yeah, it would be nice if mechanical jobs would look twice at me. But that wouldn't be enough either.
I'm not really a butch woman, and I didn't like having to pretend to be one.
OK I admit I'm very confused by this. If you're a woman than any way you live your life is living life as a woman, right? Like, I know a lot of tomboys, they were kinda my favorite for a long dang time, and none of the were living life as men? Do you mean like... being a lot more feminine?
Do you not believe that I would sign up to switch bodies with you, and that I genuinely would not regret it based on any of the libido or aggression side effects, or people treating me with less warmth and expecting me to Be a Provider, and in fact that I would mostly experience that stuff as a welcome "reversion" to a never-experienced healthy state?
"[...] it is a false map of reality that was given them by a society of callous cowards."
Callous coward here. Though experiment: If I put a Mario costume on my dog and someone yells "oh my god he looks exactly like Mario" then I don't perceive that as a lie. The person is just expressing their joy triggered by how much their "Mario-recognition" network is firing fueled by the hilarity that the clothing is on a cute dog. Like yeah. It's not literally f-king Mario. No none needs to point that out, it's understood. But it also is Mario in ~some~ sense, right?
If a transgender woman asked me "do I look feminine today?" and I see she has more face shade than me and a bigger Adam's apple, then obviously I'm answering a question about her clothes, hair, and make-up, not her morphological features. Why would she be asking me if she looks indistinguishable from a female unless it's some kind of weird-ass trap that's designed to end in drama? Obviously I'm gonna say yes you look like Mario - because mirrors and photos exist so she must be aware of her own physical features and I'm commenting on the "quality" of the Mario outfit, not reaffirming that she's actually Mario.
There are some transgender women of course, who really nail the voice and even the physique to the point where I literally couldn't tell. That's incredibly impressive, but why would you be asking me then? No matter if you "pass" or not - you can record your voice, your movements, your body and work on it. It's stupendously uncomfortable to be asked the "body-morphology-pass"-question, the only options are be incredibly honest and thus stupendously rude or lie (apart from the presumably very rare case where they look and sound 100% like a woman to such a degree that I actually didn't notice).
Suppose they don't reach that 100% female looking threshold... am I actually supposed to point out their bodily "masculinity flaws"? You know, the ones they can see themselves in a mirror? That's overstepping the social boundary by a million miles if we're not sharing the same blanket - why would anyone ambush me with such a question that I can only get wrong? Seems callous to me.
Obviously, I'll take the more "cowardly" option and conveniently assume they ask me about their Mario costume, not if they're actually Mario. Because like Game of Thrones taught us: a real Mario doesn't need to ask if he looks like Mario.
*friendly reminder that not all transgender women are autistic, so the question "do I pass as a girl" is really a social reality question, not an invitation to critique their masculine flaws.
The dog is Mario in the sense that we look at it and say "haha, it's like a furry facsimile of Mario!" Do you think this is what transwomen want? To be seen as an obvious facsimile putting on the costume of women?
>the question "do I pass as a girl" is really a social reality question
Exactly. And everyone lies to them to be polite. Let me be clear - I generally also lie to my trans friends. The fact that I'm lying to them is what prevents me from transitioning myself. I don't want to be lied to, and I don't want to force others to lie to me out of social politeness.
I saw a YT video recently of someone whom I probably couldn't tell is trans in real life (though the camera is a bit oversaturated):
5 YEAR VOICE TRANSITION TIMELINE | The Evolution of My Voice (start minute 13:00)
https://youtu.be/2txYhkmhVts?t=778
The issue is that transitioning is not "just" a physiological thing, but typically the voice is the dead giveaway no matter what you look like and according to that video it seems to be a quite long-winded process to properly train, yet also surprisingly doable.
Do you know Conchita Wurst? She sang for Austria in Eurovision 2014. I think the interesting part with her was that she didn't even try to fully pass by rocking a beard. So if you were physically transitioning and thus it became obvious anyway for quite some time that you aren't passing, then maybe there are satisfying "stop-gaps" looks- and style-wise on the road to the magic 100% that don't feel "disappointing" - Conchita Wurst style. If you can "handle the heat of the haters" (which you would get anyway once you started transitioning) and also don't try to neurotically reach the 100% as closely as you can, then I think there are interesting styles that could be explored. I mean once people can tell anyway why not go Conchita for a while? I think it shows more confidence and I'm actually less weirded out, because if you're clearly "trying too hard" to reach those 100% as closely as possible but clearly you can't reach yet, then I always wonder are they deluded and think they pass or are they actually cool? With a Conchita come-up I don't have to wonder about that, she owns that she's not Mario and instead just says "I'm Luigi, deal".
I think as long as you're not 100% convincing, i.e. literally indistinguishable, then there simply is no "socially passing as a woman" because most of society will not see you as a woman but as a Mario costume dog. If there is even a single croak in your voice that gives it away you're clearly not Mario anymore. And I think it's not out of some evil denial, it's just because people understand and categorize the world in a certain way and if you slip up for a second the female tag gets ripped off immediately and will not go on again, because in most people's mind gender and sex are the same and without beakers and DNA wizardry there is no real crossing, only cross-dressing and surgery. Unless we cis plebs can be fooled to not know at all.
Question what would DNA wizardry do?
This is uncomplicated: Good coders used computers a lot as teens and therefore likely saw a lot of porn.
If watching porn made you trans, we'd have significantly more occurrences of it.
Some of it is transmaxxing. Tech is a male overrepresented field. Like 80%+ of coders are male. With DEI laws, programs and companies seeking parity you can get a hiring advantage and jobs you otherwise couldn’t.
If they're really among the best of the best, they don't need a (striped-stockinged) leg up. Employers should be fighting over them anyway. At most, this could help explain why marginally competent engineers transition, but honestly, I doubt that, too. Until a year or two ago, demand was extremely strong and even marginally competent engineers didn't need any help.
What makes you think they are the best of the best? They often have the best jobs, especially at employers that have strong DEI practices, but that explanation almost writes itself.
It's interesting also that trans coders seem to cluster even heavier into infosec than other compsci areas.
I don't. I'm just taking it as given for the purpose of argument.
It is taken as received wisdom among trans people that getting hired as a woman in tech is harder than as a man.
Personally one of the big downsides when I thought about transitioning, was the thought of interviewing as a trans woman. No one is changing genders to get a job.
Gender dysphoria is vaccine injury just like autism
So true. I wonder if it was the same vaccine that gave me autism also gave me gender dysphoria.
BTW just wondering do vaccines cause ADHD also?
Polymorphism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphism_(computer_science)
I question the validity of the premise. But going with it, I suspect lower baseline testosterone may have something to do with this. In two senses:
1. In the sense that lower testosterone after adolescence may predispose someone to being a coder and trans. (It may predispose towards coding since you have better focus and want a low risk lifestyle). Testosterone vs intelligence exhibits a U-shaped curve. Too much is bad.
2. In the sense that hormone replacement may give trans coders an edge. Especially autistic trans coders. It may be that the autistic "male-ish" brain on low T, high estrogen may be a secret sauce.
Wow the amount of wild and claims in the comments to this post is truly astounding. Like we transitioned due to gender stereotypes. But particularly that you all still believe in AGP, and you call autists gullible.
Regarding the computer engineer/trans connection. It could be as simple as all the good programmers are at least a little bit autistic. Also it could just be a matter of visibility, computers engineers are relatively high status. So we don’t feel as much pressure to pass. Many trans people are either pushed to the outskirts of society. Or go to great lengths to pass (yes you won’t know, no you can’t always tell, because you don’t know when you can’t tell). Were-as top software engineers are in high demand (until AI takes all our jobs) so we aren’t as afraid to be visible.
My personal to theory why my autistic people transition is that we are already loosely connected to society and feel social pressure less intensely. So it is easier to overcome the intense societal and familial pressure to not transition. We also tend to value truth, so I think it is hard for us to hide who we truly are and the truth eventually comes out. For me once, I admitted that I was a woman and started transitioning. That was a huge burden lifted. Not having to hide that anymore.
I think this is true as far as it goes, except for the part where autists are especially vulnerable to social fiction on net. https://substack.com/pub/mackgallagher/p/response-to-hanson-on-autism
I think you're spot on, but I've always wondered about the ones who don't go that way. The ones who while equally autistic, equally deep into computers, still experience the idea of transgender identity as unrealistic as the idea of transracial identity or transagism.
There is something more than autism at play - autism is a meaningful contribution, but not sufficient explanation.