something i've been meaning to talk about for a while now is that i REALLY despise the "egg" concept in trans spaces. it's a cute metaphor and can be helpful shorthand for describing one's OWN process of self-discovery, but outside of that i think it broadly has negative effects.

first, i think it further pushes the notion that there's a universal & linear trans experience where someone neatly goes from Not Knowing to Knowing, despite that simply not being the case for most. a person's self-discovery needn't be a smooth line; it can zig-zag and backtrack.

it ignores a lot of the nuance with gender, in that most trans people don't fit so cleanly in such a simple before & after. it throws the idea of gender being a spectrum where gender non-conforming people Can and Do Exist out the window by nature of claiming someone is an "egg".

of COURSE there are experiences, feelings, behavior, etc that usually comes from someone who is trans but hasn't quite realized it yet, so the *concept* of someone not realizing yet isn't harmful, but it IS harmful when someone claims to know better about someone else's gender.

when someone calls someone else an egg, they are acting like they know more about that person than the person knows of themselves. it's almost never done out of malice, but it's patronizes and makes the person feel like they somehow lack the critical information, which is shitty.

there's a bit of smugness to it almost; a bit of mockery. although most of this stems from wishing to help a person explore their feelings, that zeal to help is ironically what hurts the most because it puts a lot of pressure on the supposed "egg". you can't rush self-discovery!!

the way to ACTUALLY help is to let them be comfortable, let them go at their own pace, answer questions if they have any, and then be a normal friend! i'm not saying you can't broach the topic with them, but the moment you accuse them of being an egg, it becomes a confrontation.

in a confrontation, they can either accept or reject. accepting means that they now immediately have to answer a barrage of follow-up questions and thoughts that they very well might not be ready for. that goes against the BIGGEST thing i always stress in that there is no race.

the easier alternative that people almost always take is to simply reject the idea. if they aren't an "egg" like you so think, then no harm other than that you're annoying, but if they ARE then congrats because all you've done is cause them to repress their feelings even harder.

there's a generous read that can be had of the egg metaphor, and in the end it *is* just a metaphor after all, but the way it gets applied to others frustrates me to no end. a recent example of this is that someone dm'd me saying how they KNEW a friend was trans and yadda yadda-

and they were saying how the friend was "being stubborn" and "difficult" and etc, so they asked me to assist because they earnestly wished to help. i walk in there feeling like i'm defusing a bomb because the person is now guarded and uncomfortable with their blossoming feelings.

i talked to them briefly, but i'm not going to pressure them because that's now someone who is actively Not open to exploring their gender. it doesn't matter if they are or aren't trans, but they were pushed away by the person's trans savior complex inherent to the egg metaphor.