You sunk my battleship!

To be honest, not really. Call me isolated but idea you are describing sounds more like a bunch of tactless mooks making asses of themselves than an existential threat. Shame that poisons the well on using egg in a self-referential context since that’s the more benign definition (and the one transfems use more, anecdotally - but since when has anything transfems done online ever not been reappropriated in bad faith?). Still I can tell now that this is one of those arguments on the internet where about two people have a disagreement about something and don’t realize they have two entirely separate definitions of a word until 14 comments down.

That’s a fair point of view, but I am still thrown that most people see the word “egg” as something outsiders use exclusively to coerce or out people since by the time such discourse reaches me it has devolved into people saying to never even consider the idea of respectfully discussing the idea of transing genders with anyone (rather than being a shorthand for “before I realized”).

Anecdotally I reached a stage in figuring things out where I knew what I was but was to batshit terrified to tell anyone, and anyone even considering discussing such a thing around me would’ve felt like a lifeline bordering on divine intervention. Instead I unintentionally played gender-identity chicken with a whole friend group who believed in the egg prime directive for like 8 months because my whole life is a long stream of sitcom-esque idiot plots.

Unfortunately the internet has a tendency to do whatever it wants with words, especially neologisms.

Unfortunately the blowback of such discourse in practice is just people giving me grief for trying to use the word as a shorthand to “me pre-realization” and indirectly calling me a creep if I even mention considering transitioning in any direction in a passive way because even being compared to a trans person causes certain people to damn near flinch reflexively.

What I am most confused by is people implying that it’s immoral to even consider asking someone (irl you’d just use your words - have you considered it? - the idea that the word “egg” implies that being trans is rigidly prescribed from the outside from some tactless strangers trying to blindly out other strangers rather than two peple who know each other politely asking one-on-one in a respectful conversation is kinda wild to me - am I just confused because I managed to dodge significantly stupider online discourse elsewhere and am instead taking this literally?).

Also do you think term “egg” only applies to people “suspected of being women”?

It’s harder than you’d think.

This discourse pains me.

Oftentimes the pushback against it implies that being transfem is such a terrible fate that implying someone might be happier following such a course of action apparently makes you a degenerate groomer somehow just as bad as the transphobes who want all such people to either detransition or die.

There’s just such a strange buried seething resentment to it all, but then again this isn’t even a discussion about people having nuanced one-on-one conversations about gender, it’s a confused imaginary scenario where someone is attempting social forcefem irl via brute force.

Also the phrase it almost exclusively self-refferentially in practice.

I’m afraid if I pronounce it “Blowhigh” it will come off the same way as being that one person who pronounces “gyro” with a silent g at a greek restaurant. Like it’s correct but the exonym seems to already have stuck at this point.