Walking on Eggshells – Emotions in Transition

In trans communities, people who haven’t “come out” yet are referred to as “eggs”. Once they become aware of their transness, their egg cracks. For many people this sets off a process of transitioning, which means leaving the cage of their past behind – figuratively speaking, they’re shaking off their eggshells, leaving traces on their path and all over the place. Hence from this point forward, those eggshells form the ground for interactions between them and others, which means one way or another, everyone is walking on eggshells. Although considered a consciously hiding act, it can be surprising, uncomfortable, loud and highly interactional. The noisy mess of cracked eggs and scattered shells could be considered a consequence of rigid gender norms and attached affects, which become publicly perceivable by trans people not conforming to them (cf. Preciado 2021). The subsequent, so-called “public debate” is highly emotional and has immense effects on policy-making processes (cf. Faye, 2021; Fullerton & Weible, 2024). While Cvetkovich (2012) has presented a theory of affects as “transindividual and historical force[s]” with a potential for agency (Bargetz, 2014, p.299), Berlant (2011) argues that people’s affects are used to govern “as instruments and means of politics” (Bargetz, 2014, p.300). In line with Bargetz’ (2014) combination of those theories, I want to ask which affects are being encouraged, policed, taken on and exploited in public discourses on transness and by, for or rather against whom. This paper will form on section of my PhD project on “trans* sensitive healthcare in Austria”. To get a broader understanding of the shaping forces in this discourse I take on a perspective based in Institutional Ethnography, which usually aims to reveal the “Ruling Relations” (DeVault & McCoy, 2006). While IE allows for a multitude of data formats and interpretation methods, the combination with Affect Theory to look at Public Policy processes is new. The first phases of my project have already shown that affective modes of governing, i.e. vulnerabilisation and responsabilisation to name but two of them, play a crucial role for of trans healthcare as well as emerging policies. Hence, I will further develop such a combined method and call them “Ruling Emotions”. I work with a combination of field notes, text documents and interviews, and all project steps are shaped by CBPR guidelines (CSJCA, 2022), since the history of research on trans topics calls for a careful focus on community perspectives (cf. Riggs et al., 2024). My proposition is that the ruling emotions can be seen as the eggshells: they discourage people from becoming their true selves while they still form eggs, hinder everyone involved from moving freely through the world by cluttering the ground and don’t only shape healthcare encounters but also find their way into policy-making. I have yet to find out what “walking on eggshells” means in this specific field but it could refer to all kinds of inter_actions, e.g. navigating as well as managing affects, preserving the status quo or taking actions towards change.