Quoting the rule from the community for reference:
- 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.
In that case, it feels like the other two characters are metaphorical representations of the first person looking back at themselves as an egg and poking fun at how self-oblivious they were, so I don’t see how it violates such rule.
Perhaps I’m projecting though cause no one assumed I was trans afaik until after I started saying or doing things to intentionally hint that I was an I wanted to get questioned (not told I must be a certain gender or trans, but just asked if I was trying to tell them something).
I’m not sure the characters being fiction is a strong reason for the same reason “it’s just a joke” isn’t a good enough reason to justify jokes that promote harmful ideology via their assumptions. But there is certainly more wiggleroom with fictional characters and there is also the risk of trans erasure in fiction if taken too far imo.