- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
How to get out of an uncomfortable egg culture situation with this one simple trick.
Real talk: Calling people eggs is a violation of the egg prime directive, and is considered invalidating as you are trying to say that a person is not the gender they identify as, that their identity is invalid. Don’t call people eggs, like ever, it’s extremely uncool.
I disagree with this statement. It’s not the idea that being a woman/transfem is a bad thing, it’s that the person on the receiving end of egg culture just isn’t a woman/transfem. They identify as male and are perfectly comfortable as themselves but are told the way they present is a “sign” of being transfem and the way they identify isn’t respected. It isn’t wrong because being a woman or transfem is somehow insulting, it is wrong because it’s misgendering to go against how someone identifies themselves.
Adding to the fact that some of these people are transmasc, so being told in that case that it’s not wrong or insulting to be called a girl stings that much more because they know they themselves are literally a trans man and are being told their presentation is a “sign” they are a girl.
This reads like a bad faith argument, as if you are trying to imply that to question or critique someone else’s gender identification based on their clothing or presentation is somehow acceptable. Or to attempt to debate their gender and ask leading questions is somehow okay. These are not imaginary situations, they are unfortunately quite common in many trans spaces online, and unfortunately in real life too. Maybe you have not seen or experienced the nastiness before, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt there, but it is very much a real problem that GNC people, including transmascs and enbies face, it’s not one of those “imaginary cis people problems”, and trying to spin it as such is disingenuous and harmful.
Unfortunately the blowback of such discourse in practice is just people giving me grief for trying to use the word as a shorthand to “me pre-realization” and indirectly calling me a creep if I even mention considering transitioning in any direction in a passive way because even being compared to a trans person causes certain people to damn near flinch reflexively.
What I am most confused by is people implying that it’s immoral to even consider asking someone (irl you’d just use your words - have you considered it? - the idea that the word “egg” implies that being trans is rigidly prescribed from the outside from some tactless strangers trying to blindly out other strangers rather than two peple who know each other politely asking one-on-one in a respectful conversation is kinda wild to me - am I just confused because I managed to dodge significantly stupider online discourse elsewhere and am instead taking this literally?).
Also do you think term “egg” only applies to people “suspected of being women”?
With all due respect “Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?”. No one is talking about your ability to call your past self an egg, and no one is giving you shit for you considering transition yourself. You are getting flack right now because you are denying and attempting to excuse the very real fact that there are people in the community who do not respect the way other people identify, who argue and insist that a person who is gender non-conforming must be whatever gender they present as. The example given was that people say that femboys are transfem or trans girls in denial. But great job trying to poison the well and make it out as if we’re attacking you, or that there’s some aggression or hostility towards trans people here.
Except having a polite conversation where you talk to a person about gender identity and make them feel comfortable is not what any of us are talking about when we talk about people being called eggs or the egg prime directive, or people breaking the egg prime directive. Someone saying that “it’s not cis” for someone to dress that way isn’t doing that either. It is making a statement about their gender based on gender stereotypes. The idea that the calling people eggs thing is just polite conversation meant to make people feel safe is at best a strawman argument, and at worst is another attempt to poison the well.
I just used it here because it’s very common. I’ve seen it happen to tomboys people think are transmasc, or enbies. It is also used legitimately, as a past tense referral for a person before they came out or realized themselves. I haven’t gone into those as much because they are off-topic, this subject is related to the wrongful use of the term, to refer to other people in the present tense.