!egg_irl is for widely relatable memes about questioning one's gender or being an egg (a trans person in denial) as well as other eggy topics.
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[CW: Assumes Viewer is Transmasc][CW: Assumes Viewer is Transfem][CW: Assumes Viewer is Nonbinary][CW: Transphobia][CW: Violence][CW: Weapons/Firearms][CW: Disturbing Imagery]You may optionally include other tags, such as:
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You must follow the Egg Prime Directive. You may not push or coerce people into identifying or not identifying a certain way. You must respect them as the gender they claim to identify as. In addition it is extremely in poor taste to make assumptions about other people's identities based on external factors, we understand it cannot be helped but it is best not to as it can affect the way you treat others in noticeable ways.
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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 get what you're saying, however this situation is used to illustrate that what they are doing by arguing someone is a trans girl in denial because of what they are wearing is misgendering, even though it might not seem like it. It's meant to highlight the hypocrisy of claiming that one respects the way others identify and then refusing to respect the person who doesn't identify as a trans girl because he's a boy who likes to wear thigh highs, skirts, dresses, wear nail polish, hangs out with the girls, and whatever other non-stereotypical male things that lead the person to think he must be a trans girl.
I do agree with this, the argument used in the initial post isn't great, it would be better to focus on highlighting the importance of identity alone. Honestly the idea that a person can be in-denial of being trans to other people is really toxic IMO, it gives the idea that we have to answer to others when it comes to our identity. We do not! Ultimately someone being "in-denial" is between them and themselves, not anyone else. If a person identifies as a boy to everyone else, they are to be called and treated as a boy, end of story. The only way one can be helped out of denial is to understand themselves and resolve that conflict with themselves.
The Finnster situation is a little bit thornier too, because the fact that he identifies as genderfluid, means that the egg people saying they were right and "he was a girl all along" is extremely disingenuous because, the whole thing about genderfluidity is that it means gender shifts and changes over time. That means someone who is genderfluid might very well have a different gender identity when they started than they do now. Though I've found egg spaces to be not very understanding of, or even intolerant towards genderfluidity saying that "gender is set in stone" or "it's in your brain/genes when you're born". It really does go to show the importance of just respecting how people identify right now and not worrying about whether they were wrong or are wrong. At the end of the day, it's their life, their gender. Their destiny is in their hands.
Well said.
I think you mean more than just what they're wearing, but I get the point.
Right, my point is that it's not hypocrisy because there are reasons to not be skeptical of a trans man femboy who has transitioned the way there are reasons to be skeptical of a person claiming to be cis but who engages in lots of transfem behaviors. The difference as I pointed out before is that lots of trans people actually do remain in denial and claim to be cis femboys to avoid acknowledging they are trans or having to go further with transition. This is not true for the trans man femboy, who has already taken the risk of transitioning and no longer has reason to be in denial.
It's not that I don't understand the setup and how it is meant to highlight hypocrisy - I'm just trying to point out that the reasoning is not great and there actually are real differences between a trans man femboy and a self-described cis femboy that give someone reasons to not be skeptical of the trans man femboy but to remain skeptical of the cis femboy.
This isn't even theoretical for me, I know trans men femboys IRL and I of course have first-hand experience with transfem denial in myself and with others who struggle with denial.
Besides the differences between trans man femboys and cis femboys, there is also just the way that this flowchart is so aggressive and black and white, where any skepticism that a self-identified cis femboy is labeled as transphobia. It just doesn't come across as reasonable, not only in the way it glosses over differences but the way it mislabels skepticism about a cis identity as "transphobic". It's not transphobic to be skeptical of a cis identity, if anything it is a kind of inverse bias that trans people in particular are going to hold. It is not stigmatizing or furthering hatred, violence, and bigotry towards trans people, but rather it is a common reaction trans people have to others they suspect are in denial (and often based on having been in denial and gone through those phases themselves).
It is identity-denying, certainly, but the fact that this is labeled as "transphobia" strikes me as not only inaccurate but aggressive against trans people. This is probably because it's coming from a defensive posture, born from frustrations after having being denied an identity, and at this point pushing against a dominant trans culture that intuitively accepts concepts like eggs and denial in a way that invalidates cis femboy identities. But let's be clear here, if you are cis, skepticism about your cis identity when you act much like a trans person in denial is not itself anti-trans.
I agree with you that when people over-reach and deny someone's self-identity as a cis person, even when there seems to be adequate evidence that they are indeed a trans person in denial like Finnster, it is toxic or bad in some major way. Like you said, a trans person in denial has to come to terms with being trans on their own, otherwise there are all sorts of problems - like blaming others for being trans, or built-up resentment and anger for having been labeled trans by others. When I was a trans person in denial I certainly felt like the people who were closest to understanding my transness were influencing me and trying to encourage me to be trans, and it made me not trust that I was actually trans - that I was just being manipulated or subtly coerced into being trans. This is absurd of course, but this is the kind of psychology of a trans person in denial, and exactly why it's good for people to come to terms on their own.
However, I do think there should be more education about the way gender dysphoria can look, and I do think there is some ethical obligation for experts who spot signs of transness to investigate and work with families to ensure trans children get the help they need, esp. since we live in a society so hostile to even the concept of being trans. Just from a harm-reduction perspective there is a reason to intervene and ensure that people have access to gender affirming care, therapy, and so on to help them understand and explore their gender since the consequences of going through the wrong puberty are so negative and so difficult to fix.
The idea that we should delicately avoid ever implying a person displaying signs of transness might be trans is I think a manifestation of anti-trans bias and stigma (we obviously wouldn't do that for other possible endocrine conditions like hypothyroidism or diabetes, for example). That said, the internet community are not experts and there are no best practices, ethical guidelines, or other guardrails that would apply to a medical or therapeutic context. So I pretty much agree with you that lay people telling others they think they are trans generally violates the norms like the egg prime directive. Still, it is one thing to say one shouldn't openly invalidate another's self-identity (even when it is dubious), but it's another to claim that skepticism itself is problematic, or that there aren't grey areas that fall short of an obvious violation.
For example, there was a post of a screenshot of a 4chan greentext describing a gay femboy who took estrogen and wanted to be treated as a woman by their lovers, etc. and one of the cis straight male commenters seemed to miss the trans subtext of the greentext (that there might be something else going on besides just being a gay man for the femboy, that they might be struggling with gender dysphoria), and the reaction to the suggestion that the femboy is actually trans in denial was met with such hostility because it violates the self-identity of the femboy in the greentext ... well, this is a case where skepticism is I believe the explicit intent of the greentext, and where the story is likely fictional and regardless this is being shared so far from the original author of the greentext that it is not reasonable to expect the author to run across my comment explaining the trans in denial subtext, so nobody is being harmed by their self-identity being invalidated ... and yet to introduce the idea that the femboy might be trans is met with a rigid and extreme hostility. I think the intentions of respecting self-identity are good, but when applied so rigidly and with such taboo, it in this context resulted in a trans person being shut down when trying to educate and share awareness to a cis person what common trans experiences look like.
We have to remember that trans experience is not understood or part of the mainstream. It is easy to forget this when we spend lots of time with trans people, but society is cis-dominant and most cis people do not understand trans experience. This constitutes a kind of cis hegemonic attitude, and creates a situation hermeneutical injustice, i.e. where the ability of trans people to even interpret or understand their own experiences is threatened. Much like a time before (cis) women had words or concepts to describe sexual harassment and even trying to describe those experiences were met with resistance, skepticism, or outright denial. The default and dominant situation in society is that trans people will be unable to recognize they are trans, communicate their experiences in a way that will be taken seriously, etc.
Hopefully you can see my point here that cis identity is truly not as vulnerable as trans identity, and society already creates immense pressure to conform to cis norms, even if you are not cis.
I just want to return to this and say that individuals don't exist in a vacuum - someone being in denial absolutely impacts other people and while I would prefer a situation that focuses on the individual in terms of how rights like self-identification would work, I do think we have to acknowledge that a trans person in denial often causes harm not only to themselves but others in their life. This was certainly the case for me and every trans person I know. Denial is not good, and society bears a cost from the way the individual in denial suffers.
That said, I don't think this invalidates the general principle that we shouldn't tell others what they are, or that we shouldn't respect a person's self-identity when interacting with them. If we think a femboy is an egg, we probably shouldn't say that to them unless they ask if we think they are (and even then, you have to weigh the consequences of the blowback if the person is not prepared to hear they are probably trans). I still stand by this principle for pragmatic and social reasons, even if I think there might be ethical issues in terms of the actual harm that a person in denial experiences and the problems with a society that prefers to respect denial rather than ensure people are correctly diagnosed and live healthier, happier lives.
I've gone too long, will wrap up my thoughts in a second comment 😰
part 2 of my comment:
I tend to think of genderfluid as more a way someone is describing their experience of their gender rather than a genuine gender identity. We don't really have any scientific evidence that gender identity can change or be fluid, and in fact we have plenty of scientific evidence to the contrary, that unconscious sex / gender identity is fixed and biological. This is part of why conversion therapy doesn't work, you can't make a trans person cis or a cis person trans - it just doesn't work. It also means a trans person isn't choosing to be trans, it is part of their nature and won't come and go.
That said, in the interest of respecting someone's experience, I try to reconcile the evidence against people's self-conceptions, and it's not really surprising to me that a person who insisted they were 100% a cis man first would use a label like genderfluid.
My own experiences could be labeled as genderfluid, I certainly have days where I think of myself more or less as a man or a woman, etc. - but careful observation has made it clear to me that my gendered self conception which seems so fluid is truly separate from my gender identity or unconscious sex, that there is something that will always be there deep down that causes me to be bothered by body hair no matter how I think of myself. I can't actually observe or know my gender identity, I have to infer it. I don't think most people are so introspective or careful about their self-understanding, so it does not surprise me when people create new labels and concepts to try to capture something about their experience and it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. I tend to think this is OK, and that it's healthy and good to try to describe your experiences. The problem I see is only when people get extremely rigid about these labels being taken as inerrant objective reality, which I think naturally happens as our subversive gender experiences smash up against the wall of cis-normativity. Again defensiveness seems to lead to rigidity and black and white thinking.
Either way, you don't have to characterize the egg crowd as thinking "Finnster was a girl all along", you can simply say the egg crowd will say "Finnster was not a cis man all along" - that is true regardless of where Finnster lands ultimately.
Not to side with "intolerance," but I do want to at least present some of the empirical evidence we have about gender actually being biological and "set in stone" (not that this means our self-understanding of gender is set in stone, or that the way we might identify can't change). I still agree with respecting the way people identify in the moment and being respectful even when their self-conception seems dubious or contradicts evidence.
Reading Swaab's work in particular was eye-opening, since trans women whose brains were autopsied were found to have structures in their brain that were like cis women and not like cis men, even without ever undergoing hormone therapy. While the picture that emerges with later research did not point to something as simple as "male" and "female" brains, it is particularly grounding to me to have empirical evidence like this that lends credibility to our experiences. It really is more accurate to say trans women have a "female brain" than to say trans women have a "mental illness" as though the gender identity were due to delusions or psychosis.
If reading scientific literature is challenging, the famous neuroendocrinologist, Robert Sapolsky, has some talks that summarize the situation:
This science isn't some kind of inerrant rigid belief system either, by the way - but that's not to say it doesn't provide solid evidence that has consequences in legal and political contexts. Ultimately I think it is important for policy makers, scientists, medical doctors, etc. to engage in inference to best explanation and lean on the body of evidence we have to do that. I think it is important to recognize that the evidence we have about gender identity (by which I mean the generally immutable unconscious sex that we are born with, likely due to the way our brains develop) is that it cannot be changed, that conversion therapy does not work, and that trans people cannot be made cis and vice versa. These are essentially "facts".
None of these facts require that we invalidate others' self-identity even when they contradict those facts, we can still hold the principle that we should respect others' self-identity for pragmatic reasons even when there are reasons to doubt a person's self-understanding or the way they have theorized or come to think about their gender. It is a matter of politeness and respect.
You are taking the science of neuro-correlates beyond what can really be said, especially for something as multifaceted as gender.
For example, how does one parse the causes of gender itself from dimorphic sex/gender differences?
There are numerous psychological traits that tend to correlate heavily with sex, and from what limited research exists on trans people, correlate based on identified gender as well. However, it would be totally false to say that these traits are determinant of gender, as many people don't fit within those generalizations. In all likelihood, few people probably follow the trends aligning with their gender to the letter. Most women have a handful of things that they differ from other women on, and it is the same with men. These traits cannot be understood as the cause of gender with current data, and any theory that claims to do so would be speculation at best. So whenever you look at these neurocorrelates of gender, you must recognize that they might not be due to gender itself. The differences between different gendered brains is important, but it could actually be measuring dimorphic traits instead of gender itself.
Also, the way you dismiss genderfluidity as not a genuine identity is serious overreach. There are few studies on nonbinary identities in general, so saying things about them like that isn't scientific. It seems more based on your own experience of gender than anything else. For all you know, there is a constant fluidity to everyone's gender, with some having more than others. Maybe you never dip into another gender, but how can you say others don't?
We also can't say that gender truly does not change, only that we don't know how it could change, and that all attempts to alter it carry near certain risk of serious harm. There aren't many elements of our psychology or personality that can never change, as our brains are physical substrates that can change in countless ways. The fact that we've seen little evidence of gender changing with brain damage indicates that it is a more distributed phenomenon. This makes it similar to consciousness, which does not have clear correlates either.
We are at the infancy of understanding gender, and psychology in general is in its infancy. You're missing the point in how you're interpreting the evidence. It's ok to simply not know. It's ok to not have an answer. That's a fundamental part of all science.
It's exactly why the brain sex arguments are often generally considered transmedicalist pseudoscience.
Exactly, honestly the idea that it can't doesn't seem to add up, our brains are constantly changing. I wasn't the same person 5 years ago, 10 years ago I was also completely different, and 15 years I was also different. If our personalities can shift and change throughout our lives who's to say gender can't either.
Keep in mind that traumatic brain injuries which completely reshape a person's brain and mind are much rarer than one would believe reading neuroscience papers. Most people who suffer critical brain injuries like a bullet to the brain, a knife through the head, or even a steel rod through their skull succumb to them. They never live to tell the tale. Those like Phineas Gage are the lucky ones, they don't say they cheated death for nothing. It's very possible that specific brain damage could cause a change or diminishment of gender identity, or gender feelings, but we've never seen someone with that injury, or they had more than just that injury and died.
Brain injuries can change large parts of a personality, they can completely change a person. I think it's naive to say that it couldn't alter one's gender perception. Especially when we just don't know, there's so much about the brain we don't know.
In the research I linked like the 2015 brain mosaic article, they actually find the situation is more complex than that, that most people actually don't follow trends with their gender and the brain doesn't fit a dimorphic model at all.
They are certainly trying to measure dimorphic traits and not the gender itself, I am not sure why you thought I believed otherwise. My statement that gender identity cannot be altered and that brain sex seems to be a reason why is not the same as claiming that we inspect gender in the brain directly or that you can't be anything but what your brain tells you you are. Gender clearly has social as well as biological components, bioessentialism does not work as a theory at all.
If I came across as dismissive I think I failed in my communication, there is no such thing as a non-genuine identity so long as people genuinely identify that way. We have already established that self-identity is paramount and respected.
I do tend to think a lot of the labels and identities that are being created are early theorizing based on phenomenology, which is entirely reasonable.
Regarding non-binary identities and science, there are at least studies like the brain mosaic MRI studies that show that most people (>95%) have what might be characterized as "non-binary" brains. I think this is pretty compelling and "validating", but no matter what the science shows we still hold the principle of respecting and validating self identification. That is fundamental and axiomatic.
What I said in my comment is that I do experience what I think people would classify as genderfluidity, i.e. I absolutely do experience fluctuations in my sense of gender. There are mornings I wake up as a "man", and times where I feel completely like a "woman". Sometimes it seems like those fluctuations match hormonal shifts. Other times it seems like it has to do with social situations and the way that I dress and whether I am wearing makeup.
My point about genderfluidity was not a dismissal but a distinction, that I tend to think people who identify as genderfluid are probably doing so based on the kind of phenomenology they are experiencing (and which I think I incidentally experience as well). This distinction is important because it separates what we have empirically established, which is that gender identity seems to be developmentally fixed, from what the phenomenology is, which is that our sense of gender can be quite complex and appear to us as not-fixed. I don't think these two claims conflict at all, but I think some people might wrongfully interpret it that way.
I do think this is a meaningful distinction of sorts, I think what you are trying to get at is that nothing is truly "essential" and it's just a limit of techhnology that keeps us from altering something like the brain's role in generating unconscious sex. I agree with this, but I do feel like you are skirting around the context I was in, which was emphasizing that we should take a hard line that trans identities should not be seen as "choices" but respected as based in early developments of the brain which are not readily changed. This is a way that we can use the science to back a socially humanistic approach to trans identity, and to push against reactionary elements that wish to erase trans people by any means necessary, including forced detransition and conversion therapy to force us to align with our assigned sex. The fact that this has not worked historically and that we now have good working theories based in evidence as to why it does not work is pragmatic and useful, particularly in getting a medical establishment to recognize the importance of gender affirming care and establishing that conversion therapy is contrary to scientific evidence.
Yes of course, but skepticism will always be the strongest position to take, meanwhile we have to make inferences to the best explanation, and I think doing that based on the evidence we do have, even if early, is a good idea.
This is exactly my point. We don't. We don't need to make inferences beyond how they can be used to help people. We can fairly confidently say that it is harmful and cruel to police gender identity and that affirmation is the best way to handle us. We don't need to bring speculative science into the discussion of how to treat trans people in society, because it just doesn't change much.
Our understanding of ASD and ADHD was changed in my lifetime in a way that has drastically impacted my care. I didn't fit into the old understanding of how it worked because doctors tried to fit me into their limited understanding, ultimately missing how their decisions impacted my life. Their refusal to diagnose me as a kid impacts the services I can receive today, intersecting with socioeconomic factors to limit my treatment based on where I live. Their ideas weren't just theoretical for me, but consequential to my material reality.
I am someone with some experience in psychological research, and one thing people fail to appreciate is how little we actually understand everything. Most psychologists don't even appreciate why or how we can we use our medical model to describe human differences. They don't understand that the way society itself is structured directly determines whether a condition is a disorder. They don't take into account what is necessary to define and what isn't, flopping around in uncertainty in a way that can cause irreparable harm.
My problem isn't with your understanding of gender, but your understanding of psychology. It's fine to think it might work one way or the other, except for the fact that it might actually affect people's lives. When it comes to treatment of trans people, we don't need to make any inferences beyond that we exist and deserve respect. We should be given control of our own bodies and lives; the why is interesting, but not exactly important to that view. How to help people is all our medical model can say about people.