This is something I experienced recently and it made me so uncomfortable.
I recently started playing Dungeons and Dragons. On
r/dnd, I asked if it was okay for a guy to rp a female character. I didn’t specify I was trans, because I’m stealth.
I got a lot of responses, and the second most common one was trans women directing me to
r/egg_irl or telling me I might be a trans women.
They’d say ‘anyone can play any gender, gender is a social construct!’ then in the same breath insinuate I might be a woman on the inside because I feel more comfortable role playing one. It wasn’t until I had to out myself as trans that they backtracked and called it normal for a dude.
It made me so uncomfortable to think that if I play a female character, other people (especially the trans women irl in my campaign) may think I secretly want to be a woman. It makes me feel like no matter what I do I can’t hide my ‘womanly personality’ especially if other trans people are guessing that I’m a woman on the inside. I want to be stealth someday, but I feel like people can still ‘see’ the old me. I don’t want my behavior to make people think I’m trans, let alone a trans woman. I want to be an effeminate male, that’s it. Not an egg.
Why can’t I just be a dude who likes to play chicks? How is that egg behavior? I don’t think they realize that this line of thinking only reinforces stereotypes.
Femininity in men does not mean they are MTF.