
When I was in my early teens, the combination of being trans without knowing, puberty, religion, and my family dynamic led me to develop what I now recognize as a dismissive attachment style in my adult relationships. I was taught that the feelings that I was experiencing were to be disregarded, and that the changes my body was going through were repulsive, and so I felt a constant intense shame. Expressing my feelings to my family usually led to mockery instead of validation, so I looked for ways to protect myself. The method I settled on was to conceal, to hide everything inside of me to the best degree that I could.

This manifested in different ways. I tried to be sneaky about things that I was curious about, like my confusion around what puberty was doing to me. I disappeared on library trips to look at anatomy books in secret. I covered the crack of my bedroom door so that no one could see my light on late at night, and read about sexual experiences online.  I became master of the “minimize” shortcut, which is a bit of a metaphor in and of itself. Something seemed wrong to me about my experience of my body and my desires, but the only category I had to put those feelings in was that of my “sinful nature,” so that translated to concealment of my activities and deep religious guilt.

My dismissive attachment also manifested as a chilling effect in my self expression. I experienced paralyzing doubt because of the fear I had of mockery from my family, and so visual art and writing became an exercise in second-guessing. Showing vulnerability meant being told that my feelings were invalid or childish, or that because I was “gifted” that the alienation I was experiencing could not be relieved by anyone or anything around me until I was older and lived elsewhere. I suspected that I was a faker about something too (spoiler: not a boy), and so in my self-doubt I dismissed my need to access my emotions through art. I learned how to be funny in benign ways, through wordplay, juxtaposition and puns. I chose safe subjects for my image-making and received praise for it.

If I stayed in my room reading my books (usually horribly sexist science fiction from the 1970s) or lived inside of my computer (playing video games, learning to code, not feeling my body), I was “the good kid” that didn’t cause any trouble, and nobody bothered to look any deeper. I could feel self-contained and secure inside of my box. I still dream about living in that room sometimes. I recently dreamed that I was naked in there and could only find boy clothes to wear.

What developing these habits has led to in my adult life is a struggle to trust and be vulnerable with others in the ways that I need. I find myself trying to anticipate what other people will do in order to protect myself, and I have a tendency to withdraw or shut down instead of acknowledging my emotions. I can be excessively judgmental towards others because of the degree of criticism I’ve become accustomed to from the inner voice I cultivated. This also displays as a deep fear of rejection, that if I do anything slightly wrong at all and misread someone’s unvoiced intentions that my mistake will lead to humiliation.

A confluence of personal interactions and learning has recently brought this dismissive attachment style into light for me, and now that I understand myself better I’m realizing two things. First, I need to notice and communicate my own needs. By downplaying my needs like I’m still a helpless teenager, I’m setting myself up to be resentful when they aren’t met. Second, I need to trust the people around me to lovingly communicate their needs too, rather than try and get ahead of them. I’m not a mind reader, and trying to anticipate what other people need from me has increasingly become a road to hurt feelings. 

Writing this blog continues to be an enormous exercise in vulnerability for me, but there’s long-form vulnerability like this, and short-form in daily interactions with others. Transition has given me a way back to the emotions that I repressed in myself to survive, but it hasn’t dismantled all of my defense mechanisms and trauma responses. I still need to name them and determine what’s useful and what gets discarded so that I can reintegrate all of the parts of myself again. I feel like this is the only way that I can grow my compassion for myself and others so that I can have meaningful and authentic relationships.

Learning to Trust

<blockquote>
Who a hotter B? Who got a lot of D? 
Who poppin' like a P when he be hoppin' out the V? (Brr) 
And who gon' tell him that my bitch is getting her degree? 
And when we say it's Hot Girl Summer, we ain't talkin' 'bout degrees 
— Megan Thee Stallion, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbcLcSY2au4" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">Hot Girl Summer</a>
</blockquote>
Sometimes I joke that I'm in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutch_(eggs)" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">"clutch"</a> with my other transfem friends because most of us began transition around the same time. The truth is that we connected at support group because of our similar timelines, so it's self-selection bias. One of our running jokes has been that this summer was going to be our Hot Girl Summer, and honestly for me I think it's come true. Last summer I was only a few months into transition and didn't want to be perceived; I hid inside and ran a Minecraft server for friends while starting to learn about feminine gender expression and penning (SO MANY) coming out letters. This year I'm feeling more aligned with my emotions and my body, and so I'm spending most of my time with others out in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOi-zV5rer0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">the real world</a>. Plus with Portland winters the way they are, and feeling the need to make up for lost time, I really want to make this summer COUNT.
Here's a sample of what I've been doing since the last blog post:
<ul>
<li>Organized picnics and tea times with friends</li>
<li>Attended trans and queer events in town, like lit readings and affinity jogs</li>
<li>Went to the Oregon Country Fair and danced around in giant, shimmery fairy wings (highly recommend, very gender affirming)</li>
<li>Blasted my eardrums out at a transfem indie rock show</li>
<li>Marched and partied at Portland Pride - my first Pride!!!</li>
<li>Went to the Barbie movie with friends - twice 💅</li>
</ul>
While summer of year 2 feels much more stable, I wouldn't want to give the impression that I have my shit entirely figured out. There's still a lot I'm learning about myself and personal work that I'm doing. Being out in public brings its own challenges, and I'm working on some writing that will dig into that more. But... I won't make any promises on how soon that gets posted as long as the sun is out. 😎

Hot Girl Summer

Host, 2009


## Introduction

About a year ago I took down most of my art from the internet. I had maintained an online art practice since 2009, but with my transition came a deep distrust of my previous creative work. As I found myself deepening my ability to feel emotion, my earlier art felt extremely flat and muted to me. It embarrassed me to have it still visible online, as it felt unrepresentative of my current understanding of myself, so I decided to take it down until I had time to sort things out. Now it’s been a year and I’m starting to feel like I have a way to talk about that art.

But before I do that, I need to talk about eggs. For those unfamiliar with the term, an egg is someone who has not realized that they are trans. One cannot identify as an egg, either you are living in ignorance - maybe “gender questioning” - or you know you are trans. So “egg” is a label applied to one’s past but not an identity actively lived. Theorist fave Grace Lavery writes in [*Pleasure and Efficacy*](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691243931/pleasure-and-efficacy) about a concept she calls “egg theory,” a way of understanding egg reasoning, and by consequence art production. She describes egg theory as being defined by two forces: one, the impossibility of transition for the egg in question, and two that this transition is prevented by what she calls “desire… aerosolized into a fine spray… all that is required is that its ontology be virtual and plastic.”

In other words, an egg has unexpressed desires to transition and live as their proper gender. Those desires meet the egg's perception of the impossibility of transition, and through a twisted logic of self preservation become abstracted into other forms. These other forms look like repression, weird rules one has for oneself, projection. As desire persists and grows, so does this transmutation of desire into a protective mass. This is the shell of the egg.

## Examining my Eggshell

My first tip-off that I needed to reexamine my art from an egg theory perspective came when I was walking up the stairs one day and took a long, deep look into a painting I had made in college called “Host.” I didn’t remember my original intentions behind Host, just that I had pulled images out of my folder of random pics I saved from the internet and collaged them together into a composition. As I looked at the painting, I could see that all of my selections had something to do with embodiment - cringey masculine figures in crushed velvet suits, sexy punk girls with bright red hair, a woman with a joyous expression that I had covered in a blot of green. Alien forms with twisted bodies, an Evangelion EVA suit, a space station given a tribal mask for a face. A study of a bust literally titled "Ideal Head of a Woman." The figure in the lower right with the glasses is a self portrait, I'm wearing my wife's invisibility cloak to hide my face. All undergirded by a field of bright pink. I realized, in viewing my painting with fresh eyes, that it was an expression of gender envy, of my struggles with my body at the time, a 20 year old hiding behind a shaggy haircut and nondescript baggy clothes.

I discussed my moment of recognition with an artist friend who is also trans and had been going through the same struggle with her older work, and so we compared notes. We started finding curious tendencies in our art that seemed to be indicative of a need for deflection, abstraction, and also secret desire. In looking back and trying to remember my feeling around art production, I believe that these tendencies were protective, stemming from repression of my transness, and therefore pieces of my egg shell. I want to outline the tendencies I found in my art here, in case other people can relate.

## Tendencies

### Systematization

[![Perlin Flow Playground, 2017](/post-media/egg-art/systematization/marbled.png)](/post-media/egg-art/systematization/marbled.png)

Perlin Flow Playground, 2017 WebGL app for drawing using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise" target="_blank">Perlin Noise</a>

[![Procedural Metaphor Generator, 2018](/post-media/egg-art/systematization/proc-metaphors.PNG)](/post-media/egg-art/systematization/proc-metaphors.PNG)

Procedural Metaphor Generator, 2018 Command line tool that generates metaphors from templates and lists of common words

By treating art-making as a series of operations or set of instructions to follow, I couched my expression safely in the constraints of rigorous systems. Some constraint is good for creativity, it lends to solving problems of expression in novel ways. But too much constraint and art becomes repetitive or tepid. This is exactly what I wanted as an egg, because it protected my choices (and therefore my inner being) from too much scrutiny. I justified this creative approach by relating it back to conceptual artists like [Sol LeWitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_LeWitt), but the difference was that LeWitt and others were using systems as a way of engaging with others in the creative process.

### Imitation

[![Landscape, 2009](/post-media/egg-art/imitation/landscapepaintingsm.png)](/post-media/egg-art/imitation/landscapepaintingsm.png)

Landscape, 2009 Acrylic on MDF, composition made from map tiles from Pokémon Red

[![Time, 2010](/post-media/egg-art/imitation/vector-dali.PNG)](/post-media/egg-art/imitation/vector-dali.PNG)

Time, 2010 A vector art pastiche of Salvador Dali's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory" target="_blank">The Persistence of Memory</a>

Ironic distance served me by allowing for the feeling of artistic expression without the challenges of self awareness and emotional connection. There’s something eggy about trying on other artists in the manner of clothing, as well. I've written a little bit more about this tendency with regard to wordplay in the post [Learning to Trust](/posts/learning-to-trust/).

### Technical mastery

[![Game Boy Assembly Experiment, 2019](/post-media/egg-art/technical-mastery/helloworld-gbasm.jpg)](/post-media/egg-art/technical-mastery/helloworld-gbasm.jpg)

Game Boy Assembly Experiment, 2019 Setup for a custom Game Boy cartridge

[![WebGPU Sketch, 2022](/post-media/egg-art/technical-mastery/suzanne-backface.png)](/post-media/egg-art/technical-mastery/suzanne-backface.png)

WebGPU Sketch, 2022 A raytracer that runs in the browser

In order to systematize and imitate more effectively, one needs to increase their technical ability. For my egg self, this looked like deep diving into the specifics of a medium only to lose sight of my original reason for mastering that medium, leading to outcomes closer to “programmer art.” I was fleeing from the challenge of subject matter, of investigating my feelings around a composition, and so I spent time getting really good at certain media and techniques that I would undoubtedly *eventually* use for expression. Someday.

### Tools over expression

[![Teensy TV, 2020](/post-media/egg-art/tools-over-expression/teapot.jpg)](/post-media/egg-art/tools-over-expression/teapot.jpg)

Teensy TV, 2020 A microcontroller for generating composite video signals

[![GIF Brushes, 2013](/post-media/egg-art/tools-over-expression/brushes-example.PNG)](/post-media/egg-art/tools-over-expression/brushes-example.PNG)

GIF Brushes, 2013 A website in which users could use GIFs as animated brushes on the page

Similarly, I found myself often building tools and inventing media formats ostensibly to enable art production for myself and unnamed others. I failed to actually *use* these tools, and no one else used them, because they were built to keep me away from creativity, not to enable it.

### Stoned shit

[![Hallucination 2, 2008](/post-media/egg-art/stoned-shit/hallucination2.gif)](/post-media/egg-art/stoned-shit/hallucination2.gif)

Hallucination 2, 2008 Animated GIF

[![THOMASALVIA.GIF, 2010](/post-media/egg-art/stoned-shit/THOMASALVIA.GIF)](/post-media/egg-art/stoned-shit/THOMASALVIA.GIF)

THOMASALVIA.GIF, 2010 Animated GIF

We’ve all heard the cliche about drug use enabling artists to access their subconscious and enable further expression. I think a lot of people repeating this fail to recognize how often artists - people in general - eggs, especially - use drugs to get away from their feelings. The art I made with drug use manifested as feedback, repetition or deformation of form until obliteration, turning up the gain until the speakers blew. I didn't have to sit with my inner voice if it was drowned out.

### Gender envy and dysphoria

[![Woman, 2010](/post-media/egg-art/gender-envy/GIRL.png)](/post-media/egg-art/gender-envy/GIRL.png)


 Woman, 2010
 
 Vector art study. Final image on the left, source image (found in the same folder) on the right.
 Yes, that is Ash Ketchum. All I can say is: GIRL.
 


[![13_going_on_30.jpg from the Broad Abstractions series, 2010](/post-media/egg-art/gender-envy/13_going_on_30.jpg)](/post-media/egg-art/gender-envy/13_going_on_30.jpg)

13_going_on_30.jpg, 2010
 
JPG from the Broad Abstractions series (2009-11)


[![Oranges, 2009](/post-media/egg-art/gender-envy/oranges.gif)](/post-media/egg-art/gender-envy/oranges.gif)

Oranges, 2009 Static GIF

I found myself toying with gender in what I thought were "safe" or appropriate ways, but as a whole my choices reveal certain desires and emotions. A face swap or body swap may look harmless or funny, but add enough of them up and a picture of incongruity starts to form. Related to the “stoned shit” tendency I see a repeated motif of bodily obliteration in my work, splitting apart and breaking down bodies to constituent parts. These especially crop up in images of women, but also occur in my selfies. The images are usually humorous and never abject or visceral, but they're certainly weird. Also some of my drawings of women beg the question “is that a self portrait?”.

I made collages that first appear to be sexualized or objectifying, but the egginess comes through in the lack of male gaze - there are mixed messages as to *why* I am centering these bodies or disassembled body parts. I now read these images as built upon the interplay of my desire to have a female body with the confusion of testosterone-driven libido and repressed lesbian identity.

## Closing thoughts

I wouldn't want to give the impression that there weren't things I learned or grew from in this art making period of my life. Looking back, my old art reminds me of how a seedling twists itself as it hunts for light, it grows but with constraints. I'm beating myself up a lot less than I used to over my art practice because I can see how much of it was a struggle for me, how contorted I got when trying to approach my own feelings or certain subjects. I'm not sure yet how I want to rebuild my online art practice or to what degree beyond this blogpost I even want to represent my egg art online, but with understanding comes forgiveness and that feels like a good start to me. If you're a transgender person with an art practice and you've recognized egg tendencies in your art (similar to mine or not), I'd love to hear from you.

Human Kibble

Hot Girl Summer

Learning to Trust

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Egg Art