The Enlightened Centrist Manifesto on Trans Issues

Or, Why You Should Publicly Write Out Your Beliefs on Complex Issues

On July 27, 2024, the Twitter timeline was full of Discourse on trans issues for the millionth time. The catalyst: a post from X software engineer and niche internet microcelebrity Yacine saying

this is your reminder that a one star google review is incredibly damaging to a business

furthermore, you should consistently give businesses that pushes trans flags everywhere one star google reviews. and don't forget to describe why

Given the prevalence of trans women in the tech industry, particularly in AI and on rationalist Twitter, many people (reasonably) rushed to defend them against this perceived attack. Some leaned a bit too far to the left. A day later I tweeted

Y’all are going to force me to write the Enlightened Centrist Manifesto on Trans Issues

Then, in between fits of pacing around an empty WeWork, I sat down and banged it out in around an hour, far faster than I normally write lengthy posts on complex social issues. Here it is in full.

The Enlightened Centrist Manifesto on Trans Issues

Note: since writing this almost a year ago, I’ve slightly changed my opinions, most notably on the sex vs. gender dichotomy. In a footnote¹, I explain the changes I’d make if I were to write this again today.

Though I regret that this is not in formal manifesto format, here are some Thoughts on the matter, critiques welcome:

- I have many trans friends (mostly MtF) and they are among the smartest and most interesting people I know. If you were to select a single demographic for high IQ, you could quite possibly do no better than "rationalist and rat-adjacent trans women".

- Trans people should be able to live their lives without fear of harassment or discrimination. They should be treated like anyone else by default. The same laws that apply to non-trans people should apply to trans people, and trans people should enjoy the same rights as non-trans people. As a rule, people should be allowed to live their lives how they want to live them.

- I generally support a laissez-faire approach to what one does with their own body. There should be more (fully consensual) medical experimentation and biological research, not less, especially as transhumanism gets closer and closer to reality. Patients with terminal illnesses should be able to try medication not fully approved by the FDA. This should extend beyond right-to-try and HRT for trans people: men who want to become more masculine should be able to take testosterone and other androgens, for example.

- In the future, biotechnology (or virtual reality) will quite possibly get to a point where a trans person can make their body - from organs to chromosomes - indistinguishable from a person born as their preferred sex. Sex and gender really will be a spectrum at this point. If and when this happens, I will see it as a very positive development, and most or all of my more hesitant views on the matter will update away.

- For a small subset of the population, gender dysphoria is very real. Some people feel true, deep unease and distress with the body they were born in, and HRT and/or surgery is the best way for them to become content and confident with who they are again. My heart goes out towards all people who feel this way, and I wish them the best and hope they get the care they need.

- As a matter of civility and common decency, I refer to trans people using their preferred names and pronouns.

- Spamming businesses that display trans flags (or most other flags) with one-star reviews is uncivil and wrong.

However:

- Biological sex is not a spectrum. Very few, if any, other biological classifications of humans are this bimodal, with differences not just between male and female chromosomes and gonads, not just secondary sex characteristics and hormones and facial features, but between cognition and personality. These differences are robust between cultures, across history, and even among other primate species. Most gender stereotypes can be explained by biological differences, not social constructs. There are a very small number of intersex people - roughly 0.05% of births have ambiguous genitalia - and the vast majority of even these have a predominant hormonal, gonadal, or genetic sex.

- "Gender" is a meaningless concept. It has always been clear that sex is a binary characteristic of humans, but the psychological differences between men and women are much less bimodal than the physiological ones. With the egalitarian nature of liberalism in mind, liberal sexologists in the 50s coined the term "gender" to refer to the social and psychological roles, behaviors, and attributes of men and women. They asserted that sex and gender are different, and while sex is a binary, gender is a spectrum. The problem is that people generally use the idea of "gender" in two different ways. Either they entirely detach it from biological sex, at which point it roughly means "personality" and is thus redundant, or they use it as a stand-in for biological sex, but psychological differences between men and women are to a very large degree determined by biology and are thus not socially constructed.

- Because of the flexible nature of the human brain and the fact that traits are distributed, some percentage of people have roughly the temperament, personality, and interests of the opposite sex. These people used to be generally referred to, sometimes neutrally and sometimes negatively, as "tomboyish" (if women) or "effeminate" (if men). This is very much not the same thing as gender dysphoria, and it is dangerous to conflate the two. HRT and surgery are not the right treatment for these kinds of people.

- With society’s current level of medical technology, you cannot change your biological sex. HRT can change your secondary sex characteristics, and sex reassignment surgery can change the appearance of your sex organs, but your underlying chromosomal sex, sex organs, skeletal structure, personality, etc. remain the same. Sweeping statements like “Trans women are women. Full stop” don’t accurately describe this. “A person got hormone therapy and surgery to feel more like a woman” is not the same as “that person now literally is a woman”.

- HRT, puberty blockers, and sexual reassignment surgery are not risk-free. HRT can increase the risk of blood clots, stroke, heart problems, high blood pressure, diabetes, and even infertility. Puberty blockers like Lupron can cause mood disorders, depression, and osteoporosis. SRS is even more risky. Surgical complications can include loss of erotic sensation, wound breakdown, and even tissue death. One survey found that 54% of vaginoplasty patients had pain requiring medical care two years later, and 64% of phalloplasty patients had complications like device malfunction or dislodgement. Genital surgeries are permanent and irreversible, and other surgeries like mastectomy and facial feminization surgery are very difficult or impossible to reverse fully. Anyone who undergoes such treatments should be made fully aware of the risks, and should only proceed if it would have a positive impact on their dysphoria outweighing the negative impact of the treatments.

- As important as freedom over your body is freedom over your speech. I am wholly opposed to laws requiring people to use the preferred name and/or pronouns of trans people lest they be fined and/or face administrative penalties, as some jurisdictions (Canada, California, NYC, the UK, Scotland) have enacted.

- Many people have taken a repressive attitude towards research on the matter, claiming that it is "settled science”, which it certainly is not. Research into some areas is suppressed for fear of “transphobia”, such as Ray Blanchard’s transsexualism typology, and the idea that some trans women are autogynephilic - they experience sexual arousal at the idea of being a woman - and are not purely dysphoric. The focus of research should be on helping dysphoric people get the care they need, not confining the search space to one dominant theory.

- There has been a dramatic rise in the amount of children identifying as transgender. Some, though certainly not all of them are dysphoric. Since as long as children have existed, they’ve been confused about growing up, and that confusion has manifested itself as “phases” - an emo phase, a communist phase, a skater phase. Some kids, growing up in a very pro-trans environment, believe that they are trans not out of genuine dysphoria, but because their friends identify as trans/they find it cool or interesting/they have normal puberty-related body discomfort. The way kids’ phases are typically dealt with is by letting them explore it and likely grow out of it, but in a lot of cases, the focus is placed on “affirming” and children are encouraged to identify as trans, and even prescribed HRT and puberty blockers even when they are not truly dysphoric. This is made worse by online communities like r/egg_irl and parts of Twitter, which act as though everyone who has natural doubts or questions about gender is trans and should start HRT. Given the risks and potentially irreversible consequences of HRT and puberty blockers, they should only be prescribed to minors if they truly have dysphoria and if their parents consent. Given the total irreversibility of SRS and the developing brains of minors, people should only be allowed to receive it over 18. Almost all jurisdictions ban minors from getting tattoos, let alone SRS.

I got many responses. Some were positive and kind:

• “Have very rarely read a write up this long on a such controversial topic where I agree with literally every point made, so well written!!”

• “based”

• “COMMON THEO WIN”

• “based and enlightened centrist pilled”

• “remarkably based. I co-sign at least like 95% of it, which on this topic rounds up. I'm impressed”

Some were thoughtful criticisms. One person (Warty Dog, @warty_dog) wrote:

I think ur wrong on sex and gender

1) the tally is complicated but HRT changes sex physiology substantially and I don't think it's natural to classify into 2 kinds with trans in their birth sex. the case is stronger for childhood transition. note also that the features you come in contact more in most context are the ones more changed

2) there are cultural components of gender that are not redundant with "personality". there is also something of a caste system where we treat the genders differently, "trans women are women" means trans women are female caste

3) "gender dysphoria" is a term from medicine (🤮). there is a deep subconscious part in the brain that tells you which gender/sex (?) you are, and it's sometimes not congruent with your body and role in society. also, it should be included in the tally of biological differences

Another (Liz Lovelace, @liz_love_lace) wrote:

re: the trans manifesto

you got it very right!

i basically agree with everything you said

i do have some interesting thoughts to add

1) trans people and lefties really like the talking point "trans people kill themselves if they don't transition and/or if they're not accepted by society", which, imo, is the leading cause of trans people killing themselves

not the things, the *talking point* is what makes so many trans people kill themselves, especially teenagers. When one's whole community says that they should be suicidal, they become suicidal

2) gender dysphoria is kind of an outdated way to think about trans people

it's real, sure, but pushing "gender dysphoria is a very real disorder that just affects some people and the only cure is transition" was always just rhetoric to convince normies that trans people are real

i never had dysphoria, i just thought "wouldn't it be neat to be a girl" and then became a girl, and yeah it's neat as fuck

3) the way i view "gender" is kind of the "archetype" that someone wants to belong to

there's value in belonging to a legible cluster of people, like "guy" or "girl" or "nonbinary", but you could think about it more granularly, like "butch lesbian" or "buff guy" or "nerdy guy"

so yeah good job, i'm impressed that you're so un-brainwormed about this

Then, there were various low-tier criticisms from both sides.

• “Lmao yall take yourselves soooo seriously, leave trans people alone you hateful dweebs”

• “Everything in your "However" section is incompatible with the lies that transpeople have to tell themselves in order to not freak out over what they've done to their own bodies.”

• “So should men be allowed in women’s bathrooms? Why is it civil or common courtesy to lie to someone’s face?”

• “Lol I'm not racist, BUT.. Stfu you coward”

I find myself linking back to this post more than any other long-form post I’ve written. I think this is because it represents something I think is highly undervalued: taking a complex and nuanced issue and writing out a complex and nuanced take on it².

Write More Specific Takes

Most issues, especially controversial ones, are pretty nuanced. Nuanced issues, like trans³, tend to be composed of a series of interconnected issues, rather than a single issue: are trans women women? what is a woman? should trans women be allowed to play in women’s sports? Generally, one political tribe tends to pick a specific list of opinions (trans women are women, a woman is whoever identifies as one, trans women should be allowed to play in women’s sports) and the opposing tribe picks a list of the opposite opinions. If you have some opinions from List A and some from List B, it’s hard to engage with either side. The solution is to write out a full list of your opinions from both sides, as a sort of position paper. This helps:

1. Clarify your own thoughts on the matter. In the process of writing my piece on trans, I learned about Blanchard’s transsexualism typology in depth and read papers on criminality, neuroscience, and the risks of hormone replacement therapy. This is a valuable intellectual exercise just for the sake of it.

2. Move the world towards a more nuanced and accurate understanding of a complex and controversial topic for which neither tribe’s premade set of answers is sufficient, and

3. Produce valuable intellectual output publicly on the Internet, which not many people have, as something you can point to to demonstrate your intelligence, knowledge, thoughtfulness, writing ability, etc.

What you write doesn’t even have to be wishy-washy acceptable centrism. If you frame your beliefs in a polite and persuasive enough way, even beliefs that would be considered radical in some circles can pass right through the low decoupler’s mental filters. Famously, Curtis Yarvin writes so well that he can get away with endorsing normally scary concepts, like dictatorship.

The next time you feel the need to write about a controversial issue⁴, write out something like my trans manifesto. It can be the entire piece, or the skeleton of something that resembles a traditional essay more, or even just an internal guide for you to keep in mind while you write, but it should be clear, it should be detailed, it should be polite, and it should be nuanced. The epistemic commons must be maintained, and you should help maintain them however you can.

1. If I were to write this post again, I’d make the following changes:

• I no longer think gender is a meaningless concept. It’s not totally detached from sex like pro-trans radicals claim, but it isn’t fully baked into biological sex either.

  • I never fully explained Blanchard’s transsexualism typology, which separates MtF trans women into two broad categories.

    • The first are homosexual transsexuals, or HSTS. They tend to transition earlier in life, be attracted primarily to men, and have more feminine personalities and characteristics.

    • The second are autogynephiles, or AGP. They tend to transition later in life, be sexually attracted to the idea of themselves as women, be attracted primarily to cis women or other trans women, and display more masculine characteristics.

  • Others have criticized Blanchard’s typology for being overly strict, but I find it a more useful model of reality than the left-trans-orthodox idea that all trans people are cognitively indistinguishable from their target sex and were literally born in the wrong body.

  • [EDIT (5/6/2025): The above should not be read as a blanket endorsement of Blanchard’s typology. I merely find the AGP/HSTS classifications to be better models than the “all trans women are literally women trapped in men’s bodies” model. Unstated but no less important is that I also find it a more useful model than "all trans women are men who are just pretending". The main takeaway here is that there need to be better models of trans, and Blanchard's, though very far from perfect, is still among the most well-thought-out.]

  • Research has shown that trans people do not always have brain structures matching their target sex. FtMs and androphilic (HSTS) MtFs tend to have brain structures resembling their target sex, but gynephilic (AGP) MtFs tend to have brain structures resembling their birth sex. This is especially relevant given that most trans activists and trans AI researchers lean closer to AGP than HSTS. A lot of their personality can be explained by their brain structures resembling men more closely than women. Trans activists are often aggressive, and trans AI researchers are often nerdy and slightly autistic in the way that male AI researchers are.

  • However, some people genuinely have brain typology - “gender” - that does not match their biological sex, and my original post failed to account for this.

• I omitted two of the more substantive trans issues that show up in actual politics: sports and bathrooms. On sports:

  • The purpose of separate women’s sports in general is to ensure they aren’t outcompeted by men, who are, on average, much stronger, faster, and more physically capable. There are almost no cases ever of women being able to compete with elite men in sports.

  • Many trans women, such as swimmer Lia Thomas, maintain significant advantages over cis women in sports even after beginning hormone replacement therapy.

  • Generally, people should compete in the leagues in which they are competitive. This is the entire point of women’s sports: elite female athletes are not competitive in men’s leagues, but they are competitive in women’s leagues. If trans women are competitive in women’s leagues, they should play in women’s leagues. If not, then they shouldn’t.

• On bathrooms:

  • Trans women are much more likely than cis women (about 6x) to be convicted of violent or sexual crimes, and trans women prisoners in England and Wales are about 20x more likely than cis women prisoners to be serving a sentence for a sexual offense.

  • However, I don’t buy into the right-wing moral panic about trans women being perverts who creep on women in women’s spaces. Individual cases of this are so rare that they often make national news, and it would be wrong to pre-emptively ban an entire category of people from public facilities merely because they commit certain crimes at a higher rate.

  • Voyeurism, indecent exposure, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are already illegal. If the goal is to prevent voyeurism, indecent exposure, sexual harassment, and sexual assault, no additional laws specifically targeting trans people are necessary.

  • Given our culture’s rather strong bathroom norms, the reasonable standard to me is that people should use the bathroom of the gender they pass better as, though this should be norm rather than law.

2. As I was writing this article it occurred to me that this is basically what most LessWrong posts are. Once again, the rationalists are right. LessWrong is maybe the single most rational and least vitriolic forum on the entire Internet, and it’s worth thinking about why. Sure, it helps if your community is entirely composed of extremely high-openness 130+ IQ autists with extreme attention to detail, but LessWrong’s norms about stating your positions in extreme detail - like my trans piece - certainly play a major part.

3. There are plenty of other topics I could write these position pieces on. Immigration is one where I find the left, generally, far too permissive, and the right alternatively too restrictive everywhere or too restrictive in some areas and too permissive in others. Local governance is another - many American cities could benefit tremendously from a more permissive approach to housing construction and a more restrictive approach to law enforcement. Another is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While I certainly lean pro-Israel, I went too far in my previous piece, which reads like it was written by a lawyer trying to justify everything Israel has ever done, rather than being a rational analysis of different aspects of the situation. If I wrote it again, I’d write it like I wrote my trans post.

4. And boy is this one controversial. Noah Smith recently tweeted: “I can shout from the rooftops that Dems should moderate on immigration. I can denounce the Palestine movement all day long. But when someone said Dems need to moderate on trans issues, and I quote-tweeted them with "maybe", a Blutarsky mob came after me and I got kicked out of a local rabbit-themed group chat here in San Francisco -- the first time I ever suffered offline consequences for a social media post in my life.”