It all worked out alright in the end :)
Hey folks, sorry but since this is old and due to controversial nature of the post regarding the Egg prime Directive, I’ve decided to lock it since it has recently attracted some unfriendly people, thank you for understanding.
I’m glad you cracked your egg this way, and maybe I’m reading into this too much, but I really don’t like reinforcing the idea that any man who chooses the female player option in a video game must secretly be trans.
Every time I boot up Sonic Advance I play as Tails. That’s partly because he has the best ability and partly because he’s by far the cutest, and the only thing better than playing Sonic Advance is doing so while staring at that adorable bean. That doesn’t mean I secretly want to see him when I look in the mirror.
It’s not reinforcing that idea. For the author of the comic, she played as women in games and later discovered she was one. You can play as whatever character you want to play as and it doesn’t have to say anything about you.
I always played as girls and women in games when I had the choice. I also gravitated towards books with female protagonists. Like the author of the above comic, I also ended up discovering my womanhood and transitioning. This community, egg_irl, is for trans people. Nominally for memes to do with things we did before we came out that now make sense to us after the fact.
Whether the author intends to reinforce that idea or not, the comic itself (having one character say “Honest! I just like looking at women’s asses better than men’s!” while the other one says “hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm no I think you’re trans”) very much does.
Also the other character is committing blatant violations of the egg prime directive by deliberately questioning another person’s gender identity in response to the person saying why they like doing something. This is extremely disrespectful to that person and dismisses their identity. The biggest problem is that even though this is describing something internal for the person, it is normalizing something which is disrespectful to the identities of others.
But okay, is it just the framing that’s the issue here? Would the meme be fine if it depicted an internal dialogue by the creator? Is it purely an issue because of the existence of the friend character?
I’m assuming this to be the case based on what the sidebar shows as the “egg prime directive”. Which in and of itself is a valid issue with the content. I think it’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation, but yeah I can see how it normalizes that.
I think that it would be significantly better had it been framed as an internal dialogue rather than external criticism. It might still be a bit problematic if it phrases the reasons given as invalid, rather than just not what it is for them, because even though to many people it feels like they said something stupid, they weren’t, those are valid, real reasons why people do it. The idea that the reasons aren’t valid as opposed to being simply not the reasons for themself in their case is also not great in the same way.
It’s possible that I’m reading it differently, but I see the reasons being portrayed not as invalid in and of themselves, but rather as being weak attempts at excusing their own actual motivations for playing as girls and women.
I also didn’t play as female characters because of their clothing options or their appearance being more aesthetically appealing. It was in fact because I wanted to be perceived and acknowledged as a girl and that was the closest it was permissible for me to get. I definitely expressed excuses at times for it as well. I think this is actually a very common experience for transfeminine people. Not universal, nor does it mean those things have any innate value.
I guess it can be interpreted differently by different people. Though I do feel that at least in the original communities it is posted in on Reddit and Twitter it’s very likely it’ll be read as invalid or a poor excuse in general, rather than them covering their own motivations. I say that because in the Reddit versions (and a tiny bit the Twitter versions as well) there is generally more of a sentiment that gender non-conformity is a “sign” or are “signs” and they generally are very dismissive of reasons like the ones given. They have a poor record of following the egg prime directive and I have in fact seen on r/traa2 people blatantly shit talking it and saying they would never follow it 😬.
So while I do get that there can be different interpretations, a generalized one (the not so great one) and a personalized one (the better one) I do recognize the communities they were originally posted to on Reddit and Twitter, and I do know which ones they tend to gravitate towards.
Never understood the 'I prefer to stare at girl ass than guy ass" argument. You’re playing a video game, if you’re staring at your own character most of the time probably not doing much playing.
Something important to remember is that even though the intention with games like that is to identify with the character you’re creating people don’t often play games as they are intended (if they did would modding games be as popular as it is?). So the argument framed in the 4th panel, despite it being framed as invalid or shaky is actually a valid argument because if people are using mechanics in ways that aren’t intended, then it’s only natural this would be one of them. Let’s face it, not everyone identifies with the characters in the game and they may want to satiate their attraction rather than to identify as the character, this is a common sentiment in 3rd person games where the character is being looked at from the outside, AKA a perspective that isn’t you.
Another thing about this is aesthetics, because people can like things that are seen as feminine without actually being girls, people like this who identify as male are femboys, and they are valid as they identify. Unfortunately most games out there which have the courtesy to offer the luxury of character creation, don’t offer gender-nonconformity as well. So this is another reason to violate intended use case. So 2 and 3 are very much valid use cases.
All in all this isn’t the worst thing but I’m not really a fan. There’s many reasons someone can use avatars in games that are different from their own sex and gender, the way this is framed makes it seem like it automatically means that you must be trans. In addition this mentality is a double standard since it obviously never applied to the many female gamers before gender selection was implemented as widely as it is now, I mean them playing as a boy doesn’t make them a boy now does it. Also the attitude of “oh ho ho that’s not very cis of you” does not come across as respecting the egg prime directive very much, but also at the same time doesn’t come across as outright disrespecting it.
Removed by mod
