A Violation of the Egg Prime Directive

A Darker Foreshadowing - CW: Transphobia

-The Prime Directive, from Star Trek.

-The Egg Prime Directive, from Twitter.

So… about five years before I found out I was trans, a friend of mine came out as trans online. This wasn’t a big deal - I did a *LOT* of online writing, and it happened not infrequently. I didn’t care, as far as I knew, no-one online did. In my mind, gender was just an arbitrary cultural construct that you had to obey the rules of or face societal punishment, and some people chose to disobey those rules. (yes I realize how transphobic that formulation was now.)

Except this friend was one I had known online since I was 11. This was….somewhere over 20 years. 22? 23? Something like that. I’m not even sure how long it was; before either of us hit puberty. And she was a girl. She called me up on the phone (online online friend to have my RL number) - to tell me. She was really upset. The first person she told was her lesbian sister, who rejected her - and to this day, has never spoken to her again since. But she called me for a different reason. Because she was afraid to tell her wife and needed someone who would understand.

I didn’t, honestly. As far as I could tell, we had identical psychologies and life experiences, how could she be trans? I didn’t understand, but she was one of my closest friends and I loved her anyways. But that wasn’t why she called me. She called me because she was dead certain that if she was trans, I was trans too. In her mind, I was the one person she was dead certain was trans - there was no-way I wasn’t.

“How?” I asked. “I’m definitely not trans. If anything, I don’t have a gender at all. I’m barely human. I couldn’t possibly care about my body enough to be trans.” And I got VERY defensive.

Very.

She told me about facial feminization surgery. About shoulder shaving, removing ribs. Now, years later - I found out she hadn’t actually looked up HRT. She’d literally realized she was trans a day or two before, was too afraid to look up HRT, but had looked up surgeries. And had a conversation with her sister that had gone terribly; complete rejection. She was in the complete emotional panic stage of things. She was desperate to reach out to someone, anyone. She barely remembers this conversation, but instead remembers mostly a desperate loneliness, a ceaseless unending panic.

But I took it as an attack on my gender; which I had always felt very, very insecure about. I knew I played mostly girls online, I mostly wrote girls, and I wished I was one - but that definitely didn’t make me a girl. I went from ‘supportive friend’ mode to ‘argumentative’ mode. She had a whole host of reasons about why she was *sure* I was trans, why there was absolutely zero doubt, and why we should talk about it right now - she needed someone to talk to, and if she was trans, I definitely was trans. How could I not know, she asked?

The transhobia didn’t get much worse then the above - but my half of it was, essentially, transphobic. I wasn’t trans. I *knew* this. And I told my wife about the conversation right away - I didn’t want to be hiding anything.

We talked for three or five hours. Not sure how long. I always loved talking to her. And I spoke with her over the internet frequently. So the conversation ended, and I was sure I wasn’t trans, and that trans people just wanted to convince others they were trans. It had turned into a debate about whether or not I was trans, and I did everything I could to dismiss it, only slowly coming to feel an unease or guilt about having been so defensive instead of supportive.

And I thought the most vile, self manipulative thoughts ever: Gender wasn’t even real, and transitioners really never passed, so since it isn’t real, why transition anyways?

But for my friend, as the weeks turned into years, things got worse. Her sister never came around, and completely ghosted her. Her wife, who was bi, and claimed to be a liberal - said it would be scandelous in the south, that they would be ostracized from church and from their family, and said she’d divorce if my friend ever transitioned. No, she wouldn’t consider moving.

My friend went insane. Absolutely insane. She disassociated, became suicidal, lost a very, very good career, developed a headmate, a boy persona she used to interact with the world so she could just…disassociate. She tried to re-egg herself, and spiraled downhill over and over again, without a bottom. But she wouldn’t divorce her wife (they had kids) - and she couldn’t transition.

I knew, without a doubt, from her experiences - trans people had to transition or die. My wife knew it. I knew it. It became painfully obvious in the most clear of ways - forcing a trans person in the closet was torture and murder, and the most vile, evil, horrific thing you could do.

I was so glad I wasn’t trans. Bullet dodged, whew!