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I actually didn't see this coming at all. I thought the twist would be that Hilary transitioned at some point MTF later in life, hence the choice in name, rather than that Hilary and Sam were the same person.
I want to say, your experience is somewhat similar to mine, though of course most of the details are different. I recall when I learned about what "autogynephilia" was, probably about 5-10 years ago, I immediately knew it was a real thing, because I knew I had it or at least had had it. It was never particularly strong, not enough to want to be my childhood/teenage crushes rather than being with them or dreaming about being a woman, much less seeking out lucid dreaming to do more of it (though I did get into lucid dreaming at one point for more generic reasons). But I recall being fascinated by sex-change surgery when I was growing up and fantasizing sometimes/often about living in a scifi world where that was actually possible in a truly "passing" sense, and how much I wished I could do that.
I never had any force like religion pushing me away from trans-ness, and living in some of the bluest of blue areas in the US, I probably encountered trans people earlier, more often, and more normalized than most people. But I also didn't grow up in an environment like now, where there are many powerful and popular forces trying their best to pull trans kids "out of the closet," so to speak. I simply "outgrew" it, and like you, I think I might have dodged a bullet, given the permanent changes that I might have gone through in a different environment. Then again, given that my autogynephilia never seemed that strong, perhaps even in an environment like now, I wouldn't have been pulled into transitioning. But the likelihood of it having happened certainly seems non-zero and significant, and it makes me wonder how many boys right now might be being pulled into transitioning when they would have grown up to be perfectly fine with being a cis male like me.
This, of course, ties in pretty neatly with the post below about Scott Alexander's book review of The Geography of Madness; having "MTF Trans" as a neat little groove that one can slot right into will almost certainly push people on the margins (which I might have been, or at least I was close to the margins) with autogynephilia into identifying as MTF Trans. Particularly when it's clear that there's status to be gained within certain circles from doing so. This is one reason why I think all the pretty words about "empathy" and "acceptance" from the activists claiming to support trans people rings hollow for me; there's clearly a cost to this as well, and it's not at all clear to me that these people even recognize this cost, much less have done the incredibly difficult work of doing an attempted rigorous cost-benefit analysis to figure out if what they're asking for would actually be of benefit to people. It just looks to me like it's a bunch of people for whom transitioning was beneficial projecting that onto anyone who could possibly be on the margins and doing their darndest to take out every brake and barrier on the way in the misguided notion that because that would have been helpful to themselves, that will be helpful to everyone. Someone linked this blog post here about a week ago, and the line "It felt like I was talking to an AI designed to maximize the number of trans people" really resonated with me (this post seems to have been written 5 years ago; given where ChatGPT is now, such an AI might actually become reality soon).
I'm not even convinced it's that. I think a bunch of them are profoundly miserable in a way they wouldn't have been if they had tried to make peace with their reality. I think there's a subset of them that just wants company for their misery, to drag others down the path they were guided down.
From observing some of my acquaintances who have gone down that path, the desire to evangelise has appeared in every single one of them, making "jokes" about slipping pills to people and asking "so when are you going to come out too?" Frankly it absolutely disgusts me.
There are a lot of accounts from trans people who transitioned who say it's made them much happier. I think calling people en masse liars and secretly miserable is usually wrong. I think 07muk's analysis sounds a lot more accurate.
Most of the ones I see on, say, reddit, especially in the places like egg_irl where conversion of people is attempted, are profoundly depressed. It's not really a secret to anyone. Their post histories are public.
And they'll say that they were even unhappier before transitioning. That seems perfectly plausible to me.
Also I think a lot of trans redditors who're depressed probably post that they're depressed, where as very few trans redditors who're doing alright post explicitly that they're doing alright
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I think I agree with this.
They do say that "misery loves company," and I wouldn't rule out there being some people like that, but... that seems uncharitable? Like, I'd find it more likely that these people have an ideological commitment to a mistaken idea of what's good for them and others than that they are being actively malicious.
Joking about slipping pills to people is pretty concerning. The evangelizing thing is interesting; I guess (loose categorization here) there's 3 major (not mutually exclusive) reasons people evangelize for something:
They love it and are super excited to share it.
They think they have a moral imperative to evangelize.
They are themselves uncertain of or insecure in their decision, so they evangelize partly to convince themselves that it's a good idea.
Without, hopefully, trying to mind-read too much, your acquaintances sound like number 3.
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That's funny; I didn't actually think of that interpretation at all. I chose the name "Hilary" (an ancient name, almost always male until the 20th century) because of its meaning, since "Hilary's" story had a happy ending.
I suspect the answer is pretty large, and it's one of the things that frankly makes me most angry about trans activism. It's part of why I felt compelled to write my thoughts down.
I'm almost certain I read that blog post shortly after it was published, when it was linked back on Reddit. And yet somehow I missed this line:
which echoes my own experience so much (though the blog author's actions... don't) that I can't fathom how I didn't latch onto it the first time. Another data point for my theory, I guess?
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