??? please dont egg dead people, egging is rude to begin with. he never said he’s trans, and never wanted people to analyze his psychology, so listen to his wishes
I agree. Egg culture is already shitty as it is. Posthumous egg culture combined with posthumous misgendering is really shitty and I for one hate it. The dead can’t defend themselves against intentional misgendering, and even if you make the argument that the dead can’t suffer anymore, that isn’t true for their loved ones who are still here.
It’s basically the same as Mormons who convert people to Mormonism after their death. I don’t think trans people would be happy to be compared to Mormons like that (or vice versa).
It doesn’t matter how much evidence you gather; we can’t say that a dead person who never came out was trans. It sucks and it’s a tragedy how things panned out, but if there’s one thing he didn’t like in life, it was people trying to analyze his psychology. No matter how well intentioned, it’s just us applying our own worldview to things we can never get definitive answers to.
That’s actually really gross and an erasure of trans people from history. There are a lot of cases now and throughout history of trans people unable to come out but have personal records or accounts from those close to them detailing how they felt about themselves. Saying we shouldn’t suggest anyone who was never out was trans isn’t just taking an unbiased stance, trans people are deliberately and systemically pressured from not coming out and there’s cases of trans people who were out who have their identities erased postmortem. So contributing to that feels at best like giving up ground to people who want us dead and erased.
It’s a different story if we do that firsthand accounts that more definitively indicate how that self identified, but from what I know about Kurt Cobain, he was just very eggy and queer coded. It’s entirely possible Kurt was trans, but the reason we can’t know for sure is because he never found out, not because his identity was erased.
Something that should be made very clear when talking about dead people who never found out, is that you can’t “find out” for them. Self-discovery is something that can only happen from the self. It can’t happen when someone dies.
So if they didn’t before they died and they never told anyone, you can’t assume they did because you can’t actually know, and it’s equally likely you are misgendering them.
I refuse to call a person pronouns they haven’t publicly identified with. I apply this practice to everybody whether they’re celebrities or people I know irl; whether they’re alive or dead. Not doing so is simply misgendering, which is disrespectful and harmful even if you are proven correct. It doesn’t matter if I buy into a theory about someone’s identity or not, I can’t decide another person’s gender.
We can’t definitively say Cobain was cis, and it’s really fucking sad that the person themselves can never fully answer that question. We only have the information that currently exists, and it’s not enough to say for sure. For all we know, Kurt would’ve rejected binary pronouns entirely; it’s just not our place to say.
I guess we will never know. For me reading between the lines of that summary, Ted didn’t talk about it at all, so I would have no reason to assume the psychiatrist thought about conversion therapy.
It sounds like he (she?) was angry at himself and the whole situation, and everyone involved including all of society…
Imagine you had an AMAB friend who gave you really eggy vibes, and one day you decided to start referring to them as “she”. Your friend hasn’t come out, hasn’t even said anything to you in private, but you insist on using she/her pronouns for them everywhere, to everyone they know, against their wishes. That would be pretty fucking gross right?
I actually agree completely that Kurt was very likely trans. But I don’t think it’s cool to loudly and publicly misgender people, no matter the intent.
Imagine you had an AMAB friend who gave you really eggy vibes, and one day you decided to start referring to them as “she”. Your friend hasn’t come out, hasn’t even said anything to you in private, but you insist on using she/her pronouns for them everywhere, to everyone they know, against their wishes. That would be pretty fucking gross right?
I’ve both had that experience personally, and I’ve experienced someone I’m close to being posthumously misgendered in that way. It feels extremely shitty. Actually having that person misgender my dead brother and make false claims about how he died was soul crushing to me (that’s an understatement, I can’t describe the grief and rage I felt at that). It destroyed me, I hated them for it, and I still hate them now.
Egging sucks and hurts people. When you egg living people it feels shitty, invalidating, it can also feel infantizing and condescending.
When dead people are egged, it doesn’t hurt them but it can hurt their living relatives to an extreme degree. It certainly hurt me when it was done to me. I don’t know if Kurt’s family feels the same way. Famous people likely get used to hearing lots of horrible things about their family members and vice versa. I know that for me that sucked, and personally, re-aggravated a lot of old trauma.
I actually agree completely that Kurt was very likely trans. But I don’t think it’s cool to loudly and publicly misgender people, no matter the intent.
Also there’s more than one way to be trans or queer. An insane amount actually. One can say someone was probably trans or queer in some way, but it’s not possible to say in what way. Which includes pronoun preferences. When someone doesn’t tell you, you can’t know.
What I find particularly gross about egg culture is that the people pushing it are making the assessment that a person being GNC is either not possible or that they don’t consider it likely. So they just decided that the person must be trans due to dressing as a woman. Which seems problematic doesn’t it?
Yes it is, they, whether they understand what they’re doing or not are essentially using gender stereotypes to guess someone’s internal feeling of gender, under the idea that most people are just conforming to some set of gender stereotypes and ignoring or dismissing the people who don’t conform or care about them.
On the one hand, we should always be cautious never to conclude anything about another person’s gender on their behalf.
On the other hand, it’s a lot more than one photo. And I’m not just talking about the fact that there’s literally multiple photos from multiple shows. Kurt’s family found a pretty sizeable collection of women’s clothes and makeup in his home. There are multiple interviews where he talks about feeling closer to the feminine side of the human experience or how he always tended to gravitate more towards having female friends, lots of stuff like that.
There’s also supposedly an early draft of All Apologies - supposed because the document exists but some people contend the authenticity - with the line “Let me grow some breasts.”
None of this is conclusive and should not be read as such, but anyone who has seen someone struggling with their gender is going to have a hard time coming to any other conclusion. Given Kurt’s obvious struggles with self-worth and eventual suicide, it’s hard not to see a painfully familiar pattern playing out here.
I disagree with people who posthumously assign him she/her pronouns and insist on categorically stating he was trans - that’s just as much misgendering as it would be to deny a trans person’s identity - but I think it’s a pretty reasonable assumption all told.
I think you’ve got the right of it. Deciding without asking that someone is “she” feels like a loss of agency on their part. Especially if Kurt is on the record saying he wished people wouldn’t do that.
Thinking that Kurt’s actions means he was gender nonconforming and possibly a trans woman is perfectly good and sad :'(
Honestly, I think if she were still around, things would be different for her.
??? please dont egg dead people, egging is rude to begin with. he never said he’s trans, and never wanted people to analyze his psychology, so listen to his wishes
I agree. Egg culture is already shitty as it is. Posthumous egg culture combined with posthumous misgendering is really shitty and I for one hate it. The dead can’t defend themselves against intentional misgendering, and even if you make the argument that the dead can’t suffer anymore, that isn’t true for their loved ones who are still here.
It’s basically the same as Mormons who convert people to Mormonism after their death. I don’t think trans people would be happy to be compared to Mormons like that (or vice versa).
It doesn’t matter how much evidence you gather; we can’t say that a dead person who never came out was trans. It sucks and it’s a tragedy how things panned out, but if there’s one thing he didn’t like in life, it was people trying to analyze his psychology. No matter how well intentioned, it’s just us applying our own worldview to things we can never get definitive answers to.
That’s actually really gross and an erasure of trans people from history. There are a lot of cases now and throughout history of trans people unable to come out but have personal records or accounts from those close to them detailing how they felt about themselves. Saying we shouldn’t suggest anyone who was never out was trans isn’t just taking an unbiased stance, trans people are deliberately and systemically pressured from not coming out and there’s cases of trans people who were out who have their identities erased postmortem. So contributing to that feels at best like giving up ground to people who want us dead and erased.
It’s a different story if we do that firsthand accounts that more definitively indicate how that self identified, but from what I know about Kurt Cobain, he was just very eggy and queer coded. It’s entirely possible Kurt was trans, but the reason we can’t know for sure is because he never found out, not because his identity was erased.
Something that should be made very clear when talking about dead people who never found out, is that you can’t “find out” for them. Self-discovery is something that can only happen from the self. It can’t happen when someone dies. So if they didn’t before they died and they never told anyone, you can’t assume they did because you can’t actually know, and it’s equally likely you are misgendering them.
CC: @SectoidLexi@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Exactly!
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I refuse to call a person pronouns they haven’t publicly identified with. I apply this practice to everybody whether they’re celebrities or people I know irl; whether they’re alive or dead. Not doing so is simply misgendering, which is disrespectful and harmful even if you are proven correct. It doesn’t matter if I buy into a theory about someone’s identity or not, I can’t decide another person’s gender.
We can’t definitively say Cobain was cis, and it’s really fucking sad that the person themselves can never fully answer that question. We only have the information that currently exists, and it’s not enough to say for sure. For all we know, Kurt would’ve rejected binary pronouns entirely; it’s just not our place to say.
I must be missing something – what was the abuse?
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I guess we will never know. For me reading between the lines of that summary, Ted didn’t talk about it at all, so I would have no reason to assume the psychiatrist thought about conversion therapy.
It sounds like he (she?) was angry at himself and the whole situation, and everyone involved including all of society…
Imagine you had an AMAB friend who gave you really eggy vibes, and one day you decided to start referring to them as “she”. Your friend hasn’t come out, hasn’t even said anything to you in private, but you insist on using she/her pronouns for them everywhere, to everyone they know, against their wishes. That would be pretty fucking gross right?
I actually agree completely that Kurt was very likely trans. But I don’t think it’s cool to loudly and publicly misgender people, no matter the intent.
I’ve both had that experience personally, and I’ve experienced someone I’m close to being posthumously misgendered in that way. It feels extremely shitty. Actually having that person misgender my dead brother and make false claims about how he died was soul crushing to me (that’s an understatement, I can’t describe the grief and rage I felt at that). It destroyed me, I hated them for it, and I still hate them now. Egging sucks and hurts people. When you egg living people it feels shitty, invalidating, it can also feel infantizing and condescending. When dead people are egged, it doesn’t hurt them but it can hurt their living relatives to an extreme degree. It certainly hurt me when it was done to me. I don’t know if Kurt’s family feels the same way. Famous people likely get used to hearing lots of horrible things about their family members and vice versa. I know that for me that sucked, and personally, re-aggravated a lot of old trauma.
Also there’s more than one way to be trans or queer. An insane amount actually. One can say someone was probably trans or queer in some way, but it’s not possible to say in what way. Which includes pronoun preferences. When someone doesn’t tell you, you can’t know.
Normalize men wearing skirts
1 picture of him in a dress does not make him trans
What I find particularly gross about egg culture is that the people pushing it are making the assessment that a person being GNC is either not possible or that they don’t consider it likely. So they just decided that the person must be trans due to dressing as a woman. Which seems problematic doesn’t it?
Yes it is, they, whether they understand what they’re doing or not are essentially using gender stereotypes to guess someone’s internal feeling of gender, under the idea that most people are just conforming to some set of gender stereotypes and ignoring or dismissing the people who don’t conform or care about them.
On the one hand, we should always be cautious never to conclude anything about another person’s gender on their behalf.
On the other hand, it’s a lot more than one photo. And I’m not just talking about the fact that there’s literally multiple photos from multiple shows. Kurt’s family found a pretty sizeable collection of women’s clothes and makeup in his home. There are multiple interviews where he talks about feeling closer to the feminine side of the human experience or how he always tended to gravitate more towards having female friends, lots of stuff like that.
There’s also supposedly an early draft of All Apologies - supposed because the document exists but some people contend the authenticity - with the line “Let me grow some breasts.”
None of this is conclusive and should not be read as such, but anyone who has seen someone struggling with their gender is going to have a hard time coming to any other conclusion. Given Kurt’s obvious struggles with self-worth and eventual suicide, it’s hard not to see a painfully familiar pattern playing out here.
I disagree with people who posthumously assign him she/her pronouns and insist on categorically stating he was trans - that’s just as much misgendering as it would be to deny a trans person’s identity - but I think it’s a pretty reasonable assumption all told.
I think you’ve got the right of it. Deciding without asking that someone is “she” feels like a loss of agency on their part. Especially if Kurt is on the record saying he wished people wouldn’t do that.
Thinking that Kurt’s actions means he was gender nonconforming and possibly a trans woman is perfectly good and sad :'(
Or…maybe he was just a femboy yk
Maybe, maybe not but it’s still a possibility that many in this comment section seem to forget
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For the record, if I died before I came out I would want to be posthumously transitioned.
I never chose my AGAB. Don’t assume.