#egg discourse

[thingsivesaidondiscord]

"[insert character name here] is an egg" okay? And I'm boiling them?

[penatola]

so "egg" is a word that can go for any type of trans person, and people will fight for that, until it's time to act as if the concept of eggs is some evil plot by devious trans women to force cis men into femininity and womanhood - THEN it's a tfem thing. THEN there is no wider push for people to expand the meaning. THEN the same people who insist the word is for them are magically silent, or even attacking the terminology themselves.

to be clear, idc who uses egg and I understand it COULD be used for harm: i just hate the double standards here. so youre with us and you wanna push to be recognized in a tfem-dominated topic UNTIL it's time to attack us? weird.

and yea, ATTACK. it truly never is "this situation was bad" or "we should be careful with how we use these terms to make sure we aren't causing more harm than good" or anything normal. there's no actual criticisms here, just bad faithed straw men written to sound hysterical and paint it as if trans women en masse are hunting down random, poor femboys* who just want to be feminine without the womanhood - and we are taking that away from them. With our shemale privilege we are forcing others to be exactly like us!

Idk . its just dumb.

[fluffy-critter]

Egg discourse

There seem to be two "egg discourse" things going right now, namely

Is it ever okay to help someone crack their egg vs. the "egg prime directive"

Can the term "egg cracking" apply to anything other than transfeminine

My feelings on #1 have been perfectly encapsulated by this post that I just reblogged, namely that it's important to be supportive of people through their gender journey without insisting to someone what they must be.

And for #2, well, the "egg cracking is because chicks come from eggs" is a pure fiction. This is apparently the origin of the term, via the lovely Nanoraptor:

Self Portrait, July 2010 or: Rebirth Until the point I transitioned in my mid 20s in Nineteen Mumblesomething, I lived my life as the little microraptor in an egg. I was the shell, showed the world only the shell, and it was all anyone saw. I knew who I was on the inside and what I wanted when I was five, eight, ten, sixteen, twenty one. I have firm dateable memories from those times of needing to change, needing to transition, needing to struggle, and break out of the egg. And then one December I laid on my bed in the summer heat, life going nowhere, and I let those thoughts come up again, the deepest most comfortable *knowing* who I am. I planned, and remembered, and searched for info. I made the phonecalls. The gender programs, the gender centre in Sydney, the options, the hormones. I cracked. I knew no-one else transsexual at the time barring a few celebrities. I don't know if I could even say I was directly inspired by any. Carlotta, Bernadette, Chi-Chi, Dame Edna. All showgirls, all nothing like me, but all paved the way to make what's honestly a pretty conservative and bogan culture in this country kind of accepting, despite its heavy stereotypical masculinity. I weighed up whether it was better to be seen as a kindly joke and get to be more me, or stay within and regret. I cracked. Once an egg cracks, there's no going back. There's a hole and you can breathe. There's a hole and a few lucky people close to me get to see in and see I am her. Every step after that is confronting. Scary to keep on breathing through, but easy to do as you tumbles out of the shell. The being inside, she needs nourishment like the air she can now breathe. My egg may have cracked in the 90s, but last year on another hot December day on the evening of the 8th, it happened again. Well over a decade past transition with HRT and surgeries behind me, depression and anxiety were still clinging to me as common visitors, and something clicked. I've never been able to describe it as anything less than a few moments of complete joy, all-encompassing happiness in a bright flash of light that I knew I'd created myself. It hasn't stopped. I just had to know I could create my own joy, my own mood, and like the first time around, once it started it didn't stop. I haven't been depressed since, haven't suffered that hell since. That's this image. The microraptor whose egg cracked, grew stronger, and then became tough enough to be reborn. A total fuckup of mixed metaphors pulled out of my arse but gods, it suits. (Edit: Since then I've helped crack a few more eggs. When you go through hell and come out the other side, you you learn to recognise the same in other people. Those shells are thinner than you think, and only needed me to be a different inspiration than some glammed up showgirl. I could just be the quiet artist, the nerd who's unsure of herself, the flannelette-wearing dyke, the ordinary jeans & tshirt girl who just tells a friend "Hey it's not like I was supremely confident and went into it guns blazing and out and proud from day one. One day I just looked a few things up, took steps after that, and it turned into the best thing I ever did..."

It has nothing to do with bad gender-normative puns.

[heseemstobeeatingsomething]

The statement "respect the gender identity people say they are, regardless of whether or not you think they look or act like it" also applies to men btw. Cis men, even.

It's one thing to make egg jokes with someone who thinks it's funny, it's one thing to tell a close friend who says "eggy" things that they might consider the possibility of transitioning, that's all fine, but it's quite another thing to badger strangers with forcefem/forcemasc jokes, or insist every man in a dress is a woman, or repeatedly misgender someone because you think you know their gender better than they do. You gotta respect the identity people say they are, even if you think they're wrong. Otherwise you're just setting the standard that you won't respect people's gender identities if they don't conform to your expectations, and that's not trans-positive at all.

[suspiriously]

everything I know about egg discourse i’ve learnt against my will

[dykedaryldixons]

my two cents about Egg discourse. obligatory i’m not transfem but i am trans, so if anyone wants me to shut up about this just lmk.

having someone crack my egg for me literally saved my life at 15. not understanding why i felt so miserable and depressed and angry and jealous all the time was killing me, the way i thought about my body was killing me. if the one trans woman in my life didn’t look at me and say “you’re obviously miserable being a girl, google transgender and read everything you find” i would probably be dead. finally having the language to understand what was happening and that i’m not alone and that actually i can change my gender and how i looked and what pronouns i used saved my life. i don’t give a fuck about the Egg Prime Directive or whatever, if i can prevent someone from being as miserable as i was, it will always be a net positive no matter what. tell more miserable boys they can be girls and tell more miserable girls they can be boys and tell the miserable people they don’t have to have a binary gender either. you’re saving their lives actually

[sapphia]

i think if you’re interpreting the term egg as “this gnc person MUST be trans” and not “this gnc person MIGHT be trans” you are already not understanding the concept of egg

[sum1sgottasayit]

Cracking someone else's egg prematurely will not give you back the years you lost in the closet, and trying to live out the trans youth you missed through the egg is some Stage Mom shit