The problem with naive self-identification as the go-to for telling who's trans and who isn't is that eggs exist.

People who have repressed their trans identity so hard that they will insist that they're cis even in the face of overwhelming signs to the contrary ("I'm not really trans just because I cry myself to sleep wishing I'd been born different") are a real group that is actively subject to marginalization for being trans.

Trans liberation politics can't be formulated in a way that leaves these people out just to respect their incorrect self-identification.

There just isn't an equivalence between doubting the stated identity of someone who says they're trans and someone who says they're cis.

In the first case, you're enforcing cisnormativity. In the second case, you're either making an incorrect guess with no real consequences, or you're providing a trans person a shot at killing the cop that society put in their head.

btw if you've ever called a boy toddler "tough guy" you have done more gender coercion than any trans girl's egg joke ever could

put me alone in a room with a cis person for 4 hours and i could make calling little boys "tough guy" the thread that unravels the whole sweater

as proof, this joke made someone fully come into my ask box and ask me how to ethically interact with their nephew who is 4. i'm in their heads man

It isn't shameful to be a trans woman and dudes aren't going to explode being compared to them. Egg jokes are not a big deal and a trans woman saying some shit like "hey, I used to do that before I realized I was trans" is not a big deal, infact most trans women wish someone had helped them realize sooner. If it turns out the person is just a cis dude, big deal! Being upset that your actions can be seen as a thing trans women do is suspect as hell! Being a trans woman is not a bad thing to be!

TME perspective: whenever I said gender-questioning things, egg jokes never made me feel uncomfortable. They only made me feel like I would be accepted should I come out as trans. My friends let me know they were comfortable with defying gender boundaries. We all understood it was an OK thing to say, IF YOU TAKE THAT AS AN INSULT I encourage you to look within yourself for any unconscious biases. Why is transness "crossing a line" compared to all other kinds of identities? Why is it okay to suggest someone might be gay, bi, lesbian, but suggesting they might be trans is "going too far" and "imposing" things on them?

the (very interrelated) tripartite combination of general transmisogyny, the valuation of manhood as a more legitimate gender identity than others, and the failure to understand misgendering as a corrective & punitive function of power (rather than just the erroneous placement of someone into a gender category they don't i.d. with) is how you get these monthly dogshit takes from tme people catastrophizing about precious vulnerable and naively effeminate cis men being brutishly feminized and "misgendered" as possible trans women -- while also "they"ing and "this person"ing every involved trans woman like their lives depend on it

...For anyone wondering and up in arms about who may or may not be egg cracking and forcemfemming that one cis guy?

Yeah, it's me.

I thought it'd be good for him.

I thought it'd be funny.

I quite honestly thought he looked a lot better and happier in the short skirt and cat ears.

I thought your crush on him was misplaced.

I thought your desperate belief in there having to be one good cishet white guy out there to be illusory.

I thought his cis+ness, constant ideations about being a girl, denial over his own capacity to change, and general self-loathing and self-denigratiin to be far too familiar to my own experiences in the denial phase.

I thought I wanted him to live past 30.

I thought I wanted her freed if she was in there.

I thought there wasn't a goddamned thing wrong with being a woman, cis or trans.

I thought we were all comfortable enough in our genders to handle some ordinary questioning.

I thought we were past prioritizing men's feelings above anyone else.

I thought we were past demonizing trans women for the smallest possible thing.

I thought we weren't thinking that being trans was a bad or shameful thing anymore.

I thought were we done doing this one Every. FUCKING. WEEK.

I thought we had one fucking ounce of solidarity.

I thought we had any fucking respect for recognizing that sharing lived experience is a pretty fucking normal thing to do.

I thought I was allowed to have my own thoughts on the subject.

OMG This is beautiful. Yes, as one who almost died multiple times...

Crack More Eggs. Save More Lives.

and if it turns out they are not an egg, they can handle a little self reflection.

something fascinating to me about egg discourse is how often tme people Also joke about or question their friends potential to be trans, and it's literally never talked about like this.

my cis and tme nb friends routinely joke about celebrities or characters that have big "nonbinary energy" or who otherwise exhibit behavior we would associate with ourselves. i have tme friends and acquaintances who have approached me or my wife and straightforwardly said "something seems trans about you, have I asked for your pronouns recently?"

similar friends have even talked about other still-cis friends in our circle this way, or joked about "when are you going to transition like the rest of us?" or "yeah cis people are a minority in this group, just give it time" or "no wonder you have queer friends with how comfortable with being gnc you are" or etc etc examples like that

even the actual examples of people in my life that I can think of as being the most "invasive" or presumptive about gender have been tme people:

it was my cishet friends who outed me and my wife as trans to everyone at their wedding, including their boomer parents and hundreds of strangers, and called it "the most queer wedding party ever"

it was my tme nb friend who kept saying they could "always tell" her transfem cousin was trans before she came out, and then proceeded to randomly give us extremely personal details about her bottom surgery

it was my transmasc friend who refused to call me and my wife anything other than "little enby beans" after we met and introduced us with our full genders+sexuality labels to every single person one by one at a party

it was my transmasc nb friend who kept insisting my wife could "still be nonbinary" when she was first considering identifying as a trans woman instead, and it was THAT idea that actually slowed her down from making changes to her life that she wanted

it was my cis friends who approached me arm and arm and cornered my outside of a bathroom at a party right after I took a piss to suddenly ask me what my pronouns were because they "heard something" at the party

like, transfems deserve robust support against this trash so a lot of our defensive discourse has ofc been about how it IS okay for transfems to talk about eggs and be jokey about it and non-invasively approach others about being trans

but i swear to god none of these weird people have even stopped to make their discourse ABOUT anyone BUT transfems. it's so clearly targeted!!

no one has EVER approached *me* as a tme nb person and suggested i was pressuring gnc people with my egg jokes. never. nothing even remotely similar. i joke about other people being trans all the time and no one has ever treated me the way you all are treating transfems over this issue.

important note: my examples are all things I recall as being invasive and awkward, and I'm sharing them to make a point about how often rude behavior comes from the same tme people pointing fingers over this. but I still don't think any of them are worth the crucifixion people are treating transfem egg discourse with.

even when my friends were weird to me in the above examples, my reaction was either to confront them about it as friends who I trust to be able to communicate with, or to cut those individuals off after they proved not worth a relationship in the long run. at no time did I desire to make a call-out post or spread rumors about them or publicly declare all of their gender as a screeching menace to society.

my point here is that even when I do think about moments where others crossed a line, acting like this is a "issue trans women have" is blatantly transmisogynistic garbage that only exists to serve the woman-hating machine at the heart of our society. fucking cut it out

The entire idea of the egg as "someone who is trans but ~doesn't realize it yet~" instead of "someone who would clearly be happier if they chose to be trans" has broken a lot of people's brains

No one is trans. Everyone is trans. Most people live their entire lives not realizing that being trans is just An Option for them that they could take at any given time--and furthermore, most people will resist this knowledge even when they're beaten over the head with it. We should be asking everyone, absolutely everyone: "Did you know that you can do whatever you want?, and also "Are you really sure that you know what you want?" And we should ask them over and over again until they also want to destroy this gendered nightmare.

My GF coined a phrase - gender savvy - to include everyone who has spent the time to really think about their gender and make a conscious decision about it. This includes cis people who are cis by conscious choice, rather than by default. Overall, these cis people are at least as safe to be around as trans people, because they really understand what it is to be intentional about your gender. In her opinion (and I am inclined to agree with her) trans-safe spaces should have room for them, at least sometimes

Idk guys a lot of trans women have anxiety about being buried in a suit under a name that isn't theirs for some reason. Do you think that when they look at someone who's dead like kurt cobain or LilyAnarkity and say "hey i think she might've been one of us" they're being disrespectful freaks who should die and go to hell?

there is a very big difference i think between "i was and am a semi-public figure/niche internet microcelebrity and it felt incredibly weird and gross to have strangers speculate on my gender identity" and "my friend who i personally know joked that i might be trans and that helped me figure a lot out" and I think a lot of egg discourse happens when someone acts like these are both the same thing that should be treated the same