I'm done with this conversation I think, I'm not in a great place and I don't want to keep mentally going over this stuff. I don't have any hard feelings, we're all under attack with all the anti-"gender ideology" stuff and I don't want to fight. I'm just gonna talk about one thing because it's been a bugbear for me in a lot of different contexts and it's something I actually like thinking and talking about lol
at the end of the day other people don’t know us the way we know ourselves
This isn't true for me at all. I have needed an enormous amount of help from other people to even begin to know myself. And there are many situations where other people do actually know me better than I know myself, at least in the moment. I think this is partly due to my neurodivergence, I've been diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder and I think I might actually have some other schizospec condition because I've had some weird experiences regularly throughout my life that don't quite fit with the criteria for szpd. But I'm also convinced, philosophically speaking, that there are serious limits to self-knowledge for everyone, that have become a kind of cultural blindspot due to neoliberal individualism. The idea that each individual is master and expert of themself is a strong ideological assumption, but I believe it's totally false. I know that's probably a controversial opinion, but it's based on my experience and it informs a lot of how I understand the world and people in general. I'd be curious to know what you think of it, especially in regards to egg stuff lol
It's fine if you don't reply, I'm probably going to bed soon and I almost never have lemmy open. Today was kind of a weird day for me, and I was already kind of upset about other stuff before I saw this post, so I'm sorry for if I was insensitive or weird.
for someone else to challenge or debate your identity when you don’t know, or worse, are okay with or even happy with the way you currently identify can feel extremely shitty
Not nearly as shitty as looking back and realizing people could have done that, but didn't. Sorry, but a lot of my therapy was about the trauma that caused me. I'm not going to treat other people in a way that traumatized me.
It also doesn’t target cis people either. See a lot of people in your position think it’s a trans vs. cis thing, but it isn’t. It almost explicitly targets Gender-Non-conforming people.
Okay, maybe that's a thing online. Because like I said in my first comment, I've only heard the egg prime directive even mentioned on the internet, and before this post only by people criticizing its obvious harmfulness.
the kind of egging you’re talking about, based on external ““signs”” or presentation doesn’t discriminate, it catches all GNC people in the net
I disagree, I think there's a very definite and perceivable difference between external signs of transness and gender noncompliance. I think reducing what I'm talking about to wearing makeup or dresses or whatever (two things I don't do btw) is completely missing the point.
Now to say it’s to fight cisnormitivity is laughable to me, and many other people to be honest, because gender stereotypes and gender conformity is one of the most cisnormative things there is out there.
This is a TERF talking point. TERFs say that trans people reinforce gender stereotypes and gender conformity. Please don't talk like a TERF, I'm sure you can make your points without borrowing their rhetoric.
And I said cis supremacy, not cisnoramtivity, for a reason. Those are different concepts. Withholding observable information about someone's relationship to gender (a very different thing from anything to do with identity) concerns me more for how it frames cisness as superior than how it treats cisness as the norm. Although both are bad, one seem much more significant to me in this context, and I specified for a reason.
It makes me wonder how many Nonbinary, Genderfluid, or even transmasc people have also been killed by unfounded egging.
This post is literally the first time I've ever heard of egg stuff affecting those groups specifically. If it's really a widespread issue that sucks, but I kinda hate the "egg" concept to begin with. This post upset me because it reminded me of stuff from my own life I still haven't totally gotten over, maybe I shouldn't have even commented since it involves communities and culture that I'm not a part of. But as you've presented it, the egg prime directive reads as just doing what cis society already does, and throwing unaware but visible trans people to the wolves.
Having someone argue to you that you are something that you aren’t sucks ass.
Yes, it does. And all of society is arguing that trans people are cis, all the time, to all of us. And it hurts! Which means that making an argument in the other direction from time to time saves lives.
Well, to use my own life as an example, my mother chose to homeschool me in part because she saw that I wasn't very boyish, and she was worried I would get bullied (and she was quite right!). However, she didn't tell me about this until after I came out as trans to her (e:as an adult, well into my 20s). Because of this, and because other people similarly held back on telling me the obvious about myself, I went through a lot of my life missing the pieces to put together that I was trans. The years or so I spent seeing a therapist two and sometimes three times a week, going over a lot of my life, it's very clear from how I was treated (e:and mistreated) that a lot of people could tell that I was trans (or at least effeminate/queer), but they never explicitly said anything, and I was too autistic to pick up on it. If someone had simply grabbed my shoulders and said "You are a girl. People can tell you're a girl. Take the estrogen already." it likely would have saved me from years of suffering and at least one suicide attempt. I desperately needed someone to say something, and I don't want anyone else to have to go through that. I actually feel resentful towards several people in my life because they were silent while I was very obviously distressed about my gender. I refuse to do to others what was done to me.
Another point is, cis society doesn't have a prime directive. The vast majority of people are successfully coerced into a cis identity, and that's something that needs to be resisted. Obviously not by doing the exact opposite and raising kids as trans or something, but at a bare minimum making sure that people know being (or pretending to be) cis isn't the only option, especially people who seem uncomfortable with it, would go a long way. And I know from my own aforementioned experiences and from talking to other trans people that a decent number of us are treated as lesser or different in some way long before we know ourselves that we are trans. Picking up on someone's latent transness but saying nothing is, imo, both an act of epistemic violence and complicity with cis supremacy. And I'm sorry but, because of all that, I genuinely believe that the "egg prime directive" kills people.
I think the "egg prime directive" is transphobic bullshit and I'm extremely distrustful of anyone that supports it. Granted, I'm not very online and I've only ever heard people on the internet talk about it. But I would not feel comfortable in any community where it was taboo to suggest to someone that their behavior might be a sign that they are trans or that they're experiencing gender dysphoria.
Recently heard the term "epistemicide" and I think that's what it is: willfully withholding the knowledge trans people need in order to know ourselves, based on the thin justification that it might be unwelcome or intrusive. Extremely bad vibes from the whole idea.
I've been using Openreads recently, it works pretty well. It's an open source app, all just on your phone, but it pulls info from open library. I also use storygraph lol, but I've been reconsidering it a bit because of the AI features
not surprising, I remember watching spider move when I was a kid and thinking they were obviously intelligent. sure they creep me out but I hate killing them for no reason, same with literally any other living thing