I think the only thing that bothers me about this counter is that transfems in denial do commonly identify as femboys to avoid acknowledging they are trans, whereas a trans man femboy has already transitioned and thus is definitionally no longer in denial and in fact has overcome denial to transition and live as a trans man. These are two different situations, the reasons for skepticism when encountering an “eggy” but self-identified cis femboy who insists they are not trans don’t apply to the trans man femboy, who is clearly not in denial by already going against the grain of society by having transitioned.

I get what you’re saying, however this situation is used to illustrate that what they are doing by arguing someone is a trans girl in denial because of what they are wearing is misgendering, even though it might not seem like it. It’s meant to highlight the hypocrisy of claiming that one respects the way others identify and then refusing to respect the person who doesn’t identify as a trans girl because he’s a boy who likes to wear thigh highs, skirts, dresses, wear nail polish, hangs out with the girls, and whatever other non-stereotypical male things that lead the person to think he must be a trans girl.

That said, I think it’s a much better argument to simply assert the pragmatic value of respecting someone’s self-identity, regardless of whether we think that self-identity is accurate or not (i.e. whether we think that person might be in denial or not).

I do agree with this, the argument used in the initial post isn’t great, it would be better to focus on highlighting the importance of identity alone. Honestly the idea that a person can be in-denial of being trans to other people is really toxic IMO, it gives the idea that we have to answer to others when it comes to our identity. We do not! Ultimately someone being “in-denial” is between them and themselves, not anyone else. If a person identifies as a boy to everyone else, they are to be called and treated as a boy, end of story. The only way one can be helped out of denial is to understand themselves and resolve that conflict with themselves.

A good example is Finnster, a femboy Twitch streamer who for a long time was speculated to be an egg. The debate raged on about whether he was actually trans, and this naturally brought up conversations about respecting someone’s self-identity. I still think even though Finnstser later came out as trans (thus maybe vindicating the “he’s an egg” crowd), it doesn’t mean we should think it was wrong for respecting his identity prior to his coming out. If he claimed he was a cis man, that’s what you respect whether you are skeptical that is actually his identity or not. This is a bit like the pronouns issue: you just respect the pronouns someone chooses, regardless of whether you think they suit the person or not.

The Finnster situation is a little bit thornier too, because the fact that he identifies as genderfluid, means that the egg people saying they were right and “he was a girl all along” is extremely disingenuous because, the whole thing about genderfluidity is that it means gender shifts and changes over time. That means someone who is genderfluid might very well have a different gender identity when they started than they do now. Though I’ve found egg spaces to be not very understanding of, or even intolerant towards genderfluidity saying that “gender is set in stone” or “it’s in your brain/genes when you’re born”. It really does go to show the importance of just respecting how people identify right now and not worrying about whether they were wrong or are wrong. At the end of the day, it’s their life, their gender. Their destiny is in their hands.

Whether someone’s self conception of their gender identity is accurate is unrelated and essentially separate from the practical social etiquette of respecting self-identification.

Well said.