the fun thing about calling it the "prime directive" is that they routinely went against that shit all the time in star trek. it practically existed to be defied!

personally i say fuck it, if something pings my radar i'm just like "oh have you considered that you might be trans?"

yeah, you gotta at least make some leading comments. i get not wanting to pressure people but i would have absolutely cracked years before i did if a trans person had looked at me and said "i think you might be like me" and i really don think the possibility that they're actually cis is a problem there. if they are than some people made weird comments to them and maybe they experienced a tiny fraction of the pressure we feel from society to be different. they'll live

I agree, you don't wanna railroad people into a specific identity, but gender is inextricably social. This "prime directive" shit treats gender like some atomized, wholly internal, thing. It's based on this idea that mentioning transness at all might corrupt some pure, internal process of gender discovery.

And frankly, that's some fucking lib shit. Instead of this "prime directive" nonsense, you can just present the option to people, and be a supportive friend. That's millions of times more helpful then this coy, anxious, silence.

Yeah honestly. There's a focus on Letting People Figure It Out For Themselves that like, I understand, but I think it goes too far at times.

Plus, it matters who it comes from. I find that a lot of repetition of the "prime directive" and anger at egg jokes etc from cis people comes from a place not of not pressuring someone, but of "how dare you, this person is NORMAL and you shouldn't insult them by insinuating they're like you"

doing the work god won't

ive cracked maybe 10 eggs via our lgbt center. its really interesting how many 'twinks' end up transfem.

how it do to be a role model

this is the power we could be wielding, if not for fear! comrade spectre leads the way

there's a lot of things that could be defined as egg behavior. in my case i would constantly be bringing up trans issues and stuff, just because that stuff's really fascinating and they're so brave and can you imagine doing that? that's so crazy. i remember caitlyn jenner coming out and i kept talking to people about her. i would also ask people if they'd thought about what it was like as the other sex, complain about my voice being too deep because it made singing harder (and in choir i insisted i was a bass when i very much was not because my voice sounded so deep to me and it really bothered me), play as female characters in games and stuff. i made a lot of comments like "i wish i was a girl because..." and then say some kind of joke or way i thought life would be easier and everyone would give me weird looks

other things i did included that were less public: reading stories where boys would turn into girls magically and try and replicate them. i spent probably 2 hours trying to kiss my elbow when i saw that work in a book i read. i thought some fairly mid webcomics and manga were really good because they had magic gender changes in them. i would read tg porn just out of fascination with it, because i couldn't find openly trans writing to obsess over instead. i would shave way more often than was necessary even though i hated doing it. i was fascinated by queerness and gravitated towards it though i couldn't explain why. a little after i came out as trans my mom told me she'd thought i was gay because if that. i mean, i am, but not like she meant

my experience was obviously not universal though, and there's a wide range of egg behavior out there. if anyone else has things they want to share, whether they're close to my own experience or not, please do

Egg shit I (an ftm egg) did, off the top of my head:

Ask people if they would still like me if I was a guy.

Make jokes about having a dick.

Have panic attacks when guys I was dating/fucking grabbed my tits or were obsessive about them.

Lament about how much nicer men's clothing is and how much easier it would be to be even slightly stylish as a guy.

Etc.

it's a good joke anyway