Quoting the rule from the community for reference:

  1. You must follow the Egg Prime Directive. You may not push or coerce people into identifying or not identifying a certain way. You must respect them as the gender they claim to identify as. In addition it is extremely in poor taste to make assumptions about other people’s identities based on external factors, we understand it cannot be helped but it is best not to as it can affect the way you treat others in noticeable ways.

Honestly, I’ve been anxious about this for a while, not sure if or how to bring this up. I understand the importance of the rule when it involves real people. But I’ve been seeing comics and memes getting criticized of breaking the Directive a couple of times now. But aren’t they just being shared from the creator’s perspective? Making fun of their own experience, such as, looking back, pointing out how obvious things seemed? When you see any other comic making fun of some situation, that doesn’t mean that applies to everyone. That’s not the statement the comic makes. It’s just something that may end up being, or having been, true for some people.

Am I wrong in feeling like the Egg Prime Directive is being invoked too easily when it comes to memes and comics?

edit: I hope this is the right place to make this post. (Also, technically, it’s breaking the title rule? Are meta posts allowed?) To be fair, I don’t recall where this has been happening the most, I’ve just seen it in my time browsing Lemmy and the many trans memes communities over the last few months. Also, note: The stickied post did not answer my question.

  • First Majestic CometM
    2·
    21 hours ago

    Honestly I get where you’re coming from but I do not agree with you. People are way too comfortable in this day and age speculating about other people’s gender identities and sexuality, and part of that comes from the fact this behavior hasn’t been called out in the past anywhere near as much as it should. It is unfortunately thought to be still acceptable by many people. The thing is, Egging is misgendering. Is misgendering permitted in fictional situations? To an extent. Though it should be made clear it’s wrong. Egging is problematic because it historically hasn’t been thought of as wrong and the attitude around it is still way too casual.

    Please try to understand that this phenomenon has not really stopped yet, people are still egging each other right now. It has been seen as more and more wrong sure, but only the absolute worst versions of it are ever called out or portrayed in any way negatively, and the idea that gender non-conformity doesn’t determine gender identity is still not widely acknowledged. It was only in 2013 that they dropped Gender Identity Disorder from the books as an actual medical diagnosis. It is way too soon for egging to be looked at casually, as something that isn’t harmful. There may be and I do hope there is a day when it won’t be such an icky topic, but that day isn’t today, and probably isn’t going to be for a very very long time. As it stands it is not widely and intuitively known in most people’s hearts that egging is bad, in the way that they know that general misgendering is bad.

    I did actually write a more in-depth post about it, which I might embed in the sidebar to help people find it easier.