egg_irl problematic gender rant
that egg_irl subreddit sure is weird and culty, i mean ironically/unironically trying to pill people into being trans, i suppose ritual awakening is an ancient means of personality change and this is just a modern version of that, and there's lots of people who come out or find themselves like that, but explicitly trying to induce some type of crisis, rather than encourage sober and non-judgemental self-reflection, it doesn't seem like the best way to encourage people to re-examine their gender... but one could make a case that closeted people are on many levels of self denial/repression/alienation/disphoria and so leaning into this psychodrama is necessary for some.I would like to hear trans peeps take on this, i've seen many people say something about egg_irl being toxic or whatever, but i was never in that community other than just passively looking at their memes, they are fascinating aesthetic artifacts for sure
personally i went thru that and came out like yeah i'm basically cis, i do have gender disphoria and i fantasize about being a woman, but also like having muscles and a dick and capacity for violence, and not having to bath regularly or put much thought into my appearance -- i suppose i could be a woman and keep all those things, just i'm just lazy and went with the default, idk if that makes me cis or nonbinary, it's just not terribly important to me, so i'd rather just put my gender as male, i don't really identity with my cultures definition of masculinity, but i don't think i'm a woman, i think i would know by now lol, trans people seem to really know, maybe more so than cis people, and that's kinda my issue with egg_irl it's like okay, maybe some people need to just accept what they already know, but basically all cis people are confused about gender, and for many there is a level of volition and self creation, you can choose to change genders if you want, and what you really want that might take some time to figure out, and you shouldn't make it into some urgent thing where you're obligated to transition or you're a liar and a failure, a certain degree of guilt or regret and insecurity is unavoidable considering hetero-patriachal transphobia but it should also be a beautiful journey of self discovery where trans people are treated with kindness and patience and acceptance.
in my experience gender and sexual identity isn't really a static thing, like my sexual compass would oscilate pretty dramatically between women and men, as with whether i felt/acted more gay/straight, now if egg_irl was a thing when i was like 16 i might have gone trans, as I was always very androgynous and bi and would dress in drag and i also didn't really fit in with "gay" men, who universally said i was straight, maybe that's just bi erasure, but there's something to that, maybe little bit of homoeroticism and cross dressing is just totally a normal aspect of being a straight cis man.