Note: I was inspired to write this essay because of a recent Stained Glass Woman essay on the same topic, which I agreed with parts of and disagreed with parts of. I’m glad she wrote that essay. Please do not send any criticism her way as a result of reading this, there’s been far too much of that recently.

An egg is someone who is displaying some gendered traits or doing some things gender-wise that indicate they might be trans, non-cis, or otherwise have some gender going on. Note that this is inherently observer-specific: I might be picking up egg vibes from someone, but somebody else might not pick up those vibes, or might disagree on their interpretation.

When a trans person (or someone who’s familiar with a lot of trans people) is seeing egginess in someone, there’s many different ways one could respond, and many opinions on the best way to respond, which often come with very strong feelings.

I wanted to list out several options for how to respond, and talk through options I like and options I don’t like, and why. That being said, I want to be clear that I think that there are a lot of important considerations which may push in different directions, and that my thoughts aren’t final.

I don’t think there’s remotely a uniform consensus on how to approach this, and I want to help make that conversation clearer and more helpful, more than I want to push a particular answer.

Options

These are potential options for how to respond when one sees egg vibes in someone. After I’ve listed these options, I’ll discuss my thoughts on which options I like and dislike.

I’m ordering these options in vaguely increasing order of activeness and decisiveness.

  1. Say nothing. Only broach the subject if and when someone reaches out.

  2. Suggest some resources, but not an identity term/label. For instance, tell them to consider reading the Gender Dysphoria Bible, or r/egg_irl, or to join a Discord for trans people and people exploring gender, or put them in touch with more trans people.

  3. Suggest a vague identity, but not a definitively trans identity. For instance, “Sounds like you might be exploring gender”, or “Sounds like you might be questioning your gender”.

  4. Suggest a specific identity, but be tentative about it. For instance, “Sounds like you’re probably trans”, or “You know, if you want to be a man, you can just be a man”, or send them Mae Dean’s hatching comic, the comic she wrote about the day she realized she was trans. However, if they tell you that’s not it, or don’t respond, don’t keep pushing it.

  5. Push an identity. For instance, “I’m pretty sure you’re trans”, and bringing it up whenever they do something eggy.

  6. Push a course of action. For instance, “You’re trans, so you should get gender-affirming medical treatment.”

Of course, there’s more options that just these – one might combine the forcefulness and repeated engagement of Option 5 with the lack of identity focus of Option 2, for instance. A spectrum cannot encapsulate the generality of our behavior. It’s just a starting point.

I want to start by talking about options I don’t like, which are options 1, 5, and 6.

I don’t like Option 6: Pushing a course of action

Option 6 is a really bad idea. Even among trans people who definitely know they’re trans, there are a range of preferences as to whether they want any given medical intervention. It’s not a recommendation one can make for someone else, even if that person knows they’re trans.

And certainly, if one doesn’t even know for sure that they’re trans, and they haven’t chosen the identity, it’s not something one should be recommending at all. It can give a message of “if you were trans, you’d want this. If you don’t want this, you must not be trans”, and that’s a terrible message to place on a potential trans person. It can really make things a lot worse, whehter or not they’re trans, and whether or not they end up going with the medical intervention.

I don’t like Option 5: Pushing an identity

One reason I don’t like Option 5 is because of the possibility of being wrong. A lot of gender noncomforming cis people have spent way too much of their lives being told that they must be trans. People have been told “You climb trees and watch sports, you can’t be a girl.”’ People have been told “You paint your nails and sing feminine parts in songs, you can’t be a boy.” And they’ve heard it way too much. As trans people, we know what that’s like – lots of trans people are also very gender noncomforming relative to the societal expectations of our gender. So let’s not make it worse for people. There shouldn’t be a conflict between gender non-comforming cis people and trans people. We’re all just trying to do our gender in a way that works for us. Option 5 creates that conflict.

Another reason I don’t like Option 5 is because of the possibility of being wrong. I personally spent a lot of time receiveing a message from society that if I liked some feminine things, and I didn’t like a lot masculine things, that I had to be a (binary) trans woman. Society was telling me that it was binary trans woman or cis man, that no other option existed. But I could feel in some part of myself that this wasn’t it, this wasn’t the answer, that I’m not a woman. At the time, I didn’t know about nonbinariness being a thing, being an option.

If someone had seen me, noticed my intense egg signals, but also hadn’t know that nonbinariness was an option, and they’d taken Option 5 and pushed me towards the identity of being a binary trans woman, it would have really sucked. That’s emphatically not who I am. And it would have pushed me far into the mindset that I couldn’t be trans, that I had to be cis, because I’m not trans in the way that this person would have thought I was.

So I don’t like Option 5 because the person’s egginess might be reflective of identity that one hasn’t even heard of. Sure, we’ve heard of nonbinariness now, but that doesn’t mean we’ve heard of whatever’s accurate and helpful for this person.

And finally, I don’t like Option 5 because if one has correctly identified an egg, and correctly identified that they’d be better off knowing that they’re trans, being told that they’re an egg is often not what they need. This subgroup of eggs needs to come to understand that they’re trans, and everyone’s got their own path to that discovery. Being told is helpful for some people, but counterproductive to others. Being told that one doesn’t understand oneself can feel very demeaning, hostile, or rude, especially if it’s being pushed again and again. Some people really aren’t helped by an approach like that.

I don’t like Option 1: Say Nothing (as a default)

For a very large fraction of trans people, we need some kind of outside help to come to understand ourselves. Some kind of connection, resources, suggestions, advice, something. A lot of us have benefited immensely from that help.

Sure, some of us reached out for that help, went looking for information and connection and all of it, but equally a lot of people reached out to us. That help is important. It’s vital. We need to navigate how best to do it, but it is necessary.

Now, this doesn’t mean that one has to personally reach out in all possible cases where we’re reading some egginess. It only makes sense if the person might be receptive to that connection. But we should be reaching out where we can, by default.

A lot of us feel abandoned by an uncaring world, and one of our only ways to make the world a little less uncaring for that next round of trans people is by reaching out, forming connection, providing information, providing a path out. Option 1 flies in the face of that desire. It’s not a good option.

I like Options 2, 3, and 4

I think that each of Options 2, 3, and 4 has their place – suggest resources, suggest a vague identity, or tentatively suggest a specific idenity.

Each of these options gives the egg in question a pathway towards discovering themself, without being (too) harmful in situations where the person seeing the egginess is off base.

Depending on the context, different options among this group can be better. Recently, I had an interaction with a person giving as major egg vibes as it’s possible to give, but who I didn’t know very well at all. They were saying that they wanted to feel like a girl, but that they were male and not trans. They were open to what I had to say, so I took a mix of Options 2 and 3 (mostly 2). I suggested that they check out egg_irl, and to try visiting a Discord for people who are trans or exploring, and to describe themself in that Discord as “exploring gender”. This felt like a good approach for this circumstance.

To describe another case, I know multiple people whose eggs hatched (they realized they were trans) when were sent the Mae Dean comic I mentioned in my description of Option 4, by someone who knew them very well, and who had seen their egginess and their mentality of denial for a long time. And that realization helped them, and made their lives majorly better. This felt like a good approach for this circumstance.

I think Option 4 is more appropriate the better one knows the egg, what they’re going through, the options they’re considering, and whether they’re already inundated with people saying similar things. Whether the suggestion will help them hatch, and help them towards a better life, or push them further into denial or repression.

I think Option 2 is more appropriate for more casual acquantainces, or more uncertain situations. It’s an approach that can be helpful for a variety of people, trans or not, so one doesn’t need to know the egg as well to be confident it’ll help. Learning more about trans people can be just as helpful for someone who isn’t trans as someone who is, especially if they’re beset by a bunch of sterotypes and half-truths about what being trans is like.

Considerations among options 2, 3, and 4

I don’t want to imply that these options have no downsides.

For example, some people have expressed a preference to be an egg, showing signs but unknowing, rather than to know they are trans if they are in a circumstance where they are unable to act upon their transness or be out. This would meditate against something like Option 4 in circumstances where societal transphobia is extremely severe. I can’t evaluate this argument very well because I’m not in this circumstance and I don’t know many people who are. That is a form of privilege I have, and I want to acknowledge it and leave the argument out there for those with more experience to evaluate.

As another consideration, people may find the weight of societal pressure towards cisness to be an overwhelming burden, and that their only way out is with someone pushing them out of that pit. This would meditate towards an option with repeated or even constant encouragement towards gender exploration, rather than a gentle suggestion. While this is what’s best for some people, I don’t really know how to determine who this would be right for, outside of someone asking for this sort of push. And it definitely would be counterproductive for a lot of people.

I want to make it clear: I don’t have all the answers, I don’t know what’s right in every case, and I’m not sure anyone does – we’re just trying our best.

The Egg Prime Directive

The Egg Prime Directive is a concept that I first encountered in chapter 14 of the Gender Dysphoria Bible. The chapter is titled “Am I Trans”. The Egg Prime Directive, as described in this piece, is described as:

the fact that trans people have an unspoken agreement not to tell people who are questioning their gender whether or not they are trans.

This line originally comes from an essay by Cassie LaBelle from January 2021, which is largely the same as this chapter. The author of that essay describes the term “Egg Prime Directive” as having been coined by a friend of hers, but that the underlying behavior was widespread among trans people she knows.

The Egg Prime Directive is a recommendation away from Options 4, 5, and 6, and most strongly away from Options 5 and 6. It thus suggests Options 1, 2, and 3, or options not on my list.

This chapter (and the essay on which it is based) describes the Egg Prime Directive as “one of the only things that seems to unify the whole trans community”. I have not shared this experience – in my circles, this concept is very divisive. Strong opinions are held for and against.

Many of the people who advocate for the Egg Prime Directive point to the harms of higher options on my list, especially Option 5, while many of the people who advocate against it point to the harms of lower options on my list, especially Option 1. This leads to counterproductive and hostile conversations, as the space between these options is not acknowledged. This is why I wanted to present my list, to help clarify the range of options.

In Context

I want to point out that neither the original essay nor the Gender Dysphoria Bible advocate for Option 1. The Gender Dysphoria Bible literally does Option 2 – it provides a wealth of resources about what it’s like to be trans, 13 chapters of resources by the time one reaches this chapter. The original essay and the chapter in question describe the eggs as “questioning their gender”, taking Option 3, as well as a large helping of Option 2 throughout the remainder of the chapter.

In addition to Options 2 and 3, the chapter takes Option 4, suggesting a specific identity. A quote from the chapter (a section heading) is “Consider That If You Want To Be A Girl/Boy, Then You Are Already A Girl/Boy”. From that section:

If you want to be a man, then you‘re a man. If you want to be a woman, then you’re a woman. If you don’t want to be either, or you want to be both, or you want to be a woman sometimes and a man other times, then you’re probably some flavor of genderfluid or non-binary.

For eggs who describe themselves as wanting to be a man but not being one, or wanting to be a woman but not being one, or so forth, this passage is directly suggesting an identity. However, it’s not Option 5. This is a written document, so there’s no element of repeated interaction, and the reader can choose to what extent they want to apply it to themself. It’s not an ironclad proclamation.

However, if one sees the Egg Prime Directive on its own, not in the context of this chapter/essay, it can be hard to determine which approach it’s advocating for. For instance, one might think it’s advocating against Option 4, even though the remainder of the chapter proceeds to do just that. Seeing it on its own, it might be interpreted as recommending Option 1, though the author does not remotely advocate that option. And the term “prime directive” was coined in reference to a discourse environment where the course of action was widely agreed on and seen as uncontroversial, which is not the discourse environment that I’m currently in.

For all these reasons, I don’t think it works well as a standalone slogan. It’s perfectly fine as an element of a larger essay, especially an essay where someone’s describing the circumstances around their hatching experience, but that’s not the situation in which I typically encounter it. Devoid of context, it’s not very helpful.

A different slogan

Nonetheless, there is a desire for a pithy slogan for how to make one’s way through this situation, how to care about eggs. And I think that’s a reasonable desire – for a lot of us, this is something that comes up pretty often, and a concise framework for decision making is important.

I think a slogan needs to indicate a preference against Options 5 and 6, and also against Option 1. They’re all bad approaches, and a slogan needs to make that clear. I know that’s a lot for a catchy slogan, but I think it’s doable.

My favorite slogan is:

Don’t crack eggs, build a nest.

This comes from a January 2023 thread between Tumblr users ruffboijuliaburnsides and hardboiledleggs, very lightly rephrased.

The point of this slogan is twofold: Don’t try to force eggs to hatch, and do build an environment where its safe for them to develop and come to understand themselves.

It thus advocates against Options 5 and 6 (pushing an identity), which are trying to crack the egg, as well Option 1 (say nothing), which doesn’t build the nest. It’s borderline on Option 4, but less negative on it than the Egg Prime Directive is, given the different framing of “don’t tell” versus “don’t crack”. Given that I only advocate Option 4 when one knows the egg in question very well, I think that it’s Ok for it to be a borderline case. Slogans are primarily for the more common circumstance where one doesn’t know the egg very well.

Conclusion

Caring about eggs is important. Just about every trans person gives egg vibes at some point in our lives, and a lot of people who aren’t trans give off egg vibes at some point too. We need a collective approach towards interacting with people giving egg vibes that works in both cases.

This isn’t easy. There are a lot of possible approaches, and a lot of advantages and disadvantages. It’s hard to evaluate, hard to think through it all, and emotions are intense. I’d encourage people to give one another the benefit of the doubt. If someone disagrees with you, even very intensely, they’re coming from a good place, a place of care and compassion and trying to help people. They’re just emphasizing different considerations than you are.

I’m trying to provide a framework to think through this question with my 6 options. But I’m not perfect. There might be important directions I haven’t talked about. Important shades of meaning and intention I’m glossing over. There probably are. But hopefully some good comes of this approach.

My preferred options are options 2, 3, and 4, depending on how well I know the person: Provide resources, suggest a vague identity, and tentatively suggest a specific identity, respectively. My preferred slogan is “Don’t crack eggs, build a nest”.

Whatever your prefered approach is, I respect it.