Hi, to be clear: cis straight men CAN be totally normal and empathetic about lesbians and trans people without "secretly" being closeted or an egg or whatever the hell.
The hyper parasocial way some folks go "oh estrogen would fix him" or ascribe identities to actually real people is kinda weird!!
It will forever drive me nuts that one of the most beautiful bits of lesbian romance I've ever heard was said on a TTRPG show shared between a half-phoenix wizard on a time traveling vacation with her weird dad to her tiefling rock star girlfriend via a meteor shower
And said by a STRAIGHT CIS MAN.
It's tangential to the Brennan thing but the way I see folks go "oh she just needs estrogen" to both real people and fictional characters is both A) a fundamental misunderstanding of the work folks need to do as part of their transition and B) super shitty to trans men and non-HRT using trans folks
Just be less weird about it! Transitioning is wonderful and helps so many people but that doesn't mean every single person is trans and if you don't know someone personally and as more than just an Internet Personality You Like you absolutely don't know enough about them to say they are
Christ, trying to "clock eggs" or whatever is the grossest fucking thing. It literally drove me out of some trans communities before because I found it so distasteful.
TRULY.
I think the term egg is useful as a self-descriptor and literally never anywhere else. The way some folks turn it into a Fun Little Game and keep track of how many eggs they've "cracked" is so gross to me. Help people who are figuring it out, sure, but that shit ain't helping
saw someone doing that about a webcomic artist (in an unrelated thread) which the artist happened to see and responded you know I'm flattered but, no. and they went hrm we'll see ;)
uncomfortable
It's definitely a running gag among some of us that every webcomic creator you used to know in the 2000s is trans now, but also, Jesus Christ, some people need to learn about boundaries.
Yeah I posted on a forum that ended up having a similar "oh wow another one, huh" running gag about it but one of the reasons I DID figure it out was the gals I knew from there were chill and understanding and mostly just helped me ask the right questions to myself and didn't push specific answers
The one that finally Got Me There was "You've been stuck in this cycle of repression and shame for years and it isn't going away, so you have to ask yourself
Do you think you can live the rest of your life with it or do you want to try and find out what makes it stop?"
It's a weirdly accurate phenomenon that, nevertheless, I feel like readers aren't entitled to force upon people. But it's a parasocial industry, so what else is new.
even if you're calling it right, maybe this person is in the closet for some compelling reason. maybe poking at it is making it worse? people want to be positive about things and i get that but i really didn't/don't like it.
Yeah, like, would *you* want to be outed to your friends and family before you were ready, Hypothetical Random Internet Commenter? No? Then maybe keep the le funny r/egg irl jokes to yourself until the person’s ready to come out!
Yeah I saw that, as someone who has also gotten that from people who don’t know me beyond reading a comic I updated four times a month it always gets my hackles up.
It's a weird thing! Like it's clearly always intended at least somewhat well but is always so deeply parasocial and assumptive while also deciding "no, *I* am the gender understander" that it's just uncomfortable to watch happen for me
I know trans people who figured their shit out BECAUSE they were pushed by people and hey that absolutely works for some folks and is lovely but also should not be The Default, especially if you have no actual relationship with the person you're Gender Deciding
100%, i think some gentle pushing can be really really good but that's for people who know someone *personally* to do.
i do get it, sometimes i see some online figure displaying Eggy Tendencies and i feel that urge to comment on it. it's just really something that can't be done parasocially.
I hate the whole "prime egg directive" idea because I hate the idea of assuming someone's an egg before they've even cracked, but at least it's a good thing to point at to stop people from overstepping their bounds and being idiots.
Leave strangers alone ffs
Just to “yes and” here as a cishet man, the thing that always brings me up short in the typical list of “egg” questions is “do you admire lesbian relationships.” Cause I DO but, I think it’s more about a lot of our models for het relationships being gross, than something inherent in lesbian ones.
Also, maybe it’s a good thing for men to look up to women? Maybe patriarchal society is so screwed up precisely *because* it discourages boys from looking up to women as examples to aspire to, lest they be forced to turn in their Man Card?
Also uncomfortably close to society pretending families like mine don't exist. Of course I admire my mum's relationship. Her wife is an absolutely fantastic person and I take them as a model for "growing old together" with my partner.
the whole idea seems to be a discovery of the self, and imposing on that so you can line up some called-shot points feels pretty ugly! I am also just not a fan of continuously slotting people into easy definable (you might say binary!) categories. that also feels contrary to the whole idea
oooo… the way some ppl think that hitting me with the “your partner is an egg 😂” thing because of his taste in like, computer stuff, is somehow validating for me… very odd very very odd
THAT shit is what drives me the most nuts
Shit like "oh you like playing healers in video games? That's egg behavior..."
That's nothing! That means nothing!
Folks want identities and sexualities to be a bullet points of Defined Traits and they are so aggressively not
it feels like such a devaluation of what cis men are capable of and should be allowed to explore without it threatening their gender identity. like I GET it, I do, but we have to make room for cis (+straight) dudes to do and be whatever, too, or else we're just making more boxes to force people into
Bullet points or aggressive self identification. Everything and everyone must relate in some way to their own identity.
It really is maddening when any “identity group” does this.
tbh a lot of the time I wonder if it’s just someone working thru something. Like oh, you met a cis dude who is kind and likes good things. but cis dudes do not represent morality to this person therefore they Cannot Be
Oh I feel like there's a difference between real people and going "yeah no I think this fictional character is trans coded", that's absolutely normal and rad
And yes, of course she is, have you seen how she dresses. Flowy soft dress with leather jacket and combat boots? I've worn that EXACT combo
For the record, my big one has always been Rachel Summers.
That girl A) went to the body shoppe and her wildest dream was to have a more femme figure, B) was revealed to subconsciously manipulate her own body on an atomic level to match her self image and B) is now a butch lesbian
I mean C'MON
It was hilarious to see the usual suspects complain about "making her gay" when she got with Betsy.
Like m'dudes, have you been paying attention? Even Claremont intended her to be gay.
