Eggnorance and Knowledge

If you don't crack an egg every once in a while, you're going to get a B12 deficiency (take a supplement if you're vegan!).

I've been thinking a lot about the "Egg Prime Directive" lately. I started transitioning in January 2022, and one of the first steps in that process for me was joining a Discord server for people who had recently or were on the precipice of coming out as trans. This server had a rule not to violate what it called the "Egg Prime Directive": basically, not to suggest to other people that you think they might be transgender. Let them figure it out on their own, what could possibly go wrong?

I went along with this rule at the time because I was a little goody-two-shoes prior to transition. Luckily, three years of life as a tranny dyke has more or less solved that issue. The more I think about it, though, the more I think the "egg prime directive" is stupid as hell. It's a glaring neglect of responsibility in a time when it matters more than ever.

Proponents of the egg prime directive claim that a person being told they might be trans could make them uncomfortable. Counterargument- who cares? Sometimes being confronted by new ideas makes us uncomfortable; part of being an adult is having to learn things that make us uncomfortable and work with that knowledge anyway. Are we really so cowardly that we're afraid to confront cis people with an idea that, at worst, will momentairly bother them, and at best can change their life for the better as long as they live? Telling someone, "hey, I think you might be like me" is an incredibly low-stakes gamble; if you're wrong, they'll just say "no" and you both go about your day, but if you're right, then you've done your partner in conversation a great service. I am willing to make every cis person in the world uncomfortable momentarily if it means even one of my siblings doesn't have to suffer in ignorance any longer.

The other argument I've heard in favor of the egg prime directive is that being encouraged from without to explore gender is an avenue for self-doubt. The argument goes that if someone is "told" what their gender is, then there's a chance they'll push back. This argument is even more questionable. Genuinely- where do you think knowledge comes from? People don't just synthesize ideas from the aether, they get them from interacting with the world. Ask any trans person you know how they figured it out, and I guarantee you they will not say "oh, I sequestered myself in the Gender Cave for ten years and generated the idea from pure ingenuity alone."

In every case, we encountered knowledge that helped us along the way. In my case, it was following a lot of trans women on Twitter, one of whom eventually made a post along the lines of "hey, I see you." That was all the push I needed to try it out for myself and discover that it worked. That was literally it! (I do regret that that post is lost to the sands of time, otherwise I'd include it here.) If outside knowledge is necessary and helpful, then I fail to see the issue with the trans friends of a potential trans person saying, "hey, I think your experience lines up with mine, have you considered this?"

The concept of the Egg Prime Directive fails to consider the context we live in. Quite simply, we live in a regime that imposes and enforces gender on us much more harshly and painfully than a supposed "violation" of the egg prime directive. The egg prime directive treats a tranny telling her friend "please take some estrogen" as worse than the entire structure that imposed an entire set of harmful expectations on her purely based on her anatomy at birth. If we don't help people discover themselves, we are abrogating our responsibility, especially in an era when knowledge of our lives and experiences is more scrutinized and censored than it has been in a long time. We've always been victims of epistemicide, so it has never been more critical for you to share your experience. If you fail to share your experience with those who you think might be helped by it, then you're complying with epistimicide in advance.

Cis people demand constantly to be the arbiters of what the trans experience look like, and they pat each other on the back for it. Why do you think Emilia Perez is up for every award ever when it's one of the most transphobic depictions of a trans woman in years, and an offensive depiction of Mexico by Europeans to boot? It's especially galling in a year where there was a great deal of well-loved trans-made cinema. Cis people are giving it awards because it's them talking to each other about us, and it doesn't challenge their notions.

Trans people have gained a very small modicum of control over the discourse, and it's improved things a lot compared to earlier times. When cis people control the discourse entirely, that's when you get requirements for medical care that enforce cisheteronormativity and require playing up gendered stereotypes. Letting cis people have all the epistemic authority is how we get shit like Silence of the Lambs. We've been given a tiny bit of breathing room since the bad old days, and clamming up about your experiences to preserve cis comfort is irresponsible. If you don't fill that air, they will, and they're fucking idiots at best and outright hostile at worst.

I think a lot about how my own life might have been different if I'd had more sources of knowledge when I was younger. I first had an inkling that something was different about me when I was about eight years old, but had no way of knowing what it might be because I lacked knowledge of anything relating to queerness. I first met a trans man when I was fifteen and later watched him document his transition on social media. That was how I learned that trans people take hormones. Like, I cannot understate how little epistemic authority we have on our own lives; most cis people literally still think it's all surgeries and have no idea how hormones work. When I came out at work (in 2024!) and unzipped the boymoder hoodie to reveal my t-shirt underneath, my boss asked if I'd had breast augmentation surgery. I grew these myself, thank you very much! Cis people legitimately do not know how this stuff works unless you use what little voice you're allowed. The Egg Prime Directive wants us to shut up to preserve their comfort and ignorance, and I say fuck that.

I think this rule has a lot to do with the kinds of communities that trans people early on in understanding themselves get shuffled into. Like I said, I first encountered the rule in a server for recently hatched people or people in the process of hatching. I find that these "egg communities" tend to be saturated with early-transition people with very few elders for guidance. Left to their own devices, they stew in their own doubt and create rules like the egg prime directive to protect their comfort. At three years hatched, I don't consider myself an "elder" by any stretch, but I would say I'm not a baby tran anymore, either. As exhausting as I find recently-hatched eggs, I think we've done them a disservice by not sharing our experiences with them more. Without the input of elder stateswomen, baby trans people stew in that doubt and rely on stereotypes in order to try and confirm or deny their trans status. Part of what kept me from transitioning till I was twenty-five was only having stereotypes for guidance, and we're leaving our little sisters in a similar boat. That's part of the reason I put so much of myself out there- I think it can be helpful, in some small way, to see my example.

I'll end with an exhortation; I'm putting my money where my mouth is. If you read this whole article and you think you're a cis man, please consider: I don't know many cis men who would read this many words from a tranny dyke with such rapt attention. If you're paying this much attention to my words, particularly on an intra-community subject like this, you should just take the estrogen already. There's a very good chance you're not cis if you were this interested in this article. Have fun, darling!